David Cooper
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0023 - Seymour Skinner
🕑 Added 2021-09-23 08:01:00 +0000 UTCI was pleased to see Skinner show up so early! Sorry that I had to put "Armin Tamzarian" in there, but I might as well be thorough.
Skinner is one of those useful characters that can be seen as a symbol of the show's overall point of view towards a subject - in this case the banality of authority. He is not malicious or resentful towards Bart (usually our POV character), he just...is. He's boring and stern, a constant obstacle, a representation of the tediousness in mundane adult bureaucracy.
And that's why we love him!
I think a moment that sums up Skinner really well is when he is picking a laundry detergent, slowly reading through the different options. "Tide...Cheer...Bold...Biz...Fab...All...Gain...Wisk." It's slow and boring, and it takes up a few seconds of the viewer's precious time, I love it. This kind of extremely mundane activity - to the point that it's absurd that it is even on TV - is a style of comedy that The Simpsons plays a lot with. You expect cartoon antics, sometimes you get a man slowly considering detergents.
Let's not talk about how old he'd now have to be to still have a past fighting in Vietnam.
This post is part of my "Every Simpsons Character Ever" series. For a list of my rules in this project, click here.
Comments
David Cooper
Yeah, for sure. It’s an aspect of the show I find fascinating, nothing else has existed long enough to have these issues.
Gianni Sarra
Yeah, same with Grampa being the youngest WWI veteran - it just wouldn't make sense with the floating timeline now
David Cooper
It was such a big part of his character but I think it gets brushed aside a little now.
Gianni Sarra
Every single one of the Vietnam flashback scenes was gold.
