In its first season, the Quinta Brunson series established itself as a half hour of big heart and sweetness and a sign of life for network comedy. Rooted both in the office comedy genre that is as old as the medium and in the mockumentary custom of the 21st century, “Abbott” has been a sharp and strong argument in favor of traditional forms. Brunson's Emmy win for writing the show's pilot was as much a welcome celebration of new talent as it was a surprise.
And the first two episodes of the show's second season continue its strong run. The school had a windfall in the previous season, and the decision of how to disburse it depends on the procedures. This is a fancy way of unfolding the two halves of the "Abbott" emotional equation: the masters of the show know they're underfunded and even a bonus will run out too quickly, yet they carry on with a smile, because? what is the alternative? A scene in which the teachers visit a resource-rich charter school before returning home to some scruffy deprivation plays rivetingly, with barely concealed envy bouncing from face to face.
Creator: Quinta Brunson
Stars: Quinta Brunson, Tyler James Williams, Janelle James
At the center of the show, Brunson's character, Janine, holds things together, albeit just barely. In the season premiere, Brunson writes herself an emotional breakdown scene over Janine's financial strain that ranks among the richest acting jobs she's done on the series to date. She is also doing well on the set; The character of Lisa Ann Walter, from the start, felt like a delivery mechanism for a single joke about a grimly amoral person, but Walter's performance, and her character Melissa's easily hurt pride, is taking on new and interesting addresses. Janelle James continues to find novel ways to depict narcissism and ineptitude, treating the grant disbursement like an episode of "Shark Tank." And Tyler James Williams and newly named Emmy winner Sheryl Lee Ralph share the show's most intriguing chemistry as Gregory and Barbara, with his weariness and her perennial polish clashing.
The ensemble is so strong, in fact, that it can sometimes cover moments where this network sitcom can feel a bit, well, like a network sitcom. Various plot elements have been neatly dropped over the summer, rebooting Janine and Gregory's personal lives off-screen in a way that feels abrupt and random. The internal logic of a running joke in the second episode of the season, about Barbara getting the names of black and white actors mixed up, struck me as confusing, but it's the kind of thing you shrug and forgive when a show airs. week after week. outside. (Abbott's second season will have 22 episodes, up from 13 in the first season.) James' performance distracted me from the ways that an ABC sitcom paying homage to "Shark Tank" feels like, if nothing else, a cheesy tie-in. Like when the family in "Black-ish" went to Walt Disney World as a way to promote ABC's parent company's parks. And, while the show finds ways to make use of its mockumentary device (often in James' performance and his tendency to try to catch the camera lens), it's not clear why this story is being told in that style. , other than that it is a style that is popular at the moment. “The Office” spent its final season blowing up the documentary storyline, examining why these cast members had been filmed for so long, seemed to be the last word on this device and what it could do.
This feels especially true because the stories being told throb with a liveliness that doesn't require the characters to explain themselves to the camera. Janine's moment of agitated panic (the Brunson exhibition scene) comes up in a conversation with her colleagues; the device has been dropped and we are seeing the community outside the confessional. The best I can say about the mockumentary's mechanism of having the characters narrate their thoughts and feelings in that familiar "Office"/"Modern Family" way is that it works, intentionally or not, a bit like a Trojan horse. Viewers who expect a sitcom that moves in a heartwarming and familiar way to deal with heartwarming and familiar themes end up seeing characters who have to genuinely struggle to pay the bills, or wonder how they can possibly continue to educate children with the available resources.
The second season of Abbott Elementary premieres on Wednesday, September 21 at 9 p.m. ET.
Watch Abbott Elementary 2022 Tv Series Trailer
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