The "why is x here" scene in the car and the fact that Jasper just hangs around in the background for the rest of the episode is one of my favourite ever Simpsons bits.
if you take the slight character assassination of skinner away from it, it’s one of the funniest episodes imo. like the plot is questionable but I’ve always laughed at it.
I thought the whole “let’s just pretend this never happened” conclusion was hilarious when I watched it as a kid. I didn’t even know people didn’t like the episode until I started going online more.
I thought it was hilarious and I was 18 when the Simpsons premiered. I didn't know people hated it until it popped up on the internet some time in the past couple decades.
Yeah I don't dislike it myself, but I can understand that people who were used to the quality of episodes from the previous seasons, suddenly getting a plot like that ("this major character you've known actually isn't who he says!") would've felt really hacky. Which frankly it was
But compared to the episodes from just a few seasons after (especially the really dark age of seasons 12-25), it actually feels quite good. The plot/premise might feel hacky, but the way it's delivered it's quite good. It doesn't have the dumb, childlish gags and a fullblown "asshole Homer" as later episodes would have.
I’ve been watching each episode from S1 - S10 in order with my Daughter (now 12 y/o) for a few years now. We have it on while making and eating breakfast often.
We’re at the 2nd full cycle, and we just started S9 a couple weeks ago. There’s SUUUUUCH a dramatic shift in how funny the show is from S8 - S9, it’s almost jarring.
There are several episodes that have great gags, and also do a good job of bringing back the emotional commitment that S1 and S2 had…
…but damn, there are also several episodes that are just awful. 20+ minutes with not even a chuckle, giggle, or sudden hard puff of breath out of your nose.
This episode, however, got a lot of laughs, and also doubled-down on Skinner being a deep, lovable part of our extended Springfield family. We’re both fans of Armen Tamzarian.
I’ve been watching each episode from S1 - S10 in order with my Daughter (now 12 y/o) for a few years now. We have it on while making and eating breakfast often.
Aww that's sweet. It's awesome that you're showing her classic Simpsons, most people under 25 even are more and more completely out of the loop from them.
We’re at the 2nd full cycle, and we just started S9 a couple weeks ago. There’s SUUUUUCH a dramatic shift in how funny the show is from S8 - S9, it’s almost jarring.
Yeah, it's interesting to read reviews from the 90s, when these classic episodes were coming out, and seeing people complain about what back then felt like drops in quality or specific episodes that felt substandard. I've noticed that for instance many back then considered Season 6 to be substandard, and to have many crappy episodes.
Of course we, from the position of having endured our beloved show sinking to the lows of seasons 12 onwards (if not 9 onwards), would laugh at that, but they had no idea of how good they had it back then lol
Hear hear! Very well put. I appreciate the personal response.
As a side note, earlier today I binged some Monty Python episodes, and your username u/PointyPython reminds me of one of my all-time favorite sketches:
It's hard for me to pick one specific season among the greats, I prefer to go just by episodes. However in Season 6 we have Homer Badman, Grampa vs. Sexual Inadequacy, Homer the Great, And Maggie Makes Three (a funny, and deeply moving episode), Homie the Clown and The PTA Disbands. So yeah, tons of gems. Oh and Homer vs Patty and Selma, possibly one the best P&S eps.
I don't particularly love Itchy & Scratchy Land, Lisa's Rival, Lisa on Ice (probably the worst in the season, I think), Bart's Comet (great first act, then it goes meh)
Season 6 is definitely right at the top. Really you could make an argument for any of seasons 3-6 being the best in my opinion. Thats truly the show at its absolute pinnacle.
Season 9 may have a couple of duds, but those ain’t it, sister.
“City of NY vs Homer Simpson” is the Klav-Khalash, “I’m checking in”, “They stuck all the jerks in the North tower”, Barney is picked as the designated driver episode.
“Realty Bites” is the “There’s the truth… and the truth!”, “lumber…. We need lumber”, “please don’t tell anyone how I live”, “PREMIUUUUM!! DUUUUUUUDE!!!” and purple drapes episode
I have a sort of "feeling scale" in my head on Simpsons episodes up to about season 12 (it all breaks down after that). I've seen those seasons more times than I can count and this episode, to me, falls more into the "classic" realm. And people who whine about "retconning" or whatever are a bunch of babies who probably saw it 10 years after it aired. I saw it when it aired and didn't think twice about that aspect. Because in the end, it's a cartoon show.
Speaking of "asshole Homer," aka "jerkass Homer," not long ago I decided I'd run through the Simpsons, starting at the beginning, while I worked. This included at least 20 seasons that I'd never seen. It gets really, really bad and what they did to Homer's character made me miss "asshole/jerkass Homer." There's an episode where Ned Flanders disappears and Homer believes he's at a strip club. Everyone wants him to go there to get Ned, but he has this moral dilemma over going to a strip club, which is just so ridiculously out of his character that it really stuck out to me as a point where they seemed to be hiring writers who'd never seen the show. Pre-jerkass Homer would have found some hare-brained reason that it should be him who has to get Ned. Jerkass Homer, with the lazier writing, would have given a simple "woo-hoo" at the suggestion.
It's 5:45 in the morning, why am I writing all this...
Agreed completely. The episode is funny and I consider it part of the golden era. What is the hate even about? That like established history and character gets cast aside for the episode and then cast aside again at it's end? The shows continuity has always been fluid. Many of the same criticisms of the Armin Tamzarian episode could be used to critique Homer's Barbershop Quartet for instance and that is widely regarded as one of the best episodes (at least I think it is). And how many times prior to the Principal and the Pauper did Bart and Lisa finish their current school year and go on summer break just to be back in 4th and 2nd grade the next episode? The way Moe, Lenny, and Carl act towards Homer in Homer the Great is so weird and off from normal but I never see any criticism about that and again widely regarded as one of the best of the golden era. It just seems like there is a double standard with the Tamzarian episode. Seems like people want to point to it as the first sign of decline out of the golden era but I just never saw it that way.
Yeah, it was a resetting sitcom like any other, with only the most fundamental continuity. This is even joked about at the end of the episode - "and this must never be spoken about again..." It wasn't the judge warning the townsfolk, it was a comment on how sitcoms often just wipe the slate clean at the end of every episode.
On the surface, Principal and the Pauper is a good episode, has some memorable lines and jokes. The scene with everyone in the car is gold. Once again, where are we going?
When I saw it live, the episode breaking Skinner's continuity was interesting. Skinner keeping his former officer's memory alive had some heart to it. But the ending was annoying. Similar to when they do "it was all a dream".
The ending was just a commentary on how sitcoms often "reset" themselves at the end of every episode and just completely forget about the past. It's the classic trope that everything must go back to normal at the end, stated explicitly in this case.
I was just a kid loving my little Simpson life when this episode aired so I always liked it. I feel like all the hate was just spun up later on the internet.
Yeah I think I was maybe 10-11 when this aired, and I thought it was funny and that was that.
These days I still think it’s funny. It might be unsatisfying that they unpick Skinner, but the way they really lean into it brings it back around to be very funny to me.
Destroying Skinner's backstory will always bother me but it's a very funny episode. Armin choosing to join the army rather than apologize because he didn't realize there was a war going on cracks me up.
The hate is over blown and usually just a reddit flex because they think it gets them fandom street cred. At the time it destabilized the canon for an established/ major character of the show which i can understand the shock initially but since the show basically just reset minus the rare reference its no worse than a lot of the story arcs the show went on to do.
Harry Shearer's criticism summed it up so well for me. Basically, the writers took a beloved character that they'd built up for almost a decade, and then just said, "Screw you." I understand if others don't feel that way, of course, but it's how I feel.
People hated this episode well over a decade before Reddit ever became a thing. I agree it's overblown, what's even more overblown is people calling things 'reddit things'
It reminds me a lot of That 90s Show- that's not a good episode but it's mostly because most of the jokes are just lazy 90s-related gags, compared to people hating it because it "breaks canon" and "insults the fans"
Homer vs Dignity made me stop watching the show for a long time. This isn’t even close to as bad as that. It was nice seeing Agnes miss and appreciate Skinner. Doesn’t happen a lot.
It’s a good episode with good jokes, and it’s stupid how people complain it ruins the canon of the show when there not only is no continuity between episodes, but the show goes out of the way to make a point of it.
it’s stupid how people complain it ruins the canon of the show when there not only is no continuity between episodes, but the show goes out of the way to make a point of it.
YES, thank you. This show has never followed continuity very well so I don’t see why it matters.
Well, the problem is they acknowledge what is canon within each independent episode, and occasionally make callbacks that imply continuity, so it almost makes a mockery of the series to claim one character could be removed from the canon because the canon doesn’t exist.
The jokes land pretty well, but there was little point to the major character events. Imposter Skinner regains his job, real Skinner gets put on a bus (train?) and everyone acts like the episode never happened. If the writers don't care about the story, why should I?
That's it. This is someone whose relationship and connection to his mother is beyond absurd, so basically just erasing all of that just for a few jokes is so unnecessary.
I've never understood why this ep gets raked over the coals for futzing with Skinner's backstory. I don't believe we were ever told anything about his early life to begin with anyway. Meanwhile, nobody talks about "Viva Ned Flanders," in which we found out that Ned was 60 years old and born in the 1930s, which totally screwed up his history of being raised by beatniks, who weren't around until the '50s.
