Original airdate: October 5, 2025
The premise: Superintendent Chalmers finds himself hitting a new low after getting fired, then becoming a janitor at the power plant. After a run-in with freakishly large snails in the sewage system, he discovers their mucus is great for skin rejuvenation, leading him to start his own wildly successful skin care company.
The reaction: Gary Chalmers is a character the writers seem to take an interest in every now and again. After he and Skinner’s fraught dynamic was reduced to a tired stock caricature deep into the Al Jean era, the most recent decade has seen some attempts to give Chalmers some deeper characterization. Season 23’s “Bart Stops to Smell the Roosevelts” revealed his love of the great outdoors, for rugged self-determination, and his status as a widower. Later the writers retroactively made him Shauna’s father, giving Chalmers a source of exasperation at home as well as at work. I’ve always thought the best path forward for this show as it fast approaches 800 fucking episodes is to delve into the untapped vein that is the vast supporting cast, to peek into the lives of the many other unexplored denizens of Springfield. With Chalmers, it’s felt like we’ve peeked behind the curtain a little bit, but nowhere near to the level that it feels like anything substantial. Case in point, this episode, an all-Chalmers outing where it feels like we learn basically nothing about him. Springfield Elementary is plagued with plagiarism thanks to AI, prompting Chalmers to ban all cell phones from the school. In retaliation, Bart manages to get his master’s thesis flagged for potential plagiarism, getting Chalmers fired. He ends up at Moe’s where Homer gets him hired at the plant, because why not? He’s done so for a dozen other characters in the past who’ve been down on their luck. Chalmers’ new stint as a janitor lands him face to face with some mutated snails, whose mucus ends up making his skin surprisingly fresh and smooth, giving him the gumption to pitch Burns to invest in his new skin care company (what a fucking sentence, but I’m trying to breeze through this shit). Halfway through the episode, we arrive at the episode’s prime satirical target: male-focused entrepreneur culture. Chalmers’ “Escar-bro” company is a hit amongst fellow opportunistic predators looking to swindle sheep out of their money selling snake oil (“Our whole business model is people signing up for subscriptions that they forget to cancel!” “A toast to the suckers!”) Chalmers is uneasy with this mindset, but dismisses these thoughts because the story has to continue. What really sets him off is going back to the school and seeing all of the children obsessed with his product at the expense at any focus on learning. This finally breaks him, leading him back to becoming superintendent again. He makes a speech about how these young kids shouldn’t be preyed upon by scummy businesses and influencers, which would mean something if the episode was actually about that. It felt like they had the ChatGPT in schools idea and the scam influencers idea and just slammed the two stories together without bothering to have any connective tissue. Chalmers falling into the MRA-adjacent product peddler crowd almost feels like it would make sense, given his prior characterization as a believer in traditional manhood in “Roosevelts,” but it’s not brought up here. Ultimately, Chalmers’ journey isn’t really about anything, so his reaffirmation to public service is just as empty. I can see the ingredients here, but they’re just not put together properly. Like so many characters, I can see the potential for Chalmers to be a more interesting character. “Smell the Roosevelts” way back when gave me a small glimpse of that. I just wish I could see a little more.
Three items of note:
– Last season finale, we got one line from adult Milhouse by his new voice actress Kelly Macleod, but I was interested in hearing her as kid Milhouse to appraise her performance. I figured it wouldn’t take long for him to pop up, and here he is in episode two of the season. For Milhouse’s first line, I actually rewound it because I really wasn’t sure if it wasn’t still Pamela Hayden. Macleod does a very impressive voice match, but as Milhouse got more lines, I was able to sense the difference between the two. I will say though, in a first act with appearances by Milhouse, Martin and Sherri/Terri, it was a bit of a weird experience seeing so many familiar characters performed by different people. But at this point, I guess it’s either that or listening to a nearly 82-year-old Harry Shearer croak out his lines for Smithers.
– For some reason, the new kid with the periwinkle hair Devin from the last episode is also in this episode. He’s voiced by Cole Escola, someone I’d never heard of, but then after looking them up, I realized I’d seen them in several things, including a pretty incredible role for a season of Search Party. I’m not sure why he got to be in two episodes though. Maybe they were working on this around the time he was recording for the other episode and they thought to just throw him a couple lines here? Beats me.
– Kerry Washington as Ms. Peyton is still hanging around. I guess she must have the same agreement as Marcia Wallace where she’s cool with popping up a couple times a season. Towards the end, she compliments Bart for his outburst at the auditorium for using the concept of irony correctly (“Very accurate heckling, Bart.” “Thank you, I love you!” “What?” “Nothing.”) Oh cool, are we still holding onto this weird Bart-loves-his-new-teacher schtick? It was such a treat the first time during the character’s introduction, now it’s like a running gag! What a scamp that Bart is. Ugh.
Me Blog Write Good 
”Superintendent Chalmers finds himself hitting a new low after getting fired, then becoming a janitor at the power plant. After a run-in with freakishly large snails in the sewage system, he discovers their mucus is great for skin rejuvenation, leading him to start his own wildly successful skin care company.”
Have no fears, they’ve got stories for years!
It’s funny, I literally just left a comment on the previous episode saying you missed this one and immediately after I posted it, this pops up.
Mike, I was wondering if you could share your thoughts on the revival of King of the Hill. IMHO, this revival shows how to make an old show fresh for 2025. Especially in how they aged up the cast, particularly for the characters of Bobby, Connie, and Joseph. I feel that aspect is an avenue the Simpsons should have explored at the turn of the millennium, but alas I feel if they did that now it would be too late.
I absolutely loved the new season. I’m not the biggest King of the Hill fan, but I do like the show, and thought the time jump for the revival was an excellent move. Seeing the new dynamic between the adults and the grown-up kids was so fun and interesting to see. I only wish it were longer than ten episodes, but that’s just the standard for streaming shows now. They even succeeded in tackling current-events stories, with Hank’s shepherding G.H. away from MRA influencers perfectly blending with his complicated feelings about their father, in a wonderful ending that made me tear up at the end. It’s a really fantastic show. It also serves as a perfect mirror opposite to Hulu’s Futurama, which has absolutely nothing new to say and is just spinning its wheels with the same shit we’ve seen before.
There’s another season of KOTH coming next year, with possibly more after that.
Mike,
Glad you liked the revival! Agree completely! I also liked how the revival was able to organically reconnect and restart Bobby and Connie’s romance as twenty-one year olds. That to me is a perfect rejoinder to Futurama’s eternal will they/won’t they for Fry and Leela.
Also I think with King of the Hill being off the air for 15 years, it was able to age like a fine wine, and not have tons of mediocre seasons like The Simpsons, Family Guy, and American Dad now have. I personally exclude Bob’s Burgers from this list because, while I do agree it has settled into a comfortable malaise as you put it in your review of the Bob’s Burgers movie, I think some of its’ recent episodes, along with the King of the Hill revival, show there are still stories to tell.
P.S.
What did you think of the Great North. I loved the show, and I am mixed that it was just cancelled, but I feel it was for the best because it could’ve suffered a decline just like the Simpsons had it gone on longer.
On the topic of Chalmers, his last spotlight (that I can recall) gave me one of the few laugh out loud moments I had when I did my big “watch all ten billion episodes of The Simpsons” a few years back. He was brewing his own beer, and the label read “Ingredients: Can, Beer”. I was honestly shocked that I found one of their jokes funny.