Abbott Elementary Recap: The Gang Goes Back to School
I have a confession. Until this assignment, I never properly watched It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. And for good reason! Do you have a piece of media that you will always associate with a fizzled-out fling that you knew wouldn’t pan out because the other person was annoying? However, once Abbott announced the crossover episode, I knew I had to revisit the series as part of my recap duties. If I miss any major references or jokes, feel free to point them out in the comments.
The beginning episodes took a moment to plow through — I felt robbed of a whole season without Danny DeVito — but now I’m midway through the second season and can admit I’m pleasantly surprised. However, I was left asking myself what many others did upon news of the crossover: What the hell is this group of assholes going to do to our beloved Abbott Elementary? During the opening scene, Abbott establishes that the infamous owners of Philadelphia’s worst bar are lending their time as volunteers, something the staff is ecstatic about as everyone is stretched thin. But anyone who watches It’s Always Sunny knows that neither Dee, Mac, Charlie, Dennis, or Frank have a single altruistic bone in their body or actually gives a fuck about Philadelphia’s youth.
As Abbott’s staff quickly finds out, the gang is there to fulfill 100 hours of community service for dumping 100 gallons of baby oil, 500 Paddy’s Pub T-shirts, and a Cybertruck in the Schuylkill River. Ironically, this mimics a plot from season two of It’s Always Sunny when Dee, Mac, and Dennis were once again sentenced to community service after an act of arson and forced to coach a youth basketball team. That story line is connected to one of the original instances of a running gag about Charlie’s illiteracy, an issue that becomes glaring while he’s spending time in an elementary school. In that episode, the gang gets swept up in the competitiveness of coaching, and they approach their time at Abbott Elementary with the same fervor and ridiculousness the show became known for.
Naturally, Melissa, noting that they look familiar, is the only one who has come in contact with Paddy’s Pub’s owners, and they enjoy what Ava calls a Caucasian cultural exchange. Melissa recognizes them first from a fight at an Eagles game — Go Eagles! — and later from “the skeeviest bar” she’s ever gone to. She calls them lowlifes, forcing them to reveal their criminal status. Janine convinces her co-workers to let them stay, emphasizing their crime was merely a misdemeanor and if they send them away, the district won’t give them more volunteers. Everyone pairs up with their foil; Dee heads to Janine’s classroom; Mac assists Ava with her principal duties; Charlie fixes a vent in Jacob’s class; and Frank lends a hand with Gregory’s garden. Dennis, meanwhile, spends most of his time behind the camera as he knows “quite a lot about filming and consent.” The crossover injects a healthy dose of adult humor into Abbott Elementary, something the show has begun to shy away from in the more kid-centered episodes (even Melissa’s funny eating ass line felt strangely vulgar, although we’ve heard raunchy jokes before), as each insufferable member of the gang highlights the optimism and resourcefulness of the Abbott staff.
It begins with Jacob, who notices that Charlie can’t decipher any of the words on the board, reading “World War I: The Industrial War” as “Innovative Wear.” Knowing Charlie won’t be useful to the older students, Jacob brings him to Melissa’s classroom and expresses his concerns about Charlie’s literacy. Melissa offers that maybe Charlie is dyslexic like she is, but Charlie’s unhinged spelling help (he tells a student the word light is spelled L-I-Y-T-L) convinces Melissa there might be an issue. They take Charlie to the library, where Barbara is compelled to turn Charlie into a project, as she used to teach adult-literacy classes. Charlie initially denies being illiterate and hides in the bathroom to avoid the truth, but Melissa and Barbara eventually get him to admit to his difficulty reading. They help him read a children’s book about birds, showing him how to sound out each word slowly.
In the garden, Frank uses his experience sleeping on the streets to help Gregory and Mr. Johnson ward off raccoons. They want to sprinkle chili and garlic powder in the compost to deter the pests, but Frank instead litters old batteries all over the garden, claiming they’re full of “rare earth metals.” Then he insists the only way to trap a raccoon is through intimidation, so they should use pelts with “alpha predator” urine to send a message. When later in the day, the raccoons successfully rummage through the compost despite the seasonings as a deterrent, Frank tries to get them to use his strategy. A disgusted Mr. Johnson suggests they get a huge cage to capture the creature. After an amazing back-and-forth (DeVito and William Standford Davis were great at playing off each other), Gregory extricates himself from the problem, leaving the two unhinged men to figure it out between themselves. Mr. Johnson sets up both a cage and the urine-soaked pelts, and days later, he summons Gregory, saying they caught something huge. Inside the cage is Frank, who turns out to be the one who ate the seasoned compost and came back in the night for more before getting stuck in the trap, eventually falling asleep.
