Brian Jordan Alvarez isn’t trying to start a riot, but if he were, he’d at least want it to be a funny one. Don’t get him wrong, the creator and star of the new FX high school comedy “English Teacher” wants his series to be a conversation starter, but in taking on tough topics, he’s mostly concerned with making audiences come together and laugh. Take the show’s most recent episode, “School Safety,” which deals with the school, located in the suburbs of Austin, starting a gun club on campus. Obviously, guns in schools are no laughing matter, but in a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Alvarez admitted he and his writer’s staff knew there was humor to be mined in the varied reactions to a club like this taking root and how those reactions lead to even more outrageous outcomes.
“We had to figure out, how can we really talk about this and how can we be so funny that you’re dying laughing? And really, maybe it’s obvious, but it’s just a matter of finding beats that make sense and story turns that make sense,” said Alvarez. “Luckily we have these brilliant writers, especially Dave King — he’s one of the first writers that got added to ’English Teacher’ — and you just start figuring out these turns and how to surprise the audience, and how to surprise yourself.”
In trying to take on as sensitive a subject as firearms, let alone their place in a school setting, Alvarez explained that one of his main goals was to investigate “activism as a concept,” in that his character is taking a stance without really having a personal understanding of guns.
“Evan is doing something symbolic in this episode, meaning he’s trying to get rid of a gun club for the sake of the concept of guns,” Alvarez said to THR. “We don’t want to tell you how to interpret that, but what’s interesting about it to me is activism can sometimes feel — let me say this carefully. Sometimes activism has to be on a symbolic level. You have to do something almost as a gesture to show what you mean, even if it doesn’t exactly make perfect sense.”
As far as future issues Alvarez would like to cover, he believes not every episode has to have a political undertone, but instead deal with real issues facing teachers and students today, however big or small.
“One thing — this maybe isn’t as interesting as I wish it were — but there is this thing that I found out from real friends who are teachers, where it’s actually common to make your students put their phones in a cubby thing on the wall,” said Alvarez. “So I was thinking we could play with that, with this idea of the kids trying to get around that rule. I look at these kids now, and I’m like, of course they’re going to have phones. The world is on your phone, I’m on my phone so much.”
The first four episodes of FX’s “English Teacher” are currently available to stream on Hulu.
