Few enemies are more vengeful than school queen bees, especially the adult versions. Doubt it? Cross the PTA president at your kids’ school and discover what evil lurks behind her fake smile.
Warning: There will be consequences. You will be ostracized by the moms planning the town’s annual “Girls’ Night Out.” (For the uninitiated, these still happen, at least in NYC suburbs, where adult women call themselves girls and need a sanctioned activity to drink.)
The good news is, as a parent who challenged the de facto school ruler, I can attest that, like Gloria Gaynor, you will survive.
However, standing up brings greater risks for teachers, including job loss. In English Teacher, which premiered two of the eight episodes on Monday, Sept. 2, on FX and airs weekly before streaming on Hulu the next day, Evan Marquez dares to buck the system.
Marquez treats his students fairly at an Austin, Texas, high school and engages them honestly and respectfully. No worries, the series doesn’t dip into painful earnestness and is delightfully free of twee sentimentality. Instead, Brian Jordan Alvarez, creator, executive producer, director, and star, takes a clever approach to workplace comedy.
And has great fun doing so.
“I just thought it would be an interesting world,” Alvarez says at the Television Critics Association summer tour. “I think it’s an interesting non-homogeneous environment. So, it’s a place where people from every background are forced to interact and forced to work together for a common goal of educating these students. And I think Austin lent itself to this sort of liberal place in a very conservative larger place, and that’s similar to where I grew up.
“I also went to high school in this little town called Sewanee in Tennessee, and that was a highly liberal spot in very conservative Tennessee,” he continues. “And so, having that interplay, I knew that we could play in these gray areas, and it’s part of what makes the show great, in my opinion.”
What also makes it great is his charm and acerbic observations on how often public schools are at the mercy of rich parents. They donate money or services and then assume that they know more than trained educators and should be running the place.
Marquez is a terrific teacher, the sort I would have wanted to help guide me as a teen. He’s also the principled, smart, compassionate educator I would have wanted for my kids. After all, the chance to be exposed to great literature and complex ideas is why we send our children to school. (Forcing them to tackle advanced algebraic formulae they’ll forget after the final—I’m less convinced.)
As Marquez, Alvarez is endearing and flawed in the six episodes available for review. As the actor has proven, he has perfect timing; for those who need more evidence or just crave more Alvarez, watch his episodes on the revival of Will & Grace, where he played Jack’s (Sean Hayes) lover.
English Teacher, like any solid workplace comedy, is rooted in reality.
Monday’s premiere does what it should by establishing who Alvarez, his friends, and enemies are. In the pilot, he encounters the first of many obstacles in his pursuit of being a noble-minded teacher. Queen bee Linda Harrison filed a complaint against Alvarez. His high crime? Her older son, who has graduated, saw Marquez kissing a man—his partner at the time—on school grounds.
The principal makes it clear that parents win when it’s parents versus teachers. Incidentally, these school tyrants don’t all talk with the Southern accent Linda Harrison purrs her venom in; they also yell in thick New York accents, peppering complaints with f—in’. Linda Harrisons are everywhere, and—if we are lucky—so are Evan Marquezes. He wants to help, teach, and guide students. Sometimes, he also protects them.
He proves this when the gun club is practicing. This one haunts as a sobering reminder of schools in the age of mass shootings. Marquez initially reacts in terror, as any sane person would. You can just about see adrenaline jolting through him. Then, his training takes over. He tries to protect the students, pushing kids in the hallway into a classroom ordering everyone down on the ground.
The teens are lackadaisical. They know this was the sound of gun club and have been doing drills for active shooters since they were in preschool. The series did not need to dwell on how unconscionably tragic this is; it’s woven into the plot.
Even when Marquez takes an unpopular stance, as he does in this episode, he’s inarguably likable, as is the solid supporting cast of students and teachers.
Gym teacher Markie (Sean Patton, Maron), a bear of a guy who revels in spewing outrageously dated homophobic and sexist terms, still has the right read on most situations and people. Markie understands the adults and the teens, even when they’re hilariously moronic.
