Category: tv shows

Abbott Elementary, season 3, episode 1: Career Day Part 1

A few weeks ago, I tuned into ABC to watch season 3 of Abbott Elementary. However, I didn’t know that I had missed a couple of episodes and wanted to catch up. Honestly, I laughed, I (almost) cried, and just was so glad that they decided to have a third season of the show.

There were some pretty hilarious moments in this episode. At the beginning, everyone notices that Ava, the principal of Abbott Elementary, is not acting like herself. She is following school policies to the point where she doesn’t participate in any shenanigans or act silly, and to the point where she takes away the teachers’ lunch period so that they are working all the time. Jacob, Mr. Johnson, Melissa, Gregory and Barbara all devise ways to get Ava back to her goofy self, so they try to give her stuff she likes. Jacob clumsily throws a pile of money on her desk because Ava likes money, but Ava doesn’t fall for it. Mr. Johnson tries to entice her with tickets to see Usher in concert while wearing an Usher T-shirt and trying to dance like Usher. That doesn’t work either. So, they use Gregory to try and seduce Ava, because in the earlier seasons Ava was always trying to flirt with Gregory even when she knew it was inappropriate and he didn’t like it. They have Gregory stand in the doorway to her office with his muscles flexed and have him talk to her in a sexy seductive voice about how her rules are “so rigid and hard,” and she looks up from her work and tells him to put his arms down (I busted up so hard when she called him “Jeremy Allen Black,” which is a reference to the actor Jeremy Allen White.) I laughed at the scene where they finally get Ava to go to the gym and then Mr. Johnson blasts the song “Back That Azz Up” by Juvenile. I love how Barbara called City Girls “The Town Women.” (Ava loves listening to City Girls and when she became a more serious principal and stopped cutting up, she stopped listening to City Girls for a while.)

Melissa also faces a huge decision in her relationship with Garrett, the vending machine guy at Abbott. They hit it off really well and he wants to get married to her, but Melissa doesn’t want to get married again because her last marriage wasn’t great. Garrett keeps hinting at them getting married, such as putting a Ring Pop in the vending machine, but Melissa tells him that she just does not want to get married. During Career Day, they bring in a marketing person from The Philadelphia Eagles team to talk about marketing, and the kids find it boring, so the person has Jalen Hurts call in on a virtual call to visit the class. Everyone is super excited, but then Garrett asks the marketing person if he could sneak in a way for him to propose to Melissa, so he has Jalen Hurts make an announcement about Garrett’s proposal to Melissa, with everyone watching the proposal in all the classrooms, and Garrett gets on his knee and proposes. Melissa is shocked, but she ends up saying “No,” and they have to go outside the school to talk about it. They really love each other, but in the end, Melissa didn’t want to get married, so they broke up. It was really sweet when they hugged even though it was a sad moment for both of them. When Melissa returns to her classroom, she is wiping away tears, and Jalen Hurts (Jason Kelce and Brandon Graham also make cameos. I’m not very knowledgeable about football, so I had to look up the names of the other players making cameos on the show) tells her that he respects her right to not marry and that she did what she thought was right.

Janine also faces a major decision herself. Manny, who works for the school district, offers her a fellowship to work for the school district. It is a great opportunity, but the only thing is that Janine would be away from her classroom for most of the time, and as a dedicated teacher who loves her students, it would be hard for her to be away from them for that long. Janine tells Manny that she appreciates the offer, but she turns it down. Jacob feels sad that he didn’t get the fellowship, and at first when Janine acts like it’s no big deal, Jacob tells her that the fellowship is a huge deal. The teachers also are kind of lukewarm about how Manny and the other people working for the school district are trying to change how things are done at Abbott. In one part of the episode, the district gives Janine’s classroom iPads, and Janine is so pumped that Manny and his team gave them iPads for the students to use as learning tools. However, the students complain about how the iPads aren’t fully charged and how there aren’t enough chargers for each iPad, so Janine brings it up to Manny and he and the team say that they will take care of it. Manny also introduces himself to Mrs. Howard (Barbara) but at first she is lukewarm because it seems like he doesn’t actually care about making Abbott a better place even though he comes off that way, but Manny tells her that his mom was an educator and Barbara starts to have more respect for him. Janine then comes to Barbara, and she wants to seem pessimistic about what Manny and the other school district representatives are trying to do to change Abbott, but Barbara says that she has had a change of heart and that she is actually quite hopeful about the changes the district will implement at Abbott. Janine then asks her advice about whether she should go for the fellowship or not, especially because she would be away from her classroom a lot. Barbara tells her that if that is what will make her happy, then she should do it, and that she can always come back to Abbott after the fellowship is done.

