Review: Abbott Elementary, “Game Night” | Season 5, Episode 4
An awkward game night and a frustrating trip to the DMV suggest Abbott’s fifth season might already be running out of steam
It is a truth universally acknowledged that if you’re going to go through the trouble of renting a bird for one physical comedy setpiece, you better make sure to get your money’s worth out of it. Or at least that seems to be the logic behind this week’s underbaked, very sitcom-y episode of Abbott Elementary. In a stronger episode, maybe a rule-of-threes bird gag would have been enjoyably surreal, but here it feels like an example of a show that is ever so slightly running out of new ideas. While Abbott has always been about teachers more than students and while format-breaking non-school episodes are part of the series' DNA, the show is really pushing that to the limit this season.
In fact, between the development day parking lot activities of “Team Building,” the MLB-sponsored “Ballgame,” and the hosting/DMV throughlines of “Game Night,” only one of the first four episodes of this season has actually revolved around teaching as its main throughline. (And “Cheating” even felt a bit underbaked in that department.) And I’m a little confused about why the season is structured that way. I get easing us into the school year with a return to development day and I get slotting in the big splashy filmed-at-a-real-Phillies-game episode early. But why follow that up with yet another episode that loses sight of the show’s school focus in favor of something much more generic? Especially when the two halves of this episode don’t even really work together thematically?
It doesn’t help that, of all the non-school episodes Abbott has done, this one really feels like it could be slotted into just about any half-hour comedy. “The DMV sucks” and “game night goes awry” are two of the most basic sitcom premises out there. (So much so that CBS just built an entire show around the former.) And while there are some stabs at tying those storylines into the quirky specificity of the main cast, there’s just not enough to make this episode soar like one of those random birds we keep returning to.
