English Teacher (2024) – Season 1 Episode 2 Recap & Review

Episode 2

Episode 2 of English Teacher starts with Evan rushing to work, late again. He’s stopped by a group of boys who are taking part in Powderpuff — an event where the girls play football and the boys dress as cheerleaders. Despite his many reservations, he agrees to talk to Mark about it.

Later, Evan goes to the field to find Gwen ‘helping’ Mark coach the female football team since they wanted a female coach. Evan asks Mark about the cheerleader debacle but he sends him off to Principal Grant. Grant throws a curveball and says that it’s actually the LGBTQIA+ alliance that is protesting Powderpuff.

Evan speaks to the students who claim the football players are gender-switching as a joke. They want the footballers to treat it with authenticity. Evan’s solution to the whole thing is to bring Keith, an old acquaintance who is a drag queen. He wants Shazam (Keith’s drag queen name) to encourage the boys to do authentic drag. The boys agree to have Shazam be their coach.

On the field, Gwen gets annoyed when Mark has the girls play flag football instead of tackling each other. All the girls tell Mark about the importance of letting women attack and how they don’t usually feel safe in the outside world. They even suggest he listen to a true crime podcast.  

Principal Grant isn’t happy about the drag queen and tells Evan that he can’t bring a stranger into the school. He also gives Evan a list of approved attire that the boys have to follow for the Powderpuff performance. However, when Evan takes the list to the students and sees how much they want to do drag, he tears the list up.

After listening to the podcast, Mark understands the importance of safety for women and he and Gwen teach the girl self-defence instead of football. So the boys wear breastplates and heels and learn how to dance while the girls are taught various manoeuvres to protect themselves from attackers.

Later when Keith is packing up, Evan realises that he’s been stealing things from the school. Hence proving Grant’s concerns about bringing a stranger inside. Evan takes the school printers out but Keith drives away. Turn out that Keith had a record of stealing and obviously, Grant cancels the Powderpuff performance since he’s worried about Superintendent Boone being there and somebody getting fired for the whole thing.  

Evan is at Gwen’s place later that night, discussing the whole situation. Nick is now redesigning their house pool so they can rent it to strangers on an app called Swimply.  

The day of the football match arrives and Harry joins Evan in the stands. Superintendent Boone is greeted by Grant. Just when the match ends and Evan is about to leave, the boys enter the field in full drag! They thank Coach Marquez and do their whole performance to loud cheers from the crowd. They even pull Evan in for the death drop.

Grant apologises to Superintendent Boone but he finds the whole thing funny and nobody’s job is in the line. Keith is also in the crowd and proud of the kids, although he leaves with a few extra handbags than he came with at the end of English Teacher Episode 2.

The Episode Review

English Teacher Episode 2 builds on the positive energy of the first one, diving deeper into gender politics while also taking the shenanigans a notch higher. The show is using a very empathetic lens when it comes to portraying the young high schoolers.

It’s great that there wasn’t a right or wrong but rather the footballers and the LGBTQIA+ students were both given equal consideration. Keith’s character, in such a short time, offered a nuanced addition to the story as well and avoided falling into any particular stereotypes.

There’s a lot of back and forth between characters and the dialogue is fast, witty and snappy. But they have been crafted with respect — for people, identities, ideas and more. And Evan continues to be a lovely character whose passion is a catalyst for a lot of these happenings. English Teacher is a vibrant new sitcom and hopefully, the following episodes will stick to the same quality of humour and subject matter.