Teacher's Pet: A Show I've Already Discussed At Length

Have you ever found yourself wondering what would happen if My Gym Partner's a Monkey was made by the guy who made your favorite childhood game and had more trans metaphors and quotes from Jean-Paul Sartre? Of course not. You're normal. Anyway, Teacher's Pet.

It's very much a show that doesn't know what it wants to be, and I think that's bound to happen when a show has both Scott Leadready II and Ian Wazselewski. It's very weird. They're set up to be foils, but they're essentially opposites in every way, with Scott's humor coming from clever wit, and Ian's coming from being the nastiest motherfucker on earth. At the same time though, they do dip into the other's style of humor every so often. Normally I'd find something like this an interesting exercise, but it kind of just clashes horribly.

5:29 PM · Jan 3, 2021 "i think ian is like. a leftist. but like. a shitty leftist."
5:32 PM · Jan 3, 2021 "teacher's pet is a little grossout but i think it stands out for a plethora of "almost-dick jokes""

A lot of other characters don't really stick out. The background characters never really stood out. There was the dog hating principal, but other than him, Scott, and Ian, the only characters worth pointing out are Leonard and Mary Lou Helperman.

Unlike Ian, I think Leonard works pretty well as a foil to Scott. Unfortunately, it's pretty formulaic in that Leonard plays the role of the straight man and tries to prevent Scott from outing himself to his mom. The thing is, Leonard's mom, Mary Lou, is actually a huge sweetheart. If she knew her dog could talk and went to school, I can't imagine she would have any other opinion than him being the specialest little boy who ever existed. She's kind of a shining light in the show, and I found episodes where she was the focus the best.

11:13 PM · Dec 30, 2020 "my heart goes out to ms. helperman"
10:13 PM · Jan 1, 2021 "i think teacher's pet is fine when the episodes aren't centered around leonard... like if ms. helperman has an episode i will probably love it. scott is hit or miss."

Family is a huge theme in the show Teacher's Pet, with Scott constantly referring to Leonard and Mary Lou as all the family he'll ever need. He's very much treated with love, and you'd really wanna see him succeed. Maybe with a finale-type film where he finally gets the nerve to tell Mary Lou the truth and is accepted for who he is?

Bad news, I watched the Teacher's Pet movie, and that very much does not happen...

8:16 PM · Jan 1, 2021 "feeling very uncomfortable with the implications of this brought on by the movie...."

I'm not gonna rehash my feelings on it though, as I reviewed it in length here. (Content warning for transphobia, incest, and detransitioning in this review and the rest of the blog post.)

Anyway. The rest of the tweets. 

4:12 PM · Jan 2, 2022 "teacher's pet the movie is rated pg for crude humor. now you could argue this is on the beginning end of giving films a pg rating so they can be edgier, but let us not forget what this movie is about."
4:12 PM · Jan 2, 2022 "also i think if the movie got a PG rating leonard should at least be allowed one "crap" or "sucks""
4:14 PM · Jan 2, 2022 "this movie starts out with some pinocchio stuff, and as it is in disney's library, we're going straight into the real boy shit and it's authentic, with that cranium style."
4:31 PM · Jan 2, 2022 "it's so hard to read this as anything but straight transphobia"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

4:37 PM · Jan 2, 2022 "the thing about the teacher's pet movie is it actively retcons so much of the show. leonard is a lot crueler in it, and though you can argue his motivations as someone hoping this shall pass, you can smell the transphobia on him so bad. scott just wants his friend to accept him"
4:37 PM · Jan 2, 2022 "not just friends. they're family. we'll get to that later."
4:43 PM · Jan 2, 2022 "we got mr jolly saying the christian lord's name in vain which is ah... all i can ask for"
5:34 PM · Jan 2, 2022 "so ivan krank is gender non conforming."
5:36 PM · Jan 2, 2022 "like this is not a joke ivan krank canonically does not gender conform. i dont know the specifics of this but it's worth pointing out in watching this movie and considering the themes of becoming a boy against the laws of nature, and this being seen as a bad thing"
5:40 PM · Jan 2, 2022 "i went on gary baseman's twitter and it's entirely crossposting"
5:43 PM · Jan 2, 2022 "she's trans and i want the best for her"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

5:45 PM · Jan 2, 2022 "adele just adds so much to the trans narrative as a dysphoric trans woman, which is fucking insane bc dennis is an absolute scrimblo bimblo"
5:48 PM · Jan 2, 2022 "and now we leave the world of gender and metaphors and go straight to the world of THAT IS NOT ONLY HIS TEACHER BUT ALSO HIS ADOPTIVE MOTHER."
5:53 PM · Jan 2, 2022 "the funny cartoon plot of "you're gonna out yourself to MOM" (this would be really funny if gay ppl in cartoons were common enough to write straight people and were really bad at it so it'd be mostly this plot)"
5:55 PM · Jan 2, 2022 "ok so scott is having the absolute gender euphoria of his LIFE and mary lou just thinks this is a stranger"
6:04 PM · Jan 2, 2022 "this is so crazy like scott sees marrying mary lou as an arrangement so he and leonard can be besties again, and leonard's whole argument is YOU ARE MY DOG (transphobia) but no one mentionthe elephant in the room that scott sees leonard and mary lou as family and this is incest"
6:05 PM · Jan 2, 2022 "transphobe has a point"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

6:17 PM · Jan 2, 2022 "am i crazy to say that some of the artists on this movie were just an eensy teensy bit horny for mary lou like not overwhelmingly so but just a LIIIIIITTLE bit?"
6:26 PM · Jan 2, 2022 "from an anti-trans lens this rlly goes into the contagion of it huh"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

6:30 PM · Jan 2, 2022 "ivan krank did not need to be a villain and scott did not need to detransition but at the same time, in this movie, these things have to happen due to the core thesis statement."
6:33 PM · Jan 2, 2022 "things scott does not understand
-money and various coins
-the concept of incest"
6:35 PM · Jan 2, 2022 "scott really just lampshaded how he hasn't quoted shakespeare yet. geek."

And as for that thesis statement I mentioned... It's right here.

Going through this post, it kinda hurts more now than when I watched it at the start of the new year. The gender metaphors in Teacher's Pet, much like in shows like Teenage Robot and Danny Phantom, are likely unintentional, but the fact that you could swap out something like gender for this bums me out horribly.

So I'm gonna take my frustrations out on Leonard some more.

Overall Rating for Teacher's Pet: D Tier