Comedy
English Teacher
Filled with profanity and LGBT content, FX’s English Teacher won’t be found on most families’ back-to-school shopping lists.
Charlie Croker is Atlanta’s biggest real estate mogul. He has it all: a private jet, a beautiful wife … and the reputation of being a far better man than he is.
Each of those status symbols? Little more than a farce. The jet disguises Charlie’s crippling debt. The picture of him posing with his wife on the cover of a magazine hides the fact that he went through a pretty nasty divorce before. And his reputation only exists because he’s managed to hire actually good people to work for him.
Charlie isn’t a man who pays his bills or cares about charity. The stronger his Southern accent, the more vulgar his speech. And his family has only ever served to bolster his career.
Well, the bank has finally seen through that charade. And now Charlie’s bill has come due—to the tune of more than a billion dollars.
Charlie can see his world crumbling around him. But he’s determined to beat the system. Racial tensions are high in Atlanta, and he just so happens to be in a prime spot to manipulate the socio-political uproar in his favor.
But will Charlie’s tactics get him out of trouble or just make things worse for the whole city?
Raymond Peepgrass, a banker determined to bring Charlie to heel, says that Charlie cloaks himself in decency in order to throw people off his vulgar scent. And I’d say the same of this show.
Netflix’s A Man in Full cloaks itself with a talented cast and intriguing storyline to make viewers think this might be worth a watch. But it’s a crass, vulgar and graphic series that most folks would be better off avoiding.
Language is profane, with dozens of uses of the f-word. But Charlie especially has a habit of using crude sexual descriptions to get his point across—a trait he’s warned about more than once, to no avail. Sex itself also makes several appearances, with a bit a nudity as well.
And then of course, there’s violence.
Someone gets murdered early on—we’re told who but not why or by whom. A sexual assault that occurred a few decades years prior to the events of this show serves as the blackmail Charlie needs to get himself out of trouble. And a Black man is wrongly arrested for assaulting a white police officer. (The cop in question had been beating the guy; the Black victim acted out of instinct, knocking the cop out in a single hit.) And this, unfortunately, sparks some other racially-charged plot points in the show.
In my opinion, A Man in Full is indeed full … of just about every foul content concern a viewer could have. And families would just be better off leaving it alone.
Charlie Croker becomes desperate when the banks he owes money to come to collect.
A couple has sex, and we see man’s bare rear. There are many crude sexual and anatomical references. A woman sues a man for child support after he gets her pregnant, and she graphically details their sexual encounter.
Many women wear revealing or formfitting outfits. Several men and women wear tight clothes to an exercise class. Two women gossip about a younger woman who wears a semi-transparent shirt without undergarments.
Charlie attempts to use his wife’s beauty to distract a group of bankers from what his lawyer is saying. That ploy fails. And when the lead banker dresses Charlie down, Charlie gets offended and threatens the man for speaking to him like that in front of his wife.
We see a body crumpled on the floor as the narrator talks about death. Roger White, Charlie’s lawyer, learns that Charlie may know the name of a woman who was assaulted by a man running for mayor.
Conrad (the husband of Charlie’s secretary) resists having his car towed after the vehicle is pushed into a no-parking zone by another car. Conrad isn’t violent, just passionate. But seemingly because he is Black and the ticketer is white, police are called. He gets into his car to avoid the police and stop his car from being moved, but one of the officers (both of whom are white) yanks him out of the vehicle and begins to hit him. Conrad, acting on instinct, turns around and punches the man once, unfortunately knocking him unconscious. Then Conrad is arrested.
People drink throughout the episode. A man smokes cigars on several occasions.
Charlie is more than a billion dollars in debt and hasn’t made a single effort to pay his debtors back. His attitude is unapologetic, and he makes it clear that he thinks he’s too important to follow the rules like everyone else, blaming others for his own mistakes. And while the actions of the bank as a whole are not unwarranted, two bankers delight in Charlie’s misfortunes.
Rudeness is common. A man is described as the “worst kind of racist.” Charlie calls Raymond “Mr. Peepy” and is condescending to him, inciting Raymond’s ire. Several people dance at a street party, blocking cars from passing. We hear a man’s neighbors screaming at each other through the apartment walls.
When Charlie holds Roger responsible for getting him out of trouble, Roger begins to question whether he wants to continue working for Charlie. He’s also offended when his old fraternity brother asks him for help in blackmailing a politician.
The f-word is used more than 20 times, and the s-word is used at least 10 times as well. God’s name is abused four times (twice paired with “d–n”), and Christ’s name is abused once. We also hear uses of “a–,” “b–ch,” “d–n,” “h—,” “p-ss” and “p–ck.” Charlie also uses a harsh slang term for the male anatomy in a business conversation, and he’s lectured for speaking inappropriately. He doesn’t care and continues his curse-strewn rant.
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.
Filled with profanity and LGBT content, FX’s English Teacher won’t be found on most families’ back-to-school shopping lists.
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