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"Principal Charming" |
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Trivia
- In this episode, Skinner implies that Bart is the only boy in Springfield Elementary with that name.
- Skinner points out the Board of Education, which is a paddle, meaning the school once allowed corporal punishment - then again, most schools used to. And the name of the paddle is a common joke referencing said punishment.
- This is the first episode the short version is used with "D'oh!".
- Groundskeeper Willie appears to have pink hair and beard instead of red in parts of the episode.
- This episode marks the first appearance of Hans Moleman in the series, but he is referred to as Ralph Melish.
- First episode without Maggie Simpson.
- This is the first episode where Smithers appears without Mr. Burns.
- Men who could be Selma's husbands:
- Carl Carlson
- Waylon Smithers
- Apu Nahasapeemapetilon
- A strange man in the Kwik-E-Mart
- A man on the billboard for Laramie Cigarettes
- Principal Skinner
Cultural References
The scene from Vertigo.
- Principal Skinner running up the stairs then looking down and seeing that he is a way up is similar to a scene in Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo (above).
- Skinner yelling, "Tomorrow is another school day!" parodies the famous line from Gone with the Wind: "Tomorrow is another day."
- Homer profiling every man to find Selma a date is similar to the film The Terminator.
- The title is a parody of Prince Charming.
- The movie Principal Skinner and Patty see on their date, Space Mutants V: The Land Down Under, in which a marsupial variant of the space monster (with a baby alien in a pouch) attacks Australia, is a reference to the werewolf movie Howling III: The Marsupials.
Goofs
- When the line is shown for the DMV, Barney is shown right after Homer talked to him, unless Barney happens to live close to the DMV.
- Otto Mann is in the line for the DMV. But in The Otto Show in Season 3 we learn that Otto never had a driver's license, so what's he doing there? DMVs also distribute non-driver's license identification cards (i.e., state IDs); he may have been getting one of those.
- In this episode, Lisa states she is eight. However, she didn't turn eight until the Season 3 episode, "Stark Raving Dad". The series is on a floating timeline, where the characters do not age physically.
- Skinner claims he and Patty are going to the premiere of a Space Mutants movie. This series is apparently huge and popular in the Simpsons universe. Movie premieres are typically crowded events with a lot of fanfare, but this appears to just be a typical slow weeknight show without too many people there. The Space Mutants movies are either schlocky, low-rent movies that don't gather much of an audience in the theaters, but make up for it on home media releases, or the movies used to gather big audiences, but with each sequel, that number dwindles.
- In this episode, Patty is said to be celibate, but fourteen seasons later on "There's Something About Marrying", she comes out as a lesbian. The logical explanation for that is that Patty was in the closet about her homosexuality (or rather, bisexuality, since she has a crush on the actor who plays MacGyver, just like her sister, and she and Selma once kidnapped and raped a TV repairman, which led to them having to register as sex offenders), even though clues to her lesbianism appeared in such future episodes as "Treehouse of Horror III" where she declared she lost the last lingering thread of her heterosexuality because she saw Homer run naked through the kitchen (though this could also be interpreted as her becoming asexual due to that, considering her celibacy), "Bart After Dark", where she's one of the patrons of La Maison Derriere, and "Jaws Wired Shut", where she and Smithers (who was also closeted gay until "The Burns Cage") were part of the "Stayin' in the Closet" float.
- When Patty is looking through a scrapbook, the colored squares within the book change color at one point.