Abbott Rewatch 2023-4

“This is a classroom, not a hoagie stand.” QKQKWKDJSJ

Damn, last time I was up this early was to cuss out the mailman. I don’t need all them bills comin’.” SNSNSNS. Ugh, Ava’s fits are always immaculate—those high-waisted white pants.

“Ah, tech has its place—like when you haven’t been with a man for a few years.” JESUS GODNDIWJSNSNS. OKAY, freeze frame this shot. There’s Jacob’s reaction up front and Gregory staring straight into the camera in the back. BUT ALSO, there’s the extra next to Gregory straight up LOSING it.

“I had to potty train myself.” :((

“Okay, who do you gotta bang to get into the analytics annex?” AQkqkwkswkKWJSNS. Two sex jokes in less than two minutes. Mel is on a roll

Love Mrs. Barbara Howard lying and plastering a huge smile onto her face. <3 go, girlboss. Repress ur insecurities

“I love how you guys will just park anywhere.” lmao

“Now who took that picture of me…” ANSNSNS

“Got a hotmail. I once even rode in a Tesla.” i fucking love her

“I’m a little behind on my hotmail correspondence…sssss.” AJQJJSSN

“No, not Kaleel. Everybody knows that little dork can read.” QHQJWHJWJ

HILLIAM GETS ME EVERY TIME LMAO

“A car full of women.” ANSNSNSNS, never change, Gregory.

“Like, you wanna run up the Rocky steps, but you can’t take a punch in the face!” Love this whole monologue, but especially the part where she’s like it’s a respect thing. This is the kids’ history and to sanitize it is to do a disservice to them.

The kid plays William is sooo cute.

“Sometimes I wonder if I put you on too high a pedestal, but then I think it’s not high enough. I say, ‘Janine, she’s a person just like you…’” Ughhshhshshshs, oh, this dialogue always gets me because that’s exactly the crux of Barbara’s insecurities. She has been lofted to a high pedestal—by both her own design and the admiration of others—and feeling as though there’s a gap between where she is and where people perceive her to be absolutely GUTS her. It’s the curse of the perfectionist.

The shot of Melissa smiling before William starts to read is so wonderful.

“Normally, I encourage cheating, but girl, you gots to let me know.” AJDNSNSN

“It just made me feel like I was being pushed out to sea.” :((

“Are those jellybeans on your belt?” AJQNDNW, I love when Barbara is mean. God.

“Basically, I was a jerk.” / “I wish my ex-husband could ever admit that much.” UGH!!! UGHHHHHH. UGH!!!!!!!!!!

“This is who we are—the good, the bad, and the ugly.” 😭

I really do love Jacob and Mel’s relationship.

“You’re gonna sell those, aren’t ya?” / “And what would you rather I do, Melissa?” AOQKQKAKWIWOWNANSNA. Now kiss

Barb and Janine dancing with little William. 😭😭

She’s gone for warm-tones today with a calico-print shirt that rides beautifully over her hips but also, too, with the golden hoops that delicately dangle from her ears. Amaranth lips. Dusk colored eyes. A flash of white as she smiles at Melissa with all of her shining teeth.

The second-grade teacher involuntarily shivers. If there currently wasn’t a record breaking heat wave in Philadelphia, she might have had the grounds to blame the February cold. 

“You didn’t,” the kindergarten teacher scolds by way of greeting, gesturing at the Tupperware caught between Melissa’s hands. 

“Did what?” She grins innocently, closing some of the space—the unbearable gap—between them. She sets her heavy bag on their roundtable, places the plastic container there too. Her last name is scrawled across the top in faded Sharpie. 

“A blueberry pie?” Barbara arches an immaculate brow. “My birthday is next month, I know you very well know.”

“Oh, pfft,” she rolls her eyes like she's perfectly unbothered. She crosses her arms over her chest. She shrugs. Her cheeks still feel a little too rosy for comfort anyway. “Can’t a gal make her coworker her favorite pie for no good reason?” 

“Absolutely not,” the other woman just as immediately counters, emphatically shaking her head. “Or, more accurately, ‘for no good reason’ is far from an acceptable excuse when I know for a fact you had plans with your family last night. Girlfriend, when did you have time to do this? More to the point, why did you find time to do this?”

Leave it to Barbara to turn a simple gesture of kindness into a pointed interrogation of motivation and minutiae. Melissa knows she’s bad about accepting the generosity of others, but at least she’s not the older woman three feet away, unable to receive a gift without extensively litigating whether she deserves it. It’s a degree of reflexive self-denial that her friend would be the first to call Christian and Melissa secretly thinks is pretty damn self-loathing. 

