Review: Abbott Elementary, "Holiday Hookah" | Season 2, Episode 10
The teachers get festive for the midseason finale
In terms of being a television episode full of “holiday spirit,” “Holiday Hookah” is an interesting one. The A-plot of Janine going out on the town has the trappings of romantic yearning at holiday time—and Christmas bops, including the classic DMX cover of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”—but the plot itself is not about the holidays. (Plenty of other shows, for example, would use this episode as an excuse to include plot mistletoe.) It’s a holiday-set romantic story, but it’s not about the holidays. As for the B-plot, with a self-secluded Jacob crashing Barbara and Melissa’s “annual Xmas lounge dinner,” that is more outwardly about Christmas itself. But the way Jacob keeps his real issues with the holiday close to the vest—allowing the audience to infer what his family “fighting” and “dysfunction” could be but never really have a satisfactory understanding—is stacked on top of some other strangeness about this plot.
But before I really get into the plots: It was actual…
