S01.E09: Rosemary's Boyfriend

[ElectricBoogaloo]

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Jack is incensed when his dead mom's former lover shows up and suggests they commemorate her birthday. Jack taps his students to help him retaliate, but the students' hands are already full - of crying robot babies. Stef's kindness toward Dale the janitor sends the wrong signals.

[AnimeMania]

What a waste of a Ron Funches.

[Ms Lark]

The only time I laughed at this one was when the geekiest kid said, "not to upset you" (I'm paraphrasing here) and everyone ducked at the same time to avoid being hit by chalk or some other projectile. I like the kids. That's about how far it goes with this show.

[Joimiaroxeu]

That moment at the end with all the "dead" doll babies in the pool was dark even for this show.

[Rahul]

I didn't mind the B storyline with Stef and Mary for once. However, the show's strong suit is the quirky A.P. Bio kids. I wish the writers would spend more time developing stories for them and fleshing out their characters like we have in previous episodes with Marcus and Colin.

Heather has some really violent tendencies and impulses. I wonder where that comes from, aside from her parents refusing to get her very own crockpot. 

[marketdoctor]

The idea of buying "slightly irregular" dolls and then expecting the teacher and students to make it work was a little close to home.

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However, the show's strong suit is the quirky A.P. Bio kids

I hope they realize this if the show is picked up for another season.  That's also a way to keep it fresh, as characters/actors age out, but could be in another class.

[Rahul]

6 hours ago, Joimiaroxeu said:

That moment at the end with all the "dead" doll babies in the pool was dark even for this show.

Yes, Jack's solution to the animatronic babies was both grisly and totally unexpected. I thought he was hauling them off premises to torture his mother's lover, but this show is never predictable which I like.

[JasmineFlower]

As dark as that ending was, I was kinda okay with it even if it was unexpected. I was turning the volume of the show down, muting it at times, I could not take that level of crying baby noises, it would have driven me crazy if that was going on non-stop and by all accounts it was since literally everyone seemed to be complaining about them and it was driving everyone literally crazy to the point where the kids just said they were free when Sarika asked where her baby was like some captives who had just escaped a dungeon and seen sunlight for the first time. So as crazy and dark as that ending was, it kinda made sense to me when I watched it. Durbin is luckily people didn't know he was the cause of the irregular baby dolls, or he'd have suffered bodily harm at the hands of parents, teens, and teachers alike for the amount of torture it put them all through.

[Joimiaroxeu]

But that's part of the lesson the kids were supposed to learn, isn't it? That parenting, especially helpless babies, is hard but you have to do it because they're your responsibility. If the kid won't stop crying or has some kind of disability you can't just throw it away or flat out kill it. (Although, tragically, that's exactly what happens too often.) Jack "killing" those babies defeated the purpose even though the exercise was probably doomed to fail anyway because of the defects. I'd almost have been okay with if he'd just donated them to Goodwill or something.

Edited April 7, 2018 by Joimiaroxeu

[Nessie]

I admit to a fair amount of ignorance about these dolls, and I have some real-life questions about them.  I went to school before they were in use, and the school my sons went to didn't use them, so my sole "experience" with them is what I've seen on TV.  Are they really allowed to cause that much of a disruption to other classes?*  That seems unfair to the other teachers - and the students not in that particular Health class, and if I were one of the teachers, I would be pretty upset.  I don't know if I would have gone as far as "drowning" all the dolls, but I would have made my displeasure known loudly and often until it was resolved.

*I get that these particular dolls were malfunctioning, but I guess my question is in reality, do these dolls regularly cry in class?  Can they be turned off if the student has a class that requires concentration or a test?  I get that the entire purpose of the dolls is to teach responsibility, but a teen parent certainly wouldn't have their baby in class.

[Rockstar99435]

20 hours ago, Nessie said:

I admit to a fair amount of ignorance about these dolls, and I have some real-life questions about them.  I went to school before they were in use, and the school my sons went to didn't use them, so my sole "experience" with them is what I've seen on TV.  Are they really allowed to cause that much of a disruption to other classes?*  That seems unfair to the other teachers - and the students not in that particular Health class, and if I were one of the teachers, I would be pretty upset.  I don't know if I would have gone as far as "drowning" all the dolls, but I would have made my displeasure known loudly and often until it was resolved.

*I get that these particular dolls were malfunctioning, but I guess my question is in reality, do these dolls regularly cry in class?  Can they be turned off if the student has a class that requires concentration or a test?  I get that the entire purpose of the dolls is to teach responsibility, but a teen parent certainly wouldn't have their baby in class.

At my school, the students don't get the robot babies in their regular health classes. Only the students who take Childhood Development get the robot babies. The students get their babies on Friday and turn them in on Monday, so they're only in the other classes either Friday afternoon or Monday morning. Different teachers react to the babies in different ways, but my rule is 'if your baby cries, take it outside.' They usually don't cause that much disruption. The kids take them outside and feed/change/rock it so it stops crying and then comes back to class. I usually have about 1-2 students a year with the robot babies.

[Nessie]

2 hours ago, Rockstar99435 said:

At my school, the students don't get the robot babies in their regular health classes. Only the students who take Childhood Development get the robot babies. The students get their babies on Friday and turn them in on Monday, so they're only in the other classes either Friday afternoon or Monday morning. Different teachers react to the babies in different ways, but my rule is 'if your baby cries, take it outside.' They usually don't cause that much disruption. The kids take them outside and feed/change/rock it so it stops crying and then comes back to class. I usually have about 1-2 students a year with the robot babies.

Thanks for your response @Rockstar99435.  That makes sense.

[ElectricBoogaloo]

15 hours ago, Rockstar99435 said:

At my school, the students don't get the robot babies in their regular health classes. Only the students who take Childhood Development get the robot babies. The students get their babies on Friday and turn them in on Monday, so they're only in the other classes either Friday afternoon or Monday morning.

When I was in high school (which was about a million years ago), only students in child development (which was an elective) had the baby assignment. Health class (which was required for all freshmen) did not have the baby assignment. Instead of robot babies, we had raw eggs for a full week which made it a lot easier to cheat at the assignment. I stuck my egg baby inside my PE locker for one period every day. Bonus: no crying!

[SmithW6079]

This show makes me frequently laugh out loud, maybe because Jack is such a d-bag. His interactions with the kids are funny, and I like how -- for whatever reason -- the class seems to care about him and want to protect him. The robot babies were annoying, but they made me laugh. Jack's comment to Sarika about how tightly she was holding the baby's face was great. I got a kick out of the withdrawn kid and the bully trying to psychoanalyze Jack.

The show is strongest when it focuses on Jack and the class, and the occasional insights into how messed up Jack's life is. There's comedy gold waiting to be mined from the students. I don't know why the writers are not focusing on them and keep creating B plots with the other teachers, who are absolutely horrible. They need to go far, far away. They are not funny at all, and the two with the janitor story line in this episodes were just bitches. I thought at first, OK, the black teacher doesn't want to date the janitor because he's creepy (except he didn't come across that way), but then she lied and said the other teacher had a crush on him, which prompted him to tell the Asian art teacher that he appreciates it, but he doesn't feel the same way. And because her ego is hurt, she schemes to seduce him and then dump him. Then the Asian teacher rejects the black janitor and tells the same lie. It was obvious they were rejecting the janitors precisely because they were janitors and not for any other reason. Gals, you're no prize catches yourselves.