Things get awkward, though, between Janine and Gregory. Ava catches them on camera (clearly, she is back to regular goofy Ava because that is something she would have totally done) and we see Janine and Gregory talking about what happened when they were on the museum field trip. In that episode, Janine felt that it would be best that she focused on herself and not try to start a relationship with Gregory, and she thought Gregory still had feelings for her. But this time, Janine thinks that she and Gregory should make it official and get back together since she isn’t seeing anyone, and he isn’t either. However, he tells her that he wanted to respect her decision to not be with him, and that after that he had moved on. This puts Janine in an awkward position because she assumed Gregory had feelings for her. Since season 1, Gregory has had a huge crush on Janine, but at the time she was dating Tariq, who she had been with since eighth grade. Gregory decided to start dating Amber, a mother of one of the students at the school, and by the time Janine had broken up with Tariq, Gregory was taken, leaving Janine feeling secretly heartbroken. Janine finds another person, Maurice, who is Gregory’s best friend, and they seem to be working out. However, even though they are seeing other people, Gregory and Janine still have feelings for each other, and they end up making out on evening. Gregory and Janine tell this to Maurice over dinner one evening, and Maurice breaks up with Janine. Janine feels bad about cheating on Maurice, so during the field trip that the class takes to a museum, Janine tells Gregory that she feels bad about what she did to Maurice and says that she needs to step back from being in a relationship for a while to spend time with herself. Now that Manny is in the picture, I wonder what is going to happen. I’m not sure if Manny respects Janine as just a coworker, or if he is secretly interested in being with her, and I wonder if Gregory is going to feel a way about it if Manny and Janine ever do get together.

Succession, season 4, episode 1 (“The Munsters”)

So I haven’t finished the final season of Succession yet, but I have about four more episodes to go, and it just gets more and more intense as I watch each episode. I thought I would just savor the show and watch an episode here, an episode there, maybe ration out this delicious chocolate cake of a show rather than decide “Fuck it” and pig out in one sitting. I did just that today. I can’t complain about staying home today because honestly this was a great day to finish off the show. I was too riddled with coughs and nausea to do much else, so I turned on my laptop and binge-watched a lot of Succession today. It’s definitely not a relaxing show by any means. But there is just something about the characters, the acting, the dialogue and the story that is just so captivating. Honestly, I kept forgetting that at the end of the day, it was Brian Cox and not Logan Roy or that it was Matthew MacFadyen and not Tom Wambsgans. Of course, there are actually people like the Roy family that exist in real life, media conglomerates who participate in illicit activities and all kinds of corruption. But man, the acting in this show had me hooked. Then again, there is something about binge-watching that provides a sort of escape from reality, which can also be unhealthy if I don’t do it in moderation and set limits.

In episode 1, “The Munsters,” Kendall, Roman and Shiv meet up to start a new media company called The Hundred because their dad told them in the last episode that they were on their own after he allowed Mattson to take over Waystar Royco, and that they had to “make their own fucking pile” of money instead of relying on their inheritance. However, they get bored and end up not going through with The Hundred, and they instead try to see if they can revive the deal with the Pierce media family because Logan is not backing down from acquiring Pierce’s media outlet, PGM. Naomi Pierce thinks Nan has lost interest in the deal, but the Roy kids convince her to persuade Nan to let them keep negotiating so they can acquire Pierce. It is also Logan’s birthday celebration, but he is not focused on all the birthday wishes and presents: he is thinking about the acquisition deal with Pierce.

