Abbott Elementary – Juice

By starrymag | October 26, 2022

By: Atiya Irvin-Mitchell

 

 

Jacob (Chris Perfetti) is having a rough day. He has a problem and Ava (Janelle James) is the only person he can go to. For ethical reasons he rejects the notion of a surveillance state, but he really needs to know if there are any surveillance cameras near the bike rack because a bike’s been stolen. Ava says the cameras don’t point that way and also wonders who’d steal a little kid’s bike? It seems that it wasn’t a kid’s bike as it belonged to Jacob. Of course, Ava finds this hilarious, but offers to file a report on Jacob’s behalf.

 

Jacob starts trying to describe the thief but gets uncomfortable because he worries that he’s contributing to racial profiling due to the bike thief’s afro. Ava also finds this hilarious and, in the end, Jacob just drops the issue and then leaves his helmet in the lost and found.

 

Elsewhere it’s the cafeteria’s annual meeting. They have one every year and technically it’s open to every staff member. The reality is they just want teachers to butt out and leave them to their own devices. Janine (Quinta Brunson), of course, missed the memo. She makes the pitch for adding a different kind of juice to the menu. But why? Well, that is because the juice she wants the kids to drink has a few more ounces but less sugar.

 

Later Janine goes to tell Barbara (Sheryl Lee Ralph), Melissa (Lisa Ann Walter) and Gregory (Tyler James Williams) about her idea but they’re less hyped. Barbara says there’s nothing wrong with the juice the kids are drinking now. Janine circles back to the more juice for less sugar fact. And Melissa says that the teacher’s being allowed at the meeting is just a formality as none of the cafeteria staff actually wants them there. But, Janine is determined to push forward.

 

Remember Melissa’s new teacher’s aid Ashley (Keyla Monterroso Mejia)? She’s not as helpful as Melissa has hoped she would be. She plays games during class, falls asleep and is as disruptive as a first grader without the protective layer of cuteness that would typically keep Melissa from getting mad. Melissa goes to Ava and says she wants a new teacher’s aid because Ashley has the attention span of a gnat. She hasn’t done anything Melissa has asked of her. Ava, who is in the middle of selling some personal clothing through her social media, declines to fire Ashley. In order to fire someone, you need a documented pattern of bad behavior. However, much to Melissa’s surprise, she agrees to come into the classroom and evaluate Ashley. Melissa is both confused and thankful.

 

Now, how about those juices? Janine is all set to do a victory lap. The kids love the juices and nothing bad has happened. Janine wants Barbara to admit she was right, but Barbara wouldn’t really know because she opted out. A little while later Janine is trying to teach when kids begin to interrupt wanting to go to the bathroom. With so many in need of the lavatory, Janine decides to take the whole class. She runs into Gregory and finds out that he’s having the same issue. Apparently, two more ounces of juice is a lot for a small human, so everyone has a go.

 

At first Janine is trying to see the positives. This means everyone is super hydrated. That is until the toilet breaks and they’re down a bathroom and still have a lot of overhydrated kids. Mr. Johnson (William Stanford Davis) shows up and there’s bad news and more bad news. There’s another bathroom the kids can use, but it’s the upstairs one. Unfortunately, a staircase away is a lot for kids under the age of nine. Barbara swings by and says she’d say she tell Janine that she told her so, but she’s busy.

 

Janine says she could not have foreseen that changing juices would lead to this very specific situation. Barbara reminds Janine though that she did say, “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.” With regard to the broken bathroom, however, Gregory remembers that Barbara has her own just for the kindergarteners. Very reluctantly Barbara agrees to let Gregory and Janine’s kids use it – only in cases of emergencies.

 

Melissa is still trying to get Ashley to aid her and it’s not going super well. She’s named the skeleton Meg the Skeleton and distracts the kids by having it do a dance. The good news is that the kids are entertained. The bad news is that not a ton of learning is happening. That is when Ava arrives, which doesn’t help. She realizes that Ashley bought something from her side business and immediately likes her. So, now they’re besties and Melissa is even more annoyed. Maybe Ashley hasn’t gone through four different schools this year because she’s high in demand.

