“Abbott Elementary” will shoot its 100th episode inside Disneyland this month, giving ABC’s Philadelphia school comedy a milestone outing at the Anaheim, California, theme park. The episode is scheduled for December and will serve as the Season 6 midseason fall finale, according to Deadline.
The trip suits a show that has spent recent seasons moving its teachers and students away from the halls of Abbott. Season 5 sent the staff to a Philadelphia Phillies game and relocated classes to an abandoned mall while the school sat under construction. A Disney park gives that approach its biggest backdrop yet.
The timing matters for the series. When ABC renewed it for a sixth season in March, “Abbott Elementary” stood at 84 episodes, and that renewal pushed it past the 100 mark that has long served as the benchmark for syndication. Few broadcast comedies reach triple digits now. The renewal, ABC’s first of the season, arrived while the show ranked among the network’s strongest performers in multiplatform viewing.
Quinta Brunson created the series and stars as second-grade teacher Janine Teagues. Tyler James Williams, Janelle James, Chris Perfetti, Lisa Ann Walter, William Stanford Davis and Sheryl Lee Ralph round out the core cast. Luke Tennie joined last season. The show has collected Emmys for Brunson and Ralph, a SAG ensemble award and, this year, NAACP Image Awards for outstanding comedy series and for Brunson’s lead performance.
Shooting at Disneyland carries little novelty for ABC, which shares a parent company with the park. The network’s comedies have used it before. “Modern Family” made a Disneyland trip a centerpiece of its third season, though that episode tied to the park’s 24-hour Leap Day event, not to a series milestone.
Deadline’s report cites unnamed sources, and ABC and Disney have not publicly detailed the story. Plot specifics, guest stars and an exact air date remain unannounced.
For a series about underfunded teachers stretching every dollar, the premise writes itself. The episode will test how the writers turn the happiest place on earth into a classroom field trip gone sideways.
