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English Teacher Is the Second Coming of Caleb Gallo, and It Was Worth the Wait

English Teacher Is the Second Coming of Caleb Gallo, and It Was Worth the Wait

English Teacher is a very big deal for a very select subset of people: those of us who, for one reason or another, were active on Tumblr in 2016. In other words: those familiar with The Gay and Wondrous Life of Caleb Gallo. (If you had a Tumblr eight years ago, you almost definitely stumbled across the webseries once or twice, even if only in the form of the oft-memed screencap of Jason Greene’s magnificent Freckle dramatically intoning that “Sometimes… things that are expensive… are worse.”) 

The five-episode webseries, which was created, written, directed, and edited by its star, Brian Jordan Alvarez, made a bigger cultural splash than 90% of today’s Netflix originals, despite those shows having over 100x Alvarez’s budget. Existing somewhere in that strange liminal space between hyper-real and utterly surreal, The Gay and Wondrous Life of Caleb Gallo’s quick-witted, rapid-paced parade of queer absurdism was something fresh, something new, something deeply needed. For its unapologetic queer messiness, breathless joke-per-second ratio, and overabundance of heart, it was not uncommon to see comments opining about the unfairness of Alvarez’s talents being relegated to Youtube, or imagining what he could do if he had the budget of a television series proper. And now, eight years later, with the release of English Teacher (everyone say, “Thank you FX!”), we can finally find out.

The high school sitcom (think Abbott Elementary with teenagers, or A.P. Bio with the sensibilities of Caleb Gallo) establishes itself as one of the year’s best new comedies almost immediately—or, at the very least, one that fills the “rapid-fire jokes and double-speed dialogue” vacuum that series’ like Succession and Veep left in their wake. Set in the decidedly blue city of Austin, which is itself in the decidedly red state of Texas, Alvarez’s titular English teacher Evan Marquez tries to navigate the murky waters of being an out, gay educator in a post-”woke” world. Unsurprisingly, he often finds himself trapped between 2024’s highly specific rock (students who try to goad you into saying something problematic so they can secretly record you and go viral on Tik Tok) and hard place (their Republican parents who fear their kids will catch “gay” like one could catch Coronavirus). Evan, much like Caleb Gallo, is simultaneously easy to root for yet difficult to unconditionally support. He often acts impulsively, propelled by an inflated sense of righteousness, an obstinate refusal to consider other points of view, and a genuine desire to do good in the world for reasons both selfless and selfish. Sound familiar? (It should, if you’ve gone anywhere near Twitter in the past five years. We’ve all been there.)

Evan is not the only one stuck in the middle of this unwinnable game of tug-of-war, as the other faculty of Morrison-Hensley High are right there with him. There’s Evan’s best friend, history teacher Gwen Sanders (Stephanie Koenig, whose chemistry and comedic rapport with Alvarez unsurprisingly remains top-notch); gym coach Markie Hillridge (Sean Patton) who simultaneously plays into and against the classic PE teacher stereotype in a refreshing take on the role; counselor, entrepreneur-wannabe, and certifiable weird little guy Rick (Carmen Christopher); charming new hire Harry (Langston Kerman); and, of course, no school-centered sitcom is without its long-suffering principal (played, in this case, by a believably weary Enrico Colantoni). 

