Abbott Elementary, and all sitcoms, need to ditch the mockumentary

It’s been 19 years The office premiered on NBC and ruined my life. Not because I hate the show – I love all the good episodes and hate all the bad ones – but because its enormous, still-continuing success has led to many sitcoms adopting the mockumentary format in the decades that followed. I’ve liked a lot of those shows, the sitcom-y ones What we do in the shadows to the more straightforward Cunt on earth. But sometimes the limitations of the size outweigh the benefits. That’s how I experienced it too Abbott Elementary lately, and the third season premiere continued to make me wish the cameras weren’t a character on the show.

There is an argument that the mockumentary structure makes Abbot an air of authenticity, which complements the careful work designers have put into creating a vibrant yet sparse school, populated by children in uniforms and teachers in attire that can best be described as ‘comfortable professionalism’. Those who talk with their heads to the side allow the characters to be honest about each other and the institutions that frustrate them, an easy place for jokes about financing and the secret life of the janitor, Mr. Johnson (William Stanford Davis). Abbott’However, the show’s writers care deeply about the show’s characters in a very traditional sitcom way, with their personal lives bleeding into their professional lives in a funny and awkward way, and this is where mockumentaries exert themselves the most.

“Career Day,” the two-part premiere, jumps five months after “Franklin Institute,” the season 2 grand finale, in which protagonist Janine Teagues (creator Quinta Brunson) and fellow teacher Gregory Eddie (Tyler James Williams) confess their feelings after two months. years of awkward flirting. The time skipping is handled quite clumsily; While it’s a great way to rework some characters and introduce new ones – like District Representative Manny (gentle King Josh Segarra) – it seems mainly a means of delaying answering the Janine/Gregory question. (Even with a Awesome joke about the robbed camera crew, as an explanation for the time skip.)

It is true in Gregory and Janine’s scenes AbbotThe film’s fake camera crew is pushed to their limits, with Brunson, who wrote the script for the episode, correctly guessing that the pair wouldn’t find out what happened between them if a camera crew were present. Instead, we witness the scene through Ava Coleman’s “hidden cameras.” This hidden camera gag isn’t exactly funny, but worse, it strains credulity and undermines the raw, serious energy of the show. These are two characters that are easy to care about because they care about them themselves so much. Watching them figure out how much they do or don’t care about each other is something that, ironically, a documentary crew can’t get close enough to capture. Good jokes come from characters; bad jokes undermine them.

Abbott Elementary is a great comedy about resilience and optimism, about what it’s like to not only make the best of the bad hand you’ve been dealt, but also how to inspire others to do the same. In the show’s best moments, the cast of teachers act as their own community, supporting each other in a system that is hostile to their profession, or the care needed to do their job well. It would be more poignant – and funnier – if nothing got in the way of that.