Last season, the Abbott Elementary premiere had to shake off the baggage of the entire WGA strike while setting up a truncated season. Over the course of that reduced run, the creative team accomplished a lot of great storytelling and still made room for a flood of guest stars as Hollywood lined up to bask in the glow of Quinta Brunson’s highly lauded show. Even with all of those hurdles to clear, it was a great premiere (and a great season) that left Abbott fans hungry for more.
The season four premiere swaggered in with a new sense of quiet confidence. It had perfect pacing, fed every star in the cast, and zeroed in on rich themes that will allow the show to continue its mission of supporting teachers and public education in general. Unfortunately, it also revealed one fatal flaw in the closing moments.
Nevertheless, this reviewer (and public school teacher) is still brimming with confidence and excitement for another season of possibly the only television show that has ever truly loved teachers.
“Back to School” opens with Ava Coleman (Janelle James, Central Park) running from a ghastly phantasm: a rare white student at Abbott Elementary. After the “ghost” multiplies with the reveal of the child’s tee-time-ready parents, we quickly learn that the neighborhood is facing some heavy-handed gentrification alongside a host of utility interruptions from the nearby construction of a golf course. By the end of the episode, a lawyer is already lurking in the main office with a patronizing attitude, backhanded compliments and some tempting gift cards (more on that later). Not only is gentrification a natural topic for the show to tackle, but the role-reversal gag of the staff not knowing how to respond to a white student is a scathing send-up of mostly-white communities that spew hatred in school committee meetings at the prospect of new affordable housing. Not only has Abbott earned this gag, but it encapsulates why the subject matter for this new season is so timely.
Of course, this is Abbott Elementary we’re talking about, so the creative team is able to milk the moment for several more excellent gags. Once again, we are reminded that William Stanford Davis is a total comedy assassin when his custodian character, Mr. Johnson, takes one look at the new white white family and immediately asks, “Are we being audited?” Similarly, Chris Perfetti, who portrays Jacob Hill, one of the few white teachers at Abbott Elementary, nails a gag in which he tries not to overdo his excitement over welcoming a white student to the school. Lisa Ann Walter gets to run her working-class-badass Melissa Schemmenti at full throttle when she realizes that the golf course has passed over union workers for their construction project. Later, when the lawyer arrives on the scene, Sheryl Lee Ralph’s Barbara Howard lands the ultimate jab at the smooth-talking corporate fixer when she reminds him that “we have a white child now – you want us to get his parents involved!?”
Meanwhile the more character-driven arc of the premiere involves the ongoing romance between Janine Teagues (Brunson) and Gregory Eddie (Tyler James Williams, Dear White People). After some playfully-bad acting to “trick” the documentary crew into believing they broke up over the summer (following a hard-earned smooch in the Season 3 finale), Janine and Gregory reveal that their relationship is thriving despite the fact that they are keeping things “private” for “professional” reasons.
We are not shocked to learn that the rest of the staff is well-aware of the saccharine-sweet courtship; an eye-rolling Ava even invites a district HR rep to the building in a desperate attempt to get them to end the ruse and come clean. Ava claims this is an act of self-preservation in service of her professional status, but viewers know that underneath the pained groans and short jokes, Ava sees those cute little love birds as part of her family.
Unfortunately, Janine is so averse to going on the record with this new relationship that she leaves Gregory worried that she isn’t that into him. Eventually, we learn that this comes down to Janine’s well-explored trust issues. We know she has dealt with an absent and manipulative mother since childhood. As for her dating life, when she went all-in on her previous relationship, she was taken advantage of by her man-child boyfriend and lost her self-confidence and autonomy along the way. In fact, Janine’s fears are so centered on what might happen if she makes a new commitment that she frames her relationship with Gregory around sex when their love connection is revealed to the entire faculty (and the HR rep) after Gregory is caught holding Janine’s tangled web of colorful keychains. We end on a happy note for these two young lovers when they reconcile and share an adorable hug that accentuates their height imbalance.
Yes, this is a solid and confident episode that teases a season full of great potential, but this reviewer/teacher was deeply disturbed by a decision in the closing moments of the episode. When country club attorney Miles Nathaniel (Matt Oberg doing his signature white-as-can-be white man shtick) steps in to start teasing a big payday to any established community members who want to sell their homes away to his gentrification project, things initially go as you might expect. Our teacher-heroes express appropriate outrage at his brazen and condescending mentality; the problem with the episode comes when he slips Melissa a $500 gift card.
This reviewer happens to teach in Massachusetts. While there are certainly discrepancies in the language of ethics laws across the nation, it was hard for this reviewer to miss the fact that this gift card was worth ten times the maximum monetary value of gifts a public employee in the Bay State is allowed to accept in a single year. This was already a bad move from our heroes based on the size of the gift and the clear implication that Nathaniel wants support in return for the gift card, but it jumped off the scales of possibility when Melissa openly admitted that they were taking bribes in the main lobby of the school. While it does track that Melissa, the tough-as-nails, I-know-a-guy, city gal would be most likely to take a bribe, she would certainly be careful not to incriminate herself. It was also incomprehensible that both Barbara and Jacob failed to chime in and throw that gift card back in Nathaniel’s face. This was the exact sort of behavior they were outraged about at the start of the scene.
This was a bummer of a decision for a show that is usually so kind to teachers. This sort of corruption isn’t generally the business of classroom teachers – this is the business of administrators and financial managers. This sort of temptation would have been a much more believable conflict for a character like Ava, who remains on an arc to reconcile her self-serving instincts with a (very) slow pull toward valuing public education. While it’s possible that the creative team is setting this up as a future win for Ava (she has already bragged about everything she has learned about protecting herself from trouble), this isn’t the type of victory to let a corrupt administrator hold over the heads of teachers we’ve watched selflessly fight against threats to public education from the private sector in the past (Abbott remains one of the only network shows to ever question the charter school agenda, for instance).
Fortunately, there is one resolution to this moment that might just pay off for this reviewer. We know that episode 409 is pegged as the hotly-anticipated crossover with It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Taking obvious bribes from a country club owner may not befit the educational team at Abbott Elementary, but it sure sounds like perfect fodder for an episode of Always Sunny. An actor like Matt Oberg has the chops to act as a bridge between the vibes of these two shows, and his shady lawyer is more than deserving of some harsh justice at the hands of the Paddy’s Pub crew. Perhaps Dennis, Mac, Charlie, Dee, and Frank will serve as dark mirrors for our newly-corrupt elementary school teachers; maybe seeing their behavior match up with some of the most selfish characters ever put to screen will help our beloved teachers shake off this ethical oversight. If the showrunners want to keep things fair, perhaps the Always Sunny crew can earn a slightly redeeming moment in which they take the heat for some generally selfless elementary school teachers.
Whatever the future holds, Abbott Elementary is back and ready to keep those ratings up. This reviewer is excited for the laughs and excited for all of the ways this show will continue to celebrate teaching and public education.