English Teacher undoubtedly shares much of its DNA with its creator’s cult webseries. There’s the expected similarities in tone, style, and sentiment inherent to the fact that both shows stem from the same brain, but there are also other reprisals, big and small: the wonderful Koenig takes her rightful place at Alvarez’s side once more, the codependent friendship between their characters an implicit mirror of that between Alvarez’s Caleb Gallo and Koenig’s effusive Karen. A particularly cheeky reference can be found in Episode 3, when potential love interest Harry plays a song he’s “actually been super into lately” to Evan, only for it to be The Bangles’ famously cheesy “Eternal Flame.” It seems an odd choice (I mean, who says their favorite song is “Eternal Flame” in 2024?!), albeit one in keeping with the series’ ‘80s flavoring, but it makes a great deal more sense upon rewatching Caleb Gallo: the same track memorably plays on top of a romantic reunion between Caleb and his boyfriend Benicio (Antonio Marziale). None of this is to imply, however, that you need to be familiar with Caleb Gallo in order to enjoy English Teacher; the FX series stands entirely on its own, no prior knowledge required. But for those of us who watched Alvarez and his friends navigate the incestuous nature of a modern-day friend group on our dingy laptops at the start of the Trump era, a network-produced Brian Jordan Alvarez show has been a long time coming—and I am tentatively optimistic that it will be worth the wait.

The FX series does not hesitate to press every hot button it can find in the contentious sphere of education debates, and there are many. It’s not the first series to jump headfirst into political turmoil, nor is it the last, but English Teacher is written with a rare deftness, the kind that can only be learned the hard way: by being terminally online (which makes sense, considering Alvarez is the first to describe himself as such). In the first episode, students argue about how Mr. Marquez should respond to a homophobia-inspired investigation into his teaching (a student saw Evan seen kissing his boyfriend—then-teacher Malcolm, played by a charmingly flippant Jordan Firstman—and the student’s mother fears it turned her son gay). Sure, Evan could play the woke card considering he’s both gay and Hispanic, but it’s 2024 and, as one student puts it, “gay doesn’t count anymore, and [Mr. Marquez] talk[s] like a straight white guy.” (The class then debates whether or not his voice sounds sufficiently gay.) 

The conundrums Marquez and co face are jarringly current, about as far from the safe universality of evergreen content as you could get: what do you do if a student claims she can’t do work because she has been (self-)diagnosed with “asymptomatic Tourette’s,” a non-existent condition with non-existent symptoms? How do you continue the Southern tradition of Powderpuff football games (where the girls play ball and the boys don cheerleader garb) in a way that manages to simultaneously appease parents disgusted by drag and queer students disgusted by the mockery of it? Which is safer for students: a gun club that does active drills on campus (to teach students safe gun ownership and use) or a gun placed in every classroom for the teacher’s use (to protect the teens in case a “bad guy with a gun” appears)? But even though English Teacher’s conflicts are taken straight from the headlines, it rarely looks for resolution in the directions one expects.

Despite its firm grounding in our 2024 reality, English Teacher often takes on something of a surreal affect. Much like Caleb Gallo, things often feel just one step removed from the world as we know it, just one step towards something stranger, more exaggerated. It’s not quite a typical sitcom, but it’s not a deconstruction or a response to the genre either—it doesn’t subvert convention so much as it playfully distorts it, like a funhouse mirror. In other words, when English Teacher confronts the proverbial fork in the road, it may not take the road less traveled, but you can definitely count on it to take the weirder road. For instance, when a parent chaperone interrupts Evan and Gwen’s condom-related gossiping on a school field trip, it’s not to tell them to be mindful of the students around them, nor is it to join in; it’s to warn the teachers, conspiratorially, about how the trip will be an excuse for the students to play “all sorts of wicked little sexual games, very… specific games,” if you get her gist (Evan and Gwen do not). Games, apparently, like “Stone Face”—and I won’t spoil the specifics here, but let’s just say we should all be immediately wary of any group of high schoolers who go out of their way to sit at a table with chairs, if you know what I mean. And sure, in real life, the high school football team would probably not choose to undergo a drag bootcamp run by Trixie Mattel, but is it not funnier (and more heartwarming, in a weird way) to watch Evan “conjure a conservative talking point out of thin air,” as the Principal frustratedly puts it? 

