Mrs. Munger's Class

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
The class.

Simmer! Simmer! Simmer down, students!

Mrs. Munger's Class was a series of 90-second shorts directed by Tim Maloney that aired between commercial breaks on ABC's One Saturday Morning block from 1997 to 1998. It is a yearbook page of students and their exasperated teacher exchanging funny insults and dialogue. Each student had a different personality to go along with his or her portrait.

Actual school portraits were used for the characters, though distorted and manipulated to avoid clearing personality rights. Despite this, it still eventually led to a class-action lawsuit against Disney from the teacher and four of her former students whose portraits were used in the show.

After the lawsuit, Maloney created Centerville, which used the same premise of talking student photos.

Episodes from both shows can be watched here. The unaired pilot and deleted scenes can be watched here.

Tropes used in Mrs. Munger's Class include:

"WE'RE NOT TWINS!"

  • Avoid the Dreaded G Rating: The unaired 22-minute pilot has uses of the word "damn" and a sub-plot about an R-rated movie, seemingly to give it a TV-PG rating from the then-new FCC TV ratings.
  • Burger Fool: Brad from the unaired 22-minute pilot (and later Centerville) is the assistant manager at Taco Freeze, a roadside food stand, that despite what the name says, only sells hamburgers.
  • Butt Monkey: Grace, often because of her weight.
  • Catch Phrase: Many characters have one.
    • Mrs. Munger: "Simmer! Simmer!", and variants thereof.
    • Grace: "Cut it out!"
    • George and George: "WE'RE NOT TWINS!"
    • Mahoot: "What?"
    • Gordon: "Olé!"
  • Cloudcuckoolander: Half the class.
  • Cross-Dressing Voices: Mrs. Munger is voiced by OSM executive producer Peter Hastings.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Yvonne in the unaired 22-minute pilot. "Yes, that's exactly how you do it."
  • Getting Crap Past the Radar: Cissy's girl scout uniform has the number of the beast etched on it.
  • Goth: Karyn, complete with a morbid sense of humor.
  • Hidden Depths: The two times Mahoot said something besides "What?" During an oral report he said a complex sentence praising the diversity of America. Another time, he gave a sympathetic "Oh." when Dawn revealed her Freudian Excuse for being a perfectionist and teacher suck-up.
  • Mundane Made Awesome: The reevaluation in the unaired 22-minuted pilot that Juliet in the Movie Within A Show "Juliet's Mojo" takes a shower is treated like the most amazing thing in the world by the kids and Brad.
  • Non-Indicative Name: Taco Freeze in the unaired 22-minute pilot (plus Centerville) only sells hamburgers.
  • Pig Latin: Lance speaks entirely in this manner.
  • Pokémon-Speak: Mahoot, though by saying "What?".
  • The Quiet One: Rock, though he eventually starts talking (and sounding a lot like Yoda). He even reveals himself to be an alien after Mrs. Munger takes a sick leave and zaps all his classmates (except Lance, who is also an alien), then invites his alien friends. This, however, turns out to be a daydream as Rock is awoken by Mrs. Munger, who is revealed to be his mom. However, this, too, is a dream as a delirious Mrs. Munger wakes up.
  • Screwed by the Lawyers / Author Existence Failure: The aforementioned lawsuit, which led to Centerville.
  • Speech Impediment: Theodore. He frequently gets called upon to answer questions regardless.
  • Straw Feminist: Yvonne.
  • Teacher's Pet: Dawn, who sits right next to Mrs. Munger.
  • Verbal Tic: Gordon. Olé!