“English Teacher” is funniest when it reminds us of the short distance between cherishing the fantasy of what high school should be and the point at which we resolve to just survive it.
Most shows feature teenagers traveling that line; Brian Jordan Alvarez’s comedy hurtles its high school faculty through it. He and his fellow Morrison-Hensley High teachers aren’t only tasked with navigating their students’ usual swirl of hormonal mood swings and teenage insecurities, though. They’re tiptoeing through a minefield of hell-bound good intentions and no-fly zones, the type of heated environment designed to wither an idealistic teacher’s passion.
Evan’s virtue constantly threatens to be his undoing, which is that he can’t help but push back against frivolous stress tests against his moral fiber.
Alvarez’s Evan Marquez is not that fragile, although he strains to bridge the communication gap between his students and his fellow staffers. All the while he and others fend off close-minded parents more devoted to keeping up appearances than ensuring their children receive a well-rounded education, starting with one who targets him for kissing his boyfriend in front of his students.
Alvarez may be familiar to “Will & Grace” viewers as Estefan Gloria, a part he reprised across the reboot’s three seasons. His career as a series creator launched on the Internet, where he gained acclaim in 2016 with his five-part web series “The Gay and Wondrous Life of Caleb Gallo.” TikTok is the stage for his wide array of weird characters. His FX comedy meets us on the rope bridge somewhere between, speaking the frenetic language and hyperbolic concerns of the Very Online while acknowledging the ways they fail to fully translate for the rest of us.
“English Teacher” takes that and mixes in matters of changing social mores affecting and shaping the lives of Gen Z, but has much more to say about the ways frantic older generations struggle with drastically evolving rules of engagement.
In addition to wrestling with the standard solipsism that comes with adolescence, Evan and his best friend Gwen (Alvarez's "Caleb Gallo" co-star Stephanie Koenig) fumble through saying and doing the right thing even when it is obvious their kids and peers are being ridiculous. But so are they. When one stalemate exchange leaves a student telling her teacher, “I feel attacked right now!” he flings it right back at her, but with more desperation than exasperation.
English Teacher (FX)Evan’s virtue constantly threatens to be his undoing, which is that he can’t help but push back against frivolous stress tests against his moral fiber. That starts with his devotion to teaching despite being forced to contend with, among other things, a parent’s opportunistic homophobia or the Austin, Texas school’s outdated sexist traditions.
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The first two episodes set up an issue of the week format by winking at the right wing’s hypocritical obsession with drag or conspiracies about supposed gay agendas. Later half-hours poke at the prevailing hypocrisy related to guns in schools and exploitative victimhood.
Yet Alvarez writes “English Teacher” to be as political as he meant it to be a so-called gay show, which is to say it’s less interested in identifying with those terms than in exploring the many illusory barriers we put up that prevent us from getting along.
Our caring for these characters enables us to perhaps ride out the season's tonal inconsistencies.
It takes a bit of time and patience to settle into the improvisational chaos permeating the earliest “English Teacher” episodes, but once the cast and writers find the right balance and cadence those freewheeling segments augment the show’s broader points about the ways we tend to talk past each other.
Alvarez is a capable lead, especially when he plays against an energetic Sean Patton, whose gym teacher Markie is just shy of QAnon weird yet devoid of antagonism. Evan can’t help liking him any more than we can because, like nearly everyone else on this show, he’s guided by kindness. A right-wing Barbie mom introduced later (no, not Trixie Mattel, who guest stars in the second episode) is an exception to that rule, but Alvarez recognizes her humanity too.
English Teacher (FX)Enrico Colantoni also stands out as Evan’s boss Principal Grant Moretti, a man burned out on a soul level who always chooses to opt out of whatever madness finds its way to his desk. Seeing caring TV dad Keith Mars play someone so aggressively checked out that he lapses into ASMR breaks at the sound of carbonated fizz is a kick, probably because he stands in for many of us.
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Our caring for these characters enables us to perhaps ride out the season's tonal inconsistencies. Each of the six episodes made available for review contains legitimately hilarious moments that become more plentiful as the season goes on and we get to know this workplace’s quirks. Adding points in its column of positives are the show’s aggressively upbeat 1980s pop hit soundtrack and the setting’s endless sunshine falling with equal grace on everyone.
For all his earnestness, Evan constantly falls back on the depth of empathy whenever he crashes against the bottom of his convictions and the shallow pool they swim in. He means well and wins a few victories for the causes of common sense and virtue, but they always come with some measure of compromise. He always lives to be befuddled and pleasantly surprised another day, a lesson we might all take to heart.
"English Teacher" premieres with two episodes at 10 p.m. Monday, Sept. 2 on FX and streams the next day on Hulu.
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