Abbott Elementary EPs Talk Season 4's 'Breather' Finale, Janine And Gregory's Latest Relationship Milestone
Warning: The following contains spoilers for the Abbott Elementary Season 4 finale. Proceed accordingly.
After a tumultuous season that saw Abbott Elementary lose its principal, the ABC comedy celebrated the end of the school year by going on a field trip to Philadelphia's Please Touch Museum in Wednesday's Season 4 finale.
Gregory's dad, Martin (guest star Orlando Jones), joined the excursion as a chaperone, and Janine was determined to impress her boyfriend's dad, whom she was meeting for the first time. Initially, Janine appealed to Martin's no-nonsense side, but it was when she got silly with her students that she truly won over Martin, who got in on the fun, much to Gregory's surprise. During a heart-to-heart, Martin shared with Gregory that Janine reminded him of his late wife, who would often tell him to relax. So, inadvertently, Janine brought father and son closer together.
Elsewhere, O'Shon gifted Ava with some truly gaudy earrings that "even Janine would return," she told the camera crew. Thankfully, O'Shon righted his wrong, showing Ava the earrings he, originally, wanted to buy her, which didn't meet her minimum price threshold. But they did reassure a relieved Ava that O'Shon does have taste. Then, she even let him hold her hand at the museum!
Below, executive producers Justin Halpern and Patrick Schumacker explain why they went for a quieter finale this season and reveal the Janine and Gregory story that never got off the ground.
TVLINE | There wasn't a big cliffhanger in this finale, but a lot of humor, a lot of small but important relationship moments instead. Talk to me about what your goals were with this season finale and what you wanted to accomplish.
JUSTIN HALPERN | Over the last few years, we've had a big sort of Gregory and Janine moment in our season [finales], and in talking it through with [creator/star] Quinta [Brunson], it just felt like this season, they were together as a couple. We didn't have any, like, large life choices that they were needing to make, and we didn't want to, inorganically, rush to one, either. I feel like we've done a good job just sort of taking [their] relationship very slowly and organically in the way that it might actually look in real life. And so, we were like, "Oh, what if we kind of end this in a place where it's tangentially related to this relationship, and the audience will think this is going to be a finale about the relationship?" But then we sort of subvert their expectations to land in, like, a really satisfying emotional character place for both Janine and Gregory, and to learn something about Gregory maybe we haven't learned before. And for the other teachers, we were like, "Oh, this is the fourth season. Like, we literally have had kids on the show who started in Janine's class and are now in Jacob's class." It felt kind of sad. So we thought, maybe, as teachers, you go through that. You have kids that are about to leave, and you hope you've done enough. So that was where we were coming from.
PATRICK SCHUMACKER | I think, also, we had, like, a four-episode arc that was pretty intense with Ava and what happened to her. So I think this finale almost acted as like a coda or like a respite from the intensity of the Ava arc and the golf club and all of that, and having kind of put a bow on that, this was sort of like a breather a bit. It was like a field trip.
TVLINE | Going back to Janine and Gregory, was there any discussion or talk of, "Well, should they move in together? Should we do a proposal?"
HALPERN | No proposal talk. We definitely did not talk about that. But we did talk about, like, what are the natural progressions of that relationship, and obviously, moving in together was something discussed. But there's so much fun stuff that is in between that and where they're at now, and it just felt like we would be rushing it in order to hit a plot point, and we just don't do that in the show. We just have always kind of, I feel like, hopefully successfully, let the character arcs dictate what we're going to do, as opposed to saying, "Hey, we're going to build at this moment and then force the character arcs there." So, in discussion, it just felt like, no, that's not where we're at right now.
SCHUMACKER | Early on in the season, we had talked about doing an episode where Janine sees Gregory's apartment for the first time, and we just kept finding other stories that we wanted to tell more desperately than that, and then we got to a point where it was like, "Well, now we can't tell that story because, clearly, she's been to his apartment. Or they've been together for a decent amount of time. If she hasn't seen his apartment at this point, there's something up." So we just, like, punted and punted and punted. So that will probably never get told because we don't really do flashbacks in this show. [Laughs]
TVLINE | Meeting your significant other's parent is an important step, and obviously, what Gregory's father says about his wife and their relationship means a lot to Gregory. How's that going to shape Janine and Gregory going forward next season?
