In season nine, episode nine of The Carol Burnett Show, something quietly brilliant happened—something that still has fans cackling decades later. That something was Dame Maggie Smith’s return to the show, this time as a particularly prim and proper schoolteacher who finds herself utterly unprepared for her most chaotic assignment yet: teaching Bubba Higgins.
The sketch opens in the familiar cluttered living room of “The Family,” where Eunice is bouncing on her toes, wearing her usual mix of desperation and determination, and Ed is hunched in his recliner, wearing a scowl like it’s part of his uniform.
Enter Maggie Smith—as Miss Pembroke—stoic, regal, and armed with a clipboard. The studio audience erupts at the sight of her. With her sharp British accent and aristocratic poise, she looks completely out of place among the Harper family’s Southern squabbling—and that’s exactly what makes it comedic gold.
Eunice, flustered as always, is trying to convince Miss Pembroke that her Bubba is “gifted—emotionally gifted.” Ed mutters that Bubba’s only talent is keeping the refrigerator empty. Bubba, meanwhile, wanders in chewing bubblegum and offering a hand to Miss Pembroke with a loud “Howdy!”
From that moment on, chaos reigns.
Miss Pembroke attempts to deliver a lesson on Shakespeare’s Macbeth, only to be interrupted by Ed snoring, Eunice quoting Elvis instead, and Bubba earnestly asking, “Is Macbeth the one with the lightsabers?” The audience is already doubled over when Maggie Smith, never breaking character, gives a long pause, adjusts her glasses, and deadpans, “No, that’s Hamlet. In space.”
The scene peaks when Miss Pembroke tries to get Bubba to recite a line from the play. He butchers it hilariously, mumbling, “Is this a hot dog I see before me?” Maggie Smith’s icy silence before replying, “Close. Just… several centuries and culinary trends off,” brings the house down.
In a moment of inspired madness, Eunice jumps in to do her own “dramatic” reading—tears, flailing arms, and all—leaving Maggie’s character to mutter under her breath, “I shall require a raise.”
The sketch closes with Miss Pembroke attempting to exit gracefully, only to be pulled into one final round of family bickering. She leaves with a slight twitch in her right eye and the unforgettable line: “This has been… a learning experience for all of us.”
The genius of the sketch wasn’t just in the writing—it was in the collision of comedic worlds: the grounded absurdity of “The Family,” the unpredictable improvisation of Carol Burnett and her crew, and the razor-sharp elegance of Dame Maggie Smith.
It’s no easy feat to make a scene with Carol, Vicki Lawrence, and Harvey Korman your own. But Maggie Smith didn’t just hold her own—she elevated the chaos with perfectly timed restraint and sly wit. It’s a performance fans still talk about, proof that sometimes the best comedy happens when worlds (and accents) collide.
And yes—Bubba got a C-minus. But Miss Pembroke gave it to him with a smile.