“Abbott Elementary” writer on Jacob's crisis, finally letting Sheryl Lee Ralph sing

Brittani Nichols takes us behind this week's episode.

Warning: This story contains spoilers about this Wednesday's episode of Abbott Elementary, "Breakup."

Pull that fire alarm because everyone at Abbott Elementary needs some help.

The staff of Abbott are all in various states of crisis on this week's episode of the ABC comedy. Jacob (Chris Perfetti) wrestles with the fact that he knows he and live-in boyfriend Zach (Larry Owens) need to breakup. But faced with the prospect of confrontation, he instead takes a passive-aggressive approach, leaving crumbs everywhere, not squeezing out the sponge, and — worst of all — not telling Zach goodbye in the morning.

When it all comes to a head with Gregory (Tyler James Williams) stuck in the middle (literally), Jacob finally blurts out that they need to break up and the secrets come tumbling out.

Meanwhile, Melissa (Lisa Ann Walter) is aghast at the new substitute teacher running Janine's classroom, Cassidy Geoffrey (Sabrina Wu). She calls in Janine to dig up some dirt on the sub, who is non-binary, suspecting they're not actually credentialed. Only for the entire pursuit to blow up in their faces.

Barbara (Sheryl Lee Ralph) faces her own challenges when she brings her church choir to rehearse in Abbott's auditorium, enduring the judgment of her fellow choir members. This leads to an unexpected point of connection between her and Ava (Janelle James), who has experienced similar mean girl behavior in her sorority. Ultimately, Ava gives Barbara a chance to shine, letting her sing a solo for the entire school.

We called up writer Brittani Nichols to get some parent-teacher feedback on the episode, including whether Jacob's relationship is really over, what it was like writing an episode that finally lets Ralph show off her Broadway pipes, and why she wanted to introduce a non-binary character whose identity doesn't define their storyline.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: You introduce a new character, non-binary substitute teacher Cassidy Geoffrey. But it's something we learn from context clues like an "Mx." on a chalk board Why did you want to approach the storytelling in that way instead of them come in and immediately introducing themselves with they/them pronouns or something like that?

BRITTANI NICHOLS: It started from how we cast Sabrina, which is just that Quinta thought Sabrina was funny and that was the entirety of it. It wasn't about their identity. And so the teacher's the same way. On Abbott, we don't think that everything has to be a big teachable moment. There's power in seeing people live out what acceptance actually looks like, which oftentimes isn't shining a spotlight on someone because of their identity. It's just letting those people exist in the world.

Melissa jumps to conclusions about them. Is that because of unconscious bias or just truly missing Janine and their hijinks?

Just that she's missing Janine. People are scared about having queer and trans characters that are flawed. We decided in the room to free ourselves from that concern because in real life, queer people can't free themselves of that concern and say, "I'm just going to be a perfect person because of what other people might think about me." That's the way of the world. There are prejudices. There are biases, and I think that we've done enough work on the show that you trust our teachers enough to know where they're coming from and that this isn't coming from a problematic place. The substitute teacher in the situation isn't bad. They just have their own methods that might run other people off. If we took out those quirks, it wouldn't be funny. It's hard to have people of certain identities presented as perfect because then what is there to laugh at?

You have this big breakup between Jacob and Zach. Why was it time for this relationship to end?

With Jacob, the more that we learn about him, the more we understand how he interacts with every part of the world. We've seen it so specifically in the classroom, how he interacts with his students and wanting to be a certain type of person. That certain type of person is someone that doesn't cause problems but solves them. When you apply that to your own relationship, that results in is maybe being in situations that aren't the best for you because you're so worried about what other people want. He just has such people pleasing tendencies that when he's in a relationship that solidifies and concretizes those aspects of his identity.

Is the breakup going to hold? People make up all the time.

They do. At least for this season, that relationship is over. You never know how long the show will go. I wouldn't completely close the door on that relationship because truly you never know. Especially with queer people, we come back around to folks all the time,

Why did you decide to have Jacob approach this in a passive-aggressive fashion, trying to force the breakup through being annoying?

It was a unique challenge for us because so much of a relationship happens at home, and we haven't seen Jacob's home life that much. We had to find a way to really make it a story where we're showing, not telling, while also still living in the reality that we really see Jacob at the school and we don't have people's significant others come to the school that often. He beats around the bush around certain things because of not wanting to hurt people's feelings. We wanted to find a way of doing it that felt true to the character where you're on Jacob's side, but you're also on Zach's side a little bit. We didn't want to put forth a situation where you walk away from it thinking that Jacob was completely in the right, and he is a perfect angel or that Zach has never done anything wrong. That's not how breakups are in real life. We wanted it to feel emotionally true, and that involves showing how things get a little bit messy sometimes.

We've seen Gregory and Janine as single folks. What does a single Jacob look like?

Well, he's single. I'll say that. (Laughs) Melissa and Jacob are both single and behaving like single people for the rest of the season.

Rarely do Barbara and Ava see eye-to-eye. What was the impetus for giving them this unexpected point of connection?

I've had the luck of having a lot of the Ava-Barbara storylines in my previous episodes, and this episode shows the growth that their relationship has had. They don't really see eye to eye a lot of the time. And their unique takes on how to approach problems often don't overlap, and that's where the conflict comes from. In this situation, it was a new area for our show to see where does the conflict come from when they're on the same team and they have had the same struggles. How do they approach these situations? Because they still approach them differently.

And to see Barbara have gotten to a point where she's willing to take Ava's advice because she's trusting where it comes from now. She has seen Ava in tricky situations and seen that there is a piece of Ava that does genuinely care about this, and she knows that there's a piece of Ava that genuinely cares about her. Barbara interprets it the way that she interprets it, because she's still Barbara at the end of the day.

I still have not stopped laughing at Ava's line about Jesus and relating to people with extra holes in their body. Was there any concern it was too far?

A lot of the time when we have jokes that are a bit too much, people laugh too hard in the room for us to even have the debate — if we want to have the debate — where it is solved by how hard everyone laughs.

You finally gave Sheryl a chance to show off her voice. How long has that been in the works and what were the discussions like about how it would arise and what song it might be?

We didn't lead with the idea of having Sheryl sing. I think Quinta chose the song. It's just a song that Quinta likes. I don't even know that it's a song that necessarily showcases how incredible of a singer Sheryl is. Because if we did that in the show, we might have to justify why Barbara is working at this school and not on Broadway.

Will we get to hear her sing again in the future?

Oh, I'm sure. She sang last season a little bit. She was singing "Happy Birthday." So I think we'll continue to find these organic ways of having her sing a little bit. We have a long-running bit in the room about a character that Barbara likes to play that hasn't made it into an episode yet. I don't know if it ever will, but it's fun for us to talk about and live in a world where Mrs. Howard has some sort of alter ego that she taps into to be the diva that we know that she is.

Can you tease the next episode?

The guest star is amazing. There'll be some fun moments to look back on once we reveal who it is. People will be shocked to see. It was almost given away so many times.

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