Reception
In its original broadcast, "Natural Born Kissers" finished 29th in ratings for the week of May 11-18, 1998, with a Nielsen rating of 8.8, equivalent to approximately 8.6 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.
Matt Groening listed the episode as being his eighth favorite episode, and the aroused cow is one of his all-time favorite act break jokes. The authors of the book I Can't Believe It's a Bigger and Better Updated Unofficial Simpsons Guide, Warren Martyn and Adrian Wood, called it "a superb episode which actually makes Marge and Homer's love life seem very real; everyone needs a bit of spice now and again, and they find theirs. The balloon trip is hysterical, and the attempts to explain their behaviour to a very worldly-wise Bart and Lisa are magnificent." The episode was part of a DVD boxed set release called: The Simpsons Kiss and Tell: The Story of Their Love, and in his review of the release Andy Dougan of the Evening Times characterized the episode along with "Large Marge", "Three Gays of the Condo", and "The Way We Weren't" as "four of the funniest episodes of recent series." The DVD release was also reviewed favorably by Louis R. Carlozo in the Chicago Tribune, where the episode was seen as "more ridiculous" than "Large Marge".
Read more about this topic: Natural Born Kissers
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“Aesthetic emotion puts man in a state favorable to the reception of erotic emotion.... Art is the accomplice of love. Take love away and there is no longer art.”
—Rémy De Gourmont (1858–1915)
“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)
“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)