Janine-Gregory Breakup Explained by Quinta Brunson

[This article contains spoilers from episode 19 of season five of Abbott Elementary]

Last Wednesday’s “April Fools” episode of Abbott Elementary was all fun and (stressful) pranks, but this week, there were noticeably fewer laughs between everyone’s favorite teacher couple at the school.

Episode 19 of season five began with Gregory (Tyler James Williams) and Janine (Quinta Brunson) attempting to plan their first couple’s trip after moving in together earlier in the season, but differences over their individual philosophies around money and time quickly turned the process from pleasant to painstaking, with Gregory wanting to book an Airbnb and make an eight-hour trek in a car to the Outer Banks to save money and Janine preferring direct flights, a hotel and spa treatments.

The pair initially decide to change their vacation destination to Atlantic City as a happy medium, but Janine later approaches Gregory during the workday with a compromise she deems “a bit more compromise-y,” telling him she went ahead and bought their flights to the Outer Banks herself since money was the issue. Gregory calls the purchase “a waste,” Janine says Atlantic City was a “cheap idea,” and the argument spills over into the couple’s home life, leading Janine to question how they can make their relationship work if they can’t even figure out a simple trip. Gregory says they won’t if they can’t get on the same page, and Janine responds by saying maybe the two should break up.

Viewers don’t exactly know what happens next, as both Janine and Gregory are left stunned into silence. However, Jacob (Chris Perfetti) receiving a text from Janine the next day that sends him hurling into a garbage can in front of Mr. Johnson (William Stanford Davis) appears to be confirmation that the two did indeed split.

Below, Brunson talks with The Hollywood Reporter about Janine and Gregory’s breakup, whether this could lead to any romantic developments with Dominic, the newest teacher at Abbott Elementary, played by Luke Tennie, and preparing to hit the 100-episode mark of Abbott with the recent news of the ABC sitcom’s season six renewal.

***

My first question is quite broad: Why?

(Laughs.) I’m sorry, that really cracked me up. I’m trying to get an answer together. Did you have more to that?

Why a breakup… why now?

Because no one saw it coming. I think that’s a great time to throw a stone at the settled earth. It was something I thought about from the beginning of this season. They’ve been in a relationship for a while now, and we’ve seen them be really great and go through the honeymoon phase, but I wanted to get under the surface a little bit about what could be going on with these characters and how, in relationships, things like this happen. We see it every day — couples who look kind of perfect from the outside. There can be things going on in that we don’t know about, that they discover within their relationship.

A few episodes before this one, when Janine and Gregory were deciding to move in together, I thought for a second that could be their undoing, but then they compromised pretty well and got a new place together. How did you decide a trip would be the impetus for their separation?

Because it was such a seemingly small thing. It felt like one of those things that can get so big, and you don’t even know why. We talked about this a lot in the room about relationships and past relationships, current relationships, how you never know. It could be this one little thing that leads you into an argument. I’m in my room, so I’m just looking around, but, for instance, if one person likes to sleep with the TV on and the other person doesn’t, this seems like a small thing, but before you know it, it could get really big and it’s like, “wait, why are we fighting right now?” This small thing was actually a catalyst for possibly some larger discussions that need to happen between two people who are trying to spend a lot of time with each other and possibly their lives together.

To that point, I wondered if, when Janine says, “Well, maybe we should break up,” did she really mean that?

From watching, you can see that she surprised herself. I’m not going to say whether she means it or not, but I think she surprised herself in saying it and wonders if she means it. But when she doesn’t hear anything from Gregory, it makes her feel like, “Whoah, okay.” I think she was sitting there waiting for a protest, but didn’t get one, which reinforced the fear that maybe it’s true. Maybe we shouldn’t [be together].

Were there any other scenarios you considered instead of the trip possibly leading to a breakup between them?

I don’t remember. We landed on this, and I liked it. We probably kicked pitches around, because at that point we talked about this episode coming sooner. But this was the one [concept] I liked the most. It felt small enough and big enough at the same time.

Having talked about introducing this moment earlier, how did you decide where to place the breakup in the season?

Sometimes in network TV, it’s a balancing act when it comes to what your show actually is about. Abbott is a show about teachers in a public school going through situations and making it happen every day for their students, and we want to stick to that engine. That’s the engine that makes the show go. And there’s also a balance of, “I can’t hold you when you can get locations, when you can get guest cast, when you can get how many days you have to shoot.” All of this is a part of the production process. Also, scheduling. We were affected by a lot of scheduling this year.