As a terminally online 22-year-old myself, I have a hard time watching most depictions of my peers (be they parodic or sincere) without cringing so hard that my teeth hurt. Most attempts to skewer Generation Z are often groan-inducing at best, borderline unwatchable at worst. And while English Teacher doesn’t always hit its mark, both its sincere depictions and its parodic send-ups have a significantly higher accuracy rate than most anything I’ve watched in recent years. It’s in the small things, really; Marquez flippantly remarking about how his students are “all on Tumblr” had me about to roll my eyes (it’s 2024, what teen frequents Tumblr instead of TikTok?), but a student offscreen beats me to it: “Tumblr’s dead,” intones a bored-sounding voice. English Teacher manages to skewer the uneducated righteousness of performative activism (which feels ubiquitous on TikTok and Instagram these days) without accidentally piercing the good intentions underneath: “She told me it was offensive to learn Mandarin,” a student complains by way of explaining why her (now ex-)friend is toxic. The friend cuts in, frustrated: “‘Cause you’re not Japanese!” 

This is why it feels like English Teacher comes at exactly the right time, and it’s not only because its finger is pressed hard against the pulse of the modern zeitgeist. To be blunt: we are in the middle of a severe, possibly lethal, drought as far as TV sitcoms are concerned. (Why else would The Bear—which, I’m sorry, is not a comedy; even Succession has more claim to the category, and it was still firmly categorized as drama—keep winning “best comedy series” awards?) This diagnosis is a common one, leading many to attempt to ferret out its root causes. Jerry Seinfeld’s theory is a controversial but popular one: sitcoms are dead because of woke, basically. You can’t venture very far into cultural commentary these days without hearing the inevitable “political correctness has ruined comedy,” which is a claim that has always struck me as odd: the obvious critique aside (if you can’t make people laugh without relying on the shock factor of offensiveness, you simply aren’t very funny), there’s also the fact that there is so much comedy inherent in political correctness. For every comedic door that “wokeness” has “closed,” three more have been opened—and English Teacher is determined to poke its head into each one. It’s socially conscious, to be sure, but never feels didactic or preachy.

The series’ dedication to running headfirst into modern pitfalls is admirable, and its rapid dialogue and constant overtalk is great fun—but while all of its individual parts are promising, English Teacher (or rather, the first six episodes shown to critics) falls short of becoming more than the sum of them. At least, for now. The show is deeply episodic, serialized in a very classic sitcom style; each episode’s primary conflict is resolved by the end of its 22-minute runtime, resulting in a season that feels more like a series of sketches strung together than one involved, invested narrative. The characters don’t feel one-dimensional, but at the same time, they don’t quite feel fleshed out; they often work in service to the bit, not vice versa. When they lose their functionality within the plot, they suddenly disappear (one recurring character who quite literally vanishes after the third episode comes to mind). The key to any comedy worth its salt is finding that emotional throughline, finding that heart and clinging to it—and I do think that, with time, English Teacher will as well. Perhaps it will even make a great deal of progress in the two episodes not screened for reviewers. Or, perhaps, it just needs time; time to grow into itself, time to develop its ensemble (students included, please!) into something self-sustaining. And we know Brian Jordan Alvarez is more than capable of finding that crucial connectivity, that genuine emotional draw; just look at the finale of Caleb Gallo

I’m a cynic by nature, but for better or for worse, English Teacher has charmed me enough to hope that, if the series is granted the time and space it needs, it can begin, at the very least, to quench today’s TV comedy drought. Don’t get me wrong, English Teacher is already good. I just hope it gets the chance to be great.

English Teacher premieres Monday, September 2nd on FX and streaming on Hulu. 


Casey Epstein-Gross is a New York based writer and critic whose work can be read in Paste, Observer, The A.V. Club, Jezebel, and other publications. She can typically be found subjecting innocent bystanders to rambling, long-winded monologues about television, film, music, politics, or any one of her strongly held opinions on bizarrely irrelevant topics. Follow her on Twitter or email her at [email protected].

For all the latest TV news, reviews, lists and features, follow @Paste_TV.

 
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