‘English Teacher’ is the Sitcom of the Moment

Now that its fellow FX show ‘What We Do in The Shadows’ is going off the air, ‘English Teacher,’ a low-key, good-natured and moderately subversive high-school comedy from creator Brian Jordan Alvarez, is the funniest show on TV. Alvarez plays Evan Marquez, a hottie but neurotic gay 30-something English teacher at a school in suburban Austin. A group of lovable oddballs surround him and they get into messes. It’s a sitcom, after all. But it doesn’t try too hard, basing its best jokes in character and improv-style callbacks to previous episodes. The show is a short, crisp hangout session, simultaneously very woke and anti-woke. It feels very of-the-moment.

Though Alvarez has no real Texas connection, he makes the most of the Austin setting; it’s a place where Red and Blue America exist simultaneously. The gym teacher runs a “gun safety club” before school. A PTA mom wages a campaign against Evan because she sees him kissing his boyfriend, but her real issue is that her own son is gay. Evan decides to turn a “powderpuff” jock-as-cheerleader scenario into a drag show, but the famous drag queen he hires is actually a kleptomaniac who lives out of his car.

Though Alvarez makes for a charming lead, as in all sitcoms, it’s the quirky side characters who make the ensemble. The high-school students, when they get lines, are often quite funny. But our attention usually ends up going toward Sean Patton, who plays Markie, the libertarian gym teacher whose entire life is a weird side hustle, and also Alvarez’s co-conspirator, Stephanie Koenig, who plays Gwen, a history teacher saddled with an out-of-work boyfriend who spends his time digging a swimming pool in the backyard by hand. There’s also Rick, a college counselor played by Carmen Christopher, who advises a student to go to Michigan State because the Middle Eastern food is good in Lansing, and a  principal played by Enrico Colatoni who seems more like a beleaguered politician than an educator.

You can’t really discuss English Teacher without comparing it with ‘Abbott Elementary,’ the most popular school sitcom of all time, and the most-decorated half-hour show of this decade outside of ‘The Bear.’ Abbott felt fresh and groundbreaking when it appeared, but quickly became high on its own supply. The “fake documentary” format seems tired, the characters are magical realist versions of their original conception, and like all these fake-doc shows, the story has become consumed by a cute will-they-or-won’t-they romance. Abbott’s politics, while inoffensive, are mostly safe and establishment. It’s an icon that will not risk its sinecure.

English Teacher, on the other hand, has nothing to lose, no big-name stars, and no qualms about making butt-sex gay jokes in the context of a high-school sitcom. Like its sad but lovable characters, this show does its job extremely well, but will never get much further than it is right now. Good people make good sitcoms, to paraphrase one of the show’s rare but well-earned dips into sentimental rhetoric. If you’ve ever dug a pool in the backyard by hand, or been concerned that high-school students were playing secret sex games under the picnic table, English Teacher is the show for you.