In one episode, a student announces she can’t do the work because she’s suffering from Kayla Syndrome, which she’s naming in her honor, but is actually “asymptomatic Tourette’s.” It’s about as real as it sounds.
As students chime in on her invented condition, and why she can’t do assigned work, they add that she’s easily triggered. Many of them are, having been reared to believe that nothing matters more than their feelings. These kids have been overly praised for accomplishing the most elemental tasks and have come to expect that whatever they do is worthy of applause.
When students don’t do the assigned reading and write godawful papers—including one that says it is AI-generated—Marquez flunks some and gives others fair, which means lousy grades. The kids and their deluded parents are gobsmacked. They’re used to report cards that sound like a Swedish pop band—A, B, B, A.
“I didn’t even know this was like a grade you guys could still give,” one student says of an F.
“You can’t do this,” another insists.
And there’s this marvelous psychobabble as one tries to be the voice of mature understanding and says, “Mr. Marquez, your feelings are valid. We have all learned our lesson here.”
Alvarez perfectly captures their condescending tone, bred from entitlement. Doling out grades, good, bad, or mediocre, had been the teachers’ sole prerogative. Very occasionally, parents were summoned or even asked for a meeting. Once, though, administrators would side with their staff when it came to grade-grubbing.
No longer, it seems.
Here, the school principal (Enrico Colantoni, Veronica Mars) defines beleaguered. He would just as soon fire someone than make his life more complicated. Plus, he is not about to cross the woman who really runs the school, parent Linda Harrison (Jenn Lyon, Claws). She’s a major donor since public schools cannot get by on government allocations. English Teacher happens to be set in the suburbs of Austin, where it’s easier to cut teachers than in NYC, but these parents are everywhere.
Harrison is the embodiment of these mothers convinced that their children are more special than yours. Their kids will go to whatever college they most want—grades and ability be damned—if they have the money and connections. Marquez is an obstacle to that goal because his grades reflect students’ actual work.
Harrison is rendered so perfectly that I hope we see her again with her cascading Trump tresses, long gun, and pink lip gloss. She had complained that The Great Gatsby is too lewd to be taught in class. Combined with his somehow scandalous kiss and daring to give her son a bad grade, places Marquez squarely in Harrison’s crosshairs. With her, this isn’t just a turn of phrase.
Harrison summoned Marquez to a meeting, and the principal warned him that he had to go or might as well quit. Marquez maintains he is right (after all, he is) but attends. Harrison’s approach of welcoming someone into her confidence—because how could anyone resist?—doesn’t work.
Scenes with her are funny, spot-on commentary on public schools. Marquez and his best friend, history teacher Gwen (Stephanie Koenig, Lessons in Chemistry), meet Harrison at her restaurant. Specialties in the cash-only eatery are deep-fried steak nuggets and fountain Sprite with double syrup.
“Mr. Marquez, the grades, what are we thinking here?” she asks conspiratorially. “Can’t we change it just a little bit?”
He’s no fool, except perhaps when it comes to workplace politics. Marquez asks bluntly if she’s motivated by other reasons, such as her horror that her older son is gay and that she suspects Marquez somehow turned him.
“I do not care that you’re gay,” she says. Yet she whispers the word gay the way people did decades ago, indicating that this is somehow a word so terrible it can barely be uttered.
“Regardless, I will have to stand firm in the grades as they are,” he responds. “I am an educator, and it’s my duty to give accurate grades.”
The next day, Harrison shows up in Marquez’s classroom with a lackey, taking notes, disrupting the class, and claiming parental rights to be there.
Marquez has gained a powerful enemy—and is about to enter a war far less bloody but just as vicious as the one he’s explaining to his students reading The Red Badge of Courage.
School settings have always been ripe for series. Witness Abbott Elementary, Room 222, Welcome Back Kotter, Head of the Class, Saved by the Bell, All America, and Friday Night Lights.
Like most shows, English Teacher isn’t groundbreaking. It’s something better—simply, quietly excellent. It’s a comedy that packs the power of an important documentary. Yes, some schools are failing, but it’s not because of a wonderful English teacher.
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