TV: Abbott Elementary (ABC)

A cheerful newcomer quickly finds an audience

Reviews of movies, from indies to studio offerings, will always predominate on MovieStruck.  But sometimes a powerful or innovative television show draws my attention, and when that happens, I’ll pass on my thoughts.  That’s true this week, with a new network comedy that’s garnering attention and viewers.

Abbott Elementary – ABC, Tuesdays, 9:00pm Eastern

Always streams the next day, Wednesday, on Hulu

So far, 12 Episodes have aired (all can now be streamed on Hulu)

It returns from its Season 1 hiatus this Tuesday, March 22, with Episode 13.

L to r.: Gregory, Ava, Barbara, Janine, Melissa and Jacob in Abbott Elementary

This hilarious, surprisingly touching half-hour feels like a breakthrough in network television comedy.  Its workplace mockumentary style (as in The Office) isn’t new.  And other comedies have relied on actors who tightly mesh with each other and with the show’s geographical setting (like Brooklyn Nine-Nine).

Abbott Elementary gently scrutinizes the congenial strivers in our midst who may sometimes seem peculiar but can’t be written off as neurotics (there are no Seinfeld echoes here).  It’s set in contemporary Philadelphia, and centers on five teachers in a struggling elementary school who are led, in the loosest sense of that word, by their off-the-wall principal.

What matters most in the show’s concept is that there’s no malignancy lurking in any of these odd but somehow familiar people, no poisonous personality hiding in plain sight.  Sure, they have their petty rivalries and personal crotchets, but there’s a beguiling unworldliness in nearly everything they do.  They’re neither imposters nor go-getters. They’re five dedicated teachers shaken up by a relentlessly wacky boss, doing the best they can for their students in a woefully underfunded public school.

All five love what they do.  But the show beautifully refuses to make them heroes.  They’re not looking for accolades, and I’m not sure any of them would win a citywide Teacher of the Year Award.  And there are of course no laurels coming to, or even sought by, Ava, the jive-talking, egomaniac principal who ranks student learning far below her own self-interest.

I don’t find a cliched character among them.  The five teachers aim to be sensitive, patient educators, but at the same time they put in extra effort to remain stubborn individuals.  The tug-of-war between those two impulses is what drives the writing and fuels the comedy.

They’re an infectious bunch:

Janine, played by Quinta Brunson (who’s also the show’s creator and head writer), is an unwaveringly idealistic molder of young minds, now in her second year of teaching.  All the characters sometimes speak directly to the audience, but perhaps the most open to the camera is Janine.  When she’s thwarted by the capricious Ava or gently brought down to earth by her colleagues, the look on Brunson’s face is one of pure incorruptibility suddenly shattered.  You feel Janine’s bewilderment and hurt, even when you also realize that she’s wrong.

Gregory, played by Tyler James Williams, is a substitute second-grade teacher who seems to want to stay on at Abbott.  The most delightful aspect of his personality is that he truly has no idea how charming and inspiring a teacher he is.  When the children in his class keep presenting him with their scrawled affectionate crayon drawings of him, he honestly doesn’t understand why.  Observant Janine has to inform him, “Gregory, they like you.”  A budding romance between Gregory and Janine is clearly in the offing, but Brunson has said that she and her fellow writers aren’t going to rush that relationship.

Gregory (Tyler James Williams) and Janine (Quinta Brunson) in Abbott Elementary

Jacob, played by Chris Perfetti, is one of the two white teachers, and the most mild-mannered of social justice warriors.  It’s sheer genial fun to watch him declare how inveterately he “loves to support a strong Black woman”, or to hear him refer to Black scholar and civil rights beacon Cornel West as “Brother Cornel West”, as if the two were co-radicals.  We’ve recently, quite unobtrusively learned that Jacob is gay, and it seems the writers aren’t in a hurry to ramp up that story line either.

Barbara, played by Sheryl Lee Ralph, is the oldest and most seasoned member of the group.  Barbara has taught at Abbott for more than 20 years and is open to new teaching methods, but she reminds her colleagues that caring about the children comes before any innovative classroom techniques.  Barbara’s maturity and quiet wisdom give her an edge in dishing out playful sarcasm to her fellow teachers, and she gives as good as she gets when they tease her for being tied to the past.  She counters that she’s permanent, that her brand of teaching won’t ever go out of style.

Melissa, played by Lisa Ann Walter, is the other white teacher, and she’s fiercely Italian.  Philly born and bred, she’s a keeper of Italian community secrets and connections that can startlingly enter into any episode’s story line.  If, perchance, the school needs but can’t afford a hard-to-find item, Melissa whispers, “Leave it to me”, and shortly brings it in with no charge.  But questions cannot be asked.  Her connections in quasi-legal pockets of the Italian community always come through for her, but they can’t ever be named.  Also, Melissa is a staunch ally of Barbara’s and she’s another old teaching hand who holds to tried and true methods.

Ava, played by Janelle James, is Abbott’s principal.  She’s the show’s incorrigible loose cannon, a vivacious narcissist with no administrative skills whatsoever, causing the staff to openly wonder how she got the job of principal.  “You never heard of blackmail?” Ava blithely explains.  Sometimes found sleeping or giving herself a facial in her office, Ava is bound by no rules and regulations, and never misses a chance to promote herself to the school board or to the public.  She’s an unabashed ladder climber who nonchalantly recalls that she “always hated school”.  Minute for minute, Ava is the show’s most outrageous maverick, and she regularly has me howling with laughter.

What’s given the show such a lilting start is its light touch.  Abbott Elementary seems to have few societal axes to grind, other than the oft-spoken need for more funding, better books and up-to-date resources for public schools.   And those privations provide a firm enough foundation for the show’s antic humor to bubble up dizzyingly.

These characters are all to a degree “unconventional”, but they’re also recognizable as that slightly off-kilter teacher you had, anywhere from kindergarten to graduate school, whose buoyant personality left you eager to learn as much as what they expounded on in the classroom.

Abbott Elementary quadrupled its audience between its first and 12th episodes and has already been renewed for a Season 2 this fall.  Week after week, its laidback vibe keeps on fizzing.  I urge you to get on the train now.  This baby is going places.