Tom, meanwhile, isn’t sure what to do about him and Shiv. He is starting to see their marriage is falling apart, and Shiv just doesn’t seem to care because she is so busy dealing with business matters. Greg comes to Logan’s birthday party with a date, a young woman named Bridget, and he is so happy that he brought a date, but then Kerry, Logan’s assistant, admonishes Greg about letting Bridget into the party because she seems suspicious. Greg goes up to Tom during the party and is so pumped that they will continue to join forces as “The Disgusting Brothers,” two men who bang women and feel good about their sexual conquests and get up into all kinds of other shenanigans. Tom, however, is less enthused and tells Greg to curb his enthusiasm a little, especially because his date has been the talk of the party, and not in a good way. According to Tom, Bridget has done so many things unfitting for such a high-society event as Logan’s birthday party: her handbag is too large for people’s taste (well, Tom’s anyway), she uses the nice towels in the bathroom and they are sopping wet, she asks partygoers personal questions, and she wolfs down the canapes “like a famished warthog” (to be fair, that last insult stung, and I’m not even close with this Bridget woman.) Greg rolls his eyes and says that Bridget is just “another tick on the chart.” It turns out that Kerry and Tom were on to something, because Bridget did end up taking photos of the party and posting on social media, which she wasn’t supposed to do, and she tried to snap a photo with Logan. I didn’t suspect anything when she and Greg were talking with Willa and Connor about Connor’s presidential bid. I thought she was just being inquisitive and asking questions. But then Colin, the security guard for Logan, tells Greg that Bridget needs to leave the party because she posted these pictures on social media and now Colin will need to go through her phone. At that point, Greg realizes he can’t do much to change the situation and he doesn’t want to get himself or Bridget into any more hot water, so he backs off.

I have never heard that expression before, but it showed me how Tom has brought Greg over to the dark side, and Greg is starting to shove it in his mouth and eat every last morsel of this dark side. He is loving the idea that he is this free bachelor who can bang a woman and treat her as just another “tick on the chart.” Goodbye to his sweet sensitive personality, the awkward Greg who genuinely liked Comfrey and wanted to talk to her. No, Tom asked him in the season 3 finale if he wanted to make a “deal with the devil,” and Greg said yes. I had a feeling Greg was going to change when he started to move up in the company. He started to get a taste of that power, even when his grandpa Ewan warned him at the beginning that he needed to steer clear of the family because they were a “bunch of vipers” who were going to chew him up. Greg ends up fucking Bridget, and he goes up to Tom and whispers in his ear “The Disgusting Brothers…on motherfucking tour!” He then tells Tom about his sexual escapade with Bridget, and he thinks Tom will approve and cheer him on, like, “Yeah, man! You fucked that girl!” But instead, Tom tells Greg he is in huge trouble for having sex in Logan’s house with a woman who wasn’t technically invited to the party and was doing stuff at the party she wasn’t supposed to be doing. Tom is also not having the time of his life in his marriage to Shiv, so it’s hard for him to feel any sort of happiness for Greg’s pursuit of sexual shenanigans. When Shiv gets home, she finds that the house is dark and seems empty, but then she finds Tom in the bedroom. He wants to stay and talk about what went wrong with their marriage, but Shiv doesn’t have the emotional energy to talk about that and says they should divorce. It is really painful for Tom to hear this because his marriage to Shiv hasn’t been easy; it’s been filled with betrayal, heartbreak, poor communication and boundaries and other complex feelings.

There was a really deep scene in the episode that stuck with me. Logan gets sick of being at his birthday party and waiting for the deal with Nan Pierce to go through, that he and Colin go out to eat at a restaurant, and Logan starts to reflect on his own mortality and the philosophy of economics. I kind of resonated with his reflection on life and death because I had lately been pondering the meaning of my own life and about the issue of life and death in general. It made me think of the montage during the opening credits, which toward the end feature Logan Roy in his 30s or 40s sitting outside at a table quietly with his family, and then shows him in his 80s sitting with his public relations team in an office at happiness. Royco talking about business matters. Logan is shown from the back with a posture that indicates how jaded he feels about running this company, and wondering what his purpose in life is. Logan provided this comfortable wealthy life for his kids, and acquired all this wealth, and he has been in the business of negotiating for decades, but he is wondering at this point what the purpose of all of it is. It seems he just wants to have a human conversation where he talks about much deeper stuff, not just about investments and business but about what the purpose of life is, and what happens after people die. Confronting my own mortality is scary, to be honest, and I still hold on to a fear of death, but I have been reading writings by the late Buddhist philosopher, Daisaku Ikeda, and he gives insight into the Buddhist view of birth and death. I started reading these writings more seriously when I was going through a deep and dark depression and wondered whether my life had any value or meaning beyond waking up, eating breakfast, going to work, taking a shit, brushing my teeth, and going to bed on repeat. I even wondered if there was any point in living at all. But I think Buddhism has given me a much deeper way to look at life, and it’s helped me reflect on how I really want to live my life. That was just a little thought I had while watching this scene with Logan and Colin in the restaurant.

