Abbott Elementary Co-Showrunners Justin Halpern and Patrick Schumacker on Character-First Storytelling and Reaching 100 Episodes
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As Abbott Elementary heads into its sixth season and prepares to celebrate the increasingly rare milestone of 100 episodes, executive producers and co-showrunners Justin Halpern and Patrick Schumacker are still discovering new possibilities within the halls of the Philadelphia public school.
The pair reflect on the character-first philosophy that has guided the Emmy-winning comedy from the beginning, the freedom that comes with knowing their ensemble more deeply, and how everything from budget constraints to unexpected ideas in the writers’ room can reshape a season.
For Halpern, the foundation has always been simple: make the audience care about the people, and the stakes will follow.
“If you care about the characters, then you’ll care about what they care about,” he explained. “We’ve always operated kind of character first.”
Rather than beginning with enormous plot mechanics, the writers ask what each character wants, how they are changing and what feels different from the previous year. Schumacker added that the process often starts with an examination of a particular facet of public education before the room maps out individual arcs for all seven series regulars. Those early conversations create a roadmap, but increasingly, the writers are willing to deviate from it. In the show’s earlier seasons, Schumacker said they often knew exactly where each character would land by the finale. More recently, their familiarity with the characters has given them the confidence to “color outside of the lines.”
Ava’s firing at the end of Season 4 was one such development, emerging relatively late in the writing process rather than being part of the season’s original plan. That unexpected turn ultimately opened the door to exploring something deeper about Ava: what Abbott actually means to her.
Five seasons of television inevitably means change, but Abbott Elementary has resisted transforming its characters too quickly.
“We try to play it as realistically as possible,” Halpern said. “We try to make their growth as human beings feel somewhat realistic,” noting that people rarely change overnight. Instead, the writers continually ask what development they have earned and what progress would genuinely look like for each character.
The strength of the ensemble gives them considerable freedom in finding stories. Schumacker described the seven series regulars as “all home run hitters,” allowing the writers to put virtually any combination of characters together and immediately discover something entertaining in their dynamic.
That versatility also extends to new additions. Luke Tennie’s Dominic, for example, was deliberately introduced as a kind of barometer for Janine’s (Quinta Brunson) growth. His arrival offered a reminder of how difficult Janine’s early experience as a teacher had been while simultaneously revealing that Barbara, who once served as her mentor, has changed too. The show also looks for guest performers who can bring an entirely different energy while still feeling believable within Abbott’s world. Halpern pointed to Zack Fox’s Tariq as a prime example: a character operating on his own distinct wavelength who nevertheless fits naturally into the show’s ecosystem.
The luxury of a full broadcast season has allowed Abbott Elementary to play the long game. Stories do not necessarily need to resolve within an episode—or even within a handful of episodes—and the writers have learned to trust audiences to remain invested. That long history will become particularly significant as the series reaches its 100th episode in Season 6.
“There is something that happens in that episode that… its roots are born in the very first episode of the show,” Schumacker teased.
He emphasized that the moment will still work for viewers who have never seen the pilot, but longtime fans will experience an additional payoff. “It’s going to reward people who have been with the show since the very, very beginning, I think, in a major way.” The milestone carries particular significance for Halpern and Schumacker, who noted that this is the first series either has worked on to reach 100 episodes.
As Abbott Elementary has grown, its world has expanded beyond the school itself. Audiences have visited characters’ homes, followed them to a Philadelphia baseball game and, most recently, watched Abbott temporarily relocate into a mall. But deciding when to leave the familiar school sets is not purely a storytelling consideration.
“I think that judiciousness comes from budgetary concerns primarily,” Schumacker admitted.
A large location shoot might require balancing the budget elsewhere with smaller episodes or a four-day shoot instead of the production’s usual five. Even recurring locations require strategic thinking: Melissa’s house, once filmed at a real location, has since been rebuilt as a swing set at Warner Bros., making it easier to return there.
“It’s a sort of big puzzle of both narrative creativity and then budgetary creativity that sort of feed into each other,” Schumacker explained.
The mall storyline provided an especially memorable logistical challenge. The production filmed three episodes inside a mall that was actively being demolished.
“They were literally bulldozing while we were shooting,” Schumacker recalled. “That mall no longer exists.”
Yet the location was never simply spectacle. The writers immediately asked how each character would react differently to being displaced into a mall and what the environment could reveal about them. Melissa, for instance, gradually begins reverting to the style of her teenage mall-going days. More importantly, the storyline gave the series another opportunity to depict a genuine challenge facing public schools.
“Anytime we get a chance to kind of illustrate the current problems of public education and do it within the context of our characters and story where it makes sense, we usually try to take advantage of those sorts of situations,” Halpern said.
The commitment to earned character development shaped a major Season 5 storyline: Janine and Gregory’s breakup and eventual reconciliation. After years of “will they, won’t they,” simply separating the couple for dramatic effect was never enough. Instead, the relationship gave the writers an opportunity to explore the models of love and partnership both characters had inherited from their parents.
“The fun thing about a TV show is you can have two characters where the audience thinks they know everything about them, and then when you put them together, just as is in a real relationship, new things start to come out,” Halpern explained.
Their problems could therefore reveal sides of Janine and Gregory that had never needed to emerge before they became a couple. The writers are also acutely aware of how long an audience is willing to wait.
“We kept them apart as long as we possibly could before too many people started getting pissed off,” Schumacker joked.
Ultimately, there is no formula dictating precisely when a character should change, when a relationship should reunite or when a season-long plan should be abandoned for a better idea.
“A lot of it is just gut feelings,” Schumacker said. “That’s what it comes down to.”
After six seasons, that instinct remains rooted in the philosophy Abbott Elementary established from the beginning: start with the characters, understand what matters to them and allow the stories to grow outward from there. And as the series prepares to cross the 100-episode mark, knowing those characters better has not limited the possibilities, it has given the writers even more freedom to discover where they might go next.
