3 days Ago By Katie Campione
SPOILER ALERT! This post contains details from the Season 4 finale of Abbott Elementary . Season 4 of Abbott Elementary ended with a big milestone for Janine ( Quinta Brunson ) and Gregory’s (Tyler James Williams) relationship. In the finale, titled “Please Touch Museum,” Gregory enlists his dad Martin (played by Orlando Jones) to chaperone the end-of-year school field trip to the iconic children’s museum in Philly.
In doing so, he’ll also be meeting Janine for the first time, which, naturally, neither Janine nor Gregory takes lightly. Related Stories 'It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia' Gets Season 17 Premiere Date At FX; Teases New 'Abbott Elementary' Crossover '1923' Season 2 Finale Tallies Series-High 7-Day Audience On Paramount+ Rather than be herself, Janine adopts a tough-guy attitude to impress Martin, a former military officer. It’s confusing not only for Gregory but also her second grade students, who are used to the whimsical Ms.
Teagues who always encourages fun. Eventually, after a student gets hurt, Janine realizes that her gentle, playful attitude is her superpower, and she drops the facade. Not only does she earn more respect from Martin for being true to herself, she also manages to bring out a bit of whimsy in him, too.
Watch on Deadline “I think we were looking for fun ways to advance them in the finale, and we really missed Orlando [Jones], and we know that schools always need chaperones for field trips, so it kind of was a great way to go ahead and bring a huge element for their relationship — meeting a parent is such a big deal. So it felt like just a fun opportunity to have that happen here,” Abbott Elementary creator Quinta Brunson tells Deadline. In the interview below, Brunson reflected on Season 4 and teased what she’s most looking forward to about the upcoming fifth season of her ABC sitcom.
DEADLINE: You had a full season order again for Season 4, after the shortened Season 3. How did it feel to get to flesh out everyone’s storylines again, and did the shorter season impact the trajectory of any characters in a major way that you had to adjust to this season? QUINTA BRUNSON: It’s so nice to go back to a full season order, because you just get to have more fun. It’s more time for fun episodes that don’t necessarily have a ton of weight, but still move the story along, of course, which we always want to be doing, but just having time.
..that’s just a huge plus.
I think there were a couple of things that were accelerated, that may have been different in Season 3. For instance, Janine’s trajectory and her and Gregory’s relationship, but I feel like it was okay. We did what we had with those 14 episodes, which was honestly a fun challenge.
I think [it was] a cool thing to experience with the audience, and I think it made all of us, the writers, the actors, the crew and the audience, appreciate Season 4 a lot more. DEADLINE: Once Janine and Gregory officially declared their relationship, it was interesting to see how that story would progress within the confines of the school, which we rarely leave. How did you approach that in the writers room? BRUNSON: We have to find unique ways, because it’s not like other workplace romances, specifically these two characters who are focused on doing a good job at teaching and aren’t going to bring their romance into the workplace as maybe some other workplace sitcoms typically would.
So it meant leaving the school a couple of times. That was what was really fun with the karaoke episode, was kind of advancing their relationship in that one, because you get to see them be a little bit more open and have real deal relationship problems. I think we were looking for fun ways to advance them in the finale, and we really missed Orlando [Jones], and we know that schools always need chaperones for field trips, so it kind of was a great way to go ahead and bring a huge element for their relationship — meeting a parent is such a big deal.
So it felt like just a fun opportunity to have that happen here. Throughout the season, we just look for those little moments to really help them advance. But we didn’t want them to be a couple that fight or disagree a bunch.
We really found it important to let them actually be in a healthy relationship that was working well, because all of us had kind of agreed that we hadn’t seen it in a long time. DEADLINE: I think that’s a good point about toxicity in on-screen relationships. How did you stop yourself from falling onto that crutch of creating problems for them as a narrative tool? BRUNSON: I think like for us.
..their jobs come first.
For these two characters, that’s kind of baked into who they are. So that really helps us not to go to those places for storylines. I think that the biggest thing is we want their storylines to be about their work and their job and their life at Abbott, and it kind of naturally veers us away from talking about their relationship outside of Abbott.
Honestly, it just created a lot more space for things like Melissa’s relationship and then O’Shon and Ava. It was so fun building O’Shon and Ava this year. DEADLINE: Ava had so much character development this season.
Can you talk a bit about her arc this season, from her relationship with O’Shon to her firing, and what you wanted to accomplish with that character? BRUNSON: I was so excited to do that. That was the plan from day one, to build Ava out a little bit more. Another benefit of having 22 episodes, I think.
She’s been a character that we’ve used for quips and quick jokes, and that’s always fantastic and fun, but there’s so much depth to her in my mind, and there always has been since the beginning of the series. Ava was polarizing at first, and you have to kind of get the audience to trust her, want to know more about her, want to see her win. All of that was built up over the past three seasons.
Now it felt like we were able to give a lot of people what they were yearning for with Ava, which was more story, more background, serious relationships. We just had a ball doing that. Janelle was very excited about it.
She’s been playing this character for so long, and she’s been super pumped to be able to show what is so beautiful about Ava to her. She’s had a lot of that in her for a long time as well. DEADLINE: It’s funny you say she was polarizing, because I actually do think my feelings have completely changed about her throughout these four seasons.
When she got fired, I was like ‘Wait a minute...
don’t do that to her!’ BRUNSON: Right? And you see her do really great things for the school in unconventional ways. You can only get to that point of, ‘Wait a second. She doesn’t deserve to be fired,’ after, to me, three and a half seasons of development of feeling that way.
So, going from someone who used school funds to buy a sign and everyone being like, ‘Why is this person principal?’ to ‘How dare you fire Ava’ was really rewarding. DEADLINE: In the finale, I was truly losing it at the teachers impersonating one another in the play the older kids put on at the museum, especially Jacob as Barbara. How did that idea come about? BRUNSON: I cracked up during it in the edit every single time.
I was cracking up like I never saw it before. It’s so pure and simple. Something about the whole episode.
It feels very just calm and light and charming to me. But that moment in particular is just so sweet and simple and cute and childlike. Another thing you only earn after spending so much time with these characters, to have them play each other and it really crack you up, like not only the kids, but us grown adults laughing at these little impersonations.
Honestly, that was a pitch from someone in the writers room. I feel so bad I cannot remember who, because we were breaking that altogether. We were in the middle of the episode, like, what do we have these kids do? That was a fun one.
I love when that happens. when we don’t know exactly where we’re going, we just know we’re going somewhere, and we work together to find the right ending. So that was a pitch from someone in the room, and I just loved it.
I thought it was great. I had no idea how charming it would be, though. DEADLINE: You also get the sense that the teachers were letting off some steam about each other, too.
BRUNSON: It very much needed, especially after a long year. You brought up my favorite scene. I forgot.
I haven’t seen that episode since the edit, so I forgot how much I love that. DEADLINE: I was just about to ask you what were some of your favorite moments from this season. BRUNSON: I was a really big fan Gregory and Darnell, the parent who wanted to fight him.
I loved that episode so much, and I loved how we brought it back in AVA Fest. That was Episode 5. So by Episode 20, you kind of forget about it.
I love a well earned call back, or pulling a thread from way back when. Another fun thing about having 22 episodes and rounding out a season. So that was one of my favorites.
I actually really enjoyed Barbara’s trajectory. It was very slight, but it was there, her getting to try a new thing. But the music class, to me, it was just very special.
It felt very rewarding to have her take over the music class and be reinvigorated by a new part of educating that she had had done yet. So that was really fun. I don’t know.
I’m the wrong person to ask this, because I love all the storylines. DEADLINE: I actually had forgotten about the Gregory-Darnell beef until AVA Fest. It was such a good call back.
BRUNSON: That’s what was so great about it. It gets me every time. DEADLINE: With the Barbara storyline, I love that Ava really saw that she needed to be reinvigorated in her job.
I think it showed a growing level of awareness on Ava’s part to see her teachers like that. Season 1 Ava probably would not have. BRUNSON: Nope, and I think Ava has always read people and can like suss people out.
But she’s gotten to know Barbara over the years, and she’s gotten better herself at articulating what she thinks someone needs. She’s not doing it in just a mean way now. I mean, I think we learned when she did her public speaking thing — I love that episode, because she learned she has to communicate different.
It’s not that who you are is wrong, but the approach could be a little bit different, and that’s something that all of us have to learn when we get into a professional space. Does it suck? Yeah, but it is what it is. You’re valued, and what you do is valued, but you have to learn to communicate it.
DEADLINE: What are you most excited about for Season 5? BRUNSON: I’m going to say something really small and simple. I’m really excited to see Gregory’s apartment. It was something we wanted to do this season that we never got to do, and I’m excited to see it next year.
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