My favorite episode of A.P. Bio — and at just nine episodes to date, it’s already difficult to choose — is Episode Two: “Teacher Jail.”
Why do I love it? Ah, reader, the reasons are many. Chief among them is the cameo by Niecy Nash who plays Kim — a most endearingly hardcore union rep — to perfection. Kim is desperate for Jack, high school teacher of the show’s titular class, to fight a charge that he defied school policy by leaving students unattended.
For those unfamiliar with NBC’s new sitcom A.P. Bio (please amend your situation immediately), Jack cannot be described as a “teacher” in any meaningful sense of the word. He’s a former Harvard philosophy professor whose public brawl with a rival academic relieved him of an Ivy League career and landed him back in his despised hometown — Toledo. His elite credentials are the only (barely) fathomable explanation for how Jack finagled a job teaching a subject he not only appears to know nothing about, but one he actively prevents the students from learning. (At one point, Jack makes each student chuck their textbook out the window.)
So, yes — Jack definitely, knowingly defied school policy by leaving his students alone while he wandered off to work up ideas for an as-yet-unwritten bestselling book.
We the viewers know that. But when Kim enters the scene, she does not. Turns out it wouldn’t matter, as she tells Jack later, “I don’t care if you did do it.” Kim wants Jack to make his problem an issue of school mismanagement, because what Kim really wants is revenge on Principal Dick Durbin (played by the always delightful Patton Oswalt) over an adolescent dispute regarding who should have been captain of their glee club.
You could be tempted to think Jack the worst teacher imaginable, but remember — teacher jail is real.
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There’s a synergistic mix of the absurd and realistic here already, and we haven’t even gotten to “teacher jail” yet. Union reps are always doggedly on the side of the teacher, so Kim’s actions in that vein shouldn’t be surprising. Except Jack doesn’t deserve to have anyone on his side, what with his A.P. Bio students well on their way to learning diddly-squat in his class. Then, too, does Kim really care about any of the teachers, or is it only her disgust for Durbin that drives her to protect the staff at all costs?
I haven’t seen all of T.V.’s offerings from the set-at-school genre, but I have no qualms about saying with confidence that A.P. Bio is the best among them. Glenn Howerton is casting at its finest, playing Jack as a blissfully misanthropic narcissist who not only refuses to teach his students anything at all — much less biology — but might be perplexed if anyone asked him for an apology.
You could be tempted to think Jack the worst teacher imaginable, but remember — teacher jail is real. Jack knows he broke school policy by leaving class and kicking it in the teacher’s lounge, but he agrees to file a non-guilty plea (fight!) after Kim tells him he could get “stuck” in teacher jail for months — with pay — while the matter gets adjudicated.
Obviously, Jack opts for jail. It’s held in a trailer supervised by the high school’s gym teacher, and Jack gets to work on his philosophical treatise with the help of a new bud who claims he’s in the proverbial slammer for the crime of being a “teacher tickler.” Yeah…
In terms of comedy, the show more than delivers. If Jack’s cynical time-wasting isn’t for everyone, then his three fellow teachers — Mary (Mary Sohn), Stef (Lyric Lewis) and Michelle (Jean Villepique) — definitely are. They’re warm and seem genuinely happy (a rare trait combo for any female character, much less three), but they’re also sassy as hell and know how to have a good time during their off-hours. I want to be in this girl group.
And lovable Durbin putters about the school, putting out various fires, remaining calm, eminently huggable, and overly agreeable. When he needs to cut the budget, Durbin preps by meditating on a magazine ad for a luxury car with the tagline “Never compromise.” Spoiler: lots of compromises ensue.
But there simply cannot be a school out there populated by people quite like this — at least, not by someone like Jack. Many parents may indeed want their A.P. student children to have a connection to Harvard — a unicorn get in the college acceptance scramble — but I question that dozens of them would shrug at their son or daughter’s nonexistent actual learning. (This is how the show “explains” the lack of parental complaints about Jack’s absent instruction.)
If there’s an argument to be made that academically-inclined high school teens benefit more from a deranged man’s tales of failed “bangs” than actual subject instruction, I have yet to stumble upon it.
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And everything that makes Jack a factory of comedic gold — from his variations on the daily greeting “Alright, everybody, get ready to shut up” to his simple chalk drawings depicting the many failed attempts to exact revenge on his philosophical nemesis to his adolescent insults directed at, yes, his students — also make him the antithesis of a capable, or even moderately acceptable, teacher.
Jack’s not a good man, despite his regular opines on the topic of ethics. (One of which involves his moral dilemma over killing a possum.) He’s worse than a bad teacher — he’s a horrific model of male adulthood. Strip away the erudite sneer-ridden screeds, and Jack’s firmly in the man-baby camp best exemplified by Zack Galifianakis a la The Hangover. He’s ostensibly living in his deceased mom’s place because it’s free. He doesn’t teach A.P. Bio, but not because it would be too difficult for his intellect — he refuses because he doesn’t want to do it. He’s unconcerned about the potential consequences of this decision, not just for his students, but also Durbin, the wrongfully optimistic rube who hired him.
There are glimmers here and there of humanity — Jack defends his teacher friends against East Coast snobbery at a bar one night, for instance. But none of those moments even pretend to suggest a transformation.
If there’s an argument to be made that academically-inclined high school teens benefit more from a deranged man’s tales of failed “bangs” than actual subject instruction, I have yet to stumble upon it.
So thank God that A.P. Bio‘s on the screen and not out in reality. It’s hilarious to imagine a teacher displaying such willful disregard for their students and profession — but imagine is the key word here.