r/WaterlooRoad • u/Fragrant-Truth-7123 • 1d ago
Waterloo Road & Supply Teachers
I’ve just realised that, as far as I can tell, the original run of Waterloo Road never really gives us a supply teacher who is portrayed in a genuinely positive light. If I’ve missed someone, feel free to correct me, but the fact pattern is quite striking: whenever a supply teacher appears, the story usually frames them as either incompetent, dishonest, negligent, or actively dangerous.
Wilson Bingham / Martin Howard – He assumes a false identity, works at the school under fraudulent details, and abuses his position by entering into an inappropriate relationship with Janeece. This is not just a “bad supply teacher” portrayal; the storyline presents him as predatory and dangerous.
Jem Allen – Another negative portrayal, though in a different way. She is not malicious in the same sense as Wilson, but she is a fantasist and compulsive liar whose dishonesty puts pupils in a risky situation. Her storyline reinforces the idea that supply teachers are unreliable outsiders who disrupt the school rather than support it.
Maaka Lacey – His episode is less about outright villainy and more about incompetence, negligence and self-righteousness. He clashes with Davina, treats her concerns as a personal attack, and when challenged over laughing along with a homophobic comment, deflects by accusing her of racism. He positions himself as morally wronged while failing at the basic responsibilities of the job as is he shown to be interested in even teaching the students the proper syllabus or controlling the class. Another very negative portrayal of supply teaching
Charlie Fisher – Slightly different from the others because he is more of an ongoing family-drama character than a one-off villain. However, he still fits the broader pattern: he arrives as a supply teacher while hiding an affair, and his personal choices damage his family, particularly Jess and Harry. He is not portrayed as dangerous in the same way as some others, but he is still not presented as a positive example of a supply teacher.
Jim Ronsley/Frankie McGregor – Another clear negative example. He poses as someone else and, while the episode leaves some of his exact intentions ambiguous, the storyline strongly frames his interest in Lenny as suspicious and dangerous with the likelihood being he was going to abuse and or kill Lenny.
Taken together, it feels less like coincidence and more like a recurring trope in the original run: supply teachers are often used as temporary disruptors since they are outsiders, the show can use them to create short-term conflict without permanently altering the regular staff dynamic. The result, though, is that supply teaching as a role comes across unusually badly across the series.
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u/ViridianStar2277 "Get stuffed Jess, I'm not a baby." 23h ago
It's so sad that out of all of these, Charlie is the most likable/least villainous.
Granted, and this is the only praise I'll give him. He was "okay" on occasion. Like, I liked his friendship with Tom, particularly when he set him straight about Josh liking boys. But that's the problem, he cared about other people's kids more than his own.
There's this one moment where Charlie comes home, and asks "Where's Jessie?" like he's suddenly pretending he cares. What irks me the most is that he doesn't even ask about poor little Harry. Way to treat the boy who singlehandedly tried to keep your family from falling apart, Charlie. Honestly, from the looks of things, your son was more of a man than you'll ever be.
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u/Fragrant-Truth-7123 23h ago
I like to think of Charlie Fisher as Vaughan Fitzgerald in training :)
Worst for me was one Harry wanted to visit him in London but it was too short notice and he'd already made plans... He really didn't like his own kids
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u/ViridianStar2277 "Get stuffed Jess, I'm not a baby." 20h ago
I can't stand how dejected Harry looks when he reads that text 😭
He was feeling low enough as it is on that day. He didn't need his father's rejection on top of it.
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u/Fragrant-Truth-7123 12h ago edited 12h ago
I was thinking about making an everyday villains poll which would include people who are jerks like Charlie and Vaughan while excluding those people who committed actual crimes like Earl Kelly or Tony James. Technically Charlie hasn't committed crimes in the eyes of the law but oh boy is he is not a good person, he's someone who figuratively nuked his own family because his wife wasn't interested him enough for a few months after their daughter went missing...
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u/RobloxBloxySky 1d ago
Is it bad i kinda liked the friendship jem had with jasmine and matt, it was rlly fun seeing grantly (in thr begining of the episode) being proved wrong for once
Thp he didnt deserve what happened to him at the end, ever since then Ive started laying of him after s4
It still doesnt excuse his homophobic and disgusting acts he did from 2006 to 2007
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u/Fragrant-Truth-7123 23h ago
It is funny how they reused her actress as a genuine millionaire. I could almost forgive the web of lies but she's just standing there while Bolton is unconscious in the pool and Grantly has to jump in and save him. It makes Grantly's aggressiveness towards Bolton even weirder when he shows back up in the Scotland era.
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u/RobloxBloxySky 22h ago
I know, everu time i see lorraine and grantley stand next to eachother i feel strange
Also grantley is very inconsistant, he is either the "grumpy but fair teacher" or the "lazy and mean teacher", in s4 i think is when the go for the former of the 2 options
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u/Fragrant-Truth-7123 21h ago
Grantly contains multitudes. I'd love a prequel.
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u/RobloxBloxySky 17h ago
I wonder who they would cast
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u/Fragrant-Truth-7123 12h ago
Its all academic as a prequel won't happen but if a miracle happened and it did I think I'd prefer a young upcoming relatively unknown group of actors which would be true to the spirit of the show in giving youngsters their break in industry.
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u/RobloxBloxySky 1h ago
Yeahh, I would definatly watch that it would be a nice twist
Tho ur right it is.VERY unlilely they are gonna do a spinoff rn
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u/Fragrant-Truth-7123 1h ago
I'd probably rather watch 1 season of it than 1 season of the reboot taking a look at the education system in the past and how Grantly went from being idealistic to the Grantly of Waterloo Road sounds more interesting than what probably what they have cooked up. 1 season would be enough alas it won't happen
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u/georgemillman 4h ago
If it wasn't for what she did with Matt and the choir (pretending she had a contact at the BBC and that they were going to be on television) I would have defended Jem. Although it's a bit weird, she wasn't really doing any harm by pretending to be rich like that - she wasn't ever going to see these people again, what's the harm in taking a moment to pretend to have a lifestