A few weeks ago, I tuned into ABC to watch season 3 of Abbott Elementary. However, I didn't know that I had missed a couple of episodes and wanted to catch up. Honestly, I laughed, I (almost) cried, and just was so glad that they decided to have a third season of the show.
There were some pretty hilarious moments in this episode. At the beginning, everyone notices that Ava, the principal of Abbott Elementary, is not acting like herself. She is following school policies to the point where she doesn't participate in any shenanigans or act silly, and to the point where she takes away the teachers' lunch period so that they are working all the time. Jacob, Mr. Johnson, Melissa, Gregory and Barbara all devise ways to get Ava back to her goofy self, so they try to give her stuff she likes. Jacob clumsily throws a pile of money on her desk because Ava likes money, but Ava doesn't fall for it. Mr. Johnson tries to entice her with tickets to see Usher in concert while wearing an Usher T-shirt and trying to dance like Usher. That doesn't work either. So, they use Gregory to try and seduce Ava, because in the earlier seasons Ava was always trying to flirt with Gregory even when she knew it was inappropriate and he didn't like it. They have Gregory stand in the doorway to her office with his muscles flexed and have him talk to her in a sexy seductive voice about how her rules are "so rigid and hard," and she looks up from her work and tells him to put his arms down (I busted up so hard when she called him "Jeremy Allen Black," which is a reference to the actor Jeremy Allen White.) I laughed at the scene where they finally get Ava to go to the gym and then Mr. Johnson blasts the song "Back That Azz Up" by Juvenile. I love how Barbara called City Girls "The Town Women." (Ava loves listening to City Girls and when she became a more serious principal and stopped cutting up, she stopped listening to City Girls for a while.)
Melissa also faces a huge decision in her relationship with Garrett, the vending machine guy at Abbott. They hit it off really well and he wants to get married to her, but Melissa doesn't want to get married again because her last marriage wasn't great. Garrett keeps hinting at them getting married, such as putting a Ring Pop in the vending machine, but Melissa tells him that she just does not want to get married. During Career Day, they bring in a marketing person from The Philadelphia Eagles team to talk about marketing, and the kids find it boring, so the person has Jalen Hurts call in on a virtual call to visit the class. Everyone is super excited, but then Garrett asks the marketing person if he could sneak in a way for him to propose to Melissa, so he has Jalen Hurts make an announcement about Garrett's proposal to Melissa, with everyone watching the proposal in all the classrooms, and Garrett gets on his knee and proposes. Melissa is shocked, but she ends up saying "No," and they have to go outside the school to talk about it. They really love each other, but in the end, Melissa didn't want to get married, so they broke up. It was really sweet when they hugged even though it was a sad moment for both of them. When Melissa returns to her classroom, she is wiping away tears, and Jalen Hurts (Jason Kelce and Brandon Graham also make cameos. I'm not very knowledgeable about football, so I had to look up the names of the other players making cameos on the show) tells her that he respects her right to not marry and that she did what she thought was right.
Janine also faces a major decision herself. Manny, who works for the school district, offers her a fellowship to work for the school district. It is a great opportunity, but the only thing is that Janine would be away from her classroom for most of the time, and as a dedicated teacher who loves her students, it would be hard for her to be away from them for that long. Janine tells Manny that she appreciates the offer, but she turns it down. Jacob feels sad that he didn't get the fellowship, and at first when Janine acts like it's no big deal, Jacob tells her that the fellowship is a huge deal. The teachers also are kind of lukewarm about how Manny and the other people working for the school district are trying to change how things are done at Abbott. In one part of the episode, the district gives Janine's classroom iPads, and Janine is so pumped that Manny and his team gave them iPads for the students to use as learning tools. However, the students complain about how the iPads aren't fully charged and how there aren't enough chargers for each iPad, so Janine brings it up to Manny and he and the team say that they will take care of it. Manny also introduces himself to Mrs. Howard (Barbara) but at first she is lukewarm because it seems like he doesn't actually care about making Abbott a better place even though he comes off that way, but Manny tells her that his mom was an educator and Barbara starts to have more respect for him. Janine then comes to Barbara, and she wants to seem pessimistic about what Manny and the other school district representatives are trying to do to change Abbott, but Barbara says that she has had a change of heart and that she is actually quite hopeful about the changes the district will implement at Abbott. Janine then asks her advice about whether she should go for the fellowship or not, especially because she would be away from her classroom a lot. Barbara tells her that if that is what will make her happy, then she should do it, and that she can always come back to Abbott after the fellowship is done.
Things get awkward, though, between Janine and Gregory. Ava catches them on camera (clearly, she is back to regular goofy Ava because that is something she would have totally done) and we see Janine and Gregory talking about what happened when they were on the museum field trip. In that episode, Janine felt that it would be best that she focused on herself and not try to start a relationship with Gregory, and she thought Gregory still had feelings for her. But this time, Janine thinks that she and Gregory should make it official and get back together since she isn't seeing anyone, and he isn't either. However, he tells her that he wanted to respect her decision to not be with him, and that after that he had moved on. This puts Janine in an awkward position because she assumed Gregory had feelings for her. Since season 1, Gregory has had a huge crush on Janine, but at the time she was dating Tariq, who she had been with since eighth grade. Gregory decided to start dating Amber, a mother of one of the students at the school, and by the time Janine had broken up with Tariq, Gregory was taken, leaving Janine feeling secretly heartbroken. Janine finds another person, Maurice, who is Gregory's best friend, and they seem to be working out. However, even though they are seeing other people, Gregory and Janine still have feelings for each other, and they end up making out on evening. Gregory and Janine tell this to Maurice over dinner one evening, and Maurice breaks up with Janine. Janine feels bad about cheating on Maurice, so during the field trip that the class takes to a museum, Janine tells Gregory that she feels bad about what she did to Maurice and says that she needs to step back from being in a relationship for a while to spend time with herself. Now that Manny is in the picture, I wonder what is going to happen. I'm not sure if Manny respects Janine as just a coworker, or if he is secretly interested in being with her, and I wonder if Gregory is going to feel a way about it if Manny and Janine ever do get together.
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