The world is a better place because of Ralph Wiggum. His sweet innocence, and general numbskullery has provided for more one-liners than any television character who came before him, or existed in the same era of TV. This includes Joey Tribbiani from Friends, and Woody Boyd from Cheers. The bittersweet nature of loving Ralph is born of taking pleasure from his pain. You might ask yourself if we’ve nothing better to do, building such a list, but we trust the source of the suggestion: Jim Beam never lies. Or as Ralph might say, “It tastes like…burning.” Ralph’s existential crises:
7. He Bent His Wookie
Let us travel back in time. All the way to the fall of 1994. If you were watching The Simpsons in its sixth season, we tip our cap to you. In the second episode of that season, we came to love Ralph Wiggum at new level of depth. The episode entitled, “Lisa’s Rival,” featured the series’ second reference to Edgar Allen Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart. Dealing with an academic rival, Lisa resorted to cheap tricks and cheating to beat her friend and foe in a class diorama competition. Eventually, the award went to Ralph Wiggum, who offered a box full of originally packaged Star Wars actions figures. Then fans were gifted one classic Ralphism after another: “What’s a diorama?” “I beat the smart kids, I beat the smart kids…” before his poor heart was ripped from its chest when he fell and broke Chewbacca.