New sitcom English Teacher dives right into the culture war minefield and miraculously energizes the conversation | Canada Voices

Being woke is exhausting. English Teacher, a sharp and outrageously hilarious sitcom, is here to give us all a pat on the back for even trying.

The series, created by actor, comedian and TikTok star Brian Jordan Alvarez and now streaming on Disney+, is about faculty in an Austin high school tiptoeing their way around the culture wars. Their students prod them on gender identity, keep them engaged in the Oppression Olympics (that cynical competition to see what identity group has it hardest), debate drag in school and consistently test the boundaries of what should be considered classroom appropriate.

That description is bound to give a lot of people pause, and not just the ones who complain about liberal Hollywood. Anytime these subjects come up around classrooms or comedians, it usually gives way to toxic and hateful rhetoric. This stuff is grist for comedians like Dave Chappelle, Ricky Gervais and Matt Rife, the kind who complain about being censured as they proceed to skewer cultural sensitivities and punch down on marginalized groups.

The thing about English Teacher is that it dives right into the minefield and has some hearty laughs at those same sensitivities. Progressive culture is a target for this show just as it is for the likes of Jordan Peterson. The difference is English Teacher speaks the language of progressives. And as exhausting as it can be to keep up with that language, along with the bad faith players policing it, the show miraculously energizes the conversation.

It even comes out the other end as warm and feel good as Abbott Elementary; and a lot more hopeful, and helpful, than say the Red Scare podcast, which features the musings of lefties radicalized by contemporary culture to the far-right. One gay character in English Teacher’s pilot episode admits to being a Red Scare convert, which is exactly what this show is trying to rescue us from.

Alvarez is perhaps most famous for his online alter ego TJ Mack, who went viral with the nonsensical but impossible to shake ear-worm Sitting. You may have also caught him on Will & Grace and in the wild AI slasher movie M3GAN. He stars here as Evan, the resident gay teacher in an Austin high school, navigating the tricky politics and sensibilities of a liberal town in one of the most conservative states.

Evan guides the school’s LGBTQ group, liaises with the jocks who perform in drag without respecting the culture behind it, deals with a vengeful southern mom who thinks his influence turned her son gay and is roped in when the good-humoured conservative gym teacher played by Sean Patton needs a pinch hitter to explain non-binary to his students. “This is your hero moment,” says Patton’s Markie, who probably knows that Evan is cisgender and no better equipped to explain these things than he is but just doesn’t care.

The Gen Z kids in these classrooms are actually well versed in their pronouns and gender definitions. They just want to hear such primers because they constantly have their cameras out, hoping to catch teachers slipping for viral content. It’s part of the tightrope Evan has to walk, trying to educate and enlighten while also making sure not to offend students, parents, the internet and the precious bureaucratic behavioural guidelines teachers need to abide buy.

Alvarez plays Evan’s balancing act between fried nerves and haughty righteousness to perfection. When a sexy new gay teacher (Langston Kerman) joins the faculty, Evan gets so lost in his own head about what could become a scandalous romance that panic, and the comedy that comes from it, verges on Kaufman-esque.

The entire cast is terrific, especially Patton, answering the challenge of making a gun-loving southerner lovable (even if he’s also unbelievable), and Stephanie Koenig, whose Gwen can’t decide if she’s offended by a website ranking the faculty based on hotness because it’s demeaning or because she ranked so low.

There are also a number of viral social-media stars in the cast, which has never made more sense since the show is about the terminally online. Among them are Sofia Coppola’s daughter Romy Mars, who made her splashy debut with a hilarious TikTok where she never gets around to making pasta while grounded for trying to charter a helicopter on her dad’s credit card to meet a camp friend for dinner.

She’s here playing a student who claims to have “asymptomatic Tourette’s” in an episode that brilliantly gets to the bottom of the power games kids play. There’s something genius about casting Mars, the girl who became famous for the comical way she owned her nepo baby privilege. Now she’s playing a girl who desperately wants to feel oppressed, because that’s the new thing to flaunt.

There are many more brilliant touches, between the snappy rapid-fire gags and the way English Teacher, despite its light-bordering-on-frivolous energy, doesn’t just settle for mocking today’s internet chatter. The show takes those conversations further, breaking things down and getting past tensions and misunderstandings so we actually come away with empathy for the very personalities we find grating on Twitter (still refusing to call it X).

The reason it works – the way the show can actually engage in a dialogue over the most needlessly contentious topics – is because its characters don’t have the toxic energy that makes these polarizing conversations unbearable. Some are ignorant but none are hateful.

That may come off as far-fetched, utopian even, but it’s necessary. We can’t have these conversations, and get such unrelenting laughs from woke culture and all our sensitivities, unless we have a safe space to do so.

English Teacher is now streaming on Disney+ in Canada with new episodes every Tuesday.