The origins of “shipping,” the practice of rooting for a particular pair of characters to become romantically involved, can be found in fandom. The term was first used by X-Files fans desperate for a little romance between that show’s leads, Mulder (David Duchovny) and Scully (Gillian Anderson). 30 years on, fans of every type of story engage in the practice. In fact, writers’ rooms have taken to writing characters for shipping. Such is the case for ABC’s hit sitcom Abbott Elementary. The seeds for the show’s primary ship are planted in the pilot when Gregory Eddie (Tyler James Williams) arrives at Abbott as a long-term substitute, bitter after being passed over for the job as principal of the school. He takes a quick liking to the show’s idealistic main character, second-grade teacher Janine Teagues (Quinta Brunson).
Janine and Gregory are star-crossed from the start. Coworkers and in pre-existing relationships, the pair enjoy an awkward workplace flirtationship. Things intensify about two-thirds of the way through season 2. After nearly thirty episodes of sweet, innocent will-they-won’t-they, Janine and Gregory break the seal of their situationship with a kiss while away at a conference in "Teacher’s Conference" (Season 2, Episode 16). Pressure continues to build through the last five episodes of the season, only to be anticlimactically snuffed out in the Season 2 finale.
The finale, titled "Franklin Institute," follows the Abbott Elementary staff and students as they prepare for and attend an overnight field trip to the eponymous interactive science museum. At the beginning of the episode, as the entire school waits outside on the front step for the buses to arrive, Mo (Vince Staples), Janine’s ex-boyfriend and Gregory’s best friend, walks by. Janine notices and stops him in the street to say hello. He tells her he doesn’t want to see her because she hurt him with her selfishness (she broke up with him after admitting to having kissed Gregory at the conference). This shakes her to her core, and she spends much of the field trip avoiding Gregory, who is determined to make his move. The tension builds until Janine admits that she no longer wants to be in a relationship with Gregory because of the way she hurt Mo. The parts of the episode not focused on Janine and Gregory’s relationship are exactly what we expect from Abbott, wholesome hijinks and larger-than-life characters. But the shine of these excellent elements of the episode is overshadowed by the contrived nature of the episode’s core conflict.
“Will they-won’t-they” romantic tropes are catnip for shippers and have been deployed by storytellers to varying levels of success. Some ships are extremely effective, driving interest in the series for years, even after their conclusion. Ships written poorly become infamous, like the epitome of this trope on television, Ross and Rachel from Friends. The ship in Abbott Elementary for most of the series’ run has fallen into the former category, but the Season 2 finale has pulled it dangerously close to bad territory. Why was this anticlimactic lack of resolution to Janine and Gregory's will-they-won’t-they so unsatisfying?
After All the Foreshadowing, There's No Real Resolution
The latter half of Season 2 seemed to build toward a fundamental shift in Janine and Gregory’s relationship. After their “accidental” kiss during the conference, their hold on the denial of their mutual care for one another had slipped. Both characters had visits from family members throughout the season, further blurring the line between their professional and personal lives. Gregory even tried to mend the relationship between Janine and her sister, who’d been estranged due because of their stressful childhoods.
Gregory became much more able to admit that he had feelings for Janine and that he didn’t really know how to act on them, soliciting the advice of Jacob Hill (Chris Perfetti), the history teacher and Janine’s work bestie. Jacob had been trying to get Janine to admit her own feelings for Gregory for some time, and his involvement felt like a step toward a cathartic release of these pent-up feelings.
Throughout the show, both parties have been in committed relationships with other people, like ships passing in the night. These near-misses are compelling because they happen so near to one another. Both characters dated two different people during their friendship. Both characters leaned into the plausible deniability of their connection more than once. Both denied that they had feelings for one another from the very beginning, but their very nosy coworkers would have absolutely none of it. Even Ava, who herself has a crush on Gregory, has been trying to push them together since seeing them together at the club during Christmas break.
The Finale's Inciting Incident Felt Contrived
That’s not to say that the only satisfying ending of Season 2 would be one with Janine and Gregory together. There would have been ways to keep them apart at the end of the season that might have been able to achieve what the showrunners were going for. It was unsatisfying largely because of how the show arrived at the conclusion, not the conclusion itself.
