Review: Abbott Elementary, “No Phones” | Season 5, Episode 6

How much do we need Abbott Elementary to be a show about teaching? That seems to be the question at the heart of season five and getting back into the school after a string of “field trip” episodes only brings it to the forefront. “No Phones” kickoffs with a premise that seems tailor-made to dig into the modern elementary school experience: Abbott is participating in a district-wide challenge in which the students (and their teachers) need to spend an entire day without their phones in order to earn a coveted pizza party. Only instead of exploring the realities of teaching in the smart phone era, this episode becomes a much broader parable about how we’re all too addicted to our phones. As Melissa puts it, “I’m sure somewhere in there there’s a valuable lesson.” But is Abbott the show to explore it?

I’m honestly not sure. On the one hand, I like all our central characters so much that it’s pretty much always a pleasure to spend time with them. And “No Phones” has a nice grasp on the ecosystems in which they exist—from the passive aggressive social niceties of Barbara’s church choir group chat to the judgmental social justice echo chamber that Jacob lives in online. I didn’t watch The Office for details about paper sales or Parks and Recreation for insights into local government bureaucracy, so it’s not like there’s some rule that a workplace sitcom has to be about the work that’s being done.

But when Abbott began, it seemed to set a higher standard for itself. It wanted to be a funny workplace sitcom that also captured the realities of being a teacher in an underfunded public school system dealing with things like combined classrooms, the inherent inequality of gifted programs, the importance of school librarians, ringworm outbreaks, and class pets. This season, however, it’s as if the show has decided it no longer needs to put that extra layer on top of its funny character work. Things like Janine’s double-sized classroom or Melissa’s move to middle school have barely even made a blip since they were first introduced. This is still a show about teachers, but it’s no longer really a show about teaching.