“Mr. Iglesias” starts by delivering a sweet burn. The title character addresses his class of high school freshmen and poses a challenge to them: “Alright, it’s the last day of school. We’ve got five minutes to go over all American History.” Marisol Fuentes, his best, smartest, and snarkiest student answers: “Wiped out the indigenous people, oppressed the blacks, did some good stuff around World War II and now the Sun is setting on our Empire”. Everybody laughs. “Yeah, I guess we did cover it all”, Mr. Iglesias answers approvingly. You wouldn’t have expected a punchline like this one during the heyday of high-school sitcoms, which usually dealt with everyday problems faced by everyday adolescents (sexual awakening, love triangles, failing P.E., that episode where things get way, way too real because some of the characters touch a cigarette); but this new Netflix show is here to remind us we’re not in the 70’s, 80’s or 90’s anymore. The United States, and its system of white privilege are now fair game.
@creecicchino“Mr. Iglesias” is hardly perfect, though. You would think that, as a society, we’d be passed the multi-camera laughing track sitcoms, but Netflix is keen on proving to us that we’re not. The show combines the low-budgety feel of Nickelodeon shows (along with recognizable faces from their cast) with 90’s punchline deliveries and predictable jokes. Young actors struggle to master their craft, their characters being too dumb to believe, while veterans like Sherri Shepherd, Oscar Nuñez, and lead Gabriel “Fluffy” Iglesias carry most of the show. Some characters are so unbelievably villainous, it’s painful to see their feeble motivations prolong for 10 episodes. Much of what nobody has ever liked about the sitcoms are all there, except this time they at least managed to squeeze some brains into it… even if it doesn’t seem so at first.
The show’s premise echoes the 70’s sitcom “Welcome back, Kotter”, perhaps too closely, except without the white savior plot. Gabe Iglesias is a History teacher at Wilson high, a school in Long Beach mostly made up of a black and Latinx student body and faculty, who takes it upon himself to guide a handful of underachieving misfits. Its diverse group of students isn’t gratuitous, though. They actually make a point out of it.
Gabe, for instance, makes reference after reference particularly to Mexican-American culture, from quoting Cypress Hill, to dropping Spanish here and there. He even defends the loving moniker “negrito”, which Mexican-American student Rita Pérez uses for African-American Lorenzo, her crush. In Spanish, him and Tony (the other Latino teacher) explain to the principal that “negrito” is not a slur in Spanish, but a term of endearment.
@bentleygreenofficialThe explanation notwithstanding, Rita faces accusations of violating the inclusive language guidelines. Later on in the episode Lorenzo even claims to liking his nickname, understanding the place from where the word comes from, but this storyline illustrates a school run during a post-#Metoo, post-Black Lives Matters, Trump era United States. The brutish football coach, for instance, comes off as an obnoxious man’s man who transpires toxic masculinity; Abby is a lighthearted white teacher from South Dakota, oblivious to the hardships of LA’s minorities, whose naiveté, which stems from sheltered privilege, is often the butt of the joke.
One of the running gags is that Gabe constantly goes head to head with Carlos, the assistant school principal who unsuccessfully plots to either expel these students or jump straight to convicting them. Time and time again, Gabe and the students rebuke Carlos for repeating stereotypes that criminalize and trap minorities in a vicious circle of poverty and powerlessness.
Carlos’s motivation, purging the school out of its bad apples in order to make Wilson a top performing institute overnight, doesn’t make much sense to begin with. No one is so vile against kids. No one is this petty. Eventually, however, you understand he’s is only there to provide an antagonist for Gabe, the only teacher that believes in the students, as the show wants us to believe.
It might seem easy to dismiss Carlos as a silly prop, but as it repeatedly happens with “Mr. Iglesias”, his role carries a deeper point, even if it remains underdeveloped. Carlos sparks a series of student protests by implementing the mandatory use of transparent backpacks. After seeing a Che Guevara sign, he quickly reprimands Marisol, presumably a Mexican-American, by claiming “Che Guevara may look good on a protest sign or a hippie’s T-shirt, but as a Cuban-American, I promise you, he was as misguided as you are”.
@jacobvargas
This exchange proves “Mr. Iglesias” is well aware that Latinx make up a diverse community. Even though Latinx is a useful umbrella-term due to a common, if partial, origin, the community is itself made up of many groups that might fundamentally disagree on its distinct systems of values and beliefs. Where Mexican-Americans may or may not see a symbol of anti-establishment, Cuban-Americans clearly see a symbol of repression and violence. Moreover, when Marisol and Gabe debate whether if the correct term is Latinx or Latinos, generational friction enters the stage, proving that we might be going into a territory in which Latinx are becoming ever so fragmented, not just by country of origin, but by generation.
For all of its predictability, cartoon characters and, sometimes adolescent humor, “Mr. Iglesias” does bring some fresh air to the viewership. Subtle jabs at Trump never get old, while jokes about being poor and brown, growing up in broken homes, and being white and privileged, equally abound in “Mr. Iglesias”. But the show falls short of becoming too cynical by holding it all together with a lot of heart. And what it lacks in smart comedy, it makes up for in clever social commentary.
@fluffyguyRead more:
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