Grade School Confidential [S8 E19] (dir. Susie Dietter)
Although Bart doesn’t care for it, this might be the sweetest moment in the entire series.
Generally speaking, the show didn’t do character arcs. It’s deliberately episodic, resetting events to make sure there aren’t long-term ramifications.
For Skinner and Krabappel, we watched as love evaded them both. ‘Principal Charming’ and ‘Bart the Lover’ showed us well-formed characters with hopes, dreams and vulnerabilities. Those vulnerabilities reappear here; Skinner’s socially awkward nature, exacerbated by his domineering mother, and Krabappel’s loneliness, a symptom of her deep-rooted depression.
These aren’t two people looking for one another. The opening illustrates the more outgoing Krabappel finds the fastidious Skinner boring, but outside of work, they find a commonality, shared isolation from a lack of social group.
The spark of why they ended up in that playhouse may have been pity that a grown man cannot escape his mother, but it gives rise to a chance, a moment where the two are on an equal footing and can find in one another what they might be missing in their own life. Skinner sees a woman free of control, allowed to be herself; Krabappel, a man with no airs or graces, someone with an innocence that had seemed lost to her.
Romance blossoms in the spectre of judgement and punishment. Once again, happiness threatened to be taken away by something out of their control. Bart’s lack of respect for authority, perhaps for the first time, proves an asset. Skinner and Krabappel take a stand, fight for something more than themselves, and lead us to this.
For a few sweet moments, they’re free, happy, dancing as if there’s no one else in the world and it’s absolutely beautiful.