Which is the first episode of The Simpsons to use the short version of the opening sequence, the one which goes from the title in the clouds straight to the driveway?
If you watch the episodes in sequence on DVD, or on Disney+, or on any other format you may care to think of, or look at any online reference list, then that will say it was "Lisa's Substitute" from late in the second season, originally broadcast in the US on 25 April 1991.
That episode was certainly the first one that was always intended to feature that intro. It was not, however, the first time it had been seen by those watching the episodes when they first aired.
From partway through the second season until early in the fourth, several episodes were edited down for their US premieres. Usually, this would be because a music video or a promo for a forthcoming music video needed to be included in the timeslot. The three most afflicted episodes are "Bart the Daredevil", which featured the premiere for "Do the Bartman" after its ending credits; "Bart's Dog Gets an 'F'", which similarly debuted the video for "Deep, Deep Trouble"; and "Saturdays of Thunder", which was followed by the video for Michael Jackson's "Black or White".
The truncated version of "Daredevil", which premiered on 6 December 1990, used the clouds-to-driveway opening, as stated by this post by Nick Sayer on alt.tv.simpsons right after the episode's original broadcast: "The opener was abreviated this week. It started with the clouds, then skipped directly to Bart landing his skate board on Homer's car, and the whole family rushing in." There are some other posts on the newsgroup which might be cases of people misremembering at a time when not everyone had a VCR, but this was posted within hours of the episode airing and it certainly cannot be an example; thus, this was the broadcast debut of not only this short opening, but any shortened version of the usual opening at all (barring the two Season 1 episodes that start the intro as normal, but fade into the show proper before we get to the chalkboard). The abbreviated premiere of "Bart's Dog Gets an 'F'" on 7 March 1991 also used the shortened intro before "Substitute" aired nearly two months later; the third episode to be broadcast with it, but the first that was always intended to use it!
In most cases of these watered-down premieres, the full version would be seen on the episode's first repeat, which in the case of "Daredevil" was 28 February 1991. However, that broadcast also had to be shortened to include a newsflash about the Gulf War, which concluded on the day of the repeat. Most of the cuts and edits to the episode itself thus stayed in the Fox repeat, although Canadian viewers saw the full episode.
A few weeks previously, on 24 January 1991, "One Fish, Two Fish, Blowfish, Blue Fish" was the first episode to air the condensed version of the title sequence that goes clouds-chalkboard-Homer leaves work-grocery checkout-Lisa's sax solo-driveway (keeping all three of the interchangeable elements of the intro; the other major variant of the standard-definition era, which goes clouds-chalkboard-driveway, was introduced in Season 5). This was the first broadcast episode to use a shortened intro which was always planned to do so, and noticeably has a chalkboard gag making a meta-reference to this; a joke impacted by the fact that a shortened version of the intro had already been seen at this point!
All other versions of "Bart's Dog" seem to have been uncut; the first US repeat on 25 July 1991 was the first opportunity to see it in full. I don't have the exact date for when Sky One premiered "Daredevil" in the UK, but British viewers also saw the short version, at least at first. Sky also aired the short version of "Bart's Dog", but bafflingly bereft of the "Deep, Deep Trouble" video.
The unexpurgated version of "Daredevil" is said to have finally been seen in America some months later, on 29 August 1991. However, further examination of alt.tv.simpsons reveals that even then, US viewers saw the clouds-to-driveway intro; summer repeats on Fox would frequently use shortened intros as a way to save time. It is quite possible Fox viewers never got to see the episode in an untampered form on a network airing, as a later 1993 showing was also the cut one!
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