Character from The Simpsons by Matt Groening / Fox
Principal of Springfield Elementary: a Vietnam vet, mama's boy, and meticulous disciplinarian locked in permanent escalating battle with Bart Simpson and his own inadequate budget.
Skinner's entire professional existence is a battle on multiple fronts: against Superintendent Chalmers's inspections, Bart Simpson's pranks, Springfield's catastrophic underfunding, and a teaching staff of varying degrees of burnout. He fights every one of these wars with the same rigid, methodical stubbornness he developed as a Green Beret in Vietnam. He lives with his mother Agnes, who has opinions about his life that she shares constantly. Their relationship is the show's most sustained low-grade horror — not unkind exactly, but compressive. Agnes has formed him as much as Vietnam did. His relationship with Bart has evolved into something that functions almost like respect. Bart's pranks operate most effectively against Skinner because Skinner cares about order, and caring about something is a vulnerability in Springfield.
Thin, slightly sunken-faced man in a grey or blue suit with a plain tie. He stands with the posture of a man who learned military bearing and has kept it because nothing else survived Vietnam. His hair is neatly combed. His expression, when Bart is in his field of vision, cycles through anticipation, resignation, and determination in roughly three seconds.
Also known as: Seymour Skinner, Principal Skinner