Is anybody working harder lately than teachers? Though the occupation has all the time include its share of challenges—long hours, limited resources and near-impossible expectations, to call only a couple of—today’s educators appear to face more stress than ever, whilst Covid restrictions finally lift. One way or the other, they have to juggle post-pandemic burnout, warlike school board meetings and the once-unthinkable debate of whether or not they should arm themselves.
So it’s a surprise that the breakout TV hit of the yr is a comedy about an urban public school. Abbott Elementary, whose second season premieres on ABC Sept. 21, has charmed viewers and critics alike, racking up stellar rankings, 4 Television Critics Association Awards and multiple Emmys. The series follows a gaggle of plucky teachers as they provide their all to a cash-strapped school in Philadelphia, and it manages to be each hilarious and honest about life within the classroom.
‘Abbott Elementary’ manages to be each hilarious and honest about life within the classroom.
Teachers typically appear in popular culture as certainly one of two sorts of caricatures. In comedies, they’re vindictive and oafish tyrants (“Matilda,” “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”). In dramas, they’re flattened into saintlike heroes (“Dangerous Minds,” “Freedom Writers”). Of those two, the dramas could also be more damaging: they reduce teachers—and, worse, their students—to the difficulties they face.
Abbott’s teachers encounter the identical obstacles present in these problematic dramas. Their young students have seen an excessive amount of and learned too little; funding is thin to nonexistent; facilities are falling apart to the purpose of absurdity (you don’t need to know what happens whenever you flush “Reversy Toilet”). But what sets Abbott other than its popular culture predecessors is its generosity. Its mockumentary format makes room for the complexity of the teaching experience—and the complete humanity of the teachers themselves.
At first glance, these teachers may look like familiar types. Janine and Jacob, second-year rookies and the last remainders of their cohort (“We began with twenty,” Janine says, like a weary sergeant), are eager and naive. Twenty-year veterans Barbara and Melissa are leery of their younger colleagues’ innovations. Gregory, the substitute, sees his job as a mere stepstool to higher things. The charismatic and inept principal, Ava, ignores her subordinates’ plea for more aid and exploits her authority for private gain (and she or he’s not above putting a footbath on the college supply wishlist).
Abbott’s teachers are neither saints nor villains.
Naivete and practicality; cynicism and selfishness—in lesser hands, these themes would have doomed ‘Abbott’ to schmaltz and cliché. The show’s creator, Quinta Brunson, who also plays Janine and just won an Emmy for writing the pilot, avoids this fate by allowing her characters to be complicated. Abbott’s teachers are neither saints nor villains. Barbara may introduce herself as a “woman of God,” but she lies about her ability to make use of recent reading software. Melissa has a fast temper (and possible mob connections). Gregory, against all odds (and his own wishes), begins to attach along with his students. Janine, whose dedication knows no bounds, uses work as a disastrous catharsis for her personal life, and the people round her suffer for it.
By the top of the show’s first season, each teacher has needed to reckon with who they’re and the way they are going to survive the subsequent school yr. Even Ava is allowed a full arc (seems inept principals might also be excellent at caring for their grandmothers). Abbott is the rare type of comedy that permits its characters to alter, and that’s a part of what makes it so satisfying.
Though ‘Abbott’ acknowledges the hardships of its students’ lives, it never resorts to stereotypes.
It’s also very, very funny, which keeps the show from devolving into an after-school special. As a former educator myself, I’m delighted to see someone finally harness the comedic potential of days spent with young children. Anyone who’s set foot in a kindergarten classroom has observed the magical effect rugs have on tiny humans (“like an enormous Xanax,” says Janine). “Baby Shark” is indeed, as Barbara observes, “like ‘Back That Azz Up’ for youths.” Quinta Brunson deserved her Emmy for Janine and Gregory’s meet-cute alone, which involves a practical amount of urine and vomit and still manages to be heartwarming.
The humor in ‘Abbott’ is typically silly—see, for example, the episode about “desking,” or Gregory’s intense dislike of pie (“Fruit shouldn’t be hot!”)—but never frivolous. Beneath all of the jokes about Philly slang and TikTok trends lie real-world stakes, like the coed who naps on the classroom rug during lunch since it’s more comfortable than his own bed, or the second-grader who declares her favorite movie is “American Gangster,” worrying Janine (“I will likely be having a 3rd talk together with your mom about what you’re watching at home!”). After Jacob founds a gifted students program, he wonders whether he’s lifting up a few of his pupils on the expense of others.
Though ‘Abbott’ acknowledges the hardships of its students’ lives, it never resorts to stereotypes. The youngsters who fill Abbott’s classrooms are directly innocent, devious, generous, infuriating, sensible and lazy, similar to real children. And, also like real children, they’re fiercely loved by their teachers. “Teachers at a college like Abbott should give you the option to do all of it,” Barbara says. “We’re admin, we’re social staff, we’re therapists, we’re second parents.”
You possibly can’t put a price on this type of dedication—and yet, Janine confesses she makes so little money that she overdrafted her checking account purchasing a donut hole. Why do all this for such a paltry salary? “It’s a calling,” Melissa tells Janine. “You answered.” At its heart, Abbott is a show about vocation, and the tenacity that any vocation requires. When Janine’s ambition sends her teetering toward burnout, Melissa reminds her what’s at stake if she doesn’t pace herself. “We care a lot that we refuse to burn out,” she says. “If we burn out, who’s here to deal with these kids?” Reversy Toilet or no Reversy Toilet, all of us would have been lucky to have had teachers like these.