Last September critics like myself
fell madly in love with Brian Jordan Alvarez's exceptional FX comedy English
Teacher. Co-created, directed and starring in it the first season was
compared by many to both Parks & Rec and Abbott Elementary for
its sublime mix of workplace comedy with the realities of today's educational
system. With an extraordinary cast and
sublime writing, it immediately was nominated for multiple end-of-year awards
from the Critics Choice Awards to the WGA to the Independent Spirit
Awards. It seemed almost certain it
would be contending for Emmys the following year.
And then the roof fell in. Alvarez was
accused of sexual harassment by a former male co-star (Alvarez is openly gay). Alvarez denied the charges
and in December the show was renewed for a second season but by that point
there was a cloud over it. While some of awards shows such as the Astras did
nominate it for Outstanding Comedy Series I suspected and wasn't surprised that
the Emmys would ignore it. I wasn't even sure if the second season would ever
air. I was actually a little surprised when I was looking at FX the last few
weeks and they announced that they would air the first three episodes
yesterday.
I'll be honest, I have no idea if FX
will stand by Alvarez after the second season airs and that the show will disappear
into the ether. It would not shock me if that were the case. It would be a huge
disappointment to be because, if you can absent yourself from Alvarez's
purported bad behavior, English Teacher is just as funny and sublime as
it was in Season 1 and I almost wonder watching it, if Alvarez has been writing
this season (he is the co-creator with
co-star Stephanie Koenig) and is making his character harder to like as a
result.
To be clear it was always tricky to
like Evan Marquez even in Season 1. Looking back on it Evan seems to be more
like the kind of person the right thinks all progressives are. It's not just
that he's so obsessed with doing the right thing and being a good guy; it's
that he wants all the credit for it. We got a sense of that in the season
finale when a gay teenager asked his character for help and he basically told
him to go to hell but in Season 2, it's almost as if Evan is daring the
audience to want to punch him in the face, even though its hysterical doing so.
In the first episode of the season
he's overjoyed that his students want to Angels In America as the school
play, even though Principal Moretti and the friendlier faculty question whether
its an appropriate play for a Texas high school. It's clear Evan thinks this is
a victory for him because it involves gay men – and the moment the kids tell
him they don't relate to it or the idea of AIDS, he's clearly disappointed.
They want to do a play about COVID which he tries to tell him is not the same
thing as AIDS was. The fact that for the
average teenagers its infinitely more relatable doesn't register with him.
Amazing the student body manages to
produce a play in a matter of days and the entire faculty, save for Evan,
rallies around them. Evan says that he's afraid that its such a horrible play
it will ruin their lives but as with everything else, this is all about him. Covid
in America does debut and for the record based on what I saw of it, I
absolutely want to see the uncut version and have it optioned for an HBO
miniseries. (I want to see the dancing Corona
variants with Anthony Fauci lyrics and choreography. We all do.)
The next episode 'Trash' occurs when
Evan realizes that recycling is a lie and insists on a new tech company's trash
company to make it more eco-friendly. (To be sure, his boyfriend's company
makes the system.) The 'smart' trash compactors almost immediately are clearly
some version of AI, which is both creepy and hysterical from the start, but
soon it becomes clear that they're using the trash for data-mining as well as a
kind of politically correct and anti-racist behavior as well. Evan and his
colleagues then decide they have to solve the problem and Evan tries to
deprogram the system and of course it ends in carnage.
The third episode deals with Gary's
dinner party. Evan, in keeping with who he is, has been invited but doesn't
want to spoil his weekend. He shows up and is greeting by Gil is absolutely as
gay as possible in his behavior. Furthermore he's Gary's daughter boyfriend and
he's planning to propose down the road. When Evan finally confronts Gil on it
he tells him he's 80 percent gay, 20 percent bi. ("So you're like, ten
percent straight," Evan realizes.) Evan has been trying to figure out
whether it’s the right thing to do to tell Gary's family about it and despite
being told not to do so by his friends, he does so at the dinner table. Gary
and his family already know and they're fine with it. Before Evan leaves Gil
tells him why Gary is planning to retire (in ten years): "You're a
lot." The last line from Evan of
the episode: "He's totally gay."
All of this could make Evan completely
dislikable to the audience and in my opinion there are two big reasons why we're
still sympathetic to him. None of the other characters take him seriously at
all and no one deserves to work in the school system he does. Dealing with the
latter for the moment, the student body of Evan's high school is almost
certainly only slightly less realistic then today. Every single one of Evan's students acts like
they deserve everything, that they are dumber and completely centered only on
themselves and that most of the other teachers have all but given up reasoning
with them. Evan may be the last teacher on the faculty who is still putting the
effort in and when he begins reading Dante with the line 'I am in Hell,"
you're right there with him.
The supporting cast doesn't deserve to
be tainted with the same brush as Marquez: all of them are hysterical and all
of them are, in their own special way, just as broken as Evan. Stephanie Koenig's
Gwen (co-creator of the series along with Alvarez) spends far too much of her
time listening to podcasts about murder and is convinced everybody in the world
is out to kill her. This was best seen in the second episode when she became
certain that a group of students playing with zipties were a group of psychotic
murderers. It was hysterical to watch her unravel, particularly when she tried
to figure out what a bunch of O's made out of zip-ties are. She also went out
of her way to provide choreography for musical numbers for Covid in America and
she clearly has her own blinders. Her boyfriend Mark spent all of last season
digging a swimming pool in her backyard (it was a giant hole) and is now
building a pickleball court. It says something that by this point her friends
are impressed. "This takes so much more effort than just looking for a
job.
Sean Patton's Coach Hillridge remains
the show's most reliable metric for jokes, he's the kind of guy you know will
say the wrong thing no matter what. He applauded the idea of the Covid musical
because he's not just a vaccine denier, he thinks there was a cover up
involved. When the AI trash showed up he said it was 'out of 1984' and
then later acknowledged he'd never read it. "I just say that when there's
something I don't like," he admitted, no doubt speaking for millions of
people on either side of the political aisle. And he still hasn't quite gotten
over his crush on Gwen as we saw in the worst possible way when he brought his
girlfriend to Gary's dinner party and she basically attached herself to Gwen,
telling the dullest stories imaginable even going to the bathroom with her while
she used it. Gwen then begged him to break up with her because she was driving
her crazy and Hillridge took it mean she had a crush on him.
And as always Enrico Contaloni
absolutely is hysterical every scene he's in: the principal who is the target
for everything and who lets Evan do what he wants just so he will shut up. Given
everything that happens in the school on a daily basis, Gary's always going to
be the most sympathetic character in the entire show. That said the viewer is
beginning to think there's a part of him who loves his job despite it all. At
his dinner party he says he's announcing his retirement but makes it clear its
not for another decade. And when you see
him around his wife and daughter you know that there's a decent family man as
well. When Evan tells him the truth about Gary he says: "he makes my
daughter happy and that's all that counts." That's not good enough for
Evan but its clearly good enough for him.
English Teacher remains as funny and sublime as it was
in Season 1. It's the kind of series that deserves to be on the air for years to
come. Whether it will be is an open question, as I said the stigma
around Alvarez may cause FX to eventually cancel the show. But watching it I
know that if they did I would miss it immensely. Either way, I'll enjoy it
while I can and I advise everyone else to do the same.
My score: 4.5 stars.
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