Should You Watch ‘English Teacher' Season 2?

The second season of FX’s English Teacher, released in its entirety for bingeing on Hulu, hits all the same notes as the first with its excellent supporting cast, a realistic portrayal of the modern school experience, and a lived-in humor. It’s a solid, reliable sitcom with a formula that works without feeling tired or redundant. As an English teacher myself, I recognized many of the moments, dynamics, and feelings bouncing around in the fictional Texan high school. All that said, I’m disappointed in English Teacher. The show’s first season is a difficult act to follow. The highs of the second season aren’t quite as high as the first. When you add in the significant baggage that creator and star Brian Jordan Alvarez brings to the show, English Teacher falls short of the high-water mark it set before.

There’s a lot to appreciate about English Teacher. It’s consistently funny, well-written, and energetically acted. It also ranks with Abbott Elementary as a school-set sitcom that discusses real issues with enough humor to keep things light. While my experience as a teacher in New England is quite different from Evan’s as a teacher in Texas, I recognized and related to what I saw. The gallows humor, the dedication tempered by exhaustion, the grind of incremental progress, it was all represented accurately. If I had to quibble, I’d say that the fictional teachers have a work-life balance that most real-world teachers would kill for.

It’s quite easy to make teen characters too precocious or to oversimplify school life issues like AI or censorship, but English Teacher ably threads those needles. The way the students are written is among the best I’ve seen in fictional media. That success is in the perfectly measured slang that doesn’t feel forced, in the mixture of apathy and idealism, and in the believable struggles the students face. Each young actor nails their character so well that they each reminded me of students I’ve taught.

Overburdened principal Grant (Enrico Colantoni) is the most true-to-life character of the cast. Colantoni channels the strain, exasperation, and battered warmth of a principal perfectly. The titular English teacher, Evan (Alvarez), usually grapples with the issue of the episode, often changing his stance as soon as his convictions become inconvenient. While exaggerated for TV, this dynamic felt familiar. Teaching is a profession that takes passion and conviction, and it severely tests them both.

My disappointment comes from two elements that inhibit the series. The first is the double-edged sword of having such a great formula: with everything more or less the same as it was in the first season, it’s just not as exciting the second time around. It’s certainly not bad, but it has a lesser impact than when it was new. The second is a little more difficult to address.

It shouldn’t be ignored that the series’s star/creator was accused of sexual assault by former collaborator Jon Ebeling. FX decided to renew the series anyway, which prompted critic, Vanity Fair editor, and author Maureen Ryan to point out the troubling message sent by that decision. The thought that English Teacher represents, to some extent, an apathetic normalization of sexual assault drags down the mood of the show. Instead of being able to enjoy a fun half-hour comedy without obstacles, viewers have to decide whether it feels unethical to be watching. This is a personal decision for each viewer to make, but it’s nonetheless a troubling question that can complicate the experience. The last thing a comedy needs is a heavy albatross.

English Teacher is a well-written show with genuine insight about experiences in a public high school. The cast, crew, and writers all deserve flowers for creating a fun comedy with realism and heart. It’s a shame it has to live in the shadow of FX and Alvarez’s actions.