Episode Recap, Ted Lasso, season 2, episode 10 (Trigger Warning: suicide, mental health)

So I watched some more Ted Lasso with my family, and this episode got pretty heavy because they deal with the subject of death and go even deeper in Ted’s struggles with his mental health. The episode opens with Sam and Rebecca sleeping together and they wake up and Rebecca’s mom walks in and casually introduces herself to Sam, and Rebecca’s mom breaks the news that her husband died. It is very sad for everyone, but for Rebecca it is challenging to feel any kind of pain or sadness or grief for her father because she reveals to her mom that her dad cheated on her with another woman. But it turns out that Rebecca’s mom knew about the cheating, but she never left him. Rebecca hates her mother for loving her dad even after how poorly he treated her.

The entire team attends the funeral, but one person is missing. When Ted is getting ready to go to the funeral, he suddenly experiences a panic attack and reaches out to Dr. Sharon for help. The entire dialogue where Sharon has Ted open up about his father’s suicide was deeply painful because it really showed how at the beginning I thought Ted was just by nature this super cheery person who was always telling people to turn that frown upside down, but after listening to him open up to Sharon about what he was going through, it just reminded me to not assume that someone is ok just because they seem happy all the time, because a lot of people struggle with their mental health and don’t seek help for it, but I really appreciate that the show let me know that it’s perfectly okay to seek professional help or talk with a close friend or relative about what you are going through, because honestly no one can do it alone. There were many times I felt it was painful to talk about my depression or whenever I had suicidal thoughts I felt ashamed and I would often try to hide that I was suffering so much. But when I saw a therapist at first it was uncomfortable for me to talk about that painful stuff because I just wanted to bury it and be over with it, and frankly for a lot of people bringing up painful past experiences can be triggering so of course I’m sure it’s important to set boundaries even with your therapist. But when I saw a therapist and walked it through with her and joined a support group online, it really helped to know that I wasn’t alone in struggling with this.

The episode also grapples with the reality of life and death. Keeley is annoyed that she has to go to the funeral because she has to appear sad, and her and Roy end up talking about what happens when they die, and Roy makes all these morbid (no pun intended) jokes about death and dying, but later tells Keeley that he was making those jokes because he is terrified of death, and when his grandfather died he prayed and prayed to bring him back but nothing worked but this funeral made him realize that we only have one life and he wants to make the most of it. This reminded me of last month when I was visiting one of my friends in the hospital and she was nearing her death. She was in such high spirits and brought smiles to our faces, and when she passed away it was incredibly painful. No matter how much I prayed, I knew that the reality was that she was gone. And I have always been terrified of dying and death, but I think when I confronted the reality of death, it really forced me to reflect on my own life and what kind of person I wanted to become. I had become jaded, complacent and resigned about life, but as I really saw myself more clearly when I continued practicing Buddhism and studying about the Buddhist philosophy on life and death, I saw myself more clearly and realized that I wanted to change this apathetic attitude I held about life and appreciate this one life that I have. I’m honestly scared to know what taking my final breath will be like, but I hope I at least get to spend time with my loved ones and appreciate the time I have left in my life. I would honestly hate to die knowing I regretted stuff or left stuff unfinished or unsaid. I acted like, I shouldn’t have to think about death, I’m young! But having these conversations with my parents and with other SGI members about these heavy topics on life and death made me realize that yeah, I need to eventually (or soon) put together a will and think about my beneficiaries and what kind of stuff I want to accomplish before I leave this Earth (I’m hoping there will still be an Earth to call home, because global warming is getting worse and the planet is getting hotter.) And that the reality is that as much as I complain about the challenges of being young, my youth is going to go quickly and I will be older and taking on new responsibilities in life, whether that’s kids, career or even without kids, dealing with illness and death in my family and friendships.

