Adam Patla
With work on iconic shows like The Office, Wilfred, Modern Family, and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (to name a few), Randall Einhorn has solidified himself as one of comedy’s top notch directors. It’s no wonder that Quinta Brunson enlisted him to direct the first five episodes of Abbott Elementary (as well as thirty-five others over the course of the series) to hone in on the series mockumentary style.
With his wealth of experience, you might think Einhorn has seen and done it all. Not quite.
It’s become a bit of a sitcom tradition to film a special episode on location. The Brady Bunch went to Hawaii. Countless shows shot an episode or two at Disney World. This season on Abbott, everybody’s favorite faculty shot during an actual Phillies game.
“It was not easy,” Einhorn says, reflecting on the experience. “I was very stressed thinking about the logistics of this.”
As a series, Abbott Elementary constantly pushes itself to grow and evolve. Whether that’s in the relationships (Janine and Gregory’s temporary breakup, anyone?) or shaking up the location like in the multi-episode arc set in the abandoned mall, it avoids complacency at all costs. So it’s not exactly shocking that they’d take on something as massive as filming at a live MLB game.
When initially approached with the idea, Einhorn thought, “‘No, you guys are crazy. No, that’s madness. Well, maybe. I don’t know.'”
Much like the series itself, Einhorn has no interest in coasting by on what made him successful in the first place. The episode presented Einhorn with something he tends to gravitate toward, despite the daunting nature of the task at hand.
“I have this perversion where I’m very attracted to a high degree of difficulty,” he continues. “I think once you take something and you look at it, how challenging it is, and you think, like, if I pull this off, it’s going to be great. I remember the very first pilot I did was a show called Wilfred, and it looked so difficult. It looked so hard and so difficult and like nothing else that I thought, ‘I can either really fuck this up or I can make it really great.’ And I’ve always enjoyed those. I like that high degree of difficulty.”
So how does one even begin to film an episode of television at a professional baseball game?
“We had to shoot just under fourteen pages in one day with seven scenes, seven characters, seven of the main core cast,” he explains. “So it was really, really complicated. So we shot all the dialogue scenes on one day and then in the middle of those dialogue scenes, like maybe three or four times, there’s things that are scripted that are happening on the field. So I’d be coming from a line from a character and then something on the field is supposed to happen. So I pan off, but it’s not happening that day. It’s happening tomorrow maybe.”
Of course, because of the very nature of the beast, Einhorn did encounter moments where he would have to surrender to whatever the day decided to bring.
“One day I couldn’t control. One day that I’m hoping Kyle Schwarber is going to hit a home run and thankfully he hit four of them, which were like, I’m not going to change the story so that he only hit one home run. We’re going to embrace what happened on this day and we’re going to honor the fact that that guy hit four home runs in one day. And it made the story even better.”
“Ballgame” is a true testament to Einhorn’s artistry as a director. It’s a perfect marriage of his precision and well-intended eye and his ability to embrace the magic of spontaneity. He knows what he wants for the story but isn’t too precious where he can’t evolve with the circumstances.
While the episode itself provided Einhorn a welcome challenge, the series itself keeps the legend coming back for other reasons. “I mean, they’re all my friends,” he says. “So in season five, they’re all friends and I look forward to seeing them on day one of season six. You know from the very moment we shot the pilot it just felt so like we got the recipe right. We started shooting that pilot and it felt like we’d been doing it for years and that’s so rare.”
You can watch “Ballgame” as well as Randall’s other amazing work on Abbott Elementary. Season 5 of Abbott is streaming on Hulu and Disney+. Check out our full interview with Randall Einhorn below!
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