Urban Dictionary defines "jumping the shark" as the "moment when something that was once great has reached a point where it will now decline in quality and popularity." Television has been filled with these moments. Although I don't watch much serialized written television, I can only believe that this is true since there is an entire website devoted to its prevalence. There are endless countdowns and internet debates as to what were the most egregious instances of a show jumping the shark, just as there are countless other debates as to whether or not a show had actually jumped the shark at all. Not to sound like a cliché, but I think the whole "jump the shark" thing is a cliché; one that fits the Happy Days domain from where it got its context and namesake. And also, not to sound like I'm dumping on a show/viewing audience older than me, but the very premise of Happy Days was strange enough regardless. I'm not sure how Fonzie jumping over a shark made the show any more bewildering than it already was.
What I'm getting at is that while "The Principal and the Pauper" (the second episode of the series' 9th season) was a turning point in The Simpsons history (albeit in the worst sense), I think that it's unfair for a giant swath of The Simpsons fanbase to malign the season that followed. However, the fans are justified in despising this show. Not only because of the fact that Principal Seymour Skinner (our Principal Seymour Skinner) was (gasp!) an imposter, but also because this episode reads as if it were crafted by someone with absolutely no prior knowledge of the series thus far.
In the audio commentary for this episode, Ken Keeler (part-time Simpsons writer, full-time "Principal and the Pauper" defender) talks about how strange he thinks it is that people seek comfort in television. He genuinely finds it confounding that anyone could have such a tight bond with the characters they see onscreen. I'm not sure if Mr. Keeler has been living under a rock for, oh, the past 60 years, but I can only assume that he has because, honestly, why else would we watch television? What other reason would there be for someone to tune in each and every week to watch Mad Men, Dexter or a late-night Cinemax grind-a-thon? It's because the viewing audience has some sort of emotional stake in the goings-on of these characters' lives. When Carrie Mathison had that nervous breakdown on Homeland, it was probably the saddest thing I witnessed on television in years. Rational Me knows that Carrie Mathison is just Claire Danes playing a fucked up character with a shit-ton of emotional baggage, but Irrational Me (aka the thought process that the typical viewer enters when he or she settles down to watch a film or a tv show) thought it was heartbreaking. So does that mean that I'm bizarre for having actual emotions for a real person playing a fake character having a rehearsed breakdown on a medium run on superficiality and commericals? Apparently in Ken Keeler's world the fourth wall between the audience and television is well-defined. I'm inclined to believe that his intentions were good, but man oh man did he fuck up royally.
"The Principal and the Pauper" berates you with the fact that things aren't as they should be. After we abruptly discover that Principal Skinner is actually Armin Tamzarian, a former street tough, several characters remark that he's an imposter and that they don't feel comfortable in his presence. Marge states this explicitly to Armin before he decides that he should resign from Springfield Elementary and resume his life where he left off in Capital City. This is one of the many instances in which the writers try to use the characters outside of the Skinner/Tamzarian situation as mouthpieces for the audience. Normally, this could come off as sly and deliciously meta, but here it comes off as strident and annoying. It's as if the writers were trying to preempt any shit that was going to get hurled their way if fans so happened to turn on this episode. The series had been consistently meta, more or less, for years up until this point, but here Keeler & Co. use it as a blunt object. What bothers me the most about this is that it's just lazy writing. Period. I don't feel like this show owes me anything, but it's pretty damn annoying when you see the writers of the greatest show ever not even aim for a coherent plot.
When The Simpsons is at its best, it's able to playfully dickslap the audience while giving us exactly what we want. In "The Simpsons Spin-Off Showcase," an episode I love (but a lot of fans seem to hate), the show cranks the zaniness up to 12 without coming off as retarded. The episode serves as one big sarcastic wink to a bygone era of when spin-offs were as commonplace as the Kardashians. The three segments included are ridiculously corny, exaggerated versions of the well-worn paths most spin-offs used to tread. I'm not sure if it's because my generation has a greater appreciation for everything "ironic," but I enjoy this episode. When it came to episode-long satirical send-ups of tv staples, Bill Oakley & Josh Weinstein (the executive producers of seasons 7 and 8) were simply ahead of their time.