Abbott Elementary, Season 1 episodes 5-9

I am currently watching this really great show called Abbott Elementary. It is really good, and I can see why it won so many awards at this year’s award shows. It was created by Quinta Brunson and it also stars Quinta Brunson as Janine, an elementary school teacher working with other teachers at a Philadelphia public school. It’s also really cool because Lisa Ann Walter is one of the teachers in the show, and she was in one of my favorite movies as a kid called The Parent Trap. At first I didn’t recognize it was her but then I read the credits and I was like, Oh my gosh, she was in The Parent Trap with Lindsay Lohan!

So in the last episode I watched, episode 9, Janine leads a step team but enlists Ava to join. If you haven’t seen the show, Ava is a hoot. She is always getting into shenanigans and is always hitting on one of the teachers, Gregory. She makes fun of Janine’s optimism and in the first episode she spent most of the school funding on a new billboard with her image imprinted on it. Janine thinks Ava is going to follow her routine and that she and Ava are going to perfectly get along, but one day during step class practice Ava comes in with burritos and a slushy, disrupting Janine from teaching the students. Instead of rehearsing the routine, the students sit with Ava and eat their food and gossip. When Janine was teaching the class and trying to be engaging, none of the students were engaged and none of them talked. Janine thought her routine was perfectly coordinated, but Ava thinks it’s boring and instead has the girls dance to a new routine to the song “Up” by Cardi B. Janine thinks that Ava’s routine isn’t traditional dance and gets upset. Meanwhile, the other teachers (Melissa, Jacob, and Barbara are bonding over their love of Philadelphia’s pizza over lunch) and when they ask Gregory about his favorite pizza, he doesn’t know what to say because he actually doesn’t like pizza. But to fit in with the group, he says that his hometown of Baltimore, has a distinct kind of pizza that is wet. Jacob actually goes out of his way to get Gregory the pizza he wants (seeing the soggy wet pizza grossed me out. Before I became vegan I was a Chicago deep-dish pizza kind of gal, and to this day even though I cannot eat it I still have fond memories.) but then Gregory admits that he doesn’t like pizza and everyone thinks he is out of his mind for not liking pizza. Gregory spends the rest of lunch alone in his car eating his boiled chicken sandwich, and the other teachers tell him that they were just joking and that it’s not a big deal that he doesn’t like pizza. On the day that the step team performs, Ava leaves the auditorium and Janine can’t find her, but then Ava tells her that she had a family emergency and her grandmother had an episode so she had to check in with her. Earlier, Janine was angry with Ava for leaving without telling her but then she apologizes for being angry with Ava and they agree to go with Ava’s routine. The show ends up being a success and while Ava and Janine don’t become best friends after this, it was really cool when at the end of the episode, Ava sees Janine step-dancing alone in the classroom and challenges her to a step dance-off.

Another episode I watched was one where Barbara and Jacob start a garden out in the school parking lot because they are dissatisfied with the quality of the school cafeteria food. They ask the cafeteria workers if they can improve the quality of the food, but the workers refuse and tell them they are doing the best with the resources that the school gave them. Barbara and Jacob bond over gardening and try to persuade Gregory to come garden with them, but he politely declines. He admits to the viewer (this show is in the style of a mockumentary) that he has not had a good history of gardening because his dad made him do intense yard work for most of his life and it wasn’t fun. When a little zucchini finally sprouts in the garden, Barbara and Jacob are overjoyed but then they show the cafeteria worker and the employee seems overjoyed but instead he throws the little zucchini in the trash and says he can’t feed all these children at the school with a little zucchini. Barbara soon regrets Jacob’s idealistic idea of starting this garden but then Jacob comes in the next day and shows Barbara sliced zucchini that he grilled and marinated by himself the night before, and so they excitedly show the cafeteria worker the aluminum pans of sliced zucchini that Jacob prepared, but then the cafeteria worker tells them that it’s a health code violation to use food that people made at home and not in the school cafeteria, and throws it in the trash right before Jacob and Barbara’s eyes. The cafeteria worker has Barbara try one of the chicken nuggets he made for the school cafeteria meals, and Barbara ends up not liking it but pretends like she does because she doesn’t want to hurt his feelings.

