TV #24 of 2024:
Abbott Elementary, season 3
Every serialized TV show — which in today’s landscape includes most sitcoms — has to branch out and try new things as it goes along, lest the initially-entertaining formulas for its episodes grow stale through over-repetition. Sometimes that change in direction can feel like an organic extension of what has worked before, bringing a fresh energy that takes the series to even greater heights. But sometimes, unfortunately, experiments can fail.
Abbott Elementary in its third season is still a solid program that I’ve generally enjoyed watching from week to week. I like these characters, and I regularly laugh at the brand of humor that derives from their personalities, their profession, and their particular situations. (The current highlight for me: custodian Mr. Johnson revealing that he always keeps a little bit of mop water in the bucket for next time like a sourdough starter. So gross!) But this year shakes up its usual structure by sending Janine out of the classroom for a job at the local school district, and while I can’t fault the impulse to break from the norm, the result winds up feeling pretty half-baked, sourdough pun not intended.
The main problem here is that the show can’t commit to its new paradigm. Its lead character is nominally working somewhere else and repeatedly regretting that she hasn’t been spending time at Abbott, but circumstances actually keep bringing her back there every episode to interact with the rest of the cast. Moreover, her office life stays fairly underwritten, with only a few flat supporting characters and no challenges that ever arise, develop, and get solved solely in that sphere. By contrast, consider how The Office would occasionally toy with storylines like Jim transferring to the Stamford branch or Michael starting a rival paper company downstairs from Dunder Mifflin, where those felt like fully fleshed-out alternate locations with their own casts and distinctive rhythms. The district side of this series feels so empty by comparison.
Like any strained love triangle between a protagonist’s obvious endgame and what TV Tropes calls the Romantic False Lead who delays that happily ever after, Janine’s eventual return to Abbott full-time is an entirely foregone conclusion. It doesn’t help that those two career options for her are literally and simplistically represented in the show’s narrative as two potential guys she could date, either. There’s of course her long-running will they / won’t they dynamic with her fellow teacher Gregory Eddie standing in for the school, while her new coworker played by Josh Segarra (doing his best without much in the scripts to work with) is set up as a possible suitor in the other camp. In the end, as is heavily telegraphed throughout, she goes with the former.
Looking again at The Office, since that remains one of the primary series that this half-hour mockumentary seems to model itself after, there are vibes here of Michael and Jim both turning down corporate jobs to stay with their ragtag team of scrappy underdog friends in Scranton. But those dilemmas came across as more in doubt in the context of their respective arcs, and therefore more triumphant in their ultimate resolution. On Abbott, it’s instead all very pat.
Other weaknesses shake out from that flaw at the creative core, or else are less hidden than they might have been in a stronger surrounding plot. A teachers book club devolves into bitter squabbling over optimal post-apocalyptic strategies? A.I. detection software, tested for the first time in front of students for some reason, reveals that Boomer luddites like Melissa and Barbara have been using ChatGPT to answer emails? Jacob is largely reduced in his role to that of a supportive gay best friend for both Gregory and Janine? The jokes are there, but it’s all way below the quality level of storytelling I had expected after the first two seasons of this show.
★★★☆☆
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