Previously: Everything’s coming up Milhouse.

The world owes a great deal to minor Simpsons characters, and I have taken it upon myself to periodically-yet-irregularly celebrate them as the spirit moves me. Today we honor Principal Seymour Skinner.

Editor’s note: We will not be discussing episode 4F23, “The Principal and the Pauper,” and the first person to mention the name Armin Tamzarian to me will be hammer-banned. Thank you.

One of The Simpsons‘ greatest strengths has always been its ability to imbue even the most ridiculous and pathetic of characters with an inherent dignity, and there is no one short of Barney Gumble more ridiculous and pathetic than Principal Seymour Skinner. He’s the square to end all squares, but he lacks the buoyancy and impermeability to mockery of a Ned Flanders to make squaredom bearable. He’s not only the kind of man who buys a secondhand motorized tie rack despite only having the one tie, he’s the kind of man who changes his mind about buying it. Twice.

If ever T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” could be said to describe a single man, it would be Seymour Skinner:

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

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Previously in this series: Not Allowed In The Deep End — Ralph Wiggum.

The world owes a great deal to minor Simpsons characters, and I have taken it upon myself to periodically-yet-irregularly celebrate them as the spirit moves me. Today we honor Edna Krabappel.

There’s a scene in Some Like It Hot where Marilyn Monroe’s character (Sugar Kane!) smiles heartbreakingly at Tony-Curtis-as-Josephine and explains why she’s running away from men:

I’m not very bright, I guess, just dumb. If I had any brains, I wouldn’t be on this crummy train with this crummy girls’ band. I used to sing with male bands but I can’t afford it anymore. That’s what I’m running away from. I worked with six different ones in the last two years. Oh, brother! I can’t trust myself…All they have to do is play eight bars of ‘Come to Me, My Melancholy Baby’ and my spine turns to custard. I get goose pimply all over and I come to ’em, every time. That’s why I joined this band. Safety first. Anything to get away from those bums. You don’t know what they’re like. You fall for ’em and you really love ’em – you think this is gonna be the biggest thing since the Graf Zeppelin – and the next thing you know, they’re borrowing money from you and spending it on other dames and betting on horses. Then one morning you wake up, the guy is gone, the saxophone’s gone, all that’s left behind is a pair of old socks and a tube of toothpaste, all squeezed out. So you pull yourself together. You go on to the next job, the next saxophone player. It’s the same thing all over again. You see what I mean? Not very bright. I can tell you one thing – it’s not gonna happen to me again – ever. I’m tired of getting the fuzzy end of the lollipop.

This is the story of Mrs. Krabappel’s life; one fuzzy lollipop after the other. She’s one of the only characters in the series who hasn’t spent her whole life in Springfield. She’s been to college — Bryn Mawr! — and now she’s in a nowhere town teaching “a bunch of dead-eyed fourth graders while [my] husband runs naked on a beach somewhere with [our] marriage counselor.”

He apparently takes some time off from tropical bliss to mess with her; in season 3’s “Bart The Lover,” Mrs. Krabappel’s car breaks down and her mechanic tells her “Bingo, bango, sugar in the gas tank. Your ex-husband strikes again.” The casual bingo, bango delivery is perhaps the cruelest touch of all; she can’t catch a break.

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The world owes a great deal to minor Simpsons characters, and I have taken it upon myself to periodically-yet-irregularly celebrate them as the spirit moves me. Today we honor Martin Prince.

Remember that John Mulaney routine where he says that “all little boys are a little bit gay…they’re sort of floaty and have hard opinions about things”? Martin Prince is that wonderful, fey little boy. He has not yet learned to appear as if he cares about anything less than he does. When he enthuses, he does so with his entire tiny, vibrating body.

In Sweet Seymour Skinner’s Badassssss Song, Martin’s theatrical recounting of geologic forces (“Kaboom! The sound of a thunderous volcanic explosion, which gives birth to the magnificent geode!”) is almost immediately overshadowed by Bart’s dog. “My geode must be acknowledged,” Martin insists in the exact same tone that Glenn Close tells Michael Douglas “I won’t be ignored, Dan” in Fatal Attraction.

It is not acknowledged. Mrs. Krabappel feeds the Raisin Roundies Martin made for her that morning to Santa’s Little Helper. Martin never wins. He never quits, but he never wins, either.

More friends! More allies! More, I say. Hang those who talk of less. There’s a few inches over here, ho!

What I love best about Martin is his naked, unabashed desire to be petted and adored. He contains the seeds of his own destruction; he is an unrepentant tryhard and it is his very need for affection that keeps him from making and keeping true friends. He can’t be satisfied with having a Milhouse of his own — he needs to be the Queen of Summer. Martin Prince is all appetite and no moderation. He wants a feast, but he will take scraps if that is all he can get, and hang those who talk of less.

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