Original air date: 10/4/2009
Bart and his classmates get Mrs. Krabappel fired after she confiscates their cell phones, but he soon starts to feel guilty when a hip, new teacher is hired in her place and Mrs. Krabappel gets a job at a muffin store thanks to a self-help book.
Tropes:
- Adults Are Useless: Zack clearly hears Homer admit he abuses Bart when he said the drawing will really represents his last birthday but he actually buys Homer lies and doesn't even bother to investigate.
- Alcohol-Induced Idiocy: After her students get her drunk, Edna ends up embarrassing herself in front of the whole school during a school assembly and is fired as a result.
- Apathetic Teacher: Edna's typical characterization is Subverted as she reveals that despite everything, teaching remains her dream in life, and she's motivated every day by the hope that she might be able to "teach one kid one thing." This puts her in contrast to Zack Vaughn, an Enthusiastic Newbie Teacher who's fully become this by the end of the episode and tells all the students that "only alcohol can make life bearable."
- Artifact Title: The title is of course a Call-Back to Season 2's "Bart Gets an F" (similar to "Bart's Dog Gets an F" and "Lisa Gets an A"), but while most viewers read Edna's replacement Zack as the "Z" that Bart gets, according to writer Matt Selman, it originally described a literal event in the episode, where Zack's drunken rant began with him giving all the students Z grades. Even after the scene was rewritten, the staff liked the title enough to keep it.
- Artistic License – Animal Care: While Homer was drunk and playing with Santa's Little Helper, both of them switched places and Homer gives SLH the bottle, but alcoholic drinks are very toxic to dogs.
- Bait-and-Switch: Bart tries on the third act to spike Zack's (the new teacher's) coffee in the same way as he and his classmates spiked Krabappel's, but he cannot bring himself to do so out of guilt for what Krabappel is going through and confesses doing this to Skinner... who will not hire Krabappel back because Zack is doing a very good job. The dilemma is taken out of their hands when it turns out that Zack drinks an energy with vodka, which he does in school right on that moment and turns him into a belligerent drunk that insults all of the kids and tells them that they have no future. Groundskeeper Willie drags Zack away after that with the remark "It's always the good ones that go crazy the fastest".
- Beyond Redemption: After what Bart did in this episode, Mrs. Krabappel tells him that he's "bad on the inside", despite believing that he had a Hidden Heart of Gold for so long.
- Big "NO!": Bart when he learned how many competitors Edna had during her job running a muffin store.
- Big "WHAT?!": Edna angrily does one when Bart confesses to her that he was the one who got her fired.
- Cool Teacher: Brand-new Tufts University graduate Zack Vaughn's first order of business is to give the kids their confiscated phones back, since unlike early 90s relic Edna Krabappel he's hip enough to use late 00s technology as an educational tool, and his methods of engaging his class using text messages and viral videos prove highly effective. The episode goes on to explain why teachers like him are nonexistent at Springfield Elementary: it's such a Sucky School that anyone with enough perspective to see how badly it's letting its students down will Go Mad from the Revelation.
- A Day in the Limelight: For Edna Krabappel.
- Diegetic Switch: "Another Day" by Paul McCartney starts on the episode soundtrack, then continues diegetically on Mrs. Krabappel's car radio.
- Enthusiastic Newbie Teacher: Zack Vaughn is fresh from his master's program and Springfield Elementary's 4th grade is his first class ever. Naturally, his laid-back personality and Cool Teacher ways aren't enough to keep him from snapping like a twig.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: When Mrs. Krabappel wakes up, she misgrades Nelson and Martin's math tests without looking, giving them both Bs. Needless to say, Nelson got all the questions wrong while Martin got them all right.
- Gone Horribly Right: The schoolchildren decide to prank Mrs. Krabappel by putting booze in her coffee, to make her drunk and funny. It works, but her drunken antics lead to her making a fool of herself during a school assembly, which gets her fired.
- Ignoring by Singing: As Zack rants that the school is letting all of its students down, Skinner instructs the students to do this, but Skinner is the only one to do so.
