A new controversy among TV fans speaks to the age-old adage “This is why we can’t have nice things.” Right when we so desperately needed it, another feel-good comedy has made its way onto our screens in the form of English Teacher, FX’s new comedy drama about a gay teacher working at a high school in Austin, Texas. Helmed by comedian Brian Jordan Alvarez (M3GAN, Will & Grace, Jane the Virgin), the show is well-balanced: It’s uplifting with just enough edge, managing to stay light without forfeiting the TV-MA language one would usually find in a high school (from both the students and the faculty).
In essence, English Teacher is a workplace comedy about teachers at a school—a fact that, upon the series premiere, instantly drew comparisons to Abbott Elementary, ABC’s popular Black workplace comedy beloved by the masses. While even media outlets are likening the shows to each other in their write-ups and interviews with Alvarez, some Abbott fans have gone one step further and accused English Teacher of copying the ABC sitcom, prompting English Teacher viewers to have to defend the show’s right to exist. The whole thing has escalated beyond a few simple jokes and crossed over into bona fide discourse territory—which would be fine, if the original accusation had any grist. Instead, it feels like much ado about nothing.
When Abbott Elementary first premiered three years ago, it was a breath of fresh air. The mockumentary-style show from longtime content creator Quinta Brunson—set in an underserved, yet buoyant, predominantly Black inner-city elementary school in Philadelphia—finally gave a peek into the grim lack of resources for urban education and the opaque layers of bureaucracy that teachers must fight their way through just for scraps. Abbott is also, like all great sitcoms, a romantic comedy, a show about friendship, and a show rife with meditations on personal growth. The issues of public school systems in predominantly nonwhite, less-affluent communities are familiar to so many people in the United States, and Abbott was the first time a show tackled them with the levity, beauty, and care that the issues—and more importantly, those most affected by them—deserved. Understandably, fans of the show tend to be protective of it—hell, I, a Black woman from Philadelphia, have gone on record as being protective of it.
In comes English Teacher, Alvarez’s sitcom starring himself as Evan Marquez, a gay English teacher at a diverse high school in Austin, Texas, who tries to navigate professional, interpersonal, and romantic relationships among colleagues, mentor-mentee relationships with students, and a constantly-on-the-brink-of-getting-fired relationship with his beleaguered and overburdened principal (dutifully played by Veronica Mars’ Enrico Colantoni).
In reality, the two shows don’t share that much in common, beyond being comedies about teachers. To start, their formats are wildly different: Abbott is a mockumentary-style show à la The Office, while English Teacher is a regular single-camera-style sitcom. Their settings are also nearly diametrically opposed: Abbott takes place in an elementary school in the Northeastern city of Philadelphia, while English Teacher takes place in a Southern high school in suburban Texas. Abbott has a primarily Black student body and faculty, where Blackness is not only the foundation of the show, but something that each character must also navigate. English Teacher, on the other hand, takes place in a more diverse school, where Evan has to navigate queerness and homophobia, especially as the school’s token gay faculty member. Brunson’s Janine embodies a persistent teacher, someone who’s determined to be the best and happiest educator at Abbott Elementary despite the consistent setbacks to her plans and visions; Alvarez’s Evan is much more jaded and flustered by the constant requests to grandstand as the representative for helping the kids through hot-button issues. Not to mention that the tones of the shows are entirely different. If English Teacher has any direct predecessor, it is much more in the vein of NBC’s A.P. Bio, mixed with a touch of AMC’s Lucky Hank, than Abbott Elementary.
There may be something to the feeling that Black shows have a history of being copied by television executives who go on to make more successful white versions without giving any credit, with one oft-cited example being Living Single and Friends. But it’s tiring, reductive, and insulting to suggest that once a show from a minority creator has found success, then any show with even the slightest similarity is straight-up copping that creator’s ideas. If we can have what feels like a hundred different shows about cops and lawyers and crime scene specialists (and do not even get me started on medical procedurals), we can certainly have two about teachers.
The truth is, Alvarez has been grinding for years now: His critically acclaimed web series The Gay and Wondrous Life of Caleb Gallo is now eight years old. And he’s become known not only for his supporting TV roles, but also for churning out viral Instagram and TikTok videos in which he uses face filters to embody absurdist characters. Alvarez has stated that he’s been developing English Teacher for three to four years, which puts its conception to around or even before Abbott’s debut in 2021. He deserves a chance to shine and create something original, considering he’s been doing just that on the fringes of the mainstream for nearly a decade. After all, Abbott isn’t the first show about a teacher in a school. When asked about the possible comparison, Alvarez has said that English Teacher has “a very specific voice” and “exists in its own universe.” It would be in everyone’s best interests if we let it.