HALPERN | We sort of try to sometimes use the sitcom tropes of, like, you meeting somebody's parents for the first time, and then subvert them to tell a story that we find even more interesting. So, for us, it was like, yeah, let's make this scene for the audience in the first act. Like, this is going to be a story about, like, will Gregory's dad like her or not like her? And instead, let's use those expectations to surprise people that this is a story about a guy who has never really understood his dad and never got to see his dad, really, with his mom and to understand how they were together and how that informed the way that he behaves.
SCHUMACKER | Janine is a character in the show who's clearly, like, the glue that holds everybody together, and oftentimes, that's kind of, intentionally, a thing that she does. But I think unintentionally even, it just happens because of who she is, and inadvertently in this episode, I think Gregory clearly became a lot closer to his father, and it was because of Janine and who she is. So that was something else that was really important for this episode.
TVLINE | Ava and O'Shon are still going strong, despite his initial jewelry faux pas. What are you enjoying about that relationship? And what are you looking forward to exploring with the two of them?
HALPERN | Those two performers have really fun and different energy, and you don't see a lot of characters on our show be able to sort of get to Ava, to have her, like, care, and then reassess her own behavior without having to, like, chastise her, which he doesn't do. He's sort of so no bulls–t, and Matthew Law is such a fun performer. He brings a POV that didn't exist on the show. That's what we usually try to do with guest stars... . Matthew came to the table read, and there was this, like, bit that was all based on timing, and we sort of assumed, at the table read, it's not going to land, but it'll land when we actually shoot it, because we'll have a chance to really talk to the performers. [At] the table read, they're kind of coming in, they've read it once, and those two, in that bit, just f–king destroyed at the table read. They got the bit, and they did the bit better than we could've ever hoped to have done the bit, had we explained the bit to them. It was like, "Oh, yeah, these two totally get who their characters are." They're both so funny and skilled. So I'm really excited to just play more stuff with them. I love them together.
SCHUMACKER | That bit that Justin's referencing is the episode where Gregory and Janine are trying very hard to play matchmaker with Ava and O'Shon, and O'Shon just takes it upon himself to go into Ava's office and ask her out, and it was that moment where he's just like, "Hey, you want to go out?" "Yeah." "Cool." [Laughs] And it happened so fast in the edit, but that timing was how they did it at the table read already, so we didn't aid them through editing in terms of the comedic timing. They just had it down from the beginning, inherently.
TVLINE | Matthew was cast in a Netflix series recently, but it sounds like you are hopeful that he will be back next season in some capacity.
HALPERN | I am very hopeful.
TVLINE | The scene where the teachers impersonate each other in the finale was so fun. How much of that was improvised versus scripted? And what did the cast think of that idea?
HALPERN | They loved it.
SCHUMACKER | Yeah, the cast was super game. Here's the thing: It wasn't improvised...because the idea behind it was that the kids wrote the play, and so, we, literally, had cue cards because the characters were seeing the dialogue for the first time. Obviously, the actors knew it ahead of time, but the characters were seeing it for the first time. So pretty much, with the exception of natural reactions and things like that, just the physicality of it, it was pretty much word-perfect, only because it needed to be in the scene. We're not always a word-perfect show. We do have some opportunities to kind of deviate. We don't do it a lot, but especially with that scene, given the context, and then also just the fact that we were on location... We had hundreds of kids from Philadelphia, most of whom had never been on a set before, and so, time was of the essence, and wrangling all those kids in that scene, it was chaos, until it wasn't. [Laughs] We sort of needed to be, like, word-perfect in those scenes just to make sure that we made our day.
HALPERN | The funniest part about that is Lisa Ann Walter is actually a really exceptional impressionist. She's very good, and she's also a very good singer, but on our show, her character is not good at impressions and is kind of a crazy singer. I'm really impressed by Lisa's performance, always, because she could do a spot-on of, basically, anybody we asked her to do. She's that good, but she then takes it and kind of makes it two steps off, because that's what we're asking her to do in the scene. Sometimes, when we were going through that scene, she was like, "OK, wait. I got to take it like this, and I got to move it like that." But she's actually a very skilled impressionist.
SCHUMACKR | Her doing Jacob is, like, an SNL character waiting to happen.
TVLINE | Her waving her arms around cracked me up so much.
HALPERN | So funny. Lisa and Sheryl [Lee Ralph], I don't think they get enough credit for their physical comedy, because both of them are very good physical comedians. Like, really, really good. They're also such good performers that I think people focus on that, but they're really good physical comedians. We give them all kinds of crazy s–t to do all the time, and they pull it off, and it's stuff that you can't give to just anybody.
Abbott Elementary fans, what did you think of the season ender? Grade it below, then hit the comments!