Comedy
Abbott Elementary
While Abbott Elementary’s humor will find appeal with fans of ‘The Office’ or ‘Parks and Rec,’ it won’t get a passing grade from others.
Jodie isn’t your normal kid.
Since birth, he and his mom have been on the run. That’s because since birth, he’s had powers that no one could explain.
For example, if Jodie screams, he can shatter glass … and eardrums. If he gets angry, fires start. If he’s feeling pretty good, he can perform miracles—such as turning water into wine.
Oh, and did I mention the fact that Jodie was born of a virgin?
Look, generally, we at Plugged In try not to tell you what you should or shouldn’t watch. Rather, we prefer to give you the information and let you exercise your own discernment. But this show is so messy—seriously, there’s so much negative content—I don’t feel bad giving away the show’s entire spoiler and telling you not to watch it.
For the whole show, nearly everyone thinks that Jodie is the son of God, including Jodie himself. They literally worship him as Christ come again. They beg him to perform miracles (and we see him walk on water, heal the deaf and blind and even bring some folks back from the dead).
But Jodie is not the Messiah. He’s the Antichrist. As in the son of Satan, not God.
Yeah, that’s a spoiler brought about in the last 10 minutes of the final episode. But there were other hints: Jodie pretty much gave in to all seven “deadly sins”; He blasphemed God as he used his powers to gain popularity, money and more; And he said nothing when his small town’s spiritual leaders began worshipping him as the son of God.
Those aren’t the show’s only problems though, spiritual or otherwise.
In one really uncomfortable scene, Jodie and the girl he likes essentially recreate a scene from American Beauty where they both remove their shirts while watching each other from their bedroom windows across the street. (We see the girl, who is played by a 14-year-old actress, in her bra. The camera cuts away as she begins to remove that garment as well, but it’s still the sexual exploitation of a child.)
In a depiction of violence against children, a teen boy accidentally murders his classmate. Then a mob, led by one of the town’s pastors, demands penance. They string him up and the pastor brutally whips the kid (who can’t be more than 15 years old and just witnessed his dad die by suicide) in the manner that Christ was. (We see deep cuts form on the boy’s back as he screams out in agony.) Then the mob tries to hang the teen. And they’re only stopped because a group of trans folk—the only people these religious fanatics seem to hate more than the angry teen—intervene. The two groups assault each other, forgetting about the boy balancing on tip-toe to avoid being strangled by the noose around his neck.
One priest who eventually follows Jodie essentially says that he’s lost faith in God because God “doesn’t speak to me anymore.” And he tells Jodie he thinks that Christ’s miracles were more symbolic than actual miraculous acts of God. In addition to featuring many elements of the Christian faith, the show also gives prominence to the Yaqui faith, which is a blend of Native American spirituality and Catholicism.
Each episode sports about 10 uses of the f-word, along with other profanities. There’s a depiction of suicide followed by the victim’s children finding his body. Underage teens drink at a party that Jodie attends. And a trans character plays a strong role in Jodie’s life.
Jodie falsely believes that he’s meant to save the world. But even when he discovers his true destiny, he embraces it fully. So let me save you from this incredibly sacrilegious series: Just don’t.
Jodie and his friends search for a rumored siren—a creature of ancient myth—hoping the being will change their recent string of bad fortune.
In a flashback, an infant Jodie uses his powers to control a cop who had pulled over his mother, Sarah, causing the cop to let them go free. As Jodie gets older, his powers manifest further. Storms manifest when he’s upset. Lights flicker and the earth shakes when he uses his powers. He begins having visions of the future and hearing a mysterious voice calling to him. He cuts his own hand as a blood sacrifice to escape a deadly situation. A truck accidentally drives off a bridge right into Jodie, but he miraculously survives. And he wears a necklace of a six-pointed star with an eye in the center—a gift from his father.
A cross on a hill has John 6:35 inscribed on it. We see a few nuns. People wear monster masks at a festival. A man claims to have been assaulted by a siren after mistaking the creature for a drowning woman. Several crosses adorn a children’s cemetery. A boy pours water as an offering on one of the graves and asks the souls of the children to guide them across the desert. A boy explains elements of his Yaqui faith, stating that his Yaqui ancestors turned themselves into whales to escape being conquered and that they still travel between the spirit world and real world, guiding other Yaquis.
Jodie tells his friends a gruesome myth about a woman who had triplets and then lost her husband. Her babies, sensing her grief, wouldn’t stop crying. Eventually, she collapsed from exhaustion. When she awoke, her children were gone, but she could hear them crying through the walls. She broke down the walls to find a giant snake had consumed the infants, and she was hearing their cries from the animal’s stomach as they were slowly digested. The snake escaped, and Jodie tells his friends you can still hear the babies crying.
A man brutally beats up a woman. The pair go offscreen, where we hear more sounds of a struggle before the woman returns alone with a bloody metal object in her hand. A boy’s uncle shows up heavily bleeding and stumbling, claiming he was attacked by a siren. (He clutches a handful of hair that he allegedly ripped from the monster’s scalp. Later, someone insinuates the hair came from a girlfriend.) Teens repeatedly get into fistfights. Bullies push kids around. One bully pulls a knife on Jodie when Jodie tries to stop them. He starts to cut into Jodie’s stomach before a teacher catches him, and he’s later arrested. Some kids use fireworks to blow up a trashcan. A teen boy says he’ll kill himself if he has to work in the salt mines like his father.
Teenagers flirt and some get jealous of others. We see a woman in a bikini.
Several teens lie to their parents in order to sneak out to the desert in search of a mystical creature. On their journey, they run out of food and water and nearly die. (They all show visible signs of dehydration.) Later, they all explain why they made the trek: one boy hoped to gain fame so he wouldn’t have to work in the salt mines his whole life; another needed the money to support his family; and a teen girl just wanted her parents to stop grieving her lost brother and acknowledge her existence again.
A woman puts an infant in the front seat of a car (which, in addition to being illegal, is also incredibly dangerous). When a teen boy insults another by comparing him to a girl, a teen girl takes offense. Later, that same boy’s father calls him a “princess” as an insult. Jodie takes a medication he believes prevents seizures but is actually meant to regulate his emotions.
We hear nine uses of the f-word and two uses of the s-word. We also hear multiple uses of “a–,” “a–hole,” “b–ch,” “d–n,” “h—” and “pr–k.” God’s and Christ’s names are each abused once. And there are also a few racist slurs.
Emily studied film and writing when she was in college. And when she isn’t being way too competitive while playing board games, she enjoys food, sleep, and geeking out with her husband indulging in their “nerdoms,” which is the collective fan cultures of everything they love, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate and Lord of the Rings.
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