The Principal and the Pauper

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Plot

Seymour Skinner is about to celebrate his 20th anniversary as school principal, and it goes smoothly until a man comes in who says his name is Seymour Skinner and that Agnes Skinner is his mother. Principal Skinner admits he is not the real Seymour Skinner, and is only an impostor. He admits that his real name is Armin Tamzarian and tells his story. He was originally a punk until he stole an old woman's purse and hit a judge. The judge gave him three choices: apologize, join the army, or jail. Armin chose the army while not knowing that the country was in the middle of the Vietnam War. He met the real Sergeant Seymour Skinner and warmed up to him as a friend. Skinner showed Armin his mother's picture in a locket and said that his dream was to be an elementary school principal. Seymour eventually ran a clearing just as someone bombed the place, causing Armin to take the news of Seymour's death to his mother. He couldn't do it, however, and instead assumed the identity of Seymour Skinner. A younger Agnes Skinner also could not accept that her son had died, and whispered to Armin Tamzarian "your room is the third door on the right", implying she knows he is not her real son but accepted his ruse.

Now that the real Skinner has turned up alive, he still wants to fulfill his dream, and argues that since someone pretending to be Seymour Skinner had been doing the job of school principal, the real one ought to be even better at it (It is unclear if the real Skinner actually possessed any qualifications for the position prior to being stationed in Vietnam.). He gets the job, but it soon turns out that Springfield prefers Tamzarian over the real Skinner. Tamzarian, however, had left Springfield and gone to Capital City on his old motorcycle. Marge devises a plan to get Tamzarian back to Springfield, and she heads off for Capital City with Homer, Lisa, Edna Krabappel, Agnes Skinner, Grampa, Bart, Maggie and for some reason, Jasper Beardley. After Agnes orders Armin to return home, Homer convinces Mayor Quimby and all the other citizens to allow Armin to stay. However, Sergeant Skinner refuses to give up his dignity just because they like some other guy better. Homer comes up with a way of letting Skinner keep his dignity and let Armin Tamzarian get his old job back. The plan is to give Sergeant Skinner a "dignified" parade which actually serves to run him out of town, tied to a chair on a freight train car. Tamzarian returns to being Principal Skinner through an order by Judge Snyder, saying that no one will mention "Tamzarian" again under penalty of torture.

Opinion and reaction

Skinner's voice actor Harry Shearer hated the episode. In a 2001 interview with the Dallas Observer, Shearer recalled that after reading the script, he told the writers, "That's so wrong. You're taking something that an audience has built eight years or nine years of investment in and just tossed it in the trash can for no good reason, for a story we've done before with other characters. It's so arbitrary and gratuitous, and it's disrespectful to the audience."^[1]

In the Season 9 DVD boxset introduction from Matt Groening, he describes this episode as one of his all-time least favourites. Ken Keeler considers the episode the best work he's ever done for television.

Significance and themes

Keeler said that the basic theme of the episode is that it's odd that people would suddenly start care so much about a person's background and history upon discovering that he is not who he said he was. Keeler contends that if he discovered that someone he worked with for a long time were actually an imposter, it would not be important to him. The relationship, Keeler said, is centered on personal interactions, not identity or history, and would not change in a fundamental way if it turns out that his co-worker misrepresented her history. Similarly, the townspeople reject the genuine Skinner, who is a stranger to them, and embrace the imposter, whom they know and are familiar with.

Keeler then drew a parallel between the plot of the show and the fans' reaction to it. In both cases, he said, a community of people did not know Skinner very well or care about him on a deep level until they discovered he was an imposter, at which point he became much more important than he ever had been previously. Both communities "liked things the way they were" and despite their initial anger and offense at the idea that he was a fraud, preferred the imposter to the real thing. The show, he said, "is about the people who are criticizing it".

The writers and producers also indicated that they wanted the episode's ending to fully reset to the point before Skinner is revealed as an imposter so that the audience need not consider the Tamzarian backstory part of Skinner's character.

Keeler based the script on Tichborne Case, not the story of Martin Guerre.

Trivia

• This episode is referenced by Lisa in the episode "I, D'oh-Bot", when Lisa tells her principal "I guess it is, Principal Tamzarian," after he complains about the lack of continuity.
• A clip from this show was used in Behind the Laughter as an example of the show's increasingly "gimmicky and non-sensical plots".
• According to the sign Tamzarian passes on the way out of town, Springfield is 30 miles from Capital City.
• In the scene of this episode when Armin Tamzarian is resigning, Sarah Wiggum is seen in the audience wearing a red bow. Then, later in the same scene, she is seen with a blue bow on.

Cultural references

• The title of the episode is a reference to the title of the book The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain.
• The bridge scene with flashing explosions is like the picture Apocalypse Now. That film starred Martin Sheen, this episode's guest star.
• The song sung by the Springfield Elementary Chorus in tribute to Skinner is a parody of the theme song of Flipper.