Of all of the characters on Abbott Elementary, there’s one who by no means fails to make me chortle. I’m speaking about Mr. Johnson, the janitor whose dry humor and droll facial expressions make him one of many funniest personas on ABC’s hit comedy. Right here’s what we learn about Mr. Johnson: He’s most likely in his 70s. He’s labored at Abbott endlessly, his institutional information rivaling that of the longest-tenured lecturers. He has alluded to previous lives as an Olympic athlete, a nude mannequin, a champion rib eater, and Dorothy Hamill’s paramour. He thinks that lizard individuals stay underneath the Denver Airport and that the Illuminati run the world. He doesn’t consider within the moon (not the moon touchdown—the precise moon). All of that is to say that Mr. Johnson’s origin story is generally a patchwork of jokes: We don’t know something substantial concerning the man, not even his first identify.
In a lesser comedy, he’d be a two-dimensional character who floats via the background, peppering in laughs as obligatory. Not so with Abbott. Even with no totally fleshed-out previous, Mr. Johnson has change into a core a part of the present, a personality who appears to exist completely within the current tense. He’s essential sufficient that the actor who performs him, William Stanford Davis, was promoted to a sequence common in Season 2. As the varsity’s janitor, Mr. Johnson is the gatekeeper to Abbott, bringing us in and contextualizing the on a regular basis interactions inside the faculty.
In up to date English, janitor refers to somebody whose job it’s to handle a constructing, often a hospital or a college. The job entails cleansing and protecting a spot orderly by sweeping flooring, wiping down counters, and taking out trash. However that’s not all janitors do. The phrase comes from the Latin janus, which implies “arch” or “gate” and can also be the identify of the two-faced Roman god of doorways and portals. This etymology is smart when you think about that individuals like Mr. Johnson are additionally ushers and house definers: They put together a constructing earlier than we even enter it, take care of it whereas we’re there, and proceed to take care of it after we’ve left. A part of their job is to concentrate—to the constructions they oversee, sure, but in addition to individuals who go via their doorways.
Mr. Johnson encapsulates this function completely. He’s seemingly in all places inside Abbott’s partitions, which means he notices the emotional climate of the lecturers and college students inside. In Season 1, he’s among the many first individuals to detect the romantic emotions between the lecturers Janine and Gregory, elevating his eyebrows at what appears to be like like a lover’s quarrel. In Season 2, when the historical past instructor, Jacob (Chris Perfetti), has no concept why his college students are obsessive about a present about speaking socks, Mr. Johnson seems within the classroom doorway and begins talking this system’s indecipherable language with bewildering fluency. He is aware of what the younger individuals are as much as simply as a lot as he is aware of what the adults are considering. Generally he’s the varsity’s protector: He additionally is aware of that if the scoreboard within the health club goes above a sure quantity, it’ll come crashing down. When the smooth-talking businessman Draemond fails to persuade a gym-full of fogeys that Abbott ought to change into a constitution faculty, it’s Mr. Johnson who sweeps him off the stage, bodily enacting everybody’s disdain.
It’s not simply that Mr. Johnson sees every little thing; everybody sees Mr. Johnson too. In a late Season 2 episode, the lecturers at Abbott vote on which ones ought to get two free tickets to an NBA sport. The prize is meant to go to an educator, as a paltry present of appreciation from the district. However the principal, Ava, publicizes Mr. Johnson because the unanimous winner, to his delight. When somebody complains that he’s not a “actual instructor,” he retorts, “You understand how many courses I subbed?” He is aware of he deserves the tickets—he might not have the credentials, however viewers have seen him known as to “educate” class after class, filling within the cracks of a damaged (and broke) public-education system.
Ava asks the apparent query: Why did everybody vote for Mr. Johnson? One instructor, Melissa, responds that she selected him as a result of she was irritated with everybody else. However his landslide victory reveals simply how enmeshed he’s in Abbott’s cloth. He’s the individual each instructor considered first, in addition to themselves, to placed on the poll. He is a crucial a part of the varsity, a lot in order that he’s nearly synonymous with it. Abbott Elementary is a present that places the hilarity, grossness, frustration, and pleasure of public colleges on full show, so audiences can see how a lot power and love goes into these establishments. They’re locations the place youngsters study, locations of labor, locations the place the group gathers to deal with crises and maintain celebrations. Wry, hardworking, and a little bit bit quirky, Mr. Johnson embodies the many-faceted world of Abbott in all its splendor and stumbles.
