Yesterday I couldn't get enough of Abbott Elementary, so after catching up on episode 1 ("Career Day") I watched the latest episode, "Smoking." In this episode, a student at Abbott is caught smoking, which caused the fire alarms at the school to go off. Apparently, there is not a no-smoking rule at Abbott. The teachers end up having a discussion about drugs in the lounge. Jacob says that smoking is bad, but Janine says he can't say that because he vapes. Jacob argues that vaping is not as bad as smoking, and then he tells everyone that Janine does weed. Janine admits that she smokes it every night and that she needs it to function. Ava admits that she does hookah, Gregory admits he has an occasional protein-bar edible, and when Barbara tells them they need to give up the sin of taking these drugs, Melissa laughs and says that Barbara drinks alcohol. Mr. Johnson tries to chime in, but Janine sees a student has been taping the whole discussion with his phone, and the teachers confront the student about how he needs to not let the discussion become public. However, it is too late. The student ended up posting the conversation on social media, and now students everywhere in the school now know that their teachers do substances even though they told the students that substances were bad. During a lesson Jacob is teaching on the Dust Bowl, one of his students asks, when looking at a photo of the Dust Bowl, if that is what the inside of Jacob's car looks like when he is vaping, and they laugh at him. Janine greets a student in the halls with a simple "hi," and the student whispers, "Bet you are." (At first, I didn't catch this, but then I watched it again and realized the student was making fun of Janine being "high" on weed.) Barbara is teaching her students and takes a sip from her traveler mug, and a student asks her if she is drinking Pinot Grigio. The teachers are fed up, and so they find a way to clear things up with the students.
They end up enlisting the help of Tariq's program, F.A.D.E. I honestly thought Tariq was going to show up again, but instead it's Slim, another guy who is part of the F.A.D.E. program. Slim was deeply influenced by Tariq, and it is clearly showing in his performance. He ends up giving a really hilarious spoken word about not doing drugs, and it is very cringey for the students to watch. He enlists another F.A.D.E. spokesperson, Caroline (played by a really brilliant comedian named Aparna Nancherla), who ends up engaging the students in a very chaotic discussion about which drugs are better or worse than others. The school ends up employing a strict checking policy where the teachers have to check the students' bags for any drugs. Obviously, this isn't fun, and it stresses the teachers and students out. The teachers talk more about it, and they realize the best way to address this is to actually have a conversation with Curtis, the student who was caught smoking. Melissa and Gregory sit down with the student, and the student apologizes and says he won't do it again, and that he doesn't even like the taste of smoking. Melissa and Gregory tell him he isn't in trouble and tell him that they just want to make sure he is being careful. When the student asks if it was his fault for having the F.A.D.E. program brought into the school, Melissa assures him that wasn't his fault ("it's the government's fault) and they send the student back to class. Gregory and Melissa don't want Curtis to be suspended, and so Gregory finds a way so that Curtis's suspension will be lifted. When Curtis finds out, he goes into Ava's office and gives her a hug (this was really touching).
Meanwhile, Janine also has to deal with Jessca (yes, this is actually how she spells her name) who is the substitute for Janine's classroom. Jessca insists on the students calling her by her first name and doesn't teach them grammar properly. She lets the students misplace commas and just has a very lax attitude towards teaching, and Janine has a problem with this. One of the students calls her Janine when she comes into the classroom, and Janine corrects him and says, "it's Ms. Teagues," but Jessca insists it's fine and that nothing is wrong with her teaching. Janine confronts Barbara about Jessca, but Barbara tells her that every teacher has their own teaching method and that is fine. Barbara also admits that she wasn't too thrilled about Janine's teaching methods when Janine first came to Abbott because Barbara had a certain way of doing things, but after she got to know Janine over time, she came to respect Janine's ways of teaching.
Poor Jacob had to give up his vaping pen at the end, though. The teachers cheer him on when he drops it in the trash can, but then he fishes back in the trash for his vaping pen because he doesn't want to let it go. He ends up finding another alternative to vaping, a Bref pen, which is just straight up air (I had to look up if Bref pens were real, but I couldn't find any.)
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