The Olympics were on; that pushes network TV to have an interesting schedule. I also didn’t want this to happen at a time when we were then going to be off the air for three weeks. And I didn’t want to come back to this either because that didn’t feel fun to come back with this story. I wanted to have some fun first. I can’t say enough of the real balancing act of figuring out when and where stories should come, and this felt like too big a one to be haphazard with and I didn’t want it to last. For instance, if this was going on since episode eight, I don’t think people would be having a good time right now.

Yeah, we wouldn’t.

Clearly. Your energy is so funny on the other end of the phone. I’m cracking up. You’re not happy with me.

I’m just invested. That’s all.

Okay. I love it.

What can you tell us about episode 20? The title is “Night Out” which could go a lot of different ways after a breakup.

One thing that’s going to happen is we’re going to revisit one of the iconic locations of the show, which I think is really fun. It was fun for me anyway, and for us telling the story. You’re going to see some very different sides of many of our characters, not just Janine and Gregory. I hope people enjoy it. I hope they just have fun. Let’s just have fun, guys. Right?

Well, speaking of fun, the unanimous opinion online is that last week’s April Fool’s Day episode was fantastic. Did you see the uproar over the April Fool’s joke on social media about Janelle James not returning?

I did. First of all, I hate it because I hate pranks. I’m actually very much Gregory in the show. I don’t enjoy pranks. But the fact that people were so upset by it is just a testament to how important Janelle is to this show. Nobody would ever want to see that. And everyone who was tricked by it, was, rightfully so, upset as they should be. That is not happening. But it just goes to show you how much people love the character of Ava. And I agree with everyone. Ava is highly important to this show, just like everyone is in my eyes. They’re all my children. It was a hoot. I’ll say that.

We don’t know how Janine will navigate singleness from this point on, but on a scale of one to 10, what are the odds of her getting back with Tariq [Zack Fox]?

Oh, my goodness. That’s crazy. But hey, with Janine, I would say a five. You never know sometimes with that girl.

I’m also curious about Dominic. Could there be anything romantic there, and will we see him again before the end of the season?

You will see Dominic again before the end of the season. We absolutely adore having Luke Tennie. He is wonderful. He’s the hardest-working man in show business right now. The boy is everywhere. It was so funny when he first showed up, he was like, “Yeah, I’m on The Pitt too,” and I was like, “Damn, you really are working.” But what’s great is he deserves it. He’s so fantastic, just an absolute joy to work with. And I’m so happy that he is getting nothing but more exposure in this industry, so you will see him again. That’s all I’ll say, you’ll see him again.

How did Luke come to be on the show?

What’s crazy is we wrote the character of Dominic, and Luke auditioned, and the minute I saw his face, I barely needed to look at the audition tape. I was already a huge fan of him on Shrinking. I knew that he would have what it took to pull this role off. He’s incredible to me. I opened his audition tape and was like, “Yeah, I don’t even know why I opened this.”

You mentioned the show being an engine, which is something you told THR in the past, that it’s “always been your goal to just maintain an engine that keeps rolling and keeps providing a high-quality comfort sitcom.” Has coming up with fresh, new ideas gotten harder five seasons in, or do you feel like you have more possibilities now?

I think season five felt more like, “Okay, we’ve built a lot over four seasons.” And I felt like it was safe to say that we were going to get a season six, so it felt like, “How do we not pack everything into season five and save some good for season six?” I got a lot of good stuff that I want to do, stories to tell, but we’ve got to stretch this out because 22 episodes is a lot, and I want to save some good for down the line. So that’s what got hard. What stories do we want to tell this season, and what stories do we want to tell the following season?

That’s a good problem to have.

It is. I’m very grateful for that problem.

The season six renewal news is now public, and that will put you at the 100-episode mark. How do you feel, and are you already thinking about how you might commemorate that moment?

Oh man, I’m going to be so happy. We’re going to do a cake. That’s the only thing I can think of right now, is the cake. I don’t know why I don’t have any other thoughts, but the cake is really exciting to me. I’m probably not even going to eat it. I just want to see the 100-episode cake.

***

Abbott Elementary airs new episodes Wednesdays at 8:30 p.m. on ABC.