Jean became showrunner of "The Simpsons" at the start of the third season (1991–92) together with Reiss. A showrunner has the ultimate responsibility of all the processes that an episode goes through before completion, including the writing, the animation, the voice acting and the music. When Jean began his tenure as showrunner, the only thing he thought to himself every day was "Don't blow it and screw up this thing everyone loves." The first episode Jean and Reiss ran was "Mr. Lisa Goes to Washington" (aired September 26, 1991), and they felt pressured to make it good, so much so that they did six to seven rewrites of the script in order to improve its humor. Jean said he "kept thinking 'It's not good enough. It's not good enough.'" Reiss added that "we were definitely scared. We had never run anything before, and they dumped us on this."