“I believe I’ll start, as you’ve so often suggested, by eating your shorts.” – Principal Skinner

Take a good, long look at the image above.  It is one of the best examples of Point #3 – being funny and scary – from that rather sprawling post on Tuesday.  Lunchlady Doris is absolutely covered in blood (children’s blood, at that) and has a look on her face that should be in the dictionary next to “maniacal”.  When this happens, we know that she’s been literally butchering kids, and now she wants to do the same to Bart, Lisa and Milhouse.  But she’s holding and egg beater.  An egg beater!  I don’t think you could hurt someone with an egg beater if you threw it at them. 

Yes, the image is scary, but it’s also patently absurd.  The same scary-funny feeling goes into Willie saying that he’s “bad at this” right after he gets ax murdered for the third time in twenty minutes, Skinner putting on a bib with a school crossing logo on it, and the giant, “Hamilton Beech Student Chopper”.  The situation is dire, but the dialogue and the context are nothing but jokes.  It is a very fine line to walk, especially when you’re dealing with something like kinder-cannibalism, but The Simpsons knew how to walk it.  Even twenty years on, I remain in awe of many of the things this show did.