Stream It Or Skip It?

When an article came out last December that contained sexual assault allegations against Brian Jordan Alvarez by one of his former co-stars and collaborators, people more or less wrote off his FX comedy English Teacher, despite the fact that the series was renewed for a second season a few months later. But Alvarez has denied the accusation, and FX went forward with the show; all of its second season episodes are now available on Huly and will air weekly on FX.

ENGLISH TEACHER SEASON 2: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Evan Marquez (Brian Jordan Alvarez) brushes his teeth and gets ready for work while “Manic Monday” plays.

The Gist: Evan is heading out to another day as an English teacher at Morrison-Hensley High School in Austin. He’s already stressed because his boyfriend Malcom (John Firstman) has his mostly-drunk friend Daniel (Jimmy Fowlie) crashing on the couch.

He’s directing the school play, and principal Grant Moretti (Enrico Colantoni) has concerns about the fact that it’s Angels In America, about the early days of the AIDS epidemic. Evan tells Grant that the kids picked it, but Grant is concerned about the “three lightning rods” that might tick off parents: “Sexuality, religion, and dirty words, I guess?” If it were up to Grant, they’d be doing Seussical or Our Town.

At lunch, Markie Hillrige (Sean Patton) tells Evan that the subject matter is “overdeveloping their brains.” Guidance counselor Rick (Carmen Christopher) confuses the play with the second season of The Real World. Gwen Sanders (Stephanie Koenig) chafes when Markie calls AIDS a “gay STD.”

Evan has other issues when it comes to the play, though; the kids realized that they can’t relate to the subject matter, which happened decades before they were born. “This stuff all happened 90 years ago,” says Deidre (Piper Juhan). “Nobody cares about this stuff,” says Pablo (Pablo Maldonado-Hernandez). “It’s like a cartoon or something.”

While Evan tries to convince them how serious AIDS was to “my people” in the ’80s, the pandemic they relate more to was COVID; the group, led by Chelsea (Ivy Wolk), decide to rewrite the play, call it COVID In America, and make it a musical.

As rehearsals go on, Evan is thinking it’s going to be a disaster, but Markie, Gwen and Rick have all gotten involved and are all into it. Even the ever-worried Grant is excited about the play. Evan even gets called out by the students when he says he knew people who died of AIDS. “Weren’t you a baby in the ’80s?” Jeff (Ben Bondurant) asks him.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? English Teacher is Abbott Elementary but with more cursing.

Our Take: Alvarez hasn’t changed much with English Teacher going into its second season. We’re not even sure if this is a new school year or just a continuation of the school year that was going on during the first season.

What we realized after watching the first season, and this continues into the second, is that Alvarez has made his character the least funny one on the show. Often, Evan is too self-righteous for his own good, and is too self-involved to see what the students, his friends, or Grant really want from a situation.

That’s apparent in this first episode. Evan keeps thinking he’s on the right side of this conflict about the play, but he just comes off as stubborn. The kids are right, even if how they “suffered” because of COVID had more to do with having school at home or social distancing than something more serious. At least they lived through it all, and being able to connect with the material that they’re performing is key, which Evan finds out on opening night.

The series shines because everyone around Evan, from the students to his friends, still have funny, unexpected aspects to explore. Even moments as small as Rick talking about how his accountant has RSV tells a lot about Rick, because why does a guidance counselor need an accountant and why does he have no idea that RSV is not a fatal disease?

Sex and Skin: None in the first episode.

Parting Shot: Evan, Gwen and Markie celebrate a successful opening night while watching Gwen’s husband build a new project in her backyard; this time it’s a pickleball court he can rent out. Markie shows Evan a video of the one-man show Evan did about 9/11 when he was in high school (using actual footage of Alvarez from back then).

Sleeper Star: Enrico Colantoni strikes a perfect tone as the overworked Grant. He generally still cares, but just has no patience to hear complaints and requests from the faculty, students or parents.

Most Pilot-y Line: “Can you imagine I pulled off this choreography without using silks?” asks Gwen, using terminology only other choreographers would understand.

Our Call: STREAM IT. English Teacher is still a funny workplace comedy, despite the fact that the Alvarez’ character is becoming more self-righteous as the series goes along.

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.