Vaya Con Dios, Edna Krabappel

Brilliant actress Marcia Wallace – best known as the voice of cynical teacher Edna Krabappel on The Simpsons – passed away from cancer last week at the age of 70. In tribute, Fox is running a classic Edna episode called “The Ned-liest Catch” tonight at 6:30 p.m. (CST) as the lead-in to tonight’s new Simpsons episode. 

Fox was originally planning to run an episode from Season 3, in which Bart pranks a lonely Mrs, Krabappel after she places an ad in the Lonely Hearts section of the newspaper. (For our younger readers, this was the 90’s version of plentyoffish.com.) It’s a really sweet episode, notwithstanding Homer’s idea of a sensitive romantic letdown letter: “Dear Baby, Welcome to Dumpsville. Population: You.”

However, due to “technical difficulties”, they are instead running a happier episode where Edna gets suspended from her teaching job but starts dating Ned Flanders. Ned, as longtime viewers know, is surprisingly hot underneath the nerdy church guy persona. (Note: I may or may not have a thing for a cartoon character. At least it’s not tentacle hentai.)

Homer: “Does this mean that Mrs. Krabappel is a virgin, too?” Edna: “HA!”