But there's no playful dickslap to be had on "The Principal." If anything it's an endless Roman shower. There is literally no motivation or logical through-line for the characters in this episode; everything happens just because of convenience. Guess what? It just so happens that the real Principal Skinner wanted to be a principal his entire life! That's all Chalmers needs to hear. And not long after this happens, guess what, no one likes the actual Seymour Skinner (gay gasp!). He's sexist! He's stern! He also doesn't listen to his mother, which threatens to render Mrs. Skinner's presence totally useless. So when the town eventually gets tired of him (aka when the writers try to dig themselves out of hole), they (rather ceremoniously) get rid of the poor bastard. Homer, while trying to speak for the audience for the umpteenth time, mentions that since the town doesn't care that Armin Tamzarian is a phony, then neither should you. Except no, it doesn't work that way, ESPECIALLY when you try to pull this shit with a well-established character that has a back-story and several episodes revolving around him. That cheapens the experience. It's essentially the equivalent of an episode ending as a dream, except the dream consists of nothing but you getting pissed and farted on. At the end of the episode you're told to accept what has just happened as reality, but that task is impossible when something so lazy and utterly baffling has just raped your eye sockets.
I respect Mr. Keeler for trying to take a cynical view on how we typically view familiar tv tropes, but, honey, "Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie" did it much better. Hell, if anything, the show's 8th season tackled "meta" better than any other season of the show (re: the aforementioned "Spin-Off Showcase"). "Homer's Enemy," in particular, achieved this brilliantly. If you're reading this, I assume you know what episode that is. If you don't: Frank Grimes. What was, and remains, so refreshing about that episode was that it's never explicitly stated that "Frank Grimes is real" and "Homer Simpson is a cartoon." You get everything you need to know about Frank Grimes before you even meet him. Instead of having, say, Moe come in and speak for the audience and say "hey, this Frank Grimes fellow is pretty weird," you get all of that just by watching this man interact and react to what's happening around him. The episode is incredibly dark and understated, which works in its favor. There wasn't a big to-do about Frank Grimes' entrance and exit from the Simpsons' world. He didn't make an impression on anyone (except Homer. Barely.) and after his ironically cartoonish death things quietly went back to the way they were. The polar opposite happens in "The Principal." The departure of the real Seymour Skinner is a fucking party. There's a marching band and a train and everyone in Springfield. Talk about tonal restraint!
Both of these episodes were executive produced by Oakley & Weinstein and "The Principal..." was one of the last shows they ran under their tenure. In the commentary track for the episode, while they don't criticize the show nor praise it, they stand by it. Bill Oakley claims that he did have some reservations about it and admits that maybe they were probably asking too much from the audience. But, let's be real, he and Weinstein were on the way out so I doubt they actually gave that much of a shit (especially when you consider the near flawless execution of episodes they've done similar to this). And it pretty much shows. I mean, it's kind of a big deal when Matt Groening voices his distaste of ANY Simpsons episode (and these days he has plenty to choose from). Nevertheless, the duo left the series unscathed and poor Mike Scully had to deal with the flying tomatoes of Simpsons fans ever since.
So what this all boils down to is that this episode shouldn't have existed. But in some weird, masochistic way, I'm glad it's around. It's probably one of the best-known examples of when a show has, for lack of a more convenient term, "jumped the shark" (ugh). While I don't agree with that assertion altogether (even though this episode is unconscionably horrible), I do believe that it at least proved (on a larger, retrospective scale) that the show was fallible. It was probably the first instance in which a large group of the fans saw a chink in the show's impenetrable armor and were immediately turned-off by it. And they had every right to be turned off. This episode is a heavy sack of nothing. Literally. The writers want you to believe that, in the end, it never happened. Judge Snyder's explicitly speaking for the writers when, at the end of the episode, he decrees that "everything will be just like it was." It's noble for the writers to think that their words could be used as a magic wand, but once you've seen this episode, it's unpossible to unsee it.
Addenda (and yes, I did get this idea from The AV Club):
- Oakley & Weinstein's greatest contribution to the show was the coarsening of Agnes Skinner. She's pretty much flawless in this episode (even though her crankiness here is used more as a crutch to get the plot moving)
- Was this episode the inspiration of the Dick Whitman/Don Draper storyline on Mad Men? I'd like to believe so, otherwise this episode has no redeemable aspects.
- I will always love the collective idiocy of Springfield. Their reactions to Skinner's announcement of his retirement is hilarious.
- Martin Sheen actually does great voice-work here as the real Seymour Skinner, which is a shame.
- 1997 has subsequently been heralded as the year that The Simpsons started sucking, which is funny because one of the best episodes of the series was mere weeks away from airing ("The Cartridge Family")
- I know I said in my introduction to this series that I would not cover episodes executive produced by anyone other than Scully, but this episode basically defines Season 9 for a lot of people, so it would be a crime not to discuss it. So consider this post as the unofficial beginning of the end, so to speak.
- Up next, the centuries-long rift between the Freaks and Norms comes to a head in Treehouse of Horror VIII
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