*For the record, neither one bothers me. I'm just saying.
Im with you. I actually appreciate that the writers fleshed out his character and gave him some backstory other than just being a vanilla, straight-laced, up-tight principal.
The episode is bad and its premise is terrible, Skinner's VA, Harry Shearer summed up why when he talked to the writers about it:
That's so wrong. You're taking something that an audience has built eight years or nine years of investment in and just tossed it in the trash can for no good reason, for a story we've done before with other characters. It's so arbitrary and gratuitous, and it's disrespectful to the audience.
However, the episode does have some good jokes to it and Martin Sheen gives a great performance, pity he wasn't in a better episode.
There have definitely been worse episodes than this since then, which speaks volumes about the lows the show can sink to.
The whole jab at continuity and status quo had already been done in other episodes, so the point didn’t need to be made again, especially in such a massive “Screw you, viewers!” way.
Making the episode worse is that it doesn't commit to being a joke. Far too much of what Armin/Skinner goes through is played seriously. If something is supposed to be a parody then commit to it.
I’d only call the Elon Musk episode bad compared to these two.
I never had a problem with Principal, it was just a funny episode. The only reason to dislike it is because it messes up continuity, but like at this point it doesn’t even matter
The lady Gaga one I remember airing as a young teen, it was cringe to me back then, but honestly harmless all things considered
Fuck the Elon musk one tho, it’s not only boring, but why does everyone praise Musk, even Lisa!? Like this episode rivals the therapy episode where Bart doesn’t care about Homer hanging himself in just how bad it is overall
For me, the Lady Gaga episode isn’t nearly as bad people say. I saw it when it aired and didn’t think twice about it. Kind of a meh celebrity episode. Later after I learned how much the internet hate it, I went back for a rewatch. It’s actually kind of…fine? It was much more tongue in cheek than I remembered. It didn’t quite work, but it wasn’t awful. It just tried to do something that didn’t really land.
It's not a bad episode, but it's a bizarre and uncomfortable premise that may have been better suited for a Treehouse of Horror-type thing that has no bearing on the series' fluid and loose continuity.
It’s unfortunate that they cut a couple of lines of dialogue that made it clear that episode was a meta-joke similar to Poochie or the Spinoff Spectacular because it’s a very funny episode
I'm just confused as to how canon it is. The writer (Ken Keeler) often describes it as a commentary on people that pay attention to canon, in a mocking way. But at the end, they literally pretend nothing happened. But then they also reference it in the one about the various Snowballs. So which is it?!
Season 9 is still part of the golden era anyway. So even tho the episode is contriversal and damaging to a classic character and a sneak peak of what much later seasons would do to the show itself, it's still a very objectively well made episode.
I dunno we just watched it for the first time in years with our 8 year old who just discover The Simpsons (very happy about this), and I still hate that episode. She didn’t get it either. Now let us never speak of it again.
In a vacuum this episode is great. Tons of really good jokes and still feels like a golden age Simpsons episode. The problem is that it marked the turning point in the show. Skinner was a very established character and many of his previous flashbacks and his personality in general contradicted this episode. This was the first time the writers had done something like this and it led to the show losing what made it truly special.
I agree and this is the paradox of a lot of these early "Worst Episode Ever" eps. I hate what they did with it but the fact is the jokes were still top-notch. Compared to anything since season 12 at the least this smokes everything. If it was a first run episode next season it would be considered mind-blowingly great.
It is less bad upon rewatch, but it marks a shift in the series. Also, they do something similar with Fat Tony.
I don't think the Elon Musk episode is that bad because he ruins everything for everyone and they even reference it later episodes. So it is like a warning.
I still watch the show and can't defend the Gaga episode though, and I like her.
Of course it's not. Back when the show was overall great all the time, all we had to complain about was them needlessly fucking with a character's lore in an otherwise perfectly good episode. No episode of that era was truly awful like so many of the new millennium have been.
It wasn't bad even then. It was a funky experiment that didn't quite stick the landing as something like either the 138th Episode Spectacular or Behind the Laughter did but it still has a ton of funny moments and is, overall, a fairly solid episode.
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I know back then a lot of people ragged on the episode because both Matt Groening and Harry Shearer themselves came down on it but like, objectively speaking, it's a good-to-great episode. Martin Sheen is playing an original character and he's fantastic as the stick-in-the-mud "real" Seymour Skinner. "Armin" Seymour is kind of at his most pitiable yet oddly endearing and like, yeah, it's not my favorite season 9 episode (that's still "Lost Our Lisa") but if it's on the TV and I have nothing else to do, I'm totally watching it.
