CultureCow: Abbott Elementary and Encanto are already the best family programs of a young year
by Devin McCue, Sumner Newscow — Happy Friday. Network television is usually terrible.
I wrote as much all the way back in 2018, when I argued that streaming has everything we’d ever want and cable’s content was slipping into irrelevancy. 
It seems like the only new shows on the big networks are singing competitions, reboots of old movies, and Dwayne the Rock Johnson.
That was before I watched Quinta Brunson’s new show, Abbott Elementary.
Abbott Elementary is a new sitcom on ABC about a young teacher, played by Brunson, in a Philadelphia elementary school followed by an Office-esque documentary crew. Quinta’s character is in her second year of teaching and her sunny disposition and naivete keep getting challenged by the harsh realities of the broken school system.
The mockumentary style is beginning to go stale. From Parks and Recreation to Borat 2 to Modern Family, the list goes on and on. There’s nothing wrong with the style itself, but the longer it’s used, the easier it gets to lean on the format to hit a punchline rather than write a clever joke without a character spoon-feeding it to the camera.
Abbott Elementary resists that urge. Characters breathe new life into the format by pointing out how inconvenient constant interviews are, speaking directly to the camera without breaking from the action, and more to break up the well-worn traditions of the style.
But all of those clever tricks don’t mean anything if the show isn’t funny. Thankfully, that’s the best part of the program. The show is written by Brunson herself and she’s been a great comedian for years. She was literally one of the first internet memes, part of the original cast of Black Lady Sketch Show, and wrote a best-selling book of essays titled She Memes Well last year.
Abbott Elementary may be network television’s last gasp at content worth watching. While remembering schools in America are dead broke is a hard reality to live in, it’s a surprisingly hilarious reality to build the best comedy of a very young year around.
Unlike network TV, one format that will never get old is the Disney musical.
Disney’s musicals aren’t always great (I’m looking at you 2019’s Aladdin), but kids can’t get enough of them. What makes them truly successful is when parents can listen to them a million times without telling their kids the DVD got tragically lost.
Luckily, Disney’s newest musical, Encanto, is a great kids movie that you’ll listen to again and again despite your parental status. It is also showing at the Wellington Regent this week.
As much as it pains me to admit it, the biggest reason that is the case is the internet’s least favorite musician, Lin Manuel Miranda. There isn’t anything bad about Miranda, mind you, he’s just the living embodiment of cringe. But he doesn’t get handed the reigns to the best musical of my generation without some real talent backing it up.
Rather than use the tried-and-true Disney musical style full of long ballads and violin-heavy love songs, Lin Manuel added a flair of hip hop. Hip hop does a lot more than provide a much-need dose of modernity to the movie. It gives the characters more time to tell their stories.
Take the first time a song switches to rap, for example, Luisa’s (our heroine’s sister) solo, Surface Pressure. Surface Pressure is about a woman with super-strength starting to crumble under the enormity of her responsibilities. It starts out like any other musical, then, after a minute falls into beat and picks up the pace. Instead of struggling to fit in the many facets of her anxieties into a 3-minute power ballad, she has rap bars that can hold a lot more information.
While the music is the best part of the movie, the story is what brings kids to the theatre. Encanto follows a young woman named Mirabel who lives in a small Columbian village with her super-powered family. The only problem is that she’s the only one without a “gift.”
The film isn’t about her journey to get a superpower and fit in with her family. It’s about bringing her family together in a new way that the older generation never considered. Recognizing that the youth have as much to say as their forebearers isn’t a radical concept, but it’s never one I thought I’d see in a Disney movie.
Parents (since I know you’re the ones who be stuck with this movie forever if your kids like it), will love this movie as much as their kids do. It mixes in some subtly mature jokes for your benefit and will teach your child a new lesson that they won’t get from Cinderella.
And if you’d like to watch it without shelling out cash for yet another streaming service as I have mentioned before, the Regent is playing it this weekend.
Meme of the week
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