Did Abbott Elementary Teach the It’s Always Sunny Gang a Lesson? Grade the Crossover!
Two comedy forces collided this week on Abbott Elementary, as the school staff welcomed the Paddy’s Pub gang from FXX’s It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Did the crossover episode make the grade, though? We want to know what you think — but first, let’s recap.
Wednesday’s episode opens with Ava announcing that a new community initiative is sending volunteers to help out at the school. The teachers are desperate for help, which Ava finds offensive: “Y’all are acting like I let this school fall apart.” And on cue, the gymnasium’s scoreboard collapses to the floor. She calls the lawyer for that incoming golf course to try to squeeze more money out of him for a replacement, but he flatly tells her they’re unionized now, so she has no leverage to demand any favors. Maybe the volunteers can help? Well, knowing who’s coming, it’ll be a miracle if they don’t actively make things worse.
The teachers are excited for the volunteers: Jacob needs help fixing the vent in his classroom, and Gregory could use a hand in the garden. And when the volunteers arrive… hey, it’s Mac, Dennis, Charlie, Dee and Frank from It’s Always Sunny! Dennis spots the cameras filming their every move and instantly makes himself scarce, and when Jacob asks if any of them do duct work, Charlie happily volunteers: “I’ve done tons of duck work.” Frank signs up for garden duty, too, since he’s lived outside. Melissa thinks she knows them from somewhere… but it’s probably because they’ve all gotten into fights at Eagles games before.
While Charlie works on Jacob’s vent, he takes a stab at reading what Jacob wrote for his students — and well, it’s clear Charlie is not a strong reader. Frank instantly rubs Mr. Johnson the wrong way by tossing batteries in the planter boxes (they’re “robot food,” he claims), and he scoffs at Gregory’s plan to ward off raccoons by adding garlic and chili powder to the soil: “You’re gonna make the dirt taste delicious.” Instead, they should bring in animal pelts soaked in “alpha predator urine,” he insists. Plus, Mac tries to sneak out early by getting Ava to sign their volunteer slip, but she wants them to stay for the whole week, instructing him to find something useful to do: “I already have a white guy who comes in here to annoy me.”
At least one of the pairings is going well: Janine and Dee bond right away because they both went to Penn, and Dee seems to have a knack for teaching. (She did work as a substitute teacher in a Season 6 episode of Sunny, after all.) While the other teachers are complaining about their volunteers, Janine is beaming about Dee — but then Melissa remembers where she knows them from. They own Paddy’s Pub, she says, “the skeeviest bar I’ve ever been to,” calling them “a bunch of lowlifes.” Mac admits that they’re only there to complete court-ordered community service after they dumped a hundred gallons of baby oil into the Schuylkill River. Along with 500 Paddy’s Pub T-shirts. And a Cybertruck. Melissa and Barbara want to get rid of them, but Janine points out they’re not likely to get any other help from the district. So they’re staying!
Mac is eager to help Ava to get her to sign his form, so she appoints him her new vice-principal… and has him go detail her car. Jacob and Melissa take Charlie to Barbara, hoping she can help the poor guy with his reading problem. He claims he’s fine, though: “I can read any word at any time.” Then a rift emerges between Janine and Dee when Dee spots Gregory and calls him “a hunk.” She has Janine’s students pen valentines for him and quizzes Janine about him: “Is he in a relationship? If he is, is he a cheater?” Janine says she and Gregory are together, actually, and Dee congratulates her, but adds: “You’re good if I take a spin, though, yeah?” She sees this as a competition, glancing down at Janine’s shoes: “I see he likes big feet. Good. Mine are enormous.”
Now Janine wants to send the volunteers home, but Ava is happy having Mac do her bidding, bringing her cinnamon rolls and steaming her clothes. Dee taunts Janine that she’s ready to make a move on Gregory, and they nearly come to blows, with Janine labeling her “a bird-ass bird.” (If you watch It’s Always Sunny, you know.) Gregory is repulsed by Dee, though, and reassures Janine that he’s not interested in any other women, “especially not that woman.” Meanwhile, Barbara gently helps Charlie learn to read, asking him what his interests are. “Beer, milk steak, bird law,” he lists off, and Barbara seizes upon birds and has Melissa fetch him a picture book with birds in it. He reads the book in front of Barbara’s class, with the students helping him sound out the words, and the room applauds when he makes it all the way through. Well, at least one part of this story has a happy ending.
