TV Recap / Review: Seymour Becomes an Unlikely Parent in "The Simpsons" - "Guess Who's Coming to Skinner"
This evening saw the debut of the 10th episode in The Simpsons season 37, entitled "Guess Who's Coming to Skinner" (a play on the title of the 1967 romantic dramedy Guess Who's Coming to Dinner-- note that a season 11 episode of The Simpsons was already called "Guess Who's Coming to Criticize Dinner"), and below are my brief recap and thoughts on this installment of the long-running animated sitcom.
"Guess Who's Coming to Skinner" begins with a Springfield Elementary School class field trip to the Waterpark... ancestral home, a funny gag that gets worn out after several repetitions. Naturally Principal Seymour Skinner (voiced, as always, by Harry Shearer) is enthralled by this outing-- to the point where he becomes very flirty with the docent-- but all the children are bored to tears. So Bart Simpson (Nancy Cartwright) takes it upon himself to explored some roped-off areas of the house, including a room that contains a collection of vintage snow globes. This leads to a disastrous snow globe fight, Skinner needing multiple eye surgeries, and an antagonistic parent/teacher conference between the principal and Bart's parents Homer (Dan Castellaneta) and Marge (Julie Kavner).
An exasperated Skinner returns home to find that his mother Agnes has gone on vacation for Spring Break, so he decides to spend his own time off back at the school, filling out textbook requisition forms. That's where he hears a noise in the middle of the night and wakes up Groundskeeper Willie (also Castellaneta)-- who still happens to be married to Karen Gillan's character Maisie MacWeldon-- and the two of them track down the source of the disturbance: a boy named Hub (guest star Kieran Culkin from Succession) who has been living in the library. Hub claims to be a ghost, scaring Willie off, but Seymour knows better and takes Hub to his office for a grilling. Hub makes up an obvious lie about how his parents died-- which becomes a running gag throughout the episode-- but since Skinner can't get the actual truth out of the boy, he takes him home and lets him stay in Agnes's sewing room. When Hub continues to act up (there's a clever sequence where the boy nearly drowns n a ball pit and Skinner saves him) Seymour visits the Simpson home-- newly purchased hat in hand-- and asks Marge and Homer for advice on dealing with a troubled kid.
Marge suggests encouraging Hub's creative side, so after Spring Break ends Skinner pushes the boy to audition for the school play Peter Rabbit. Though hesitant, Hub lands the role of Farmer McGregor, but when Seymour learns that this role only entails a few brief lines, he takes over directing the play from Mr. Largo (also Shearer) and enlists Lisa Simpson (Yeardley Smith) to do a full rewrite, beefing up the McGregor role. Soon there are banner hung all over town advertising Hub's performance as Farmer McGregor, but when it comes to be showtime Hub comes down with a case of butterflies, which is not helped by his discovery that Skinner plans to adopt him permanently. Hub runs away, missing his cue, and Seymour chases after him in the playground. This is where the child's real parents show up and we learn that Hub had actually run away from a boarding school and camped out at Springfield Elementary because he liked it there more.
After a laugh-out-loud moment featuring Nelson Muntz (also Cartwright), Hub accepts that he must return home to his real parents, but first he decides to return to the Springfield Elementary stage, much to the disappointment of all the parents in attendance who were all hoping to just go home. Hub gives a rousing speech as Farmer McGregor, deviating from Lisa's script-- Milhouse (Kelly Macleod) says she didn't really write anything; she just "ran the room"-- and weaving a moving tale about how much it meant to him to have Skinner looking out for his well-being. "That's not my boy," Skinner says proudly, and the episode cuts to credits. A mid-credits scene gives us a pretty hilarious inside-baseball look at the McGregor writers' room under showrunner Lisa, complete with her frustration that the only thing the writers can come up with pitches for is what they want to eat.
Other than that and a couple other jokes that made me chuckle, though, "Guess Who's Coming to Skinner" was kind of a miss for me. That's coming after two weeks' worth of very strong installments, so I can't help but be disappointed that this one was mostly a flatline. I guess it was sort of touching on an emotional level and I do tend to enjoy The Simpsons when Harry Shearer's characters are featured, but the plot stretched the realm of believability and, on the whole, the half hour was not nearly as full of laughs as I would have liked. Thankfully there's always next week!
New episodes of The Simpsons air Sunday evenings on FOX.