Reception
In its original broadcast, "Dancin' Homer" finished twenty-fifth in the ratings for the week of November 5–11, 1990, with a Nielsen rating of 14.9, equivalent to approximately fourteen million viewing households. It was the highest-rated show on the Fox network that week.
Since airing, the episode has received mostly positive reviews from television critics. DVD Movie Guide's Colin Jacobson said it was "probably the best episode" of the season, and commented that "Dancin' Homer" offered a "consistently satisfying show. Like the better episodes, it packed a lot of action into its twenty-three minutes, as Homer’s saga took on a near epic feeling. It also contained more wonderfully bizarre asides than usual at this point in the series’ run. From the Rastafarians who appear in the crowd when Homer performs 'Baby Elephant Walk', to the existence of the Players’ Ex-Wives section at the ballpark, the episode provided a fun and rich program." In a review of the second season, Bryce Wilson of Cinema Blend said "Dancin' Homer" felt "a bit flat", but "but even in lowest points, humor is easy to find." Dawn Taylor of The DVD Journal thought the best line of the episode was Homer's "Marge, this ticket doesn't just give me a seat. It also gives me the right — no, the duty — to make a complete ass of myself." Jeremy Kleinman of DVD Talk said lines from the episode such as "A Simpson on a T-shirt, I never thought I'd see the day" show a "humorous self-awareness of the emergence of The Simpsons as cultural phenomenon".
The episode was by Jerry Greene of the Orlando Sentinel named the third best episode of the show with a sports theme. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette named it second best sports moment in the history of the show. Warren Martyn and Adrian Wood, the authors of the book I Can't Believe It's a Bigger and Better Updated Unofficial Simpsons Guide, wrote: "Understanding baseball isn't really a requirement for this episode, as the humor doesn't come from the games so much as the personalities. Tony Bennett's cameo is great, and Homer's dance has rightly become legendary."
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