User blog comment:Mattalamode/The Miss Simian Problem/@comment-30307603-20170413180738/@comment-31194372-20170413205930

When I say "vanilla," I mean he's more of a conventional character, and again, I mean it as something respectable, maybe even commendable about him. At the very least, in a show as hectic as this one, he's one of the most toned-down. The lens of the character is slightly tinted for the sake of making him specific in several regards, but the show doesn't repeatedly use him in the same way every single episode in the same way that shows like Spongebob do, and it's a reason why this show is still going full-steam and that one, quite frankly, is not. (There's some allure in an unchanging character, but it also runs incredibly dry if you want something interesting to happen.)

I get that "The Apology" is more of a character piece than anything, but I still don't think it's incisive enough. It does what it has to do, but it doesn't prod beyond that, and while delving further into a character like Miss Simian could easily lead to mixed results, at least there would be some kind of takeaway from it. This is a perfectly subdued filler episode - had the show gone a bit more with Miss Simian in the same way that they dug at Principal Brown's insecurities in "The Fraud," I would've liked it more, but it's the kind of episode that purposely underplays its moments for the sake of keeping Miss Simian's personality constant in the future (an idea that "The Grades" executed much more perfectly).