What I’m Watching: Abbott Elementary

Abbott Elementary: Season 2, Episode 5 “Juice” (B+)

Janine does tend to get ahead of herself when she has a new idea that no one else latches on to, and Barbara refusing to elaborate beyond “don’t fix what’s not broken” only added to her resolve to prove her mentor wrong. Those extra two ounces of liquid had a disastrous and rather immediate effect on the bladders of all the students and a resulting stop-up in the bathroom supply chain. Mr. Johnson didn’t seem too fazed by all of it, but he was also more than ready to race to Barbara’s secret bathroom when she said it was reluctantly available for use. It didn’t take long for Barbara’s bathroom to also get broken, and it seemed very therapeutic for her to take out some pent-up rage on the upstairs toilet to ensure that something would finally be done if they were completely out of options. Janine and Gregory definitely thought she was coming for them with the baseball bat, and I enjoyed Janine managing to get one “office hour” per month with Barbara as the mentor that she never had. It was understandable that Melissa couldn’t get anything done thanks to her new teaching assistant, Ashley, played by the very funny Keyla Monterroso Mejia from “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” Her quick gravitation to Ava was not good news, and I like that Melissa was eventually able to get through to the adult who had essentially become another kid for her to manage and figure out how to distract long enough to get something accomplished.