There’s an old saying that analysing comedy is like dissecting a frog. Nobody laughs and the frog dies.

But if that approach was applied to actual dissection, we’d still think humans were worked by little people inside, like The Numbskulls in that comic.

So I say, dammit. This is comedy science and we need to get some blood on our hands. We’ve waited long enough. Let’s cut up a frog and kill it. Not just kill it. Dice it. Shove it through the woodchipper. Leave its guts floating in the air as a fine, dull mist that nobody could laugh at, but which leaves a horrible taste in the mouth.

Yay! Fun!

As a subject for my unholy experiment, I’ve sent Igor into the comedy graveyard, where all the most glorious funny things are buried, and he has exhumed the corpse of the Simpsons episode Homer Badman.

It’s a classic episode, from season six, regularly scoring high on critics’ and fans’ lists of the best Simpsons episodes of all time. The script will have been ping-ponged around one of the sharpest writing rooms in comedy history, but the lead writing credit here goes to Greg Daniels, who went on to co-create King Of The Hill, Parks and Rec and the American version of The Office. He knows what he’s doing, and he’s said that it’s his favourite ever Simpsons episode.

In Homer Badman, Simpson family patriarch Homer attends a candy industry trade fair, with the hope of stealing as many free samples as possible. On returning home, his attempts to grab a rare Gummi bear candy that the family’s childminder has sat on are mistaken for sexual harassment, and the hapless yellow dad ends up a victim of trial-by-media.

This episode features some of my personal favourite Simpsons moments ­(Homer throwing a shaken cola can as a grenade, ­a pitch-perfect throwaway Little Mermaid parody, a TV talk show hosted by a wild bear) and builds to possibly the greatest closing scene of any sitcom, where Homer proudly and tenderly tells his wife, “Marge, my love, I haven’t learned a thing.” (That’s the rules right there, not only for writing the character of Homer, but for keeping a sitcom going for thirty plus years.)

But we’re not going to get that far. Nowhere near. I’m going to shred any joy out of the episode by forensically scalpelling the guts out of just the first two minutes, joke by joke.

Two minutes. We’re not going to get much past the production credits appearing on screen, but those first two minutes contain ten great jokes which I’m going to pick apart like some kind of relentless fun-removal machine, in the hope of demonstrating the depth of thought, and density of writing, that makes something really, really good.

This isn’t analysis intended to reveal some secret ‘hero’s journey’ or the importance of ‘Saving the Cat’, or to pinpoint some overarching theory of comedy. It’s just about how much hidden thought is packed inside every laugh, ready to be released at speed, like a boxing glove on a spring.

So here’s How It Works: the first two minutes of The Simpsons season 6, episode 9: Homer Badman.