“It’s an apology,” she grunts, undeterred. At the same time, not entirely good at this whole vulnerability thing, she briefly glances away, scratching the side of her nose: “I threw you smack dab into the wall yesterday over a lousy branzino.”

When she finally works up the guts to look at the older woman again, Barbara’s eyes have incrementally softened, the crow’s feet around them gently flexing their tensed toes. Melissa hates that—being so thoroughly seen, canvassed, and understood by another.

She kinda freakin' loves it too.

“I’m sure it would have been a remarkable dish,” Barbara offers kindly before chuckling a little.

“… more, well, fortuitous circumstances permitting.”

Which is a polite way of saying that yesterday was a total clusterfuck without actually saying that yesterday was a total clusterfuck. Her fish wasn’t the only casualty of poor Janine trying to make the school a better place.

“Oh, it would’a kicked ass,” Melissa agrees, smirking at her friend’s trademark discretion and simultaneously basking in the stunning lack of her own. “Blown Annette’s stupid cacio e pepe outta the water.”

“I know you certainly achieved your goal of looking cuter than her, though.”

“Damn straight I did! I was a flippin’ smoke show.”

“Naturally,” Barbara hums in a low voice. It's sensual. It's just for fun. Barbara is only a friend. Melissa's stomach still does a little flip anyway.

"Thanks, kitten," she quips in the same affected tone.

And they both heartily laugh then, giggle even. Of course they do—flirting is one of their favorite ways of showing their love—and Melissa knows that all is forgiven by the way that Barbara’s dimples twitch at the corners of her beautifully shaped mouth. 

There’s a small part of her that thinks that maybe she's getting off a little too easily, that forgiveness is something she shouldn’t be so freely gifted as reckless as she was, as inconsiderate and as rude. But she supposes that’s the Christian talkin’ in her too, or hell, more specifically still, that good, 'ole Catholic guilt of never feeling like she’s good enough—always one confession shy of any kind of meaningful absolution.

She shrugs the itchiness away, though—plays it off like it hasn't gotten under her skin.

She laughs and Barbara does too, and in doing so, give each other permission to get on with their lives. They have traditions to uphold, sixteen-year long habits that have long been encoded into their systems.

Melissa slumps into her favorite chair, her body partially angled towards the open door, while Barbara fixes another coffee—black, just the way the second-grade teacher likes it—and brings both mugs to the altar of their shared table. She assumes her own seat with more delicacy in the motion than Melissa contains in her pinky finger, ankles crossed, posture unimpeachable. Melissa turns the break room television on and clicks the remote a couple of times until she finds the Action News channel. That annoying commercial for the local Toyota dealership is currently on, the one with a father and son duo clearly reading from a corny-ass script on a teleprompter. She grunts impatiently at the inconvenience, and Barbara snickers because she does. 

They accidentally brush legs as they’re both shifting around, and they mutually pretend not to notice.

(Melissa’s running theory is that if they pretend not to notice, then continuing to do it remains innocent.)

(Permissible even.)

“You really shouldn’t have, you big, ‘ole teddy bear,” Barbara tries again, though she directly undermines herself by drawing the Tupperware to her and unlatching the lid to clearly get a better look. It’s an extraordinarily easy pie to make: cream cheese, powdered sugar, and whipped cream all mixed together, a fresh blueberry topping and a baked graham cracker crust. Chill overnight. Serve cold. It was no skin off Melissa’s back at all, and it’s always worth it for this very moment, for the treat of seeing her best friend’s entire face light up in unadulterated pleasure.

“You should have spent the time and necessary resources upstaging your cousin.”

“Bah,” she snorts, playfully batting Barbara on the arm. “I got plenty of time for that. I just wanted t’do something nice for you, ya stubborn gagootz.”

She lets the rather schmaltzy note linger—far longer than she usually would—only realizing that her friend is blushing when she turns a little and the sunlight slanting through the blinds glints off her darkened cheeks, transforming her entire physiognomy into something angelic, which is to say transcendent and holy.

Melissa swallows thickly.

“Now, uh, quit your bellyaching and enjoy some of your pie,” she adds gruffly, reaching into the basket on the center of their table and grabbing a plastic fork that she all but lobs at Barbara.

The older woman laughs incredulously as she stops the utensil from skidding off the table just in the nick of time. “At”—she glances at her silvery wristwatch—”seven o’clock in the morning? Are you out of your mind, girlfriend?”

“My old noggin’s perfectly intact thank you very much,” she huffs, retrieving a fork for herself. “I just know life’s about indulging in the simple pleasures every once in a while.”

Crackin' open a cold beer after a long day at work.

Staring at her married coworker from a distance that won’t get her in trouble with Gerald Howard and God.

Thinking she’s all beautiful, gilded in shining sun.

