Review: Abbott Elementary, “Ava & Fest” and “Miami” | Season 5, Episode 21 & 22

Hey free subscribers—the reality of broadcast seasons means it's a while since you've heard from Caroline about the fifth season of Abbott Elementary, but that means it's a perfect time to spend $5 to join the conversation about the finale.

In retrospect, a lot of the big picture choices of Abbott Elementary’s fifth season make sense. Given how much these last few episodes have dug into the idea of Janine repeating her mom’s patterns, it was smart to bring back Taraji P. Henson to put that fraught relationship front and center again. The mall arc and furnace repair are now key pieces of Abbott’s ongoing journey as a struggling but still surviving school. Plus, if you want to hint that Janine and Gregory’s relationship is headed towards engagement, it makes sense to show them getting more serious throughout the year.

It's just that—looking back—so many of the season’s choices seemed to happen in the wrong order or with the wrong level of focus. The idea of Jacob, Ava, and especially Barbara and Mr. Johnson helping Janine and Gregory work through their first big fight is sweet, but shouldn’t that have come before they moved in together? And shouldn’t Gregory’s starry-eyed proposal plans be at least a little more removed from the reveal that his impulse to any relationship conflict is to either demand his own way or completely shut off and stop communicating at all? Shouldn’t Ava have been more central to the throughline about saving Abbott from a list of school closures? Shouldn’t a season that started with the idea of Janine becoming Dom’s mentor have circled back to that at literally any point? And whatever happened to fashion club?

“Ava & Fest,” especially, is a relatively strong episode to end the season with—even if it feels odd that we don’t get a last field trip/final day of school episode like we usually do as the teachers head to a conference in “Miami” instead. But, looking back, season five evolved in strange fits and starts. There were some undeniable high points along the way; the aforementioned Henson vehicle “Birthday” is one of the best episodes in the show’s entire run and the mall arc was a refreshingly bold attempt to do something new at a time when the show easily could have just rested on its laurels. Yet there’s also a sense that this season could have been so much more cohesive with just some relatively minor structural tweaks.