It’s a common complaint of the streaming era that most new TV shows never get a chance to find their voice. Would Seinfeld or Parks and Recreation — two beloved sitcoms that only hit their stride after shaky first seasons — have made it to season 2 if they were Max originals? The fact that we even have to ask reveals what we lost when we gained a streaming library and the ability to binge an entire season of Survivor in a single sitting.
Some shows still get a chance to bounce back from a rough start, however, and one surprising example recently landed on Netflix, where it’s reaching its biggest audience yet. All four seasons of the NBC/Peacock series A.P. Bio are currently available to stream, and before you write this show off as just another basic network sitcom, allow us to explain why this one is much more interesting (and much weirder) than you ever imagined.
A.P. Bio’s premise is simple, if somewhat contrived. Jack Griffin (Glenn Howerton of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia fame) is a disgraced Harvard philosophy professor who’s forced to move back into his childhood home in Toledo, Ohio, and take a part-time job teaching biology to a class of overachieving high schoolers. Jack spends most of his time trying to get revenge on a rival philosopher while refusing to teach biology — one of the show’s best recurring jokes is his penchant for using the classroom chalkboard to draw crude diagrams of his various schemes, which range from catfishing to removing a display at the local bookstore.
A.P. Bio was canceled after season 2, only to get revived a year later as a streaming series on the newly launched Peacock. This is where things get wild. Free from the constraints of network TV (and with seemingly nothing left to lose), showrunner Mike O’Brien started taking some big swings — even if they didn’t always connect.
Image: Universal
The first sign that something has changed comes in season 3 episode 3, “Gary Meets Dave,” which tells an entire story through “previously on A.P. Bio” recaps full of new scenes we’ve never seen before. The episode strings together these fake flashbacks for about 15 minutes before pivoting directly into a preview of next week’s episode. (The plot has something to do with stolen money, but it’s, unsurprisingly, hard to follow.)
Season 3 also ends with A.P. Bio’s weirdest, and arguably best, episode, which revolves around a local holiday called “Katie Holmes Day.” The citizens of Toledo celebrate the most famous person ever born in their city with an annual , a nativity scene-style performance, and other bizarre traditions that include harassing the current owners of Katie’s childhood home and putting muffins in shoes. (If you’ve seen the “Leap Day” episode of 30 Rock, this has a similar vibe. And if you haven’t seen that episode, well, do yourself a favor and watch it immediately.)
Almost every episode of A.P. Bio’s fourth and final season has a similar gimmick, taking the show’s already established world and characters and using them to tell whatever story (in whatever genre) the writers can dream up. In one, the students form a cult. In another, they “ship” their teachers and imagine the results; if you want to watch Glenn Howerton and Patton Oswalt (he plays the principal) make out, here’s your chance.
The overall experience of watching A.P. Bio feels similar to another great sitcom with humble origins that took a turn into the surreal: Community. Both shows start small before suddenly escalating into subversive storytelling, and both shows were canceled only to be renewed by a nascent streaming service (interestingly, they both also take place in a school). A.P. Bio never feels quite as bold or brilliant as Community, but its most ambitious episodes provide a similar thrill of watching network TV break the rules and get away with it.
Not all of those episodes work — a few are almost unwatchable — but it’s still worth checking out A.P. Bio now that it’s on Netflix. After all, in the streaming era, most new shows never even get a chance to make it to season 4 in the first place, let alone to try out anything as weird as “Katie Holmes Day.”
A.P. Bio is now streaming on Netflix and Peacock.
