Stream It Or Skip It: ‘English Teacher’ On FX, A Comedy About A Principled High School Teacher Who Has To Deal With Parents And Bureaucracy

We really, really appreciate it when a comedy comes out of the gates with so much confidence in its characters that it lets the humor stem from their attitudes and reactions. It just makes a show look like it’s not straining to generate a laugh. A new series from comedian Brian Jordan Alvarez does exactly that, and it gets off to a promising start.

ENGLISH TEACHER: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: The song “Maniac” plays, and Evan Marquez (Brian Jordan Alvarez) wakes up to start his day.

The Gist: Evan is an English teacher at Morrison-Hensley High School in Austin; he’s certainly a principled guy who will defend those principals to parents and the administration, even if it gets him in hot water.

His buddies at school are optimistic history teacher Gwen Sanders (Stephanie Koenig) and PE teacher Markie Hillridge (Sean Patton), whose views are definitely right of center but he seems to be perceptive about the people around him. As they eat lunch, with Markie decrying everyone using TikTok, guidance counselor Rick (Carmen Christopher) comes to the table to convince the trio to invest in a stock he likely has way too much money in. Evan also takes note of Harry (Langston Kerman), the new physics teacher who is subbing for someone who took a leave to go on The Amazing Race.

The principal, Grant Moretti (Enrico Colantoni), calls Evan into his office to tell him he’s under investigation; a parent of a now-graduated student has put in a complaint that Evan kissed his then-boyfriend Malcolm (Jordan Firstman) in front of her son, corrupting him. Evan thinks the complaint is ridiculous, especially coming from the particular mother in question, who seems to have a beef with lots of things the school did. The ever-stressed Grant just wants Evan to write a letter of explanation and apology and get this off his pile of things to deal with.

Evan is chapped, of course, and tries to figure out what to say in the letter. He suspects that the kid is gay and the mom is pissed that he “turned him” with that kiss. A conversation with Markie, of all people, is enlightening on the subject; Markie says that the kid “saw you being you” and wanted to be more like that.

He meets with the extracurricular book club he leads and all of the students know that he’s being investigated. They argue just how gay and “Hispanic” Evan is, then one of the students says, “If they’re gonna get you, they’re gonna get you.” Of course, he was “gotten” for selling Molly at prom, which he says he did as “a bit.”

Meanwhile, Markie convinces Evan to teach his class about what “non-binary” means, even though Evan says, “I’m binary!”

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The most obvious comparison is Abbott Elementary, though English Teacher isn’t in mockumentary format and has a lot more swearing.

Our Take: Alvarez created English Teacher, and the showrunner is Jonathan Krisel (Baskets). The show has a bit more of a manic energy to it than Abbott, with dialogue that often sounds tossed-off and damn near improvised. But the funny lines land more often than not, mainly because Alvarez and Krisel do a good job of setting up the characters and letting their personalities dictate the comedy, rather than just rely on gags.

A good case in point is that initial cafeteria scene. In that short scene, we see that Evan stands on his principles, Gwen sees the good in people, Markie has some interesting conspiracy theories, and Grant regrets ever taking the principal’s job. It’s not a complicated scene, but it’s more than enough to show where everyone stands.

In the second episode, Evan brings in an old college friend (Trixie Mattel) to teach the football team how to do drag properly for the annual Powderpuff event, a response to the school’s LGBTQIA students protesting the event. In the meantime, Gwen and Markie teach the cheerleaders about self-defense when they should be teaching them how to play football.

One of the other aspects we like about the show is that Evan is going to have his book club to bounce things off of in every episode, and they exhibit some interesting personality quirks of their own. We look forward to getting to know these characters, even if it’s a tiny bit at a time.

It does feel like each episode will have that A- and B- story that involves Evan, Gwen and Markie acting in some combination then coming together in the end. Whether that will always work is another matter; in the second episode, the self-defense story has funny moments but doesn’t come together as well as the drag story. But structuring the episodes like this also shows that Alvarez and Krisel have confidence that the supporting characters can carry their own stories, and to see that confidence so early on is a mark of a good workplace comedy.

Sex and Skin: None, except that Evan starts to remember the kissing incident and he thinks Malcolm did more than give him a peck on the lips.

Parting Shot: After being told by Grant that he can no longer date faculty members, Evan officially meets Harry when the new teacher comes by asking for a whiteboard eraser. When Harry compliments the plain white shirt Evan is wearing, Evan starts realizes Grant’s edict is going to be tough to follow.

Sleeper Star: Sean Patton’s Markie is being positioned as the most broadly-sketched character of the group, and Patton takes that and runs with it. But he also takes Markie’s surprisingly insightful moments and makes them feel organic to his character, something that’s tough for a lot of people to pull off.

Most Pilot-y Line: When Evan mentions Markie to Grant, the principal goes, “Who?”, and Evan has to remind the principal that Markie is the gym teacher. Listen, we get that Grant’s being pulled in a million directions, but you’d think he’d know who the gym teacher and football coach is.

Our Call: STREAM IT. English Teacher doesn’t look like it’s trying too hard to be really funny, which is about as big a compliment as we can give a comedy. But it has also established some well-drawn characters right at the start, which is why its comedy feels so organic.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.