Just from the episode title, I could tell this was going to be a good episode; the couch-gag just furthered that notion. This was not only a good episode, it is the best of Season 19, and for the show's current standard, I consider this episode perfect.
Not only is this an immensely complicated episode, it's without a doubt the most intelligent one I've seen in well over ten seasons. Some things here are so brilliant, that the only other times I've ever seen anything like them on the show, were in the movie.
Example, that flashback scene of Homer's life is just one of the greatest things I've seen in the show. I don't know why it works, but it just does. It almost the same, if not, more impact than the 'Wedding Tape' scene in the movie, and I just didn't think that was possible. It's not a tear-jerking scene, but it's a mixture between being melloncollie, funny, and and slightly depressing, but in an absolutely perfect, powerful way.
As for humour, I was pleasantly surprised by what this episode had to offer. I didn't laugh at times, but the material wasn't bad, just not something that can bring me to laugh at it. Now, on to animation. I've seen better on the show, but it was fantastic here, with great uses of colours, which really go with the feel of the scenes they represent.
Another thing that makes this episode pretty much perfect for the show's current standard is the references to other episodes. They're absolutely brilliant. There's one scene in which about a thousand frames from earlier episodes come flying at you, and I had to pause the video to make any of them out. I don't believe the show has referenced itself better than it did in this magnificant episode.
While this isn't an entirely perfect episode, as the scenes with Marge, Homer, and Duffman let it down a bit, and the Ice Age parody wasn't something I was expecting, but it works; it just doesn't matter, because I've come to expect that hardly new episodes are going to be perfect, and pretty much no episode in the past 3 years has shown a level of this brilliance; and I need to be happy with what they're giving; but I'll never stop believing they might possibly put out something better one day. But this episode is pretty much perfect, and after 19 seasons, I don't think it's going to get any better than this. So until they put out a better episode, I'm going to just accept that this is the how perfect episodes are nowadays.
9.9/10 - which is possibly the highest rating I've given an episode since the seventh season.