Pilot – The episode begins with a brief scene showing what an average workday morning is like for English Teacher, Evan Marquez (Brian Jordan Alvarez). A later lunch conversation with co-worker, Gwen/Gwendolyn Sanders (Stephanie Koenig), will reveal that they are still in the early days of the school year where nothing is as it was the previous year, including the students and the lunches, according to Rick (Carmen Christopher). Before Evan is pulled into a meeting with Principal Grant Moretti (Enrico Colantoni), there is a brief mention of the supposedly attractive new Physics teacher, Harry (Langston Kerman).
It is during the meeting that Evan learns he’s being investigated thanks to a complaint filed by Linda Harrison (Jenn Lyon), alleging that at the end of the previous school year, he kissed his boyfriend in front of the entire class, including her son. The dispute also reveals that Linda has not only filed previous claims against Evan, but her son graduated last year. Evan will eventually begin to suspect that Linda’s problem with him has to do with her son being gay.
As Evan begins preparing for his defense statement, he will turn to his former boyfriend, Malcolm (Jordan Firstman) for advice. This will not only end with them going to bed together but it will also be revealed that Malcolm was Evan’s boyfriend at the time of the complaint. Although not by his choice, Evan will later also discuss the investigation with gym teacher, Markie Hillridge (Sean Patton). Surprisingly enough, this conversation will reveal that Markie shares Evan’s for her reasoning.
Evan is baffled when his investigation comes up during one of his classes. He’s even more stunned once he hears their solutions. Like most of his associates, Evan begins to take an interest in the new psychic teacher, Harry. He doesn’t get very long to dwell on it though because Markie asks him to speak to his class about the meaning of non-binary. Evan, however, later discovers this to be a clever student-inspired ruse to embarrass Gym Teacher Markie on social media. Being that Markie asked him to give the talk, it kind of ruined things for the students.
When Evan gets around to turning in his statement to Principal Grant, he learns that the complaint has been dropped altogether thanks to Markie. The mere slap on the wrist does come with one school board stipulation – he is never allowed to date another faculty member.
Evan immediately agrees and appears to go on about his life with an all-new outlook. This is until he tracks down Markie to thank him for his intervention and learns how he convinced Linda to drop her complaint. Even refers to it as using homophobia to fight homophobia. Despite Evan’s outrage, he can’t but help agree with Markie’s Hail Mary philosophy and ultimately ends up thanking him.
The episode ends with Evan returning to his classroom where he is visited by Harry, with the request to borrow dry erase markers. It is suggested that they may have a connection.
English Teacher Review
The woke agenda is clear right from the very beginning. And, although I haven’t been around any school system in nearly 20 to 30 years, I couldn’t help but feel that the series was unrealistic. That said, the scene where the student asked Markie to explain non-binary to them just so they could film and embarrass him was probably somewhat realistic. I never thought about kids these days using those types of tactics, but in the age of social media, I am not surprised.
Other than that the show was pretty horrendous. I did, however, appreciate the shorter runtime and brash Mackie, although he is probably one of my less preferred characters. I’d give the opener a 4.5 out of 10.
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