 Warren Martyn and Adrian Wood, the authors of the book I Can 't Believe It's a Bigger and Better Updated Unofficial Simpsons Guide, said the episode is a "convincing portrait of young marriage and hardship in the days of Reaganomics — and the biggest name to guest voice gets the littlest, but the most significant, to say". When asked to pick his favorite season out of The Simpsons seasons one through twenty, Paul Lane of the Niagara Gazette picked season four and highlighted "the sweetly funny" "Lisa's First Word". David Johnson at DVD Verdict named it "one of the greatest flashback episodes". Dave Manley at DVDActive said in a review of the The Simpsons: Greatest Hits DVD that it is "one of the better episodes and probably my personal favourite on the disc, although most Simpsons connoisseurs would probably go for the previous episode [on the DVD]", and added that there are "some great parodies in the episode too". The Orlando Sentinel's Gregory Hardy named it the fourteenth best episode of the show with a sports theme (the Olympics in this case).
