Spinoffs That Make Me Wish I Washed The Original, Part 2: Get Schooled

The Goldbergs was, much like The Middle, another one of those ABC comedies I really wished I’d paid more attention too. It runs counter to so many of the other series I like on TV that I had to regulate it to the backburner. The dozen or so times I watched it, thought, I was very, very amused. An 80s set comedy (voiceovers are always coy as to when exactly it takes place) have found that it finds the perfect sweet spot between nostalgia-based humor and typical family fare. Jeff Garlin and George Segal have always been among my favorite actors, and Wendi McLendon-Covey has a created one of the more brilliant sitcom mothers in history. So even though I had barely watched the original, I decided I wasn’t going to miss the chance to watch the spin-off. And I’m glad I chose to; Schooled is one of the funniest new series I’ve seen in awhile.

Schooled follows the life of Laney Lewis (AJ Michaels), Barry Goldberg’s girlfriend, and failed fiancée. Apparently, she tried to have a singing career after dropping out of college, and it went badly. So, in an effort to try and pay off a massive credit card debt, she becomes a teacher at William Penn Academy, the high school the Goldberg’s attended. (Bev provides her only reference. It’s enough.) The series (which takes place in 1990-something) shows Laney, who is only marginally more savvy then she was on The Goldbergs, but that she knows enough about being an ego-driven teenager to actually be able to make a difference. She can match a moody teenager salvo for salvo, know exactly where she’ll be after storming out (trying to drink Zima under the bleachers), and how to deal with parents that are not as clever as they think.

This is entertaining enough on its own, but where Schooled excels that it gives two of sketch comedies most undervalued veterans the chance to shine in character roles they perfected in smaller doses on the mother show: Tim Meadows (who labored on SNL for more than a decade without ever getting the coverage he deserved) plays Mr. Glasscott, now promoted to principal, and Bryan Callen (lead performer on the criminally undervalued MAD TV) resumes as Coach Mellor. Both are hysterical in their roles, but this is a triumph in particular for Callen, who is given a chance to have depths I never suspected. In the Pilot episode, he tries to get a high school showoff on the basketball team to be more of a team player, not out of ego, but because he thinks he has a chance to go pro. After a particularly hysterical (and frankly, astonishing) game of HORSE, he does, in fact, reach this kid, manages to see the potential in him for football, and we learn that this kid actually became an NFL quarterback.  We’ve also learned Mellor was headed toward the Olympics before blowing out his knee, and actually knows enough about math that he can successfully coach the ‘mathletes’. Not bad from a character who doesn’t seem capable of speaking in anything other than a shout.

And there’s a real inspirational level to this series that you wouldn’t expect. We knew from some of the stories on The Goldbergs that many of the characters and situations came from showrunner Adam Goldberg’s real life. Schooled takes it one step further, by showing that not only are the teachers based on actual educators, but actually doing interviews with some of them during the end credits. This doesn’t just make this a funny show, but also one of the more hopeful ones. As a society, its comforting to know teachers like this are still out there.

I don’t know if Schooled will last as a series. It’s ratings so far have been marginal on a network that is starting to truly struggle. But I really hope that it manages to find an audience. This series has the potential to be another one of an ever growing number of really good original ABC comedies. The fact that it happens to be based on real-life people – people more heroic that so many of the characters on serious dramas – makes Schooled more than just another spinoff.

My score: 4.5 stars.