Another great part in that episode with the gardening is when Janine’s best friend from college, Sahar, is hired as a new volunteer art teacher at the school. At first Janine is super excited because her and Sahar did a lot of fun things together in college: they went to parties, hung out, everything that best friends do. But everything goes South when Melissa buys several copies of Peter Rabbit for the kids to read because this is their tradition every school year, and also it is the tradition to make paper plate bunnies, but Sahar thinks that is boring and moreover that Peter Rabbit is a tale about capitalism and she wants to have an installation that goes against the grain and breaks with tradition. Melissa is not having it, however, and tells Janine to not let Sahar do the installation. Janine reminds Sahar that they had to ask Melissa’s permission first before doing the installation but Sahar insists that her idea is better than Melissa’s and does the installation anyway. At first it seems perfectly innocent and it seems that Sahar listened to Melissa after all; the kids all made paper plate bunnies and Sahar created a fairy tale installation that looks beautiful. But when Melissa looks closer, she finds that Sahar tore apart the books and made the installation out of the pages of the books and she is, rightfully, furious because she bought those books with her own money. Melissa confronts Sahar and Janine tries to break the two of them up, and Janine confronts Sahar and tells her that what she did wasn’t okay, but Sahar gets defensive and accuses Janine of conforming with the school’s tradition. She quits the job and leaves the school. Janine feels guilty that she didn’t stop Sahar from doing what she did and apologizes to Melissa but Melissa forgives her and Janine repays her by buying new copies of the Peter Rabbit books for the kids with her own money.

Another episode is when Melissa has a student in her class transfer to Janine’s class. The student is named Courtney, and Janine thinks she can handle Courtney since on the surface Courtney seems sweet and innocent but then she finds out that Courtney loves giving the teachers a hard time. Ava lets Janine see Courtney’s records and finds that even Melissa, who is a tough-as-nails, no-nonsense teacher, wrote that Courtney was out of control and even wrote in the evaluation of Courtney that Courtney could have been a cult leader. In the class, Courtney pretends to be polite and nice, but then when the kids recite the Pledge of Allegiance they end up reciting a different version where “God” and the “America” in the United States of America are replaced with Courtney’s name. Courtney gets into other shenanigans like putting a mean note on the back of one of the students and, in what is the final straw for Janine, writes a swear word on the board in permanent marker for the students to read. Janine tells Melissa that she is really stressed out over trying to get Courtney to behave, and even though Melissa makes fun of Janine at first for not being able to handle Courtney, she gives Janine grace and lets her know that Courtney was difficult to handle even for her. At the beginning, Janine gets a C in a performance review she read online about her teaching and reads that the person writing the review thought Janine was inexperienced, and Melissa makes fun of her for it, so Janine tries to prove to Melissa that she didn’t deserve to get that C grade and that she is a better teacher than people think. But later she realizes that she is never going to be a perfect teacher, and Melissa reminds her that everyone is just doing their best at the school and that Janine can’t let one bad review affect her self-esteem.

I can kind of relate to this because even though I am no longer a teacher, I remember when I worked with preschoolers and when I first got there I lacked prior teaching experience (other than being a reading tutor for a month during high school to two boys from Korea) and it was really challenging. At first I got along well with the students but then I stopped going to work as much because every time I encountered a challenge I started to think I wasn’t a capable teacher. That same year I was also adjusting to the demands of college, burnout, and depression. I started calling out sick from work under the excuse that I had to study for my classes. What was really going on though, looking back, was that I didn’t feel like a capable teacher. When students fought with each other I felt I had no control over the situation. When students would act out, I felt I couldn’t do anything about it, so the more experienced teachers had to step in and handle the situation. While that was in the past of course, looking back this situation taught me that every workplace has its challenges and I cannot expect every day to be sunshine and rainbows. I also realized that confidence is something you build with experience. It’s not something you gain overnight. I am sure that I could have learned from the mistakes I made on the job and treated them as valuable lessons, but I think because I was so focused on wanting to be the perfect teacher I got really hard on myself whenever I made mistakes at work or didn’t meet my expectations.

