Shish and two briefcases – Weekend – Kommersant

Shish and two briefcases – Weekend – Kommersant



The second season of Abbott Elementary School has started on ABC, one of the "big three" broadcast channels in the United States. The first season received seven TV Emmy nominations, including a major nomination for Outstanding Comedy, and won three, something that hasn't happened on an on-air show in a long time.

Text: Tatyana Aleshicheva

The comedy about "America's poorest school" in Philadelphia, where mostly black children study, is surprisingly universal these days. The young, enthusiastic teacher Janine Tiegs (starring comedian Quinta Brunson, the creator of the series) is trying with all her might to gain at least some authority among her little students (and the Abbott school is primary, that is, there are no difficult teenagers there). But when Janine, taking a deep breath, tries to calm the little one with a helpless “Count to ten!”, Her older colleague Barbara (Sheryl Lee Ralph, who won an Emmy for this role) just needs to enter the classroom - and the shkolota calms down with reverence. Here you can immediately suspect some time-tested methods (“Did you leave your head at home? Parents to school!”), But Barbara, who has been working at Abbott since about the Middle Ages, is just one of those who always starts talking in a low voice - to listen.

The state maintains the school with such meager funds that the teachers decide to plant a vegetable garden in the yard so that the children get at least some vegetables for lunch - an entire episode is devoted to this undertaking. And in another, teacher Melissa (Lisa Ann Walter), a native of the Italian quarter beaten by life, pulls out replacement carpets for school classes (one first-grader peed right on the carpet, another vomited) - needless to say, she manages to "squeeze" them from the sports complex of a fashionable team, for which the authorities do not spare money. But all this would be half the trouble if the affairs of "Abbott" were driven by an intelligent administrator. But do you know what it's like when the headmistress is a fool? Ava (Janell James) is a fifa who doesn’t get out of social networks, who made her way to this position with the help of blackmail: she caught the head of the local administrative committee (read - the head of the City ONGO) for adultery in the church! Her creed is to do nothing at all at work, and for the only time in several years when the city does give money to the school, she spends it on a new sign - at the sight of this, Janine is ready to sob with anger and despair.

How to work in such an environment - when mothers drop off children at school an hour later, because they are on the road, when there is no money for anything, or when first-graders are afraid to walk down the corridor, because a burned-out lamp has been blinking for a month, like in the movie "It" ? And so: Janine herself will perch on the stairs to change the damn lamp - and even then she will de-energize half the school. On the other hand, Principal Ava invited a film crew to Abbott (which is why the series is filmed in the spirit of the classic bureaucracy comedies The Office and Parks and Recreation, as a pseudo-documentary), and this allows Janine and her colleagues to cry into the viewer’s vest every time - to tell what it's like, when you want, the best way, and at the same time water is gushing from a faulty tank in the toilet. And no, there is no money allocated for plumbing.

At school, however, there is a jack of all trades - janitor Mr. Johnson (William Stanford Davis) - his writers borrowed straight from the Breakfast Club, only there the janitor was evil, and this one is good. He, of course, can replace the lamp, and even first-graders can be left on him, who have no one else to leave with - only then, standing at the blackboard, will he tell them that the Illuminati rule the world. Well, what do you want from a public school - say thank you that there is generally someone working there for these beggarly salaries. “That's why none of you newbies can last more than a year here, bakery turnover! says the wise Barbara. “But the secret is that you must not let the children feel slighted. We need to teach them to make do with what they have and not cry over the things they don't have."

This universal advice, which sounds against the backdrop of endless comic situations from the category of “working on naked enthusiasm, plugging holes in the budget with our bare hands,” is one of those features of the series that made almost all TV critics cry with emotion. Only the National Review columnist, enfant-terribly overseas film critics Armond White did not cry. According to White, pop culture does not exist in a social vacuum and always promotes some kind of political agenda: in this case, giggling, "distorting the reality that we fear." The kind and funny comedy about the elementary school on the Big Three channel tries to reduce the real problems of underfunded schools to hahanki - so White believes - and the viewer who laughs at the ingenuity of underpaid teachers is not much different from the heroes of the series who learn to be content with little and get by with what they/we have. We can say that this philosophy has already been encouraged by the TV Emmy Award - the best comedy "Abbott Elementary School" did not become, but received a prize for the best script.


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