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'The Simpsons' marathon: What you need to know

'The Simpsons': Every episode ever made of the animated sitcom is airing on FXX, starting today. Here are the details of the marathon.

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Matt Groening/Fox Broadcasting Co./AP
'The Simpsons' airs on Fox.

You may be a diehard fan of the long-running Fox animated show “The Simpsons,” but can you handle more than 200 hours of the program?

A marathon of “The Simpsons,” airing on the channel FXX, started this morning and will continue until Sept. 1. More than 500 episodes (that's every episode ever created) and the film “The Simpsons Movie” will air during the stretch, according to Rolling Stone, and the installments will air in chronological order.

“The Simpsons” has aired 25 seasons and will kick off its twenty-sixth with a new season premiere on Sept. 28. The animated show centers on the title family, including dad Homer (Dan Castellaneta) and son Bart (Nancy Cartwright), as well as other residents of the Simpsons’ town of Springfield. Monitor readers selected “Simpsons” as the sixth-best TV sitcom of all time and according to NPR, it’s the longest-running prime time scripted entertainment TV show ever. 

Showrunner and executive producer Al Jean and some of the other “Simpsons” writers will be tweeting about the show during the marathon via the Twitter account @everysimpsons and the hashtag #EverySimpsonsEver, according to Variety.

David Bianculli of NPR said that he thinks the marathon is an intriguing event. 

“There's something about the sense of watching at the same time as other people that makes it special,” he said, according to NPR. "That certainly goes for a marathon – and that's why I predict this 25-season Simpsons marathon will indeed steer people towards FXX. It's a great show, a great idea and a TV viewing event of unprecedented scale.” 

There is some conflicting advice on which episodes viewers should definitely tune in for (Joe Reid of The Wire wrote that by Aug. 25, “you're done... you're almost finished with season nine, at which point, the quality of the episodes starts to dip considerably enough that marathoning just won't be worth it from here on out," though Reid did select a few episodes that he felt were still worth viewing, while Vulture writers Jesse David Fox and Josh Kurp wrote that “some people and some other sites will tell you that you don't have to watch after season eight, but please don't listen to those people… Sure, the rate of great episodes drops off, but some of the show's best half-hours happen after season ten."). “Simpsons” fans will probably know best which episodes they want to pick and choose and can use this guide by The Wire if they need a refresher course on some of the installments.

If you attempt any kind of binge-watching, just please keep hydrated and at least crack open a window to feel a breeze.

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