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    Review: On ‘English Teacher,’ School Is a Battlefield

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    A new FX sitcom handles the educational culture wars with a light touch.The culture war often doesn’t have a physical frontline; it’s fought in op-ed columns, through social-media memes and inside people’s heads.Public schools are an exception. There, the state infantry of teachers, enlisted to handle potentially explosive ideas, face wave after wave of challenging students, backed by air support from helicopter parents.“English Teacher,” which begins Monday on FX, is a deft, brutal trench comedy of this battle. Brian Jordan Alvarez, the creator and viral-video comic, stars as Evan Marquez, a high school teacher in suburban Austin, Texas, struggling to get through each day with his ideals intact and his shirts unstained.His students are wily shape-shifters, a tech-enabled alien species whose ways and attitudes keep their handlers off-balance. “The kids this year, I feel like they’re less woke,” Evan tells his best friend, the history teacher Gwen Sanders (Stephanie Koenig), who concurs. One student, she said, told her she needed to teach “both sides” of the Spanish Inquisition.Evan’s real troubles begin, however, when he learns that he’s under “investigation” after a rich, influential parent reported him for having kissed his ex-boyfriend (Jordan Firstman) in front of students.His principal, Grant Moretti — a walking anxiety attack played wonderfully by Enrico Colantoni — admits that Evan shouldn’t have to deal with this, but he’s too beaten and besieged to do anything but plead with Evan to help him make the problem go away. One of Evan’s students suggests he claim discrimination as a gay Hispanic, but another says, “Gay doesn’t count anymore, and he talks like a straight white guy.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Adam Sandler’s ‘Love You’ and Other Netflix Specials to Stream Now

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      The star is in fine, filthy form under the direction of Josh Safdie (“Uncut Gems”). Hannah Berner and Langston Kerman also deliver standout hours.Adam Sandler, ‘Love You’(Stream it on Netflix)When Barack Obama made a reference to the size of Donald J. Trump’s, ahem, crowd size, in his speech last week at the Democratic National Convention, he brought a category of lewd joke into the absolute center of the mainstream. This unlikely achievement owes a debt to Adam Sandler, who has been consistently committed to the art, at least since writing a dirty rhyme in a classmate’s middle-school yearbook.Now 57, Sandler is still at it, and judging by his new special, “Love You,” he hasn’t lost a step. Before he became a huge star, Sandler made proudly filthy and beloved comedy albums full of irreverent sketches that chronicled subjects like an extremely long bout of urination. This new special can feel like a throwback to that era. If anything, age allows new avenues for potty humor. Have you considered the bountiful comic implications of how botoxing away the wrinkles on a penis could lead to mistaking a flaccid member for an erect one? Adam Sandler has.“Love You” begins with Sandler heading to a stand-up show and everything going wrong. His car’s windshield gets busted, and then he requires a last-second costume change. There are tech issues. From his car to the dingy hallway backstage, we see him, via frenetic, crooked camerawork, being bombarded by people making demands — some annoying, others disturbing, all gradually ramping up a vague sense of anxiety.If it feels as if it’s a sequel to “Uncut Gems,” that may be because the special is directed by Josh Safdie, who along with his brother, Benny, made that jittery, giddily caffeinated drama, a high-water mark of late-career Sandler. Whereas Benny Safdie followed that up by collaborating with Nathan Fielder on the TV show “The Curse” to push his genre-blurring style in more narratively complex directions, Josh wasted no time putting his mark on the aesthetic of another comedy star.Sandler’s last special, “100% Fresh” (2018), was a key stage in his transformation from critically dismissed superstar of man-child comedies to widely beloved éminence grise. He hasn’t exactly matured — that would destroy his comedy — so much as allowed sentimentality to overtake the humor. He had help from family. His wife (who shows up at the end of the new special) and daughters are now as much regulars of his work as Chris Rock, David Spade and his old friends from “Saturday Night Live” are.Sandler’s family and old friends are regulars in his work. His pal Rob Schneider gets a cameo in his special doing an Elvis impression, the sweaty Vegas version.NetflixWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More