Abbott Elementary & the Power Of A Slow-Burn

There's a reason those slow-burn romances are the ones that warm our insides and have us returning year after year.

There really is nothing like a good slow-burn. I’m about to sound real crotchety, real old, real auntie, but these days, with shortened season orders and every show required to have some loud hook (kidnapping, time-travel, looming murder, etc), the slow-burn has suffered. What used to brew for a season and a half (see: Dawson’s Creek, Pacey & Joey) or even five seasons (see; Gilmore Girls, Luke & Lorelai) now sometimes only gets about three episodes. In other cases it brews for longer but then the sweet rewards of finally hittin’ romance get sliced and diced, dropped to D-plots or lost completely because plots A through C have to be about that kidnapping plot. It’s rare now to find a show that gets the complex equations for a slow-burn just right. A show that respects the art of the stomach-flutter. A show that milks chemistry for all its worth instead of just shoving two actors who have it together and calling it a day.