The Principal and the Pauper
The first of notoriously panned episodes.
Story
During a 20th anniversary of Principal Skinner’s career at Springfield Elementary, he is caught by the “real” Seymour Skinner.
Random Facts
Although the episode is quite harmless to the series, it has always been a warning sign of the show about to drop in quality.
Originally made to be a finale for season 8 – man if that actually happened…
Season 9 is often pointed as the part where the series started to decline. The decline got really notable going into season 11, and even worse in season 13.
Hated by Matt Groening and Harry Shearer.
Ken Keeler didn’t write any other episodes of the Simpsons after this one. Did he get demoted?
Random Opinions
While not a good episode by the show’s high standards, I thought a lot of episodes in season 13 were far worse.
Bad one time characters started to creep into the series starting with this episode.
I still find a few episodes from season 2 and one from season 3 a little worse.
Scorecard
| Visuals | Writing | Tolerance | Audio | Characters |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Great (8/10) | Poor (4/10) | Poor (4/10) | Poor (4/10) | Terrible (2/10) |
| Still good animation. | At least this episode is considered non-canon. | Destroying a character that was given so much character throughout 9 seasons? | Infuriating lines. | The real Seymour is god awful. |
Rating: 22/50 – Poor (4/10)
I might’ve been a little lenient on the rating here. Trying to spice a show up by making some random bullshit? I wonder if Ken Keeler got kicked off the Simpsons for this one.
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