(courtesy IMP Awards)
On the surface, and what a thoroughly entertaining surface it is, English Teacher, now in its second season, is a series about goofily relatable teachers at a high school in Austin, Texas, possessed of witty banter, life weary observances and the need to have their wits about them to combat Gen Z students who seem to have an answer for everything.
But like any top tier sitcom worth its comedically talented salt, English Teacher operates some wonderfully deep levels, taking us not simply into the world of an educational system seemingly at war with itself, with the parents of its students, and yes, hilariously, with the students themselves who still manage to be vulnerable and lost even as they engage in a woke-heavy quip-a-thon with the people valiantly trying to educate them.
Happy to turn the absurdity level up to a generously applied 11, the show’s creator, Brian Jordan Alvarez, who also plays Evan Marquez, the protagonist at the heart of all this incisively clever educational madness, recognises that by super-enlarging everything from the perils of modern teaching to the personal lives of the teachers themselves, the show is in a perfect position to comment not just on life in a school system besieged by all kinds of competing priorities but life itself.
Is that maybe too wide an ambit grab for one sitcom which has an average of 24 minutes per episode to make its point and have some fun into the bargain?
Possibly, but somehow the little show that could, and it has to be admitted English Teacher is criminally under-appreciated and deserves more buzz, manages to mostly stick the landing each and every time, tackling some reasonably weighty issues with a “spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down” approach that is emblamatic of comedy at a whole but which also comes with its own smartly delivered flavour.
At the centre of things is Marquez, a world-weary gay man of 35 who cares a great deal, some might say too much, since his depth of care often causes more complicated problems that it solves, and who is trying his best to educate his kids in the face of fiercely all-knowing commentary by them – it’s not what it seems; yes, these kids know things but they are still, at heart, as vulnerable as any students down through history coming of age and trying to be prepared for what adulthood involves – while juggling a relationship with a boyfriend, the corporately successful but flakily intense Malcolm (Jordan Firstman), who is a former teacher himself but still doesn’t quite get what his partner is dealing with.
Evan’s central problem, apart from the fact that he might be a diversity hire – he’s fine with this philosophically when it applies to his students and their acceptance into highly competitive colleges but not so much if he’s in the spotlight of the program since, you know, EGO – is that he takes everything so damn seriously.
It’s a laudable trait since it makes him a damn fine, enormously educated teacher, but it also means he doesn’t have the flexibility to bend with the often nonsensical educational wind like fellow educators and friends, straight, right-wing BFF PE teacher Markie Hillridge (Sean Patton), close friend Gwen Sanders (Stephanie Koenig) who has relationships challenges of her own with unemployed, purposeless buff boyfriend Nick (Chris Riggi), highly strung, amusingly driven careers adviser Rick Santana (Carmen Christopher) and long-suffering sage school principal, Grant Moretti (Enrico Colantoni).
The huge, plunging gap between Evan’s reality-defying ideals and the truth of the school world around him is fertile ground for vibrantly funny comedy and English Teacher mines it brilliantly, offering a show that knows full well that school life is a million miles from what it should be but that it is what it is and everyone, yes, even Evan, has to just make the best of it, snarky, system-gaming students and all.
Like any sitcom at the top of its game, and in its second season English Teacher is well and truly atop this lofty comedy pedestal, the show understands that the lives of the people at the heart of its storytelling are every bit as important as the jokes that liberally dot its narrative landscape.
In fact, it embraces, and welcomingly so, the approach that good comedy derives from artfully observed and sublimely well realised characters, and one of English Teacher‘s great strengths, apart from its love of extracting truth and honesty from the absurd, is that it lets the comedy flow from these people.
People who are beautifully and relatable flawed, and who want to do the very best they can, but who are often trapped by all sorts of competing forces that mean idealism has to be sacrificed on the altar of just hanging on for dear life.
But somehow, despite students who game a diversity-embracing system meant to help them, and who are not averse to opposing the adults there to guide them – the students this time around get more screen time and the show is all the stronger for it – and a school administration that seems determined not to actively help them, these flawed but authentic people keep on trying to make a difference and win our hearts as they do so.
And that’s really why English Teacher works so well – it gives us authentic people in comedically over the top situations who are doing their best to make life work, who want to help the kids they teach but getting tired/disillusioned/happy doing so and who sometimes fail, sometimes succeed but keep kicking on anyway.
Sure, the “sit” part of the “com” is heightened to gloriously funny comedic effect, but at its heart English Teacher keeps things heartfelt and grounded and in so doing gives us a show that makes us laugh out loud frequently but also feel something too, the two extremes held in a mutually beneficial balance that marks this sitcom out as something rather special that will hopefully get a nice long run.
English Teacher streams on Disney+