What I’m Watching: Abbott Elementary

Abbott Elementary: Season 2, Episode 2 “Wrong Delivery” (B+)

One of the hallmarks of this show has always been how Abbott doesn’t have the resources it should, and therefore it stung to see how another school not too far away had everything it needed and more. Getting rid of their mice infestation and having all of them find their way to Abbott instead was a very literal consequence, and I appreciated some of the subtler pieces, like how the teacher who kicked a student had now been hired there and how Melissa’s charter school doppelganger turned out to be her sister. Ava forcing everyone to make presentations in a “Shark Tank” format was an entertaining waste of time, and I enjoyed that Mr. Johnson both served as a shark and then pitched using the funds to make him the “007 of janitors,” also known as Agent 409. It was a shame that Janine had to come down from the high of actually winning something, a first for her, when they needed to divert the funds to the mice emergency, but at least she has Gregory to give her encouraging advice and also tell her when her ideas aren’t fully-fleshed out rather than just saying what he thinks she wants to hear. Gregory panicking about letting his relationship with Taylor peter out came to a humorous end when Barbara revealed that she had been doing just that to him. Barbara also got some great one-liners about the white actors she thought were Black and then Michael B. Jordan, or the actor she was actually thinking of, Michael J. Fox.