Way too accurate to the american school system.
My highschool was so underfunded that they could barely pay their teachers. We had substitutes for most of each year.
Episode's also got some great jokes, but it's honestly saddening that the underfunding still applies 30 years later.
[8.0/10] There are so many quotable lines in this one. “Prove me wrong”, “That’s a paddlin’”, “Purple monkey dishwasher,” “The finger things means the taxes,” “In this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!” and so many more! All of these classic lines are just fantastic and pepper what is a funny episode.
But amid all the rapid fire humor, it’s easy to forget to pull back and see how well structured the reversal at the center of this one is. I’ll admit, at the halfway point, I was ready to write this one off as a pure gag fest (albeit a very entertaining one!). Instead, this episode works with plenty of great irony.
Bart starts out trying to engineer the teachers strike and succeeds! He gets everything he wants from this “pleasure overload”, including the chance to make endless mischief. But when his effort to scare away any substitutes/scabs works too well, he ends up being taught by his mom. The twist that now he not only can’t pull his usual in-class hijinks, but has to use all of this powers (including those to exploit people with booksmarts) to end the teacher’s strike he himself instigated, is a stellar one.
I also like the endless antagonism between Skinner and Krabapple. The show wrings all kinds of great gags about the budget-strapped decay of the school, from the bus that’s falling apart, to gym-mat filled meat substitutes, to the joy of malk! Their back and forth over the strike is outstanding in the pettiness and skullduggery. And I love the cynicism of the solution, where a budget impasse is fixed by making schools into literal prisons.
All the while, the raft of secondary characters in the episode get lots of great things to do. Lisa going crazy without the validation of school is the comic gift that keeps on giving. Marge taking her provincialism to the classroom is a lot of fun. And Homer gets some fantastic lines about Vassar, thermodynamics, and plenty else. There’s a lot of crazy, off-the-wall humor in this one, but it totally works in context.
Overall, this one is filled to the brim with crazy gags and hilarious lines, but they mask a very solid Bart story supporting it all.
Shout by DeletedBlockedParent2016-03-17T21:01:49Z
Young girl, in this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics. This is such a great episode!