Another episode I watched was about the gifted program that the teachers start at the school. This one really resonated with me because when I went to a new elementary school there was a gifted and talented program and I felt really bad that I didn’t get into the program and felt like I wasn’t smart compared to the gifted and talented students. This really had an impact on my self-esteem and of course, I am at a better place where I am working on not defining my worth by my achievements but looking back I still can’t believe I let not being in the gifted and talented program bring down my confidence. In this episode, a really smart kid transfers from another school to Abbott Elementary and Ava is praising his giftedness and constantly talking about how smart the kid is. Janine decides to start a gifted program and Jacob, who was in the gifted program when he was younger, decides to lead it, too. At first things are going well; Jacob brings a chicken to school to show the kids who got admitted to the gifted program how chickens hatch eggs. However, the students who aren’t in the gifted program feel left out, and Janine tries to remedy the situation by bringing the ones not in the gifted and talented program a display where they think there is a chicken hatching eggs inside the container. However, Janine and the students find out that what hatched from the eggs were snakes and everyone panics. Melissa admits to the camera that when she was picking up the chickens she called the person who supplied snakes instead of chickens. Janine thinks that it was a disaster and tries to clean up the situation, but Gregory suggests that they get rid of the gifted program because it made some the students feel left out. He explains from his own personal experience that when he was in school they had a gifted program but he didn’t get admitted into the program and it made him feel left out and made him feel that he wasn’t as smart as the gifted kids. He reminds Janine that everyone if gifted in some way, not just a few kids. Meanwhile, Barbara and Melissa are in the teacher’s lounge and the guy who restocks the vending machine asks Melissa out on a date. Melissa is still not over her divorce, though, and she politely declines and says she is busy. Even when she tells Barbara that she’s not ready, Melissa still thinks about the vending machine owner and how cute he is, and after talking with Barbara, she regains the confidence to take up the guy’s offer on taking her out on a date.

Downton Abbey, season 3, episode 1

The episode opens with Anna, the head lady’s maid of Downton, handling a huge leather briefcase on the cupboard. Gwen walks in and Anna asks what is in the briefcase. Gwen is at first ashamed to admit it, but then she shows Anna but asks that she keep it private. The thing in the briefcase happens to be a typewriter and Gwen confesses to Anna that she is taking shorthand and typewriting courses because she plans to leave service at Downton and become a secretary. Mrs. O’Brien walks in and tells them there is a task that needs to be done, but Anna and Gwen are standing in front of the typewriter so that Mrs. O’Brien cannot see it. Mrs. O’Brien tends to spill the beans on a lot of people at Downton Abbey, so she would of course tell everyone about the typewriter and that Gwen was leaving service. Meanwhile, Mary and Cora get word that Evelyn Napier is coming to Downton Abbey, and Cora is still trying to set up someone with Mary even if she doesn’t want Cora to pick a husband for her anymore. Mary is not interested in Matthew right now, so she is putting him off, but it’s hard for her to just make her own decision like that because Matthew Crawley is Robert Grantham’s cousin and heir to the estate at Downton. If Matthew marries Mary, then Cora would lose her inheritance.

Meanwhile, downstairs, Carson and the other staff members are looking at Gwen’s typewriter, which either Carson or someone managed to steal from Gwen. Gwen comes down and is upset because someone took her typewriter and showed everyone downstairs without her permission. Carson asks her why she is keeping a typewriter, and Gwen responds that she loves her job at Downton but she is planning to leave service to become a secretary, and that is why she has been taking a bunch of classes and keeping the typewriter. Carson asks her if there is anything wrong with working in service, and Gwen says no there isn’t, but she doesn’t picture herself working in service forever and wants a better-paying opportunity. People are divided about her decision to leave, and even during dinner, the Grantham family talks about it. Lord Grantham and Cora just want to make sure everyone is happy working at Downton, but Isobel thinks that if Gwen wants to find work elsewhere, she should. Sybil, one of the Grantham sisters, is one of the few who actually fully supports Gwen in her decision to leave (besides Anna, who is cool with Gwen ‘s decision to leave service since they are close friends) and after she overhears Carson telling her father that Gwen wants to be a secretary, she actually shows Gwen an ad in the papers for an open position as secretary in Thirsk. Gwen is doubtful that she will get it and thinks she should stay in service, but Sybil never gives up on her and explains to her that the reason she supports Gwen’s decision to find a new job as a secretary is because times are changing and women are demanding more equality and Sybil supports this reform and women’s rights.

