One of the best episodes of the Emmy-winning comedy Abbott Elementary is when a student is caught smoking in the boys’ bathroom, which causes the fire department to show up out of the blue. This makes the teachers at the school have to face their bad habits.
The teachers talk about how the school district’s smoking policy isn’t good enough because of this event. This makes them talk honestly about their past leisure activities, which shows how hypocritical it is for them to say no to these kinds of things.
One of the best things about the show is how well Lisa Ann Walter’s character, Melissa, who just broke up with her boyfriend, gets along with Mike O’Malley’s character, the fire chief. Aside from that, the show has a side story about Janine (Quinta Brunson), who can’t help but mess with the spacey substitute teacher who has taken over her class.
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At the beginning of the episode, the school has to be evacuated because of a fire alarm. Someone was caught smoking at school, which is where the warning came from. When the staff finds out that the student is smoking, they get together to talk about the old drug policy. Gregory and the other teachers are worried about the policy’s flaws and how it might affect students unfairly in the short term.
When the teachers find out that smoking is not exactly illegal (because there are no rules against it on campus), they start talking about a new drug policy for the school. This is when the episode’s main talking point happens. The teachers can then talk about each of their flaws.
Jacob is hooked on smoking, Gregory on protein bars, Ava, the principal, on hookahs, Melissa on CBD oil, and Barbara’s only drug is Jesus Christ (or small bottles of Pinot Grigio, as Melissa pointed out). Surprisingly, even Janina smokes weed every night.
A student records the whole talk on their phone and sends it around the school, along with funny one-liners from other students the next day. There is also an F.A.D.E. talk in this episode that is run by two very incompetent volunteers, which makes people miss Tariq for a moment.
In other parts of the show, Janine, who is now working for the school district, tries to help her substitute teacher by phone, but she is having a hard time meeting the requirements of her new job. Sabrina Brier plays the new substitute teacher. Her character is very Gen-Z, which doesn’t sit well with Janine, who is having a hard time getting used to the fact that she doesn’t teach a class anymore.
As the show goes on, the teachers work together to push for a more complicated and sensible drug policy. They fight managers who won’t listen, work their way through red tape, and finally get their voices heard.
