0023 - Seymour Skinner (Patreon)

I 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.