The part with Gwen reminded me of this documentary that I saw about personal finance on Netflix called Get Smart with Money. There was a young woman in the documentary who worked a couple of jobs in the service industry and was struggling to make ends meet, and in addition she also had these amazing skills with making art and wanted to become a freelance artist but wasn’t sure how to market her art and make money from it full-time. She sat with a financial adviser who encouraged her to start a side hustle to bring in extra income because she had these incredible skills that she could offer to people. I also thought about how in the recent years of the job market more people are learning new skills and going back to school so they can learn new skills because it’s not enough to get a degree from college anymore. It’s a competitive job market and the demand for different skills is always evolving and I’ve noticed that a lot of the jobs that are high-paying are typically jobs in software and technology. I remember in 2017 working in food service and was paying off student debt but my loved ones encouraged me to learn some new skills so that I could get a new job with higher pay, and the most in-demand skill I learned about was in coding. So I took a programming course and it was expensive and I ended up taking more than a year to finish it, and there were times it was hard to learn the material at first and I wanted to give up so many times, but learning this skill gave me something new to learn and work on. I didn’t end up getting a job as a developer or in the technology field but it was useful to have this skill because I also learned to commit to something challenging and stick with it for a long period of time. I also remember when working in food service, I was stuck on having these big dreams of moving to a huge metropolitan area for my music career and becoming famous and making money from it, and I was so impatient to leave the job because I wanted to achieve my dreams. However, I also learned to treasure the connections with people I met working in the job I had and on my last day I ended up crying in appreciation because I ended up developing a lot of great connections with people at the job. When I had the job I also took on a side hustle (a short project for a website someone was doing) and even though I didn’t yet know how to apply advanced knowledge I gained from the course to the project I had the basic skills needed to complete it. It was so nice getting the paycheck from that project. Honestly looking back I could have thought, Gee wouldn’t it be nice if I just had a side hustle? But at the time I was so focused on paying off my student loans and working full-time that taking on a side hustle seemed too much for me to take on. However, after watching the documentary on Netflix it makes sense why I would need to market my skills at some point so that I can gain extra income and don’t need to rely on one income for all my needs.

Meanwhile, while Gwen is figuring out how to leave service and get the job as secretary, Mary goes riding horses with Evelyn Napier and a bunch of men. Evelyn brought Kemal Pamuk, who is an ambassador for Turkey and is visiting England. At first Mary thinks Mr. Pamuk is going to be unattractive and uninteresting but she sees him and finds out he is quite fine-looking. She ends up ditching the guy who was supposed to ride with her, Lynch, and rides with Mr. Pamuk instead. The two feel an instant chemistry for one another and Mary ends up having a great time with Mr. Pamuk. They come back to Downton to change their clothes for the evening, and Thomas Barrow, who is gay, finds Mr. Pamuk quite attractive and is secretly excited that he is going to be Mr. Pamuk’s assistant during his stay. Thomas is seduced by Mr. Pamuk’s good looks and hits on him but Mr. Pamuk is disgusted by Thomas’s advances and tells him he won’t tell anyone Thomas hit on him if he lets him into Mary’s room so they can have sex. During dinner, Evelyn and Matthew see Mary and Kemal giggling and enjoying each other’s company at dinner and feel jealous that Mary likes him more than she likes them. Kemal ends up taking Mary away from the party to a private space and starts to kiss and fondle her, but she is appalled because she understands that she is an unmarried woman and that this kind of interaction with Kemal isn’t appropriate and tells him that neither of them is to speak of the kissing with anyone. However, Kemal ends up having Thomas lead him and Mary into Mary’s bedroom. (At this point, after watching it a few times I was wondering whether this was consensual sex or rape. Some said it was sex, others said it was rape, so I wanted to make sure I understood correctly since at times I have tended to unfortunately conflate the two. Thankfully people have called me out on it) Kemal coerces Mary into having sex with him and then shortly after dies. Mary grabs Anna and has her and Mary’s mom, Cora, drag Mr. Pamuk’s dead body out of Mary’s bedroom. Cora of course is pissed and asks Mary what happened, and Mary is in tears because of Mr. Pamuk’s sudden death, and Cora tells her she must never let this news get out that Mr. Pamuk was in Mary’s room because the family would freak out. I thought they could just stealthily sneak Mr. Pamuk’s body out of Mary’s room, but as I soon found out after watching the entire show, nothing is private at Downton Abbey and there is always someone watching. In this case, it was Daisy. Daisy was getting some laundry done late at night and went down the hall only to find Mary, Anna and Cora farther down the hall dragging Mr. Pamuk’s corpse away from Mary’s room. Of course, this scares the shit out of Daisy and continues to haunt her for the next episode.