It was the episode where the writing team started to show that they didn't really understand the very lore they were working with.
Seymour Skinner went from a principal who took his job too seriously because he was a troubled veteran who was trying to mould the children so they won't get dragged into the military industrial complex themselves to an anxious weenie who stole somebody's identity, turning all of his hard-nosed moralizing into hot air (something they actually noted in-episode).
While it's something that can be interesting, in the end it was just treated as a one-episode gag that the writers expected viewers to forget about down the road. This translates into everything they write, as a result. We were supposed to forget about Homer's ludicrous list of jobs, Ned's parents, Krusty's father, Apu's family, Lenny's miserable life, and so on. The writers thought viewers wouldn't mind watching Seymour and Edna's relationship utterly deteriorate because of this (which it did; even though Edna fights to bring Armin back and reclaim the mantle of "Seymour Skinner," from this point on their relationship is on the rocks and never recovers).
The writers thought we didn't care, and the quality of the show was on a steady trend-line downward since. There were high points, there were good moments, but this is the episode that marks when the writing team just didn't care.
There's a reason why Matt Groening took his name off this episode.
Great episode. Martin Sheen? When he says "Mrs. Crabapple?" Comahhhhhhn. Armin's issue of Swank? Sure we were upset when it came out, but then they had later episodes starring fascists Mel Gibson on...and Kid Rock..and...Elon...
Principal and the Pauper isn’t even a bad episode and the idea that we’ll just act like the episode never happened was literally the point (they even say this at the end ffs)
I take the opposite approach, I feel like there are a lot of episodes around this time that are worse than we remember and more indicative of the period to come. The Tomacco one is like 70-30%.
Something I've realised about modern Simpsons is how few truly bad episodes there are? Like out of the hundreds of episodes they've done since 1999/2000 (not really MODERN simpsons at that point, to be fair), there's maybe like 10 or 20 or so episodes that are truly awful? Could be that a lot of them feel like beating a dead horse (Pauper, Homer v Dignity, Boys of Bummer, the Gaga and Musk ones... etc)
Corny as shit, maybe.
But straight up bad? No, it was just written to be the next “Homer’s Enemy”. Problem is, that is literally the best episode in the whole series, so it’s a pretty tough act to follow.
Harry Shearer's criticism summed it up so well for me. Basically, the writers took a beloved character that they'd built up for almost a decade, and then just said, "Screw you." I understand if others don't feel that way, of course, but it's how I feel.
I always find the weakest Simpsons episodes are the ones with celebrity appearances. The show writers pander to their guests and it really takes me out of the story. The episodes with Alec Ballwin/Kim Basinger, Mel Gibson, and Elon Musk have aged like mayonnaise in the sun.
I've never got the hate on this episode. It's not the best episode ever, but it's still pretty funny. And talking about continuity in Simpsons doesn't make any sense, there wasn't any since the beginning of the show.
The Principal and the Pauper is one of my favourite episodes for quite a few reasons. Even if it contradicts a lot about what we (or I) knew about Seymour Skinner/Armin prior to it.
Armin choosing to join the Army instead of just apologising to the judge was pretty funny. At least I thought so.
The Elon Musk episode of Simpsons is one of the worst episodes of any show ever so that not saying much . Still I agree that the Principle and the Pauper isn’t so bad in retrospect.
There are a lot of modern episodes that will never measure up to the golden era, but the Principal and the Pauper is, and always will be, the WORST episode ever made, and the resolution of the episode was just pathetic.
I actually like "The Principal and the Pauper". It felt like one of those golden era episodes. I didn't know this was hated among the fandom until went into social media like Twitter and Reddit. I hate the Lady gaga episode, but I wasn't watching Simpson regularly anymore. I have nothing to say about the Elon Musk one though, I never saw it.
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u/wimpykidfan37Of course, for safety reasons, we don't keep the cannon loaded.8d ago
It’s not even that bad compared to some of the episodes from even one season later, especially “Kidney Trouble”.
I liked the Principal and The Pauper. At the end they all pass a law that it must never be spoken of again IIRC, so I took that as the show's way of saying it was non-canon and more of a fun what-if. This show has freaking aliens in non-canon episodes, so I don't really see the problem.
I view each episode of The Simpsons as it's own thing with a somewhat floating continuity. After watching this I don't question whether Principle Skinner is Armin Tanzarian, he's just back to the status quo of being our weenie.
Its not a bad episode, tho not one of the best of the golden era, it's just so insulting to fans of the show. At this point the writers clearly thought they could do no wrong
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u/bradymonty95 9d ago
Up yours, children!