Mad Men may be lauded for its handling of the mysterious and scandalous true identity of Don Draper, but The Simpsons included a strangely similar plot twist in its episode "The Principal and the Pauper" almost exactly 10 years earlier. Ironically, Mad Men received praise for the way it used this element to develop Don's character, while fans and critics consider "The Principal and the Pauper" to be the point when The Simpsons started to suffer a decline in quality.
The penultimate episode of Mad Men season 1, "Nixon vs. Kennedy," confirms that Don Draper's real name is, in fact, Dick Whitman. It turns out that he had fought in the Korean War to escape a life of poverty and abuse only to accidentally set off an explosion that killed his lieutenant, named none other than Don Draper. Looking for an excuse to start a new life, Dick steals the identity documents of Lieutenant Draper and becomes the successful advertisement brain that the show's characters and audience members are most familiar with.
Principal Skinner follows an analogous journey in "The Principal and the Pauper," in which it is revealed that the head of Springfield Elementary had also stolen the identity of his commanding officer in the Vietnam War. In this case, however, the story was met with heavy criticism from the show's fanbase and creatives alike. Critics have denounced the Simpsons episode as a downward turning point in the series and the end of the Golden Age of The Simpsons. Series creator Matt Groening has called the episode a mistake, while Harry Shearer, who voices Skinner, expressed that the event was a disrespectful betrayal of character development and audience investment.
How Mad Men Made The Simpsons' Plot Twist Great
The problem with "The Principal and the Pauper" is that, much like Shearer had articulated, it feels as if the episode retcons the complexities that made Seymour Skinner such a memorable character. The orderly principal's uptight interactions with his apathetic student body, as well as his past military history, defined his humorously strict yet principled code of conduct for years. Revealing that his entire identity is a facade called into question his central character traits. In addition, The Simpsons episode ends with the denizens of Springfield agreeing to ignore the discovery, making the story both unsatisfying and pointless.
In contrast with The Simpsons, which concocted its Skinner twist out of thin air, Mad Men hints early on in the series before the audience knows the full history of Don Draper that he is not all who he seems to be. Throughout season 1, a man follows Don around claiming to be his brother, sparking fits of jitters and sweat from the adman every time the strange figure calls him "Dick." The drama's creative team had planned this revelation from the start, while the reveal exposes that Don's duplicitous behavior stems from deeply rooted insecurities about his own identity and privilege. Whereas The Simpsons had sullied its progress, Mad Men had only begun to enrich its layered themes.