Inside Janine’s District Job, Status With Gregory & More

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Abbott Elementary, Season 3, Episodes 1 & 2, “Career Day.”]

Abbott Elementary is back and a lot has changed at the titular school since viewers last attended class as the Season 3 premiere revealed a time-jump, new jobs, and characters, as well as some very special guest stars.

In the premiere’s opening moments, Ava (Janelle James) welcomes the camera crew back into the halls of Abbott, but it isn’t the first day of a new school year. No, it’s actually five months into the year as the camera crew had their equipment stolen. But a lot has changed in those intervening months. As the faculty files into the library for career day, discussions about the district employees who are helming the event ensue. Halting the whispers with their entrance is none other than Janine Teagues (Quinta Brunson) who tells the cameras a lot has changed.

Yes, she’s gotten a job with the district, or rather a fellowship, offering her a way to implement the kind of change she’d like to see in the schools of Philly. Her new gig is due in part to the interest that district employees Manny (Josh Segarra), Emily (Kimia Behpoornia), and Simon (Benjamin Norris) take in her eagerness to make a positive difference in the system.

When she was first offered the job months before the current timeline, Janine was hesitant, but encouraged by her friends and colleagues. But that doesn’t mean that awkwardness doesn’t pervade the air. Before she takes up the district on their offer which takes her out of the classroom temporarily, Janine addresses her feelings for Gregory (Tyler James Williams) after last season’s cliffhanger.

As she admits she still has feelings and is interested in exploring them, Gregory kindly shuts her down, revealing he’s shut the door on it. When she takes the fellowship after this bomb drop, he can’t help but question if she chose this path in direct response to his rejection, causing friction between the friends when she returns for the career day she’s been wanting to hold at Abbott.

Ultimately, Janine’s career day is successful as she makes amends with Gregory and recruits speakers who bring some very special Philadelphia Eagles into the classroom. Below, series executive producers Justin Halpern and Patrick Schumacker break down the biggest twists and turns and hint at what’s to come as Season 3 continues on ABC.

About That Time Jump

When it came to the time jump, Halpern says, “We had to make some shifts because of the strikes.” Usually the show follows the regular school year format. “We like the fact that Abbott airs in the fall and follows the school year, and we didn’t want to just give that up because we were not going to air in the fall due to the strikes because that first day of school energy is a nice place to start a character arc,” he adds.

It was also important to feature the two periods of time because Halpern points out, “We left Season 2 with that Gregory and Janine moment, and so we needed to spend some time on that. We couldn’t just let it go and then say we were five months further in the future. I think that would’ve been unfair to the audience.” Ultimately, the solution was “the idea that the cameramen were robbed, which felt so organic to our show. It seemed like, ‘Okay, now we know how we can do this,’” Halpern recalls.

Janine’s New Job

(Credit: Disney/Gilles Mingasson)

Despite some changes that had to be made upfront because of the strikes, Janine’s job with the district was always in the cards. “We played the district as the boogeyman for the first two seasons, and when we were talking with Quinta, it felt like it was time to see what that might look like,” Halpern explains of the choice to introduce the district workers. “There’s such a groundswell of young progressive activists who are moving into bureaucracies in governments all over the country and facing a lot of resistance. And it felt like an interesting place to take people who are just like Janine and show how they kind of push these boulders up the hill.” Since the show started Janine’s wanted to bring positive change to Abbott and this new role is finally giving her that chance.

“We wanted these characters to feel almost too good to be true, that they were able to sort of seduce Janine over to the district side of things and that she would at first be skeptical because they’re so validating and so like-minded that it was almost offputting,” Schumacker adds. That’s what led to the key scene between Barbara (Sheryl Lee Ralph) and Manny. “She saw that this is kind of a different mindset. This is a group that puts their money where their mouth is. And that scene with Manny telling Barbara about his mother being an educator… that was the last scene we figured out in the production of these first two episodes.”

At the end of the day, Schumacker says, “We wanted to make sure that everyone — not just Barbara, but the audience — knew that Manny is sincere. These people are different than past regimes that Barbara has suffered through.” While Janine seems to be enjoying the fellowship so far, she does linger by the door of her classroom while visiting for career day, making us wonder if she’ll be back to teaching sooner rather than later. “You’re going to have to watch,” Schumacker teases. “That’s a pretty big spoiler, but that is definitely an internal struggle that Janine is going to have to deal with over the course of this season. Some big discoveries about her vocation come about in this season.”

Is Hope for Gregory & Janine Gone?

(Credit: Disney/Gilles Mingasson)

While Janine and Gregory didn’t exactly make romantic progress in the premiere, they repaired the awkwardness that grew between them when she started her district job. As for hope that they’ll make a move in one direction or another, Halpern says, “We don’t think of the will-they-won’t-they as in, ‘this episode they get together.’ We try to think of it in terms of the characters and where they’re at.”

In other words, it’s all about timing. “These are two people in their mid to late twenties where you’re just kind of figuring s**t out. And so our feeling is like, we want to grow the characters first, and then we look and see within that growth of the character, are they in a place where the stars would align or are they in a place where they wouldn’t?” Halpern explains. “We hope people are invested in the characters. And if they are, then they’ll start to get a sense of when these two should or should not be together.”

Philadelphia Eagles’ Jalen Hurts & Teammates

One of the presenters Janine recruits for career day works for the Philadelphia Eagles, and as a treat for the class he’s assigned to, he gets players Jalen Hurts, Jason Kelce, and Brandon Graham to zoom into the school. Ultimately they get involved with a failed marriage proposal from Gary (Bruno Amato), the vending machine guy, to Melissa (Lisa Ann Walter).

The players’ Zoom caused a frenzy among the faculty and students though, but things were less chaotic behind the scenes despite the virtual format. “They were actually very busy preparing for the playoffs at that point,” Schumacker says. “But in terms of the casting, it came together relatively quickly because Jalen and his reps have actually been in communication with the show prior to this season.”

“He was kind of active in expressing his interest in being in the show,” Schumacker adds. “So once we had this career day idea, it became kind of a no-brainer… it all sort of coalesced.” Despite having to film from two different locations and coordinate timing, Schumacker admits, “I couldn’t believe how we did not have any technical snafus or anything like that. But that’s a credit to all the prep that our crew did.”

Stay tuned to see what other surprises are in store for Season 3 as it unfolds on ABC. And let us know what you thought of the premiere in the comments section, below.

Abbott Elementary, Season 3, Wednesdays, 9/8c, ABC