If you follow local news, morning shows or social media, you’ve probably seen inspiring videos. A dedicated teacher receives a surprise donation back to school itemsor PPE or shoe. An educator wants her school supplies instead of flowers funeral. A school employee pays out of pocket to keep students warm Clothes or food. Her heartwarmingis not it?
May be not. Maybe it’s depressing. After all, the unspoken side of these tearful stories is how we outsource our society’s basic needs to the whims of viral philanthropy. These videos replace real investment by rewarding a few lucky people. we love to feel good about teachers. But actually make well by them is rare enough to warrant memorialization on video. After a few minutes, we scroll.
ABC’s best new network sitcom of the season, “Abbott Elementary,” isn’t a one-year supply of pens. But there’s something else that matters: the constant attention paid to a profession is often lost in the barn of doctors, lawyers and police on TV, no matter how many lies we tell.
He has an intermittent show history with teaching: “Welcome, Kotter”, “Boston Public”, Season 4 of “The Wire”. But TV tends to see students as the heroes of the school—the Sweathogs show stole it from Gabe Kotter—and even in series that take teaching more seriously like “Friday Night Lights,” educators are equal actors at best.
“Abbott Elementary,” whose first season will conclude on April 12, is a workplace comedy, meaning it sees teaching as a job done by complex, messy people. It also means that his mission and goodwill would mean nothing if he wasn’t funny. And very funny. (As a critic, I appreciate a bittersweet. seven-episode niche dramedy more than most, but sometimes you just want something good sitcom.)
Shot in a bogus style—the camera crew was rumored to be making a movie about underfunded public schools—“Abbott Elementary” would fit into NBC’s must-see TV series of the ’00s if it were the network. at that time he was mostly doing comedies with Black actors.
Creative, Quinta Brunson (“A Black Lady Sketch Show”) stars Janine Teagues, a sophomore, sophomore teacher at a ramshackle public school in Philadelphia where toilet users learn to avoid a “Reversey Toilet” (a failed faucet in permanent water heater mode). and there have been three presidents since George W. Bush was recorded in history textbooks.
Nerd seeks the approval of veterans like Janine, who pleases conscientious people, and tough kindergarten teacher Barbara (Sheryl Lee Ralph). But he has a hard time handling his own students – partly because he looks like a half-boy with his short stature and hummingbird nerves.
Janine has Michael Scott’s need to be loved without her excruciating ignorance, Leslie Knope’s idealism without the steamroller confidence. She could be a supporting character in another sitcom; There’s even a hint of a long game of Pam-and-Jim between him and Gregory (a totally dry Tyler James Williams), a substitute teacher (a con man, a dry Janelle James) who’s reeling from losing the main job to Ava. ).
Making Janine the point of view character feels like an expression. It’s not bigger than life. If anything, she’s a few sizes smaller. And as “Abbott Elementary” suggests, this is exactly the kind of person who makes the world work: the ordinary person who swallows their doubts and does the work that needs to be done.
Sharp jokes and character drawings alone make “Abbott” a delight. The show has a well-balanced ensemble, complemented by the quotable serious young white man Jacob (Chris Perfetti). Robin DiAngeloand Melissa (Lisa Ann Walter), a street-smart South Philly native with a “man for everything.”
But what becomes clear in season one is how comprehensive Brunson and his creative team have made readings about both its eternal challenges and its momentary dynamics when it comes to American education.
The third episode, “Wish List”, is built around viral, please-fund-my-class videos and turning the education they promote into “American Idol”. (“I can’t hear another squeaky voice begging for a pen,” Melissa grumbles.) Janine, with the help of Ava, who doesn’t know much about pedagogy but has a green screen in the office, promotes the online material list. For making TikTok videos.
They’re so successful that they secretly decide to do the same for the tech-phobic Barbara (“I’m going to put rain glue in that room,” says Ava). Ava’s bizarre video gets a flood of donations, but Barbara is horrified.
“Is it nice to have something? Of course,” he said to Janine. “But my students don’t need to feel any less – because they do. immortality There are things.”
Our culture likes to tell him educational success stories about a few people. But public schools only really work if they work for many. In a later episode, Abbott initiates a gifted program that allows his students to watch baby chickens hatch from eggs. When Janine tries to spread the offer to the rest of her class, the eggs Melissa obtains through one of her “links” spawn baby snakes; this is a breathtaking and funny scene with the tip as sharp as a snake’s tooth.
“When you give chickens to some kids, other kids will get snakes,” Gregory says. “If you hold the snakes long enough, you think you deserve it.”
Some of the show’s most powerful statements are conveyed not in speeches, but in the comfort of just being who they are. “Abbott” is completely but haphazardly immersed in Black culture, as in scenarios such as Janine and Ava staging a school step show.
and duration the epidemic is not coming“Abbott Elementary” feels right in the moment, highlighting all the social services (counselling, catering, crisis response) communities rely on in-person education. Janine spends an episode trying to schedule a meeting with a student’s mother and assumes her mother isn’t involved. Apparently, the mother is a nurse stuck at work.
You don’t need to show an N95 mask to make the connection. At its core, “Abbott Elementary” is about the overworker serving the overloaded. And lately they have all been asked to give more than they have.
A drama can tell the same kinds of stories, but there’s something about a workplace comedy that focuses on eccentricities and minor annoyances, which makes it particularly effective. The teachers of “Abbott Elementary” are just as flawed as you, and that’s important. Part of the “heartwarming” narrative we love to tell ourselves about education is that teachers are saints. Appropriate: You owe nothing to a saint.
In the penultimate episode of the season, “Abbott” gives one of his strongest lines to his most flawed character. Always relying on a combination of delegation and blackmail to stay in business, Ava finds herself having to make a solo presentation to win a funding scholarship to the school. She is not doing well.
But at the last moment, he unexpectedly finds his voice. “Don’t give us the money because we need it,” he says. “Give it to us because everyone at Abbott deserves it.” This distinction between need and to deserveIt is the difference between compassion and respect, between charity and obligation.
And sometimes a laugh is the best kind of respect you can pay. “Abbott Elementary School”, thank God, is more heartbreaking than heartwarming. The kind of comedy that Network TV needs and education deserves.