 

Barbara is trying to teach the little ones about seasons when Gregory comes in with a student. Then, Janine comes in with a student. Next, Ashley comes in to use the bathroom. It gets distracting fast between the interruptions and the big kids wanting to say hi and cuddle with the little kids. The inter-grade solidarity is cute, but it means Barbara doesn’t ever get an answer to her question about what you should wear during the Winter. That is when one of Barbara’s students has a bathroom emergency. So, she nixes the bathroom use because it’s unfair that her students should have to be punished for the irresponsible juicing.

 

It seems Ava is not going to fire Ashley. She thinks Ashley is fun and she’s helping her run her latest side hustle. Yet Melissa points out that she doesn’t know where Ashley is half the time and she’s making it harder to teach. Ava calls her up because she’s getting water for her clothes steamer. Melissa tells Ashley to please go back to prepping in her classroom.

 

All the kids, save the kindergarteners, have been banished to the second floor. The plumber won’t be able to come for days, and Janine admits this is so inconvenient even that she can’t find a silver lining to the situation. So, her wheels start turning and she comes to a conclusion: it’s Barbara’s free period. Janine explains to Gregory that they would help Barbara if she was in need. Therefore, if they quickly and quietly took their kids to the kindergarten bathrooms she’d never have to know.

 

Easier said than done. When the kids are all lined up at first there’s no Barbara in sight. However, of course she appears and isn’t thrilled. Scratch that – she’s angry and only holding back from full on yelling because she doesn’t want to yell in front of the kids. At any rate she scolds Janine and Gregory that she distinctly told Janine and Gregory that her bathroom was off limits. They try to explain, but Barbara reiterates that there was nothing open to interpretation about her saying no. Janine says they’ll leave, and it’ll be like they were never there. That is until Barbara’s bathroom breaks.

 

The kindergarten bathroom breaking somehow took out all the second floor toilets. Now, Mr. Johnson says the only working bathroom is on the third floor. Barbara is more than a little fed up now. She says that taking her kids up and down the stairs to trek all the way up to the third floor was exactly what she needed.

 

Elsewhere in the teacher’s lounge Jacob and Ashley are talking about music. Jacob likes her, but Barbara still not so much. Ashley offered some theories about how “Grindin’” by Clipse was the cups song way before Pitch Perfect came out, but she didn’t do anything on the to-do list that Melissa gave her. Ashley says she’ll do it and quickly forgets when Ava wants to catch up. Poor Melissa.  She doesn’t get what Ashley’s deal is as she can help Ava run a Ponzi scheme, but she won’t help Melissa run her classroom. Jacob suggests that Melissa try and speak her language, but Melissa doesn’t love the idea.

 

Janine is out of breath after walking to the third floor. She admits she was wrong about the juice and to not accept Barbara’s earlier “no.” Still she says it would be helpful for Barbara to explain why she’s shutting some things down every once in a while. Barbara says she deals with kindergarteners who ask “why” every five seconds, so she doesn’t want to deal with it from twenty somethings. Janine says she gets it, but they do need to know why. She says the younger teachers need her to show her work so they can figure things out. Janine wants to know if Barbara ever had a mentor. The answer is no as Barbara had to figure everyone out on her own.

 

Moving on Janine says it sucks that the district won’t send someone out to help because they still have one working bathroom, so it’s not an emergency. That gives Barbara an idea. She tells Janine to watch her class and heads downstairs. Barbara goes into Melissa’s room and asks to borrow her baseball bat. Melissa doesn’t ask why, but she just wants Barbara to wipe off any fingerprints when she’s done.

 

When Barbara comes upstairs wielding a baseball bat Janine and Gregory are a little alarmed. Barbara goes into the bathroom, and we hear some banging and then she comes out and tells Janine to call the district. Now the situation is an emergency. Then, reluctantly Barbara admits she has a point, and she agrees to have an office hour, emphasis on hour, once a month.

 

Melissa decides to take Jacob’s advice. She engages with Ashely and says she can set aside time to teach the kids a fun thing every day, but only if she grades some tests first. It works. Then, it’s the end of the day and we learn that not everyone at school has been feeling the bathroom woes as Ava has a private bathroom in the basement.