When Ava hears Charlie read about protected birds, it gives her an idea: She sends Mac out to get a photo of a nest of endangered bird eggs on the golf course, texting it to the lawyer and threatening to rat him out to environmental groups if he doesn’t pay for the new scoreboard. Frank’s help in the garden doesn’t go as well, though: Mr. Johnson discovers Frank trapped in a raccoon cage after he helped himself to some of that garlic and chili-seasoned dirt. Charlie gets a diploma — we’ve never seen him happier — the school gets a new scoreboard, and Ava finally signs Mac’s volunteer slip. “Let’s never ask for help again,” Janine decides, but Frank sees this as a big success, deciding: “Crime is worth it, plain and simple.”
Abbott and Sunny: two great tastes that taste great together? Give the crossover a grade in our poll, and tell us in the comments if you’re an Abbott fan who’s never watched Sunny (or a Sunny fan who’s never watched Abbott).
Smart way to explain away Dennis’s absence, which I can only assume was due to Glenn Howerton not having capacity to appear in more scenes.
He is a literal sociopath and would never want to be on a documentary. He had plenty of time or “capacity” as you call it. Period.
You do realise that Dennis the character and Glenn Howerton the actor are separate, right? Glenn clearly wasn’t available to have a bigger role in the episode like the rest of the Sunny cast was, so they thought of a reason to explain his absence that was still in Dennis’s character.
They need to do a crossover episode each season
To me that was the best part of it I cackled everytime the camera got on him
My only complaint was that it flew by so fast. What a masterful crossover of two of the best sitcoms on TV.
It was wack.
Too bad that ABC station in Los Angeles had fire coverage and I missed Abbott. It has been nonstop since last night. I missed Will Trent and High Potential because of the fire coverage.
Looks like both Abbott and Shifting Gears are scheduled to replay Friday night.
Natural disasters are more important than a tv show. They will rerun the episodes and there is DVR. Please be a better human.
As a fan of both loved it, loved the nod to Sunny in the beginning with Ava mentioning its 7:30am on a Monday.
But now I def want to see the teachers visit Paddy’s Pub
I’ve never seen “It’s Always Sunny…” but I still enjoyed this crossover. It was fun to see the teachers interacting with the gang as they did, and I think all the respective character pairings worked perfectly (of course Mr. Johnson would get into it with a guy like Frank. And Ava and Mac were a fun teamup).
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Also enjoyed seeing Kaitlin Olson on here, given how much I like her on “High Potential” (she’s sure keeping herself busy lately, good for her). Their fighting over Gregory was hilarious, but I liked how smoothly Gregory put an end to all of that. Barbara teaching Charlie to read was genuinely sweet, too.
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Yeah. This was fun :). And I liked how thei gang’s connection was through Melissa – it just seems right that she would run into people like this at some point in her life :p.
As a fan of both shows, I loved it. :D The “milk steak / bird law” callback and Janine calling Dee a “bird” especially made me cackle.
Bird-ass bird was the best line of the show.
It’s been awhile and I was glad to see the gang from Sunny. I was so excited when I first heard of the crossover. A newspaper in Season 14 episode 2 of It’s always Sunny placed it in the same universe as Revenge. So I guess that makes Abbott Elementary is part of the same universe. Honestly I wouldn’t mind a few more shows joining them. Maybe have a McPoyle family member busted on one of the cop shows.
I’ve only seen clips of It’s Always Sunny here and there over the years. But I really enjoyed the crossover. My husband, who has watched Sunny, thought that it was really wrong the gang was volunteering, so we were fully waiting for the court-mandated part of the story. I hope they can keep finding reasons the gang needs to earn some volunteer hours. Shouldn’t be too hard, really. . .
My word of the week is apparently milksop. It just popped up in the book I was reading, and then I was shocked to hear Ava drop it as an insult just a day or two later here.
Just seeing Charlie and Frank made me smile.
I want a prequel episode with the whole cybertruck and shirts being dumped in the Schuylkill river.
I suspect we’ll see that in the Always Sunny part of this crossover in a few months.
This was the best crossover that I never knew I wanted or needed. The way both casts played off of eachother just shows what an outstanding show each one is in their own right.
Nothing else was on so I thought I’d watch Abbott and see what all the hoo-haw was about. ???? I don’t get it.
I usually watch Abbott with my mother…and boy was she not pleased! I sincerely wonder how other people who are unfamiliar with IASIP responded to the episode. I had to explain a lot of the jokes, particularly the Frank stuff, and it was hard. I personally still chuckle at the idea that Frank was probably the “alpha predator” who contributed the urine for the pelts. I kinda wish they’d just keep him in that cage to scare off the racoons for the rest of the season.