“English Teacher” Is an After-School Special with Edge
Consider the plight of the reluctant idealist. Evan Marquez (Brian Jordan Alvarez), the titular character in the new FX comedy “English Teacher,” is an exemplar of the type. Under different circumstances, he might have been content to snark from the sidelines—when a colleague identifies him as a “proud gay man,” he’s quick to respond “I’m not that proud”—but, as one of the few outspoken progressive adults at a school in Austin’s less-than-liberal suburbs, he finds himself forced into the role of the unlikely scold or the even more unlikely crusader. Despite the thanklessness of the task, following his ex’s lead and taking a cushy gig in the city’s booming tech industry would be unthinkable. “I need a job that means something to me,” Evan explains, “which I hate.”
This earnestness feels necessary in an environment where the students are getting “less woke,” parents complain about “lewd content” in “The Great Gatsby,” and Evan himself gets nicknamed Fruit Loop by the meathead gym teacher, Markie (Sean Patton). Even the principal, Grant Moretti (Enrico Colantoni, whose rapport with Alvarez is a highlight of the series), tries to disabuse our hero of his high-mindedness. When Evan attempts to broker peace between the jocks and the social-justice warriors, Principal Moretti schools the teacher in his work philosophy: “You just have to listen to them complain. You don’t actually have to do anything about their problems.”Evan insists on doing something anyway—and, predictably, chaos ensues. Soon, he’s coaching football players on the fundamentals of drag.
“English Teacher” was created by Alvarez, who’s perhaps best known for a recurring role on the “Will & Grace” reboot and for spearheading the critically acclaimed 2016 Web series “The Gay and Wondrous Life of Caleb Gallo”—a project that was once dubbed “ ‘Will & Grace’ on speed.” Often, the new show feels like a hybrid of the two: a traditional, three-act sitcom with a spiky online sensibility. Much of Alvarez’s cast comes from a similar viral-comedy pipeline; Stephanie Koenig, who also appeared in “Caleb Gallo,” plays Evan’s co-worker bestie, Gwen, and Jordan Firstman, who broke out as an early-pandemic Instagram sensation, plays his ex, Malcolm. “English Teacher,” informed by those origins, takes a one-for-them-one-for-me approach to humor, such that an offhand reference to the dirtbag-leftish podcast “Red Scare” and a teen’s withering aside about the obsolescence of Tumblr coexist with broad, sketch-comedy-esque scenarios. Tonally, it veers between the cynicism of Max’s industry satire “The Other Two” and the sincerity of Quinta Brunson’s “Abbott Elementary.” The balancing act doesn’t always work—but when it does it yields something at once smart, heartwarming, and appealingly irreverent.
Despite superficial similarities—both are workplace comedies in which a try-hard educator strives to push the institution forward and an indifferent principal gets in the way —“English Teacher” isn’t “Abbott.” Whereas Brunson, the daughter of a retired public-school teacher, conceived of her show as an insidery love letter to the profession, Alvarez uses his setting as a heightened joke vehicle. The staff members are considerably less noble than their counterparts on “Abbott,” as are the pupils: if the “Abbott” kids are (mostly) innocents, the high schoolers of “English Teacher” are old enough to have agendas and psychodramas of their own. The teens offer a way into an array of hot-button issues, from social media’s impact on kids’ mental health—one funny bit involves a girl self-diagnosing with “asymptomatic Tourette’s” in pursuit of clout—to the hazards of guns on campus.
Mostly, these teachable moments come with an ironic twist. When Evan gets roped into explaining the concept of a nonbinary gender identity to Markie’s class, he quickly discovers that the kids who requested the lesson had only wanted to film Markie’s inevitably inane description and post the footage online. But at other points the need to counter bigotry feels all too real, as when the mother of a former student, unhappy with her son’s coming out, tries to get Evan fired for “encouraging” homosexuality in the classroom.
The series is at its best when channelling the sense of besiegement that teachers today must feel from all sides, albeit filtered through the softening lens of a sitcom. “English Teacher” ’s innate sympathy with their dilemma—particularly that of gay educators in an era of conservative fearmongering—lends it a distinctiveness, even a sense of purpose, that papers over its faults. And, in the six episodes provided to critics, the characters deepen in surprising and satisfying ways. One of the most pleasing turns comes when Markie, for all his insensitivity in other arenas, is revealed to be an adept observer of the ins and outs of teen-age female friendship. His exhaustive play-by-play of the gamesmanship that led to one girl’s “rapid ascent to the upper echelon of popularity” is both entertaining and oddly touching for the care it implies. I didn’t mind that it was all a little too good to be true. ♦
