In The West Wing, Aaron Sorkin crafted his trademark office narrative between large conferences the place everybody talks over one another and brisk “walk-and-talks,” by which two characters work out their points on their approach to the large conferences the place everybody talks over one another. Alvarez phases plenty of these large conferences. Cafeteria lunches, class discussions, after-school e-book membership conferences—these scenes are sometimes frenzied set items, with 30 Rock–ranges of joke density. But, as an alternative of walk-and-talks, English Teacher stitches itself collectively with scenes that happen between two folks, every on their approach some place else. Stolen asides within the corridor, fast duck-ins to the principal’s workplace, confabs in between class intervals. If The West Wing’s type was a couple of large, unwieldy group of individuals marshaling all their power to frequent function, English Teacher is a couple of large, unwieldy group of individuals whose power is flying in every single place. Whatever the mission is, no matter it was, the objective is simply to get to the subsequent interval.
What we quickly be taught is that Evan is in bother. During the final faculty yr, he apparently kissed his then boyfriend, Malcolm (Jordan Firstman), in entrance of a category of scholars. One of these college students, the kid of an ultraconservative native enterprise proprietor, has since graduated and come out as homosexual himself. His household blames Evan for this undesirable flip of occasions, and they also’ve requested Principal Moretti to fireplace him. By the tip of the pilot, Evan’s out of hazard, however with a brand new mandate from the district that he be forbidden from courting co-workers. The sudden arrival of a brand new, scorching historical past instructor, Harry (Langston Kerman), then, units up a season’s price of slapstick social eventualities.
But the will-they-won’t-they between Evan and Harry is, at finest, a minor thread on this extremely confident first season. The present’s actual curiosity is cut up between the school lounge and the classroom. Specifically, it’s in regards to the query of management. What occurs when lecturers are instructing college students who need to be instructing their lecturers? In a knockout midseason episode known as “Kayla Syndrome,” Kayla, a pupil in Evan’s class, tells him that she suffers from a illness known as “asymptomatic Tourette’s,” a type of Tourette’s syndrome that options not one of the signs of Tourette’s and is barely self-diagnosable. Despite the plain silliness of this, Evan finds himself alone on an island of incredulity. When he asks for clarification, one other pupil steps as much as defend Kayla by describing, in a condescending, sing-songy tone, what Tourette’s is. Evan interrupts her by saying, “I know what Tourette’s is.” And the lady replies, “Sounds like you’re halfway there, and you’re taking the opportunity to be educated, which is … honorable.” When he unintentionally says one thing, later within the dialog, that upsets the category, Kayla herself replies, “You can’t blame people for making really huge mistakes when they haven’t learned the etiquette.”