Meanwhile, Dee and Janine instantly hit it off as Penn alumnae. Dee engages the students in a Benjamin Franklin cosplay, takes down the Christmas decorations Janine is too short to reach, and helps with grading. Things take a turn when Gregory enters the room, muscles bulging under his cardigan, looking for left-handed scissors. Dee is entranced and makes it her mission to hook up with Greg. Janine is shocked that Dee is trying to come on to her boyfriend and tentatively explains their relationship, hoping this will make Dee back down. Conversely, the thought of a competition for a man merely motivates Dee more, sending Janine rushing into Ava’s office to get the gang to leave.
Ava passionately disagrees as Mac has turned out to be the best help she could’ve asked for. Enthusiastic to get his community service hours over with, Mac sets out to be as productive as possible in the shortest amount of time, so Ava will sign the paperwork and relieve him of his duties for the rest of the week. This is a gross underestimation of Ava’s capability to take advantage of people, so she sends him on increasingly impossible missions while promoting him to vice-principal. He gets her coffee with latte art of her face, steams her clothes, details her car, and brings fresh cinnamon rolls. So, when Janine breathlessly storms into her office (I love it when she makes fun of Janine’s breathing), Ava refuses her request, saying she might even frame the gang for another crime, so they have to do more hours.
The next day, Dee shows up to Abbott in a little black dress and heels, ready to steal Gregory. Janine puts her foot down, excuses Dee into the hallway, and takes her glasses off, ready to fight for her man despite her short arms. Gregory hears the commotion and tries to keep the Philly girls from pouncing. He looks Janine in the eyes and tells her that no matter what Dee has up her sleeve, she is the only one he wants and he’s not interested in any other woman, “especially not that woman.” The relief trickles through Janine, and she backs down and returns to her classroom, comforted by his reassurance. Once again, Gregory’s monogamy only galvanizes Dee’s illicit thoughts, and she propositions Gregory for a romp in the gymnasium.
Finally, Charlie displays his new skills while blundering through a read-aloud session in the library. When he proudly shows off by reading one of the “hard” sentences in the back of the book about a protected endangered bird species in Pennsylvania called loggerhead shrikes, Ava gets an idea about how to finesse a new scoreboard for the school. At first, Ava intended to acquire one through the continued agreement with the lawyer from the golf course, but during a phone call earlier in the episode, she found out that now that the course has employed unionized workers, she no longer has leverage. Ava gets Melissa’s “egg guy” to put loggerhead strike eggs on the site to give her a reason to threaten to delay construction by alerting the Bird and Game Commission.
At the end of It’s Always Sunny’s volunteer week, now with the ability to read at a kindergarten level, Charlie gets his own solo Move Up Day, complete with a cap-and-gown ceremony. Frank apologizes for eating the compost in the garden, offering a battery he stole from Mr. Johnson’s car as an olive branch, which Gregory tells him to immediately return before Dee unsuccessfully attempts to slide on Gregory one final time (she writes it off as him being gay, something that can happen “with the short ones”). With the scoreboard installed and a week of community service hours behind him, Mac presents Ava with his paperwork, awaiting her signature. Ava hesitates, unwilling to give up Mac’s helpfulness, but when Mac lets it slip that he went the extra mile by writing thank-you notes to all of the teachers, Ava angrily signs the paper saying her employees “run on insults,” and tells him to get the hell out. The episode concludes with the It’s Always Sunny volunteers getting hilarious one-on-one interviews with the documentary camera crew detailing their time at the school. Frank said it the best: “I got to work the land, I got to eat some fiber, Charlie learned to read. Community service is great! Crime is worth it, plain and simple.”
Teacher’s Notes
• Here are my favorite lines from the episode:
Ava: “Find something useful to do; I already have a white man who comes in here to annoy me.”
Barbara, who does the best alliteration: “Please remove these improper people from the premises posthaste.”
Mr. Johnson to Gregory after finding Frank in the cage: “Do you want to bash his brains in, or should I?”