English Teacher, Comedy, and Short-Form Television

a satirical workplace comedy with a romantic subplot

When The Bear was winning all those Emmys and then not winning some other Emmys, there was a persistent and very online conversation about whether or not it was a comedy. Rigid distinctions do make Emmy voters jobs easier; if you were to open the “Best Comedy” award up to “dramas that are funny, too” you’d be rather overwhelmed by choice. The new show from the comedian Brian Jordan Alvarez, English Teacher, is billed as a “Comedy drama,” which is technically true, but sidesteps the whole issue a little too neatly. Are there comedies that have no drama? Stand-ups, maybe, although Hannah Gadsby would surely like a word. The Office has one of the most enduring dramatic storylines in recent memory: the romance of Jim and Pam. Was Friends a drama or a comedy? We all know this dichotomy is dumb; it’s outdated and traditional to try and fit shows into boxes like this anymore. Far better to go with the obvious answer and just make awards based on standard episode length: short-form gets its own category no matter how funny it is: problem solved.

But is it? Rewarding the ability to create something within a set timeframe is reasonable. We already do it with short stories and make no distinction as to level of humor contained therein. But there’s something more here than just a very human desire for categorization. We also want to somehow specifically reward the act of creating comedy; despite how amorphous, it’s clearly an artistic skill worth celebrating. Beyond that, I also think this debate reflects another very human desire: to know what we’re getting into. We aren’t comfortable going in blind to a show, not knowing whether it’s going to make us laugh or rend our souls. Most good shows, of course, do a bit of both, and therein lies the trouble.

But first, English Teacher. English Teacher is a new show from Brian Jordan Alvarez that follows Evan Marquez, a straight-laced, anxiety-ridden openly-gay teacher at a Texas high school. The series takes as it’s starting point the way in which high school has become the front line for political and social battles and how those battles have become so online and so absurd as to be almost useless. The “almost” is important; the show is clear that there’s something still to say about gun violence, drag, helicopter parents, social media. But that “something” tends to be small and personal rather than large and society-shaking. The supporting cast is funnier and more interesting than Evan; neurotic history teacher Gwen and conservative football coach Markie are standouts. As the season advances, the show shifts farther away from the school and the students, focusing more on Evan and his circle outside of their work and finding meaning in their relationships with each other.

To be clear, this show is indeed funny. If I were to tell you it’s a 25 minute comedy-drama, I would place my emphasis on the comedy part. Much of the plot feels skit-based, set-ups for one extended joke, and could easily exist outside of the larger story. The jokes can be sharp (the gun episode is its best), although never sharp enough to cut. At its heart, there’s a mushiness to this show. It’s really just about people striving for love and friendship, which is largely why it leaves the kids and the school-related drama behind as it deepens its plot. Its final episode takes place almost entirely in a leather-daddy bar and is the least funny and most heartfelt of the first season. The mushier it gets, the more dramatic is strives to be, the less situational and the less comedic it gets.

One of the most universally recognized short-form comedies is Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag, which started as a one-woman stand-up routine. It won Outstanding Comedy Series in 2019 and Waller-Bridge won Best Lead Actress in a Comedy in that same year. That show had razor sharp comedy and a bravery I’ve rarely encountered. It was a show that would have you laughing so hard your stomach hurt and crying so hard your heart hurt within the same 25 minutes (sometimes within the same scene). The first episode of the second season ended with Waller-Bridge declaring straight-to-camera that this season was “a love story” and what followed was a beautiful swirl of genres that felt entirely new. Was that a comedy? It won its comedy laurels and had its origin in stand-up, but the show knew it had to declare itself in season two. It needed to say: this is not just a comedy, nor is it a romantic comedy. It’s a comedy with a heart-wrenching love story at its center. I would not send anyone to Fleabag for just a few laughs. Try SNL for that; once real people with real feelings are involved, the jokes should cut.

As with most of my reviews, whether something is character-driven or plot-driven is the ultimate arbiter of its quality. This is as true of comedy as of anything else. The more real a character feels, the less strictly funny they are going to be. SNL is funny in the lowest-stakes kind of way because none of the characters in its skits feel realer than a cardboard cutout. The more a show’s jokes are driven by character development, the more complex the feels are going to be. It’s as simple as that. That’s why The Bear is a comedy, the reason for the confusion is it’s just a really good one and good comedy isn’t an easy breeze of a watch.

The desire to categorize is also a desire to know what you’re getting into. The most literal and extreme version of this is the trigger warning, which has become more common in genre fiction, especially in the romance community. But the desire to call something a “comedy” comes from the same impulse. I think a lot of people go to the comedy because it isn’t supposed to be violent or scary or break your heart. But it will, and we’re kidding ourselves if we think we can always neatly box ourselves off like that. Genre fiction has done a lot of work to answer this problem; beyond trigger warnings there’s a lot of specific sub-categorization, and I think that may be an answer to this problem. Call something a “cozy comedy” and any reader of mystery/fantasy will know that they’re going to get a warm hug of a story, in which any conflict is wrapped in bubble wrap and murder itself can seem like an act without tragedy attached (and thus, generally features no real people, as real people don’t usually react like that to murder). By that logic, I would call English Teacher a satirical workplace comedy with a romantic subplot. To me, that moniker means it’s a show with two different impulses tugging at it from either end. “Satirical” pulls it farther away from character, “romantic subplot” pushes it further towards character. How well it maintains its balance with those two descriptors tugging it this way and that is what makes it worth watching.