Reception
In its original broadcast, "The Joy of Sect" finished 27th in ratings for the week of February 2-8, 1998, with a Nielsen rating of 9.6, equivalent to approximately 9.4 million viewing households. It was the fourth highest-rated show on the Fox network that week, following The X-Files, King of the Hill, and Ally McBeal.
In a 2006 article in USA Today, "The Joy of Sect" was highlighted among the six best episodes of The Simpsons season 9, along with "Trash of the Titans," "The Last Temptation of Krust," "The Cartridge Family," "Dumbbell Indemnity," and "Das Bus." The A.V. Club featured the episode in its analysis of "15 Simpsons Moments That Perfectly Captured Their Eras." The Mirror gave the episode positive mention in its review of the Season 9 DVD release, and wrote "The Joy of Sect is hilarious with only Marge keeping her head." Isaac Mitchell-Frey of the Herald Sun cited the episode as the highlight of the season. The Sunday Mail highlighted the episode for their "Family Choice" segment, commenting: "Normally, a show about religious cults would spell doom and gloom. Only Bart, of The Simpsons, could make a comedy out of it but then, he and his cartoon family are a cult in their own right anyway!"
Jeff Shalda of The Simpsons Archive used the episode as an example of one of the "good qualities present in The Simpsons," while analyzing why some other aspects of The Simpsons make Christians upset. The book I Can't Believe It's a Bigger and Better Updated Unofficial Simpsons Guide commented that the episode was "an odd one," with "a lot of good moments," and went on to state that it was "a nice twist to see Burns determined to be loved." However, the book also noted that "The Joy of Sect" is "another one where the central joke isn't strong enough to last the whole episode." In a lesson plan for St Mary's College, Durham: An Introduction to Philosophy: The Wit and Wisdom of Lisa Simpson, the episode is described in a section on "False Prophets" as applicable for "... studying the more outrageous manifestations of 'religion' or those simply alert to the teachings of Christ on the subject."
Read more about this topic: The Joy Of Sect
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.”
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)
“He’s leaving Germany by special request of the Nazi government. First he sends a dispatch about Danzig and how 10,000 German tourists are pouring into the city every day with butterfly nets in their hands and submachine guns in their knapsacks. They warn him right then. What does he do next? Goes to a reception at von Ribbentropf’s and keeps yelling for gefilte fish!”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)