Setting Up and Paying Off Audience Expectation: ABBOTT ELEMENTARY

directing to keep theme in frame

Stu and I (and Chas!) discussed Abbott Elementary 2.07 “Attack Ad” — specifically, how the show gets playful with its mockumentary format and fourth wall breaks — and compare its use of fourth wall breaks to High Fidelity and Fleabag.

But I’m here today to talk about how the Season Three finale uses those techniques in delightful, cheeky ways.

spoilers for Episode 3.14 “Party” follow

In short: once That Kiss comes, we realise we’ve been steadily set up throughout the whole episode, even from this seemingly innocuous scene.

Let’s look at how we’ve been set up!

Camera Crew as Audience Surrogate

A sense of voyeurism is baked into Abbott Elementary’: from the handheld camera work and sometimes-long-zooms, we feel the crew’s immediacy and quasi-cinéma-vérité; testimonials explain things in reality show exposé ways; and characters’ glances through the fourth wall connect directly to us, even if the in-universe reason is they’re making ‘can you believe this?’ eyes at the crew.

This feeling of voyeurism can also work ‘against’ us, allowing characters to shut us out; like in the episode’s first instance of Janine’s door closing.

The camera is outside, but clearly some crew remain inside, because the episode immediately cuts back to Janine — logically this tracks as one camera team follows Gregory and Co, while one camera team stays inside. (Remember this detail!)

Framing Important Elements

Janine’s next piece to camera is framed with her door-window showing the outside fritzing light. This remind us of the bulb sub-subplot, while setting us up for the last shot of this story. (Spoiler: we’ll be looking through that very window.)

Keep Up The Conceit

"Party" contains classical elements such as Janine giving an interview and smaller moments such as Gregory eyeing the camera when considering what to say.

It also plays with (much rarer) direct interaction when Gregory ‘subtly’ pushes the camera team out the door.

Remember the two camera crews; when Gregory comes back, Janine is talking to camera, and we are inside with her when he knocks; we never see him outside.

This does two things: 1. allows us to experience Janine’s nerves and anticipation of ‘who could that be!?” 2. logically presume the other team stayed with Jacob and Co.

Showing any of this scene from a second angle would mean both crews are on site, so the whole “push ‘em out the door” wouldn’t (necessarily) mean Janine and Gregory are alone . . . whereas now we know they are.

Bringing It Together

Finally, the crew points the camera through the window because like us (who they’re usually positioned as), they want to see it happen!

Abbott Elementary never breaks its conceit, but cleverly uses it to: foreshadow events through setting up and reminding us of objects like the window and light bulb; give us emotional identification with Gregory, Janine, and the camera team in turn; then pay it all off with comedy as well as a fist-pumping finally!