Kerry Washington joins the cast as the voice of Rayshelle Peyton, the new fourth grade teacher at Springfield Elementary. She's interviewed for the job by Principal Skinner (Harry Shearer) and Superintendent Chalmers (Hank Azaria).
Being an eminently qualified teacher, Mrs. Peyton is immediately hired and given a signing bonus of $90 and change literally out of Chalmers's pocket. She convinces the other teachers to engage in project-based learning, in which the whole school will make miniature replicas of the seven wonders of the world.
At nature documentarian camp, Lisa makes a documentary about an octopus. As a documentarian, she's not supposed to intervene in the natural balance of things, and so her documentary ends with the octopus dying. But the truth is that Lisa actually intervened to save the octopus from a shark, but left that part out of the public cut of the documentary.
Some time ago, Bart snuck into a fancy resort and had trouble in a swimming pool. Mrs. Peyton rescued him, but instead of being grateful, he yelled at her and stormed off. Now that Mrs. Peyton is a teacher at his school, Bart worries the new teacher will recognize him, and acts out in destructive ways.
Tropes
- Acting Unnatural: Every time Mrs. Peyton tries to talk with Bart, he starts acting odd trying to suppress his crush on her.
- Bait-and-Switch Comment: As she's about to enter a room, Mrs. Peyton foresees the people in the room will be mean to her but that's most likely because of their terrible home lives. She was referring to the other teachers and staff, not the students.
- Brutal Honesty: Homer's advice on how Bart should deal with his Precocious Crush.Homer: You're a kid, she's a grown-up. Get over it.
- Childhood Brain Damage: Implied. As a kid, Homer had a crush on his school nurse, and would repeatedly hurt himself to get to visit her. The fact that he lists the same method twice implies that he now has memory issues.
- Crazy Jealous Guy: Bart acts out aggressively after finding out that his teacher is married, ripping a drinking fountain out of the wall. While pointing out that everyone experiences jealousy, Homer relates an incident in which he reacted to another man holding the door for Marge by keying his car (which was actually a school bus), only to find out that he held the door for everybody.
- Death by Newbery Medal: Subverted. Lisa's documentary is about her bonding with an octopus (named Molly) while in a nature documentary-making club. At the end, Molly gets eaten by a shark, and Lisa recounts her guilt at being unable to intervene. She wins the "Most Ethical Filmmaker" award for this performance. It turns out later that Molly is alive; Lisa did go and attack the shark after filming, thus saving Molly.
- Disaster Dominoes: Upset over Mrs. Peyton being with her husband, Bart needs to take out his rage somehow, so he tries yelling into a jar. Unfortunately, it's the jar where Lisa kept her octopus Molly, who latches onto Bart's face, taking his coloring so it's not immediately obvious that he has an octopus on his face. In his flailing around to get Molly off his face, he accidentally closes the automatic bleachers and lets loose some large yoga balls, causing the audience to stumble onto the gym floor and topple the kids' models of the Seven Wonders of the World, including a literal domino topple with the Great Wall of China made of wooden blocks.
- Don't Eat and Swim: Implied. When Bart goes into the pool at a fancy hotel, he finds himself unable to tread water, and needs someone to rescue him. He later suspects that he forgot how to swim because of all the ice cream sundaes and curly fries he had eaten beforehand.
- Dreadful Musician: Mrs. Peyton was a teacher in Ghana. Her husband is an oboist, but he was not good enough to play in the National Symphony Orchestra of Ghana. So they moved to Springfield, and now Mr. Peyton is good enough for the Springfield Symphony, which has a very low bar. Mr. Peyton comes to the school and plays a little bit for the children, he's actually quite bad.
- Dumbass Has a Point: Homer learns about how Bart has been behaving around Mrs. Peyton and assumes that he has a crush on her. Bart insists he's wrong and tells him he's actually afraid she'll hate him if she recognizes him from their first meeting at the pool. A Green-Eyed Epiphany causes him to realize Homer was right the first time.
- Family Portrait of Characterization: A variant. Mrs. Peyton has the class draw self-portraits of how they see themselves, which she uses to infer their personalities. She concludes that Martin is a genius Teacher's Pet from his detailed pencil sketch, and that Nelson has a bad home life from his photo of him threatening Santa into being his father. With Bart, he's just gluing something onto the paper and doing nothing else. When she asks him about it, he says that he "always has glue on his face", then glues his face to the paper and tries to walk out of the room.
- Green-Eyed Epiphany: Bart's emotional reaction to finding out that Mrs. Peyton is married is what causes him to realize that he has a crush on her.
- Green-Eyed Monster: Bart, upon learning that Mrs. Peyton is Happily Married.
- One Dialogue, Two Conversations: Bart believes that he's in love with Mrs. Peyton, and is jealous that she's already married. Meanwhile, Lisa is concerned over the ethical nature of keeping Molly. Homer, talking to Bart, says something that makes Lisa realize she should get rid of Molly:Homer: Look, sometimes there are awesome things in this world that aren't meant to be your awesome things. You got to let it go. Trust me, there's other fish in the sea.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: When Bart first sees Mrs. Peyton, he has a sudden flashback of her crying and asking if he's okay. This unnerves him to the point that he seems to lose any sense of self-awareness, first clapping like a seal and then pretending to be a robot. Later, in class, he's again distracted and glues a paper to his face. Further behavior escalates into rage, such as kicking Milhouse's project out the window and ripping a water fountain out of the wall. He attributes this all to jealousy, repressed feelings, and his fear of what Mrs. Peyton will do if she recognized him.
- Shout-Out:
- Lisa's half of the plot, as well as the title of the episode, are a nod to My Octopus Teacher.
- To The Incredible Hulk: When Bart sees Mrs. Peyton with her husband, he gets very angry and rips a water fountain out of the wall. Later, when he describes this to Homer, he says he "hulked out."
- Martin's self-portrait where he's reflected on a sphere is based on a self-portrait by M.C. Escher.
- Teacher/Student Romance: Invoked. Bart didn't know at the time that Mrs. Peyton was a teacher. Still, the attraction is one-sided.
- Title Drop: In-universe. Lisa's My Cephalopod Soulmate documentary ends with the line "I hope I made a difference in Molly's short life, because she will forever be My. Cephalopod. Soulmate." With each word, the camera zooms further into Lisa crying.
- The Unreveal: They never really explain in this episode why Flanders isn't teaching the 4th grade class anymore. However, it was explained in the next season that he was fired for praying on school grounds.
- Writing Lines: At the very end of the episode, Bart tells Mrs. Peyton that there's one strategy his old teacher (Mrs. Krabappel) used to keep him under control. He realizes too late that this is a bad idea; the final shot has him writing "I WILL NOT EXPRESS MY EMOTIONS THROUGH CHAOS" on the chalkboard numerous times.
