A strong Abbott Elementary proves it knows exactly which relationship matters most

This picture has been included because this young actor’s skillful reading of Michelle Obama’s book should not go unmentioned in this recap. Photo: ABC/Gilles Mingasson

One of the things all good sitcoms do is figure out new ways to make the same collection of people bouncing off of each other over and over again funny each time. There’s an art to it, so that each time, say, Leslie and Ron interact, it’s still funny, and ideally over time, part of what makes it funny is your expectation of how that conversation will go. Abbott Elementary still has plenty of territory to cover in terms of who among its core cast is funniest together, but going by the early episodes, the show has a very clear sense of which actors have eye-catching chemistry together.

Take Janine and Barbara, for example. In just four episodes, it’s become clear that this is THE relationship on this show. Yes, Janine is on a will they/won’t they path with Gregory, and it’s going to be funny every time to watch someone as straitlaced as Gregory trip over his own shoelaces trying to talk to a woman he likes. But given how much of the show is premised around Janine’s dreams of being a good teacher, her admiration and pursuit of a friendship with Barbara and Barbara’s begrudging acceptance of her is going to forever be fertile ground for storylines. This episode, for one of the first times, gave Janine a slight upper hand given her greater ability with technology, although as usual, she doesn’t actually have the upper hand, because the new tablets they’ve been given are impossible to use. But because the show has already done such a good job crafting the dynamic between them, Barbara’s eventual admission that her failure to understand the new tech made her feel like she was being put out to pasture is genuinely touching. Everything we’ve learned about her so far has suggested that she’s a nearly flawless educator, in part because we mostly see her through Janine’s eyes. That Janine then gets to experience a moment of connection with her because of this vulnerability is great payoff for characters we’ve only just started to get to know. Of course, Janine ruins the moment almost immediately, but we also know Janine well enough now that we know she’s going to ruin it.

Speaking of Gregory, Tyler James Williams might be giving the best performance on the show. This isn’t to downplay the work everyone else is doing, but Gregory’s dominant characteristic is being opaque and reserved, and yet you get so much of who he is from Williams glancing briefly at the camera, or averting his eyes from Janine, or even just in the way his stiffer way of speaking contrasts to his more emotive colleagues. He has to be so understated for this character to work, and yet who Gregory is and what he wants is already one of the clearest arcs on the show.

The Jacob/Melissa storyline doesn’t land quite as well—not to defend the podcasting glut out there, but if a guy fitting the stereotype Jacob does had done that level of research and listened to a few podcasts about it, he absolutely would know about the darker side of labor unions! That’s exactly what that type of podcast does. And he would not be excited by the notion of a former police officer coming in to teach his Black students about unions. It feels like a bit of a misfire in terms of the comedic possibilities, especially given how drastically different he and Melissa are in terms of their approach to teaching. These two characters generally feel a little less fleshed out than some of the others—Melissa is consistently funny because Lisa Ann Walter is funny, but it almost seemed like they would have taken the opposite sides on this particular conflict, although that’s partly because it’s sort of hard to tell where Melissa will land on a given issue as of yet.

Still, the show is moving along at a brisk clip for a series still finding its footing. It’s a testament to the character work done so far on Jacob and Melissa that their conflict does read as a little wobbly. Although possibly the greatest suspension of disbelief may be needed for Janine suggesting that anyone on this planet would want to accompany a couple on an IKEA trip just for fun. We get that she has some serious inability to pick up social cues, but this is a bridge too far.

Stray observations

• The nonverbal work on this show is really impressive. After listening to a way too detailed “easy” explanation of how their tablets work, Melissa gives a sort of Jim Halpert look to the camera that is maybe one second long, tops, before the camera cuts away. A lesser show would have let the camera linger, needlessly. See also the brief moment where Janine awkwardly tries to hug Barbara from behind and then gives up. Really felt that failed hug attempt in my bones.
• Hope Gregory enjoys his ride home with a girl. No, woman. No, car full of women.
• A close friend of mine lives in Philly, which is why I got Jacob’s throwaway line about how people park in South Philly. Readers: they are parking literally in the median. But only in this part of Philly, nowhere else. And they don’t get tickets, even though this is a patently absurd place to park. I have rarely felt more baffled than I did during the explanation of this phenomenon after we drove by it. Shoutout to Quinta Brunson for giving this show such a clear sense of place while simultaneously not over-explaining the really specific Philly jokes.
• “I’m a little behind on my Hotmail correspondence…s.” Barbara, don’t worry: We’re all behind on our Hotmail correspondences.
• The final, brutal reveal about the tablets they’re using being a school to prison pipeline tracking system is a reminder that this show is funny but still quite serious about this school and the place it occupies in the world.