Ralph Durbin

Ralph Durbin is the deuteragonist of the currently revived NBC sitcom A.P. Bio. He is the principal of Whitlock High School. Durbin is played by Patton Oswalt. 
==Personality==
Ralph Durbin is indubitably a pushover principal. The problem with Ralph is that he can be too nice and patient with everybody around him, including his own staff. And as Ralph is too cowardly to stand up to anyone, he finds himself often caught between two warring factions unable to pick a side unless he can tell which side is the most intimidiating towards him, which then he'll pick as his side.  
All in all, Ralph Durbin is the highest measure of morality and ethical purity on the show A.P. Bio. He helps maintain justice and order throughout the high school and without him, the school would most likely would have foreclosed due to a lack of funding and recognition from the school board. 
Ralph has a recurring run-in with Jack Griffin, the AP Biology teacher who dislikes his job and doesn't even teach his students any biology. Ralph protests that Jack doesn't respect him whatsoever. Jack futilely tries to deny any wrongdoing, thus forcing Ralph to punish him by a 2-day unpaid suspension for leaving the classroom just to go to the lounge and eat chips during class hours. 
==Mishaps==
*Durbin often has to supervise the A.P. Bio class to insure the students' safety whenever Jack goes missing or is late. And even if Jack does arrive on time, he frequently attempts to leave the classroom to go stay in the Teachers Lounge to eat Sun Chips and write ideas for a new book to revive his philosophy career rather than teach any biology to his AP Bio students. 
*A few weeks later after the pilot episode "Catfish", he gets turned into a scapegoat for the broken school sign that Jack destroyed by driving his car into it in the beginning of the pilot episode, and since Jack refused to pay for it (but did agree to admit to doing so), Ralph had no choice but to cut off funding for lab equipment to A.P. Biology for the entire semester.  
*In "Burning Miles", he was intimidated by the teachers into giving them free, frivolous luxuries such as a parachute, a new speaker phone, a karaoke machine and a brand new television. He had to make up for all this by cutting off all future funding for A.P. Bio (Jack's class) for the rest of the semester, which was a fortunate coincidence for Durbin because Jack never even teaches A.P. Bio. 
*He was conned out of his money by a third party market into buying mechanical test baby dolls that won't stop crying no matter what because of a malfunction in their design that got them recalled and rejected from being on the market. 
*When one angry mother complained about a nude back drawing of Mary Wagner being put on display in the hallway, Durbin immediately sided with that mother fearing what she could do to the school if she contacted the school board. Even though that one mother alone can't damage the school's reputation enough simply due to a difference of opinion, Durbin cowardly ended up siding with her over Mary (who was proud of that drawing) and the majority of other teachers who fought for Mary's portrait restored. 
*When the Dean came for a visit, almost all his teachers wanted to show-off baking soda volcanoes instead of anything that's informational or creative, disappointing the Dean and nearly hurting his chances of being nominated Principal of the Year. However, Jack did save his skin by presenting a superb pig dissection and (falsely) crediting Durbin for giving such freedom to choose a variety of sizes of pigs for experiments. 
*In the Season 1 finale, Jack tried returning to Stanford to resume his Head of Philosophy duties at the time Durbin was not prepared to replace Jack.  
==Trivia==
*Out of all teachers at Whitlock, the one who is friendliest to him at least on-screen would be Mary Wagner, the Korean art teacher. 
*Ralph attempted to adopt the motto "Never compromise" but he couldn't keep true to it and just let everybody walk all over him. 
*His favorite food appears to be clams and linguini. 
Category:TV Show Heroes
Category:Non-Action
Category:Male
Category:Wealthy
Category:Cowards
Category:Spouses
Category:Protectors of Innocence
Category:Protectors
Category:Honorable
Category:Master of a Villain
Category:Leaders
Category:Paragon
Category:Bigger Good
Category:Karma Houdini
Category:Selfless
Category:Scapegoat
Category:Officials