Readjustment
Episode 8 of A Teacher begins with Claire released from prison and picked up by Nate and her Father. Both of them warmly embrace her but she’s cold and distant, unhappy with her Father despite him being sober for 7 years. Her divorce to Matt is nearly finalized and with him now out the picture, Claire is staying in Nate’s basement for the time being. Claire tries her best to get back to normal, heading out for a run in the nearby park and visiting a clothing store. There, a woman approaches and hands her an application form. Only, when Victoria shows up she calls her a sexual predator. Claire bolts out the store, ashamed and breathing heavily as she tries to compose herself. After a routine check-up at the hospital, Claire heads home and boots up the computer, googling herself to see what the headlines say. That evening, things explode at the dinner table. Claire calls Victoria a bitch and even goes so far as to tell Nate that Eric pursued her first, playing the victim card. Nate is having none of it though and calls Claire out for what she’s done. She’s been in prison for 6 months and she still doesn’t seem to have learnt her lesson. Claire hasn’t taken any responsibility for what happened and worse, Eric messages asking to see her. Instead of doing the sensible thing, Claire instead puts make-up on and invites Eric over to Nate’s house. Eric blames himself for what happened as the pair talk about how happy there were together. As Eric tells her he needs her, Claire sees sense and pulls away, telling him he needs to leave as it’s violating her probation. On the back of this, Claire packs up her things and moves back in with her Dad.
The Episode Review
A Teacher returns this week with an entire episode of… not very much. Between Claire’s mundane day to day tasks and a couple of dramatic spikes, there’s absolutely nothing else going on here. If anything, the episode only reinforces how little prison has actually done to change Claire’s persona. She refuses to take responsibility for her own actions (at least until that fight with Nate) and even blames Eric for what happened between them. There really isn’t a lot to say about this episode because, well, there isn’t a lot going on. Given the episode is one of the shortest of the season, the opportunity to dive into the psyche of these characters is squandered. I understand that the show is trying to reinforce the idea of getting back to normality after being inside prison but this episode just feels formulaic and lacking any real emotion that it so easily could have portrayed. Hopefully next week’s episode will be an improvement.