- Inherent in the System: Enthusiastic Newbie Teacher Zack Vaughn's experiences teaching Mrs. Krapappel's class cause him to Go Mad from the Revelation that the entire educational system is a joke.Zack: You can get rid of me, but you can't get rid of the truth, man! This school is a glorified hamster wheel run by incompetent bureaucrats who can get you through a test, but you will fail the test of life!
- In Vino Veritas: Krabappel turns into a very flighty person when drunk (which leads to her losing her job when Bart spikes her drink) and Zack turns into a very belligerent jerk when drunk (which leads to him losing his job when he decides to get drunk on school hours).
- It's All My Fault: Technically, Mrs. Krabappel's entire class—right down to Teacher's Pet Martin Prince—was in on the plot to get her drunk and each student contributed his or her own alcohol. While it was still Bart's fault in that the scheme was his idea and the others took their marching orders from him, no one else was fussed enough about it to own up or try to make things right.
- Jerk Jock: The Carload of Cool Kids that insult and make fun of Mrs. Krabappel for listening to "Another Day" while on her way to school, calling it "a million year-old song".
- Kids Raiding the Wine Cabinet: Bart describes having his 4th-grade classmates obtain alcohol as "the easy part" of his plan, and we're treated to a montage of how various kids accomplish it: Milhouse opens his parents' cabinet with a crowbar, prissy Martin Prince breaks open his mom's chocolate liqueurs, Dr. Hibbert's son draws wine straight through the cork of the bottle with his dad's syringe, and Nelson grabs stray drinks at the strip club while the patrons are distracted by his mom's routine. Ironically given his household, Bart is the only one who orders out (lying about his age online to receive a shipment of "Absolut Krusty").
- Mandatory Line: Lisa only has two lines in the whole episode and she only appears in two scenes. Marge receives this treatment as well, having only one line in the only scene in which she shows up.
- Not Me This Time: Bart initially plans to get Zack fired the same way he accidentally got Edna fired, by spiking his drink, but has a pang of conscience and confesses everything to Skinner instead. Coincidentally, however, Zack was just getting ready to spike his own drink anyway.
- Out of Focus: Lisa appears in two scenes in this episode, and she only speaks in one of them. Ditto Marge, who only has a brief speaking role in the whole episode.
- Pet the Dog: Zack vouching for Bart when Skinner was quick to blame him for the teacher's drunken behavior is impressive, considering he could have just let the boy take all the blame while he continued his rant... and also considering he was wasted.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Edna gives one to Bart when he reveals to her that he and his classmates spiked her drink and ended up getting her fired:Edna: No matter what you've done, I always thought there was a spark of decency in you, Bart Simpson, but I was wrong. I never thought I'd say this to a child, but you are bad on the inside!
- Restaurant-Owning Episode: Because she was fired and Bart's self-help book convinced her to do so, Edna opens a muffin bakery and seems to be doing okay... until Bart returns at the beginning of the third act, and discovers that Krabappel is depressed again because she's losing money thanks to a competition boom and the fact that she feels the business is going against her true nature of being a teacher.
- Restrained Revenge: After getting her teaching job back, Mrs. Krabappel forces the children that got her fired to eat stale muffins.
- Shout-Out: The self-help book that Bart gets Krabappel, "The Answer", is a parody of The Secret
. Allegedly, the book can tell you what is your dream, and it tells Krabappel that her dream is to bake muffins. - Take That!: For the above-mentioned book: on the final act, Edna tells Bart that her real dream was to be a teacher and (after an act of looking like her muffin business was booming) she reveals that she is now heavy in debt and many rivals have opened up since she started, so she tears the book apart. Her final revenge act, forcing the kids that got her fired to eat stale muffins, is portrayed as if she took the idea from the book, as well.
- Too Dumb to Live: Bart happily tells Mrs. Krabappel that he and his classmates spiked her coffee and got her drunk, getting her fired. Edna is, of course, furious when she hears this, but what else was he expecting?