Dragging the will-they-won’t-they into a third season is not a bad narrative decision, but achieving this end through appealing to the viewer’s sympathy for Mo isn’t the way. To understand Mo as a victim in his relationship with Janine requires a convoluted analysis. Mo, Gregory’s best friend, pursued Janine after Gregory asked him not to. Perhaps Gregory did not outright explain that he wanted Janine for himself, but he didn’t need to. Mo and Janine’s relationship began under pretenses, and Mo should not have been surprised when their relationship ended for the same reason. The two of them casually dated for a few months — which was nothing compared to the decade Janine had spent with Tariq, the partner whose life was far more impacted by the end of their relationship than Mo’s.
That Mo attempts to avoid seeing his ex-girlfriend by passing in front of her job when he thinks she’ll be occupied doesn’t really pass muster. That Mo feels as hurt as he appears to in the finale of Season 2 makes little sense given the brevity of their connection. That Janine has never once considered that ending relationships could be seen as a self-centered act is downright ludicrous. If Janine’s learning this lesson is so important to her arc, it would have made more sense for Tariq, not Mo, to be the mouthpiece. Tariq lost his home at the end of his relationship with Janine, after all.
Janine’s inability to comprehend that her exes might not view her as the angel they did when they were together is so childish as to be unbelievable. Janine has been in the presence of and accused of selfishness her entire life. Her mother is a user and abuser who sees all attempts at maintaining autonomy as inherently self-centered. Janine sees her own sister, Ayesha, who escaped from the endless trauma cycle of dealing with their mother, as selfish, repeating what their mother has no doubt said.
'Abbott Elementary's Real Season 2 Twist Has More to Do With Janine
One way to understand the end of this season as it pertains to Janine and Gregory’s will-they-won’t-they is to understand that the real twist of Season 2 is that Janine may grow as an educator, but she’s not growing very much as a person. Janine’s central character trait is her naïve idealism. Her journey over the course of the series has taught her that not all parents are heavily involved in their children’s education, that there are limits to the power of positivity, and that this teaching thing is a lot harder than it looks. She takes her professional failures in stride, maintaining her love of the job and her bubbly personality. There’s an equally compelling and frustrating element about her personality, that she will try anything in her classroom, almost not afraid enough of failure professionally, but is too afraid to take any risk in her personal life.
The steady stream of personal life disappointments Janine has weathered left her mostly unchanged. Her relationship with Tariq ended in Season 1 after Tariq was offered a job in New York City. He wanted her to come with him, but she ended their relationship to remain at Abbott. The opportunity in New York was certainly an excellent one for Tariq’s career, but the emotional upheaval of losing a relationship you’ve relied on for so long is major, no matter what. The way their breakup occurred implied that if there had been no job offer, Janine and Tariq would have stayed together indefinitely–until some external force appeared to knock their lives askew. Since most of the crises she had about ending the relationship were about the move more than the relationship itself, it’s easy to infer Janine has learned nothing about how to be better in relationships. Appearances from Janine’s sister and mother this season reinforce her struggles to consider her role in various disagreements and bad behavior in her family unit and in her personal life.
Janine’s relationship with Mo is illustrative of her consistency and lack of growth, as it is a short-lived replica of her relationship with Tariq. Tariq was not as intelligent, driven, or successful as her, and she took care of him because she believed it to be her duty to do so as his girlfriend. She repeated the pattern with Mo. In the days after ending her relationship with Tariq, she realized how little they had had in common the entire time, something she also realizes about Mo after kissing Gregory.
Being in a relationship with Gregory would be a big change and a real risk for Janine. She shares true compatibility and chemistry with Gregory. They understand the pressures and needs that come with being educators. They are both socially awkward, and both have strained relationships with their families of origin. They could make each other very happy, but Janine has no template for what a mutual relationship built on equity would be like and is terrified by that. She maintains the status quo instead of taking a chance on Gregory and her own happiness. Janine’s lack of growth is particularly frustrating when viewed next to Gregory’s. Gregory has really come into himself over the course of the second season. He ends a relationship after it runs its course. He works to repair his relationship with his father. He grows closer to his coworkers and deepens his practice as an educator. Gregory Eddie has spent the entire second season bettering himself to be ready for a relationship with Janine, and she has not done the same for him.
The showrunners are under no obligation to give us a Janine/Gregory relationship, but the will-they-won’t-they of it all has largely run its course. In the next season, if we can’t have our two favorite teachers live happily ever after, then we must see Janine pushed out of her comfort zone. She has proven that she can learn and grow in how she has developed as a professional. It’s time to see that same growth in her personal life. Maybe she needs to go on a journey of self-discovery. Maybe Gregory will wait until she gets back, but maybe he won’t. Just kiss (again), already, you two!