The Simpsons (1989)

Best in its classic early seasons Springfield is built for the pause button. Store signs, newspaper headlines, church marquees and the chalkboard in the opening titles all carry their own jokes, layered under dialogue that is already firing on several levels at once. That is why the show's peak years still hold up to a frame-by-frame rewatch: you can know an episode by heart and still find a gag on a storefront you never read. The series has run for decades and the later seasons are looser, so for pure density, start with the early-to-mid 1990s run.