0055 - Ms Mellon (Patreon)

Marcia Wallace plays two characters in this episode! And then, as far as I can tell, no other characters, ever.

Ms Mellon is meant as a counterpoint to Mrs Krabappel, which is funny to consider because we, as an audience, barely know Krabappel at this point. This is most evident in their names, with Krabappel meaning to sound like "crab-apple" and Mellon being "melon." The confidence of presenting a sort of parallel character this early is a little baffling, and for years I found the fact that the two basically have the same voice more distracting than anything else.

Mellon seems like a good teacher though! We see little of her beyond her willingness to encourage her class, and never seems at all annoyed at Bart for not keeping up.

I am surprised to learn that she has many appearances after this, although I don't think any of them are speaking roles:

"A Streetcar Named Marge"

"Mr. Plow"

"Marge vs. the Monorail"

These are mostly animators picking a character at random for background roles, I imagine, but it's nice to know she has a life beyond this episode.

This post is part of my "Every Simpsons Character Ever" series. For a list of my rules in this project, click here.