Don Draper and Principal Skinner: America's Frauds

Or should I say Dick Whitman and Armin Tamzarian

I was describing the plot of Mad Men to a coworker who had never seen the show. When they said, “So it’s just about a hot guy who cheats on his wife?” I told them what the twist was. Don Draper is not Don Draper. He stole the identity of another man who died in war.

“So he’s just Principal Skinner?”

I was dumbfounded realizing that I had never made this connection. Looking online, you can see it is a common observation among many Simpsons fans all the way back to 2007 when Season One of Mad Men premiered. You’ll find posts saying “THEY TAMZARIAN’D DON DRAPER.”

The real Seymour Skinner protects Armin Tamzarian from gunfire (© Disney)

Don Draper and Dick Whitman take cover (© AMC)

For those who don’t know, in Season 9 Episode 2 of The Simpsons’ “The Principal and the Pauper” it is revealed that Seymour Skinner, the strict mother’s boy principal of Springfield Elementary… is not Seymour Skinner. His real name is Armin Tamzarian and he only became Seymour Skinner after the real Skinner “died” in Vietnam and he stole his identity.

This is one of the most infamous episodes of the show because it marked the true end of The Simpsons’ reign as the undisputed king of TV comedy. Its cultural hold began to fade. Fans disliked the storyline because Seymour’s mother not being his actual mother felt so wrong to his character. It’s like saying Norman Bates’ mother wasn’t his mother… wait, Psycho II actually does that? Maybe… this was the point.

(© Disney)

The episode doesn’t feel confident in the twist. After receiving the script, Skinner’s voice actor Harry Shearer said, “That's so wrong. You're taking something that an audience has built eight years or nine years of investment in and just tossed it in the trash can for no good reason, for a story we've done before with other characters. It's so arbitrary and gratuitous, and it's disrespectful to the audience."

I’m a casual fan of The Simpsons (with great love for the Treehouse of Horror specials) and I had never seen this infamous episode before today. As someone who didn’t spend years investing in the show as I watched it live, it’s… actually kind of funny as an intentional disaster. The Principal and the Pauper isn’t good but it is fascinating to watch as a bit that appears to be bombing on purpose. The episode ends with the characters saying they will “never speak of this again” as if already aware of the audience backlash and how dislikable the storyline was.

The Simpsons asked if you would still love a character you had invested in if he wasn’t actually who he said he was. The answer is, how good is his lie? Their lie is a joke and not an earned one. The writers were just asking “Can we get away with this?” between laughs.

In Mad Men, the lie is his life. You were never deceived, from the end of the pilot you should know not to trust or even like Don Draper… we just can’t help it. The writers of Mad Men didn’t ask “Can we get away with this?” The question instead was “Can he get away with it?”