David Cooper

0204 - Agnes Skinner

Added 2023-03-23 09:00:01 +0000 UTC

Agnes is by far the most recognisable character introduced in this episode, as her son "Spanky" - sorry, Principal Skinner - shows her around the school.

Notably she is portrayed as a sweet gentle old woman here, far from the cold, mean monster we know and love today. I'd say it's likely that it was unplanned for her to appear again beyond this role as Bart's victim, her next appearance is not until she joins S.N.U.H. next season in "Itchy and Scratchy and Marge, without a line.

And then not again until season 3's "Stark Raving Dad", in which she is oddly huge.

Now obviously I don't want to catalogue every single appearance of a B-list character, that would take ONE MILLION YEARS, but I did want to pinpoint where she became the monster we know her as for the majority of the series, and I think it's right here:

As I'm sure everyone reading this knows, early Simpsons loves a good Alfred Hitchcock homage or parody, and this Psycho reference pins Skinner as Norman Bates and Agnes as...well...Mrs Bates. Even though Agnes is not even seen in this scene from "Brother From The Same Planet", it seems to be the origin of everything that came after in their relationship. In Psycho, Norman Bates is emotionally damaged by the way his mother treated him, and while Skinner has not snapped and killed his mother yet, we can only assume it's coming soon.

Agnes next significant appearance (excluding crowd shots) is in "Bart's Inner Child", where again she does not speak, but her relationship with Seymour is cemented as he role plays destroying her on stage at Brad Goodman's seminar:

From here, we're off to the races, and the Skinners relationship is firmly established beyond this. I find it surprising that we don't begin to get the "real" Agnes Skinner until season 5, longer than many shows would even last.

In conclusion, here Agnes Skinner with a moustache in "Treehouse of Horror II", for some reason: