Recap: ‘English Teacher’ Episode 4 Tackles The School Shooting Debate

English Teacher Episode 4, “School Safety”, deals with two important issues — the responsible use of firearms in the well-armed State of Texas, and the fact that Gwen only ranked 26th on the list of hottest teachers floating around the student Discord.

These two matters aren’t of equivalent social importance, needless to say, but sitcoms need A and B plots, so here we are. But the gun stuff is undeniably topical since school shootings are considered an epidemic in America, and it’s a blight that the country suffers from at an incredibly unique scale.

The issue, which quickly becomes a debate, is introduced in “School Safety” in the smartest way possible — as distant gunshots that Evan hears as he’s strolling into work after spending another night with his not-boyfriend, Malcolm. In his shock, he spills coffee all over himself and ducks for cover, creeping into a classroom where he finds his students unconcerned. The gunshots are just the sound of Markie’s gun safety club.

Evan immediately resolves to get the club shut down, but it’s initially unclear if this is a matter of principle or one of embarrassment, since it’s only Evan who seems to be concerned (and he has to work the rest of the day in his coffee-stained shirt.) He talks the book club into staging a protest where they all march through the corridors dressed as ghosts, but Markie leads a counter-protest, he and his students also dressed as ghosts.

Evan and Markie occupy the two most common zero-sum positions on this issue — the former is profoundly anti-gun, and the latter thinks that since guns are already widely present and accessible in the U.S., especially in Texas, teaching students to safely and responsibly operate them will save lives. Since the likelihood of any meaningful anti-gun legislation ever being passed is very low, for reasons that mystify the rest of the world, it’s ironically Markie, again, who seems most in tune with the needs of the student body.

Evan’s frustration at this manifests first as him lashing out at Markie, which is a shame given how Markie had his back in Episode 2, and then tricking his students into writing an assignment on Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment that pushes them to detail the most heinous thing they would do if they could get away with it. His plan works — one of the student’s essays constitutes an active shooter threat, so the firearm safety club is abandoned, metal detectors are installed around the school, and free writing assignments are banned.

But another measure includes every classroom having a gun in a lockbox, and the entire faculty being trained in their use. Evan’s “win” is the implementation of even more oppressive and terrifying measures. In the process, one of his students, Pablo, who was simply doing what Evan asked of him, must to go to therapy three times a week. And Markie still takes it well.

Stephanie Koenig as Gwen | Image via FX/Hulu

Elsewhere, English Teacher Episode 4 sneaks in a less well-intentioned and arguably bleaker subplot that isn’t as topical, serious, or sensitive and isn’t handled in as even-handed a way. It’s the Gwen thing.

Throughout the episode, Gwen, annoyed at being ranked so low on the hot teachers list, begins dressing in increasingly provocative ways — “You look like Erin Brockovich,” Evan quips at one point — to impress the male students. When she eventually finds out it’s Jeff who’s behind the list, her only concern is why she’s so low. When he explains that he was deliberately manipulating the list because he noticed her low position caused her to dress better, he also presents a gallery of “looks” for Gwen, who would suit teal.

The outcome of this is that Gwen gets Jeff to email her the gallery and starts wearing his suggested outfits around school. The gun safety stuff will snatch the headlines, but I’m not sure that firearms are the greatest threat to the students of Morrison-Hensley High School if the teachers are this easy to manipulate.