Photo: Gilles Mingasson/Disney
Last week, after we saw the staff leap into action to defend their students when Girard Creek tried to play in their faces, I noted how well the show champions their kids, both onscreen and off. Tonight’s installment echos Abbott’s commitment to uplifting the youth with a completely kid-centered episode that showcases the incredible talent of the little people who make up the student population. Having a role on the show is an amazing chance for child actors, particularly in this bleak TV landscape, since it’s not often that emerging Black talent can add these kinds of clips to their acting reels. Their performances on Abbott showcase their comedic timing and physical acting skills — these kids have perfected the deadpan look to the camera from dealing with their teachers. Now, four years in, which is a huge developmental jump at that stage in life, many of them are growing before our eyes and can consistently refresh their portfolios with content as they age, a dwindling opportunity as kid-centered television falls out of fashion.
Who else was shook seeing Courtney as the cool, calm, and collected tween, a mature version of the chaotic kid we were introduced to in season one? I did a knee-jerk impression of Tyrese’s “My Shayla!” when she appeared on the screen. She’s still a master of chaos, but the now-refined Courtney is more clever with her shenanigans, giving Lela Hoffmeister a chance to showcase her ability to embody a character with longevity. When the annual science fair rolls around, in lieu of a traditional project, Courtney harnesses her penchant for mischief with a social experiment that exploits the competitive nature of the teachers. She plays coy throughout the episode, avoiding divulging the details of her experiment, telling Melissa that “it would compromise my findings if I told you any more at this juncture.” But that’s okay, because the teachers don’t require any interference to turn a children’s lesson into an all-out war.
As the school’s resident science expert, Mr. Morton helms the fair, basking in the leadership opportunity, something he rarely encounters in his personal life. Abbott elaborates on Morton’s lore tonight, adding another juicy tidbit — this is the man’s second divorce, meaning he’s now left with half of everything his other ex-wife didn’t take, which Jacob says is “still twice as much as you deserve.” The ongoing feud between the co-workers takes on new heights when a coup by the rest of the teachers leaves Jacob and Barbara stuck as co-judges alongside Morton. No one takes the science fair as seriously as Morton, as indicated by his having to spray-paint an old basketball trophy as a prize, and his insufferable personality doesn’t sway the teachers’ apathy. To avoid working with Morton, Melissa and Janine immediately volunteer to help the students and the rest of the staff connivingly write Jacob’s name instead of their own on the slips of paper Morton pulls out of a hat. Jacob is smart enough to know he’d be thrown under the bus and writes Barbara’s name, guaranteeing at least one other person goes down with him.
At first, Janine and Melissa allow the kids free rein to explore their scientific instincts, but after Ava steps in as guardian for Tyree, a student without a signed permission slip allowing him to work with the dangerous materials, the competition heats up. Ava lives vicariously through Tyree as she wrestles with latent feelings of abandonment from her absent father. Frank, played by the wonderful Keith David, is also Gregory’s barber and signs the barbershop up as a sponsor upon hearing about Abbott’s science fair. Ava is nonplussed by the gesture, maintaining strict boundaries even when Frank pulls up to the school to see his daughter, though she accepts the money. Janine sees their interaction and offers her sympathy and Ava sarcastically says she has a “hole in her heart” before laughing in Janine’s face, solidifying her disinterest in establishing a relationship with her dad. But when Tyree enters Ava’s office complaining about his father always forgetting things, she throws herself into the competition, joining Tyree as he finds the best method for water filtration using Abbott’s suspiciously murky tap water as the control. To Ava’s disappointment, Tyree is inspired by an upcoming camping trip and isn’t preparing for “when we lose access to running water and the proxy wars escalate into World War Z,” but nonetheless, she vows to get him first place.
Ava takes Tyree’s experiment to the next level, taunting their competitors as they join the rest of the kids under Melissa and Janine’s supervision. Melissa and Janine try to remind their boss that this is simply an elementary-school science fair, but as soon as Ava insinuates that she’s better than the two teachers — not just at science but at being cool, because “the only thing Janine knows less about than science is what’s cool” — the competition is on. Melissa teams up with a student working on powering a lightbulb with a potato, and Janine partners with another to build a model volcano. Mr. Johnson also gets in on the action, claiming to be one of the famous Hidden Figures of NASA, and helps a student create a robot to mop spills. Janine and Melissa completely hijack the experiments, steamrolling the students’ ideas in favor of what they think the judges will want to see. They go so far that they begin sabotaging each other after overhearing that more teachers in the school have paired up with students to try and win the trophy.
While Melissa, Janine, Ava, and Mr. Johnson do everything in their power to get their respective student to win, Morton drills Barbara and Jacob on rigidly abiding by the scientific method. Barbara wants to focus on presentation, and Jacob wants to judge based on social impact, but Morton isn’t interested in aesthetics or morals. Instead, he argues that “you build the A-bomb, you don’t worry about how it’s used” (I bet watching Oppenheimer with him would be a blast) and calls them simple. Jacob and Barbara are so appalled by Morton’s condescending attitude that they denounce their judging duties and order Morton to never speak to them again. But once the science fair rolls around, Barbara has a change of heart, telling Jacob they should do the “godly” thing and help Morton deliver the best judging experience for the children. She argues that they’ll bring balance to Morton’s unyielding scientific standards, so they apologize for storming out.
It takes a little back-and-forth to get Morton to respect Barbara and Jacob as judges — Morton defiantly says that “science is a meritocracy; you’ll be treated as equal if you are equal” — but eventually, he concedes. Outside of a hilarious outburst from Jacob (Chris Perfetti is such a goofball), the trio pulls it together, agreeing to judge the projects holistically while still demonstrating strict standards to ensure the students are learning. They ruthlessly critique every submission, going as far as tearing apart Abbott’s Tiniest Kid’s (yes, that is what the cutie pie is credited as on IMDb) adorable flower project and saying the model volcano was “culturally appropriated.” They’re so harsh that they announce that despite the teachers’ overwhelming efforts, no one “satisfied all of the judges’ wildly different standards.” Courtney seizes control of the microphone, galvanizing the students to change their projects to reflect their original ideas and not the ones the teachers bullied them into. Then, she completely usurps the teachers’ power and proposes the kids judge the science fair themselves.
The teachers accept defeat, backing off and confessing that they took things too far (well, everyone but Ava, who says she’s the real victim in all of this), and they stand back while their students regain control and implement their unique ideas. Morton, banished away to the corner, tells his “new best friends” Barbara and Jacob that he ruins everything he touches. Softening, Barbara speaks to Morton in his own language, using an algebra formula to metaphorically, and scientifically, explain that maybe he’s the problem. But the intimacy doesn’t extend past that nugget of advice, as when Morton suggests they hang out sometime, Barbara and Jacob exit the scene. As the science fair wraps up, the students crown Courtney the winner, exalting her social experiment that she reveals tested “the effects of power dynamics in competitive environments” before shouting out the teachers who proved her hypothesis that adults can’t handle competition. One day, Courtney is going to be in charge of us all!
• We need more barbershop scenes with Gregory and Frank. Gregory’s impression of Frank’s misogynistic hypotheticals (“Aye, Gregory, would you let a female buy you dinner?”) was spot-on for the kind of man Frank seems to be.
• There were so many great lines, but here are the ones I loved the most:
Ava, wondering why the science fair requires a permission slip: “I can’t believe you need permission to be a nerd.”
Ava, hearing about Frank and Greg’s conversation: “I am so tired of men talking to each other.”
Barbara: “You are tap-dancing on my last nerve, and I don’t like the choreography.”
