Bart Gets a Z (S21, E02-443)

He should've looked online for self-help, didn't Zack teach him anything?

Plot Summary
Its another typical day in Edna Krabappel's life, but she's still dedicated to teaching her class something every day.  This is made extremely more difficult nowadays as every kids in her class liberally uses their cell phones, phones they have for good reason ('safety') but aren't being used as such.  Tired of them, Krabappel forces the class to give her their phones.  After school, the kids gather up to complain about the strict Edna, where Bart takes a cue from Homer and decides that if Edna had some alcohol in her, she'd be more fun.  The kids steal some booze from their parents, and Bart mixes all of it together with some Hazelnut creamer to mask the taste, and slips it into her coffee.  Within a short period of time Edna gets pretty wasted and makes a public fool of herself across school.

Principal Skinner has no choice but to fire Edna for the incident.  The class feels bad about it, and Bart is ready to admit his wrongdoing, but just then a new teacher comes in.  The guy, who lets the class just call him Zack, is fresh out of college and tries to teach students how to master technology to gather their facts instead of just learning or memorizing them.  Still, Bart feels a little guilty and visits Mrs. Krabappel at her apartment.  Edna is in a miserable state, with bills piling up and having no sense of effort anymore.  Bart wants to help Edna out, but he and everyone else loves Zack so much he doesn't really want her to be a teacher again.  Just then, a woman advertises a self help book disguised as an epic quest called "The Answer" and Bart goes all in on it.  He details the book to Edna, and she decides to give it a try because, really, she doesn't have much else doing on.  The book has her write down her dream, to own a muffin store, and with some help from Bart the two are able to start up a muffin store.  Bart is relieved Edna is back on her feet, but lets that much slip out, making Edna suspicious.  Bart relents and tells Edna that he was the one who spiked her coffee that day.  Edna goes off, stating that her real dream was to be a teacher and, worse yet, tells Bart he has nothing good inside of him.

That last statement really gets to Bart, and he starts contemplating whether to get Zack fired to let Edna back in.  Late at night, Bart sneaks into class to sneak booze into Zack's favorite energy drink, but eventually opts against doing so.  The next morning, Bart simply tells Skinner what he did.  Skinner thanks Bart for his honesty (by punishing him severely), but tells him that as long as Zack is competent he has no plans to replace him with Edna.  However, just then Zack blares out anti-kid sentiments out in the hallways.  It turns out he's getting drunk from his spiked energy drink.  Bart didn't do it, however, as it was Zack himself who had snapped, poured vodka into his drink himself, and is dragged off yelling out typical conspiracy theories and such.  Edna is given her job back, and gives the class her old, stale muffin as a sly payback for what they did to her earlier.

Quick Review
Early in my run of episodes I came across a few episodes that I felt were dated.  Homer vs. Lisa and the 8th Commandment is a good example of this.  I always though it a little weird whenever the show even mentions newer technology for whatever reason.  At one point Homer tries to start up an Internet company despite having no idea what the Internet even was, then in a much later episode Homer uses the Internet to easily acquire a license.  I mean, yeah, it sounds silly to let such things bother me considering that the show even precedes Windows 3.0, but that's how it is.

So from that, the sight of seeing the kids all using cell phones to text and, hell, even tweet, really just bugs me.  Not enough to hurt the episode's already low score in anyway, but its still bothersome for me regardless.

Anyway, my personal preferences aside, this ends up being another subpar episode where the comedy is lacking.  The whole bit with glorifying "The Answer" didn't do anything for me, and plot had stretches where there was nothing funny.

Final Score: 6.3