This week:
- It’s the best comedy on TV. But should you watch?
- We have a new reality TV icon.
- Obviously I have thoughts about the Wicked trailer.
- Persistence pays off.
- Jean Smart!
Class Is in Session. Or Is It?
Nothing makes me happier than announcing the arrival of a new, truly great TV series.
So when the brilliant, hilarious FX comedy English Teacher came out last year, I was basically the TV critic version of Maria Von Trapp, spinning on a mountaintop in my most sensible frock (typing a newsletter while laying in bed) in jubilation, belting to all the comedy lovers below that they should watch.
And I stand by that. The first season of English Teacher was one of the most exciting freshman comedies in a long time.
The show centered around a gay, you guessed it, English teacher working in Austin who becomes increasingly exasperated by the blurred lines between wokeness and conservatism in his community—not to mention the culture war brewing between Gen Z students and the millennial staff exhausted by them. It was fresh. It was observant. It was intelligent. Most importantly, it had jokes.
But in the midst of my heralding of the show’s greatness, a pigeon flew into my trumpet.
A few months after the first season of English Teacher wrapped, Vulture published a feature detailing allegations that the show’s creator and star Brian Jordan Alvarez sexually assaulted a former collaborator during the filming of one of their projects.
The story, which I encourage anyone who has watched or is thinking of watching English Teacher to read, chronicles an uncomfortable, disturbing, absolute hot mess: a trio of collaborators with an awkward, unhealthy, and arguably unsafe lack of boundaries engaged in a friendship by way of psychological warfare. Their relationship—and relationship to the idea of consent—makes it difficult to concretely define what happened. It certainly was not good.
A police report was filed, but Alvarez was not charged. After an awkward period where the allegations were made public at the same time English Teacher racked up its first set of award nominations from groups like the Indie Spirit and Critics Choice Awards—and was starting to appear on Best TV Shows of 2024 lists—FX renewed the show for a second season.
Which is where we are now.
Season 2 of English Teacher is now streaming on Hulu, and it is, if possible, even funnier and shrewder than the first. This is a genius show.
The premiere alone is award-worthy: Alvarez’s class, to his surprise, chooses to stage Angels in America as the school play. But once they read it, they’re bored by AIDS paranoia that they can’t relate to, because it was before their time. (Seriously.) So they decide to rewrite the show to be about COVID, a plague that they say traumatized them far worse than the gay cancer of the ’80s.
To navigate that minefield of sensitive topics with a sense of humor that skewers the moment we’re in, that’s some comedy wizardry.
But the biggest question that surrounded the launch of Season 2 wasn’t whether it was going to be this funny, but whether anyone will—or should—watch it.
I’ve had frank conversations with colleagues and even with people at FX about this. I know critics who flat out refuse to review or write about it because they were so shaken by the allegations in the Vulture article. I know others who felt that, absent official charges, it wouldn’t be appropriate or fair to take such a moral stand.
I landed in an awkward place in the middle.
The idea of separating the art and the artist is an increasingly ludicrous one at a time when our media consumption, and therefore opinions about content, is holistic: it’s not just the work, it’s the personality and the brand behind it that we care about.
So I chose to watch the new season of the TV show that I loved and championed, and to enjoy it as I would in a vacuum without any context. Then, after that, attempt to figure out how to wrangle my thoughts about it given that I am not in a vacuum, and know that my reaction will inevitably, and perhaps rightfully, be colored by the information in that Vulture article.
And that’s what this is. This is me working out how I feel given *gesticulates as if he’s landing a goddamned airplane* all that.
The truth is I don’t have an answer, nor really should I. I don’t know if it’s OK to watch the show. I don’t know it’s presumptive and unjust to not watch it. I do know that the episodes are hilarious. I don’t know if that absolves any complicity in enjoying them. I don’t know if it was wrong to use the word “complicity” there. I do know that I am confused.
It’s actually a moral conundrum that I could envision playing out with sharp insight and a reticent cheekiness in an episode of English Teacher. Isn’t that something.
An All-Time Great Insult Moment
My Real Housewives are my children. In my own little deranged, slightly parasocial delusion, I am their parent. I nurture them. I encourage them. I am often disappointed in them, sometimes proud of them. I may be raising them, but, the truth is, they’re the ones raising me.
And when one of my children a Real Housewife comes into her own, elevating from “meh” to “werk!” status, I feel it in the depth of my soul. I had that moment this week with Real Housewives of Salt Lake City star Bronwyn Newport. Congrats, girl. You’re an icon now.
It is hard for a Housewife who is added to the mix of an original cast to hold her own. That’s why I’m in awe of Bronwyn. This week’s episode should have destroyed her. OG cast member Lisa Barlow unfurled what may rank as the wildest insult ever on a Real Housewives franchise. In lieu of calling Brownyn a gold digger, she referred to her as a “gout d— sucker.” Pure poetry.
