English Teacher, created by Brian Jordan Alvarez, is a show with no interest in sentimentality. Take, for example, the opening scene of the season finale, “Birthday.” A student comes out to Evan (Alvarez’s titular teacher) hoping that, as a gay teacher, Evan will have valuable advice on how to share the news with his friends and family. But Evan offers no such wisdom; instead, he’s baffled to even be asked. “You’re scared to come out? It’s 2024! Just go in the hall and say ‘I’m gay!’ Just go and get advice from kids your age.” We’ve been conditioned to expect on-screen depictions of coming out to be tender and emotional. (See, for starters: Sex Education, Atypical, Bojack Horseman, Never Have I Ever, Glee, Schitt’s Creek, and Heartstopper.) But English Teacher isn’t concerned with our expectations; it cares about what’s happening right now.
This chaotic and unpredictable energy fuels not only English Teacher as a show but Evan’s relationship with his on-again, off-again (and then back on-again) boyfriend Malcolm (Jordan Firstman). It’s the most exciting relationship on television right now—gay, straight, or otherwise—thanks to how refreshingly current and honest it feels.
Queer relationships on television are often so focused on acceptance over that very queerness that they end up being optimistic to the point of seeming unrealistic. The pivotal relationships in Schitt’s Creek and Heartstopper are charming, but they’re a fantasy. They’re an idealized version of contemporary homosexuality made to feel palatable to straight audiences, as well as a valuable wish-fulfillment for queer people who weren’t able to live out these relationships in public in previous years. These shows have a sweet but limited view of a healthy, modern, gay relationship, devoid of the horniness, anxiety, and free thinking that characterizes many current relationships. English Teacher’s starting point is a world in which that wish has already been granted. Despite homophobia and the persistence of ugly anti-LGBTQ legislation, you can be openly gay in America, whatever that entails. For this show, it entails being stupid, being wrong, and being messy. People aren’t easy, and neither is English Teacher.
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Malcolm and Evan exhibit all these characteristics and then some. The first episode of English Teacher finds Evan in hot water over a classroom kiss with Malcolm, who recently resigned to get a better paying job. Their partnership has existed in a sort of indefinable nebula since then, and they’ve agreed to just be friends. There are plenty of ways to express love beyond batting your eyelashes and sweet longing stares, and their relationship is largely manifested in chaotic conversations, messy sex with each other, and discussions of other men they’d like to have sex with. There’s a fluidity and openness to their boundaries and romance, but also a sense of unease as Evan is in a constant state of flux about his job as a teacher and the financial insecurity that comes with it, as well as what he wants from Malcolm.
In “Birthday,” the last of the season’s eight episodes, Evan is turning 35, and Malcolm plans a surprise party for him at the local gay bar. Evan is horrified to see his colleagues—he’s wearing a tight leather t-shirt and bold yellow short shorts—and the bar is having a leather night for which the televisions are all playing pornography. Evan has a big decision to make as he embarks on the back half of this decade: Will he choose Malcolm or Harry (Langston Kerman), another gay teacher at his school who’s in an open relationship of his own? The decision comes to fruition during a big karaoke performance.
It’s reminiscent of the climactic moment in Schitt’s Creek where David (Dan Levy) performs a lip sync of Tina Turner’s “Simply the Best” for his boyfriend Patrick (Noah Reid) as a declaration of love in their comfortable, monogamous relationship. It’s beautiful, touching, and tugs effectively at the heartstrings. It’s also adheres to the beats of a more familiar and typically heterosexual love story. In English Teacher, Evan watches a drunk Malcolm perform karaoke (Mazzy Star’s “Fade Into You”) during the party. Mid-song, he shouts that Evan’s a loser because he won’t join him on stage, which Evan laughs off. To make Evan jealous, Malcolm brings Harry into the performance. Evan says he’s not jealous—they’re all just friends! But his other friend, the school gym teacher Markie (Sean Patton), thinks otherwise: “If I’ve learned nothing else in your world it’s that there’s no such thing as just friends,” he tells Evan, in one of Markie’s many incisive observations. Inspired, Evan comes up on stage and embraces Malcolm, kissing him passionately. “So you’re like, in love with me now?” Malcolm asks him. “Yeah, that’s a possibility,” Evan responds. It’s not sentimental per se, but there’s a rawness to the emotion, thanks to Alvarez and Firstman’s performances, that gives this pivotal moment weight.
After choosing Malcolm, Evan leaves the bar with his friends, with Malcolm nowhere to be found. Turns out someone at the bar invited Malcolm to an orgy. That’s met with surprise by Evan’s colleagues, but not by Evan. “I accept him for who he is,” Evan says earnestly. It’s not a front—when Malcolm rejoins Evan and company in the backyard later that night, Evan is genuinely interested in whether the orgy went well, even asking if it was at a warehouse or an apartment (it was in a Home Depot stock room). They cuddle up on a deck chair and share a kiss to end the season. There’s a compelling frankness to the conversation, and indeed to English Teacher. It’s raw, outrageous, shocking, complicated, and problematic. It’s human.
