The second season of the TVLand sitcom Teachers premiered last night.
The show consists of several educators who deal with the really outrageous situations set in a school. This show wouldn’t be on my radar unless I was suggested to review it for this very site. That being said, it’s easy to see why many who are in the field may like the show, as it is supremely raunchy and just goes off the rails as far as comedy.
However, any ability to connect the show to real life factors are just not there. To begin with, the teachers showcased are not the best of employees. They don’t call in sick when they are out, they go on dating websites during the actual class day, and one is even seen twerking in front of 8 year olds. It is probably assumed that nothing here is supposed to be grounded in reality, but still, it is sadly not even funny in what it tries to accomplish.
The episode begins with a musical montage, in which we are reintroduced to the main characters through song. It ends up being all a dream, and the teachers are thrust into the first day back to work after summer. They all sit around in the break room swapping stories, stating words that should probably be left to after school hours.
One of the teachers finds out in the break room that she has to deal with a group of “rough around the edges” kids, and those students buckle so quickly to their new role model it’s almost laughable. No set of young minds would ever be so respectable, especially when they are portrayed as that tough.
As the show progresses, a bit that actually rings true is that the art teacher has been given a shopping cart to push around her supplies for art class. This is an element that the show gets right when comparing it to classrooms in actuality; art is sadly a dying form of education due to budget cuts and a bigger focus on more academic content.
Another one of the main characters is shifted to a trailer to teach her classes, which has a running gag of her and students transistioning to a lifestyle much like those who live in a trailer. The joke begins when the air conditioning doesn’t work, which is something that, sadly, can be a problem for any teacher.
That’s the only two moments that actually can be pulled out of the fire that is this season premiere. Teachers is extremely unfunny, and not at all memorable. The educators portrayed here are caricatures, which would be fine if there was more substance here. The comedic aspects might have worked better if they were grounded in reality, but the ability to keep things entertaining fall flat with bad line deliveries and worse even, not a soul we can root for. These are not the kind of teachers that make for television.
One could only guess how it made it to a second season. It gets a failing grade.