#RHOSLC The cameraman who got that shot of bronwyn sipping the champagne while Lisa crushes out needs an Emmy pic.twitter.com/rDW5mWelrl
— i think your vagina may need an exorcism (@davypalmer) September 24, 2025
The women watch on gleefully as Bronwyn eviscerates Lisa because she succeeded to do in one night what they all have attempted to do for years and that’s to clear Lisa Barlow. Lisa not only looked a mess on screen but in her confessional too. You can tell shes spiralling #RHOSLC pic.twitter.com/5TbLGz3XQr
— Mark (@MarkJCampbell) September 24, 2025
That should have turned Brownyn into dust. Instead, she owned it, exposing her love of sex acts involving her husband’s allegedly inflamed member. Does an expensive gift, or a blind eye towards a hefty credit card bill, come, so to speak, as a reward for such acts? Yes, as she smugly tells Lisa, who can’t believe that she didn’t wither in response.
The defiance energizes Bronwyn, who continues to read Lisa for her own financial shortcomings. It’s a thrill to watch a Housewife ascend in real time.
The Wicked Sequel Is Looking Spicy
How many times did I watch the new trailer for Wicked: For Good this week? That’s between myself, God, and Ariana Grande.
I don’t know what it is about these Wicked movies. I’m as cynical as an elder millennial living in New York City with so much debt that banks anthropomorphize and start giggling when I walk by could possibly be. And yet I refuse to think anything other than this much hyped movie sequel will be a masterpiece that may absolutely change my life.
I believe that because of the songs, because of the epic performances in the first film, and because of the energetic direction. And because, in this movie version of the stage musical, we’ll apparently get to see Elphaba and Fiyero f—.
This is so important to me, as, apparently, it is to many people on the internet—or at least on my social media algorithm—as “SHIRTLESS FIYERO” has been the number one trending topic on my newsfeed.
SHIRTLESS FIYERO LYING DOWN NEXT TO HER… TAKE THE KIDS OUT OF THE THEATER pic.twitter.com/Tt9sKBwRAw
— best of jonathan bailey (@badpostjbailey) September 24, 2025
her bare shoulder and shirtless fiyero in the back oh i feel like a victorian man seeing an ankle for the first time pic.twitter.com/gnTj9bjj4A
— lee (@thwiptom) September 24, 2025
we get shirtless fiyero pic.twitter.com/6QiaE3qHMI
— ana ψ (@nckmillr) September 24, 2025
An Epic “Just Keep Swimming” Moment
You spend long enough being obsessed with—and then working in—pop culture, you get to see wild journeys unfold.
For example, I remember watching the first season of America’s Got Talent, and being charmed by a cute contestant named Jessica Sanchez.
I remember watching the 2011 season of American Idol, in which my ferocious crush on eventual winner Phillip Phillips was unwavering, even though I knew that Sanchez, the runner-up, was boundlessly more talented.
I remember when Sanchez was cast as a guest star on Glee, a show which at that time was my entire religion, and being so happy for her.
This is what not giving up on your dreams looks like—from American Idol runner-up to a winner. Jessica Sanchez finally won! Jessica Sanchez, the winner of America’s Got Talent AGT 20! #AGT #AGT20 #AGTFinals pic.twitter.com/FF6LAc1e0t
— mc 🤍✨ (@macxcredit) September 25, 2025
Sanchez was just crowned the winner of the 20th season of America’s Got Talent, a full two decades after her first audition. It’s been forever since a winner of one of these talent competitions made a major mark in the music industry, but watch this clip of her singing and try to tell me she doesn’t deserve to be a star.
Mothers Are Back
The new season of Hacks is filming in New York City, and I didn’t not walk to the corner where this photo was taken after I got off work to see if they were still filming there…
WAKE UP NEW PICS OF HACKS FILMING IN NYC pic.twitter.com/WVg23KvWKg
— darling (@plazadeferguson) September 25, 2025
More From The Daily Beast’s Obsessed
The Real Housewives alleged boy band affair is all I can think about these days. Read more.
Billy Crudup and Mark Duplass dish with Obsessed about the new season. Read more.
He’s the reason you’re going to be swooning over Netflix’s new show House of Guinness. Read more.
What to watch this week:
The Lowdown: Epic “Ethan Hawke With a Goatee and Funny Hat” series. Now on FX.
One Battle After Another: Dare we say Oscar frontrunner? Now in theaters.
The Ugly: A devastating mystery about the “ugliest” woman in South Korea. Now in theaters.
What to skip this week:
Eleanor the Great: A sweet movie until you realize what the plot is… Now in theaters.
Slow Horses: The farting Gary Oldman spy series loses wind. Now on Apple TV+
The post It’s the Funniest Show on TV. Is It OK to Laugh at It? appeared first on The Daily Beast.