Accidentally brushing shoulders.

Thighs. Ankles. Knobbly, arthritic knees.

Eating pie for breakfast, which is to say, having her own cake and somehow being lucky enough to eat it too. Some days, just being in Barbara Howard’s presence is enough. And other days, getting to share these precious moments with her makes Melissa feel like she’s cheated the dealer and won the lion’s share of his gold.

“Our blood sugars are going to rocket sky high,” Barbara says doubtfully, though she’s eyeing the dessert appreciatively—with clear lust in her eyes. Her indiscriminate sweet tooth is one of her only weaknesses. 

Melissa knows because she frequently and giddily exploits it. 

“Eh, that’s future youse’s problem,” she shrugs happily. 

“And present Barbara’s guilty delight, I suppose?” The kindergarten teacher sighs. There’s resignation in the gesture, a tender fondness that only has but one other name. “Consequences be damned, forgiven, and forgotten?”

“Yup,” she grins crookedly. “That’s the spirit, Barb.”

“Mm. You’re an entire mess-and-a-half, Melissa Schemmenti—you know that, right?” Barbara asks, finally planting her fork in the middle of her container.

(Sweet surrender.)

“Can’t argue with that,” she jokes, staking her own claim in the pie too. 

(Simple indulgence.)

“But, hey,” she adds, “it’s on you for still lovin’ my fine tush anyway.”

The sides of their hands accidentally touch as they each carve into the pie, pinkies perfectly aligned. This, too, is innocent. It’s nothing, Melissa convinces herself as she viscerally shudders, as Barbara instantly recoils, withdrawing her hand, taking a huge chunk of the dessert with it. She stops just short of bringing it to her mouth, though, staring at Melissa from the depths of dark, inscrutable eyes.

“Another guilty delight of mine,” she says quietly. It almost sounds like an aching admission on Barbara’s elegant tongue, as though the love between them is not as perfectly above the table as they tell themselves, as though all the leg brushing and every fleeting touch besides aggregates to something larger than their component parts.

Something sinful.

Something beautiful.

It’s funny how the two often end up being one and the same.

“Lovin’ my big ass?” Melissa asks, even though she knows that’s not exactly what Barbara is talking about. They always talk about the important things in the esoteric language of a joke, a game, a bantering exchange that they can absolutely take back. 

(The ring on Barbara’s fourth finger perpetually requires that they take it back.)

“the young man with an earring in his cheek”

“until you wake up and your kitchen is across the street”

“oh lord, the boy is in the trash” 😂

that room is soooo bare

“i like clean :)” oh, gregory

jacob bring unimpressed and janine being so proud of her video

“that thing” *rubs fingertips together* idk why but that made me laugh so hard

“is that european?”

ava turning the hello sign away from everyone and completely defeating the purpose of it HA

“is this an iphone 9? it’s like a walkman”

“can you twerk? it don’t look like you can but i could be wrong” this woman is so FUNNY

look at them all standing around watching the video. so cute.

janine and barb being a mother-daughter duo

child: “i drew a picture of you!” gregory: “oh wow” *in the most unenthusiastic tone ever*

him trying to hide the bag under the desk 😭 please

“maybe the giraffe”

janine being disappointed in gregory for not trying

they really made ava do everything but her job in these first few episodes

i want one of those massage guns!!!

in between the bones?!!

watching janine give out the stickers was so nostalgic 🥺

ava trying to do barb’s voice i’m cRYING

not the the black and white filter 😂

“little johnny” she didn’t lie though, that does have an affect on people

“i pulled out a dollar and she was like viola davis”

ava having an OF 😭

janine’s plan to move to a small town with a tomato stand to escape ONE person is so real

“a comment from luke 14:13” “oooh, what’d he say?” pleasE ma’am

her just dropping the packages right on the table lmao like okay i guess??

“would you just enjoy something? you’re gonna get an ulcer” i can’t 😂

janine panicking like that is so funny to me. that guilt was eating her ALIVE.

janine getting sad at gregory saying he’s only a substitute

“not that i keep count — 27”

aw @ gregory saying he has 26 drawings

lmao not a space durag

no but honestly kids drawings can be so hard to decipher

janine being ready to fight these people for barb LOL

“if you went to the top you wouldn’t be able to find it”; bc ava really said, “let me make the most melodramatic tik tok ever”

“are you gonna give that stuff back?” “oh hell no” i know that’s right, barb!

“your hyperactive little heart was in the right place” this might be the sweetest insult ever??

“i’ll help you decipher” mhmm we know you will ma’am

am i the only one who doesn’t know who don cheadle is? yes? oh, okay.

“where are you seeing santa?” sir in the whole entire picture

jacob trying to make the most out of the printer is so janine of him