Armin Tamzarian Revisited

bethje and I watched a few Season 9 Simpsons episodes with commentary last night. This included the infamous "The Principal and the Pauper," the episode in which Principal Skinner is revealed to be an impostor. Ken Keeler, especially, was very defensive of the episode. He and the other commentators suggested some reasons why people disliked it so much, and there was a mention of the episode providing too much back story for the character, but I don't think that was the problem at all. Rather, it took a character who already had a fair amount of back story, and contradicted it. Why would Skinner have all of those flashbacks (in episodes both before and after "Pauper") to his time as a sergeant in Vietnam if he'd never actually been one? (Granted, that's pretty much what happens with Cloud in Final Fantasy VII, but I wouldn't think Skinner is THAT messed up.) Also, I remember rolling my eyes somewhat (not literally, as far as I know) at the idea that Skinner used to be a street punk. I mean, I guess it works, but the idea that a character was exactly the opposite of how he or she is now until they experienced some life-changing event was pretty much cliché by that point. They'd already done it with Ned Flanders in "Hurricane Neddy" (and Flanders would also undergo a change that contradicted pretty much everything we knew about his back story, but not until a later episode). The thing is, I didn't think the episode was that bad overall, because I think it actually played out reasonably well, but there's only so far you can go with an ill-advised premise. I guess it's yet another example of the fans taking continuity a lot more seriously than the writers, which seems to be fairly common in just about any fictional medium.

Looking over the list of episodes from Season 9, it seems to have been the last season to introduce a significant number of recurring characters. It brought in Duffman, Gil, and the Crazy Cat Lady; and established Manjula as a semi-regular character (although her first actual appearance was in a flashback in "Much Apu About Nothing"). Even the Khlav Kalash guy appeared in at least two episodes in that season ("The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson" and "Lost Our Lisa"; I'm thinking there might have been a third, but I'm probably wrong), although I don't think he's been seen since. The only characters I can think of who first appeared after this and have been in more than two episodes are Nelson's mom and Apu's octuplets, although there are probably a few more I'm forgetting. Not all that many, though. It kind of seems like the Recurring Character Pool was closed in Season 9.

And here's a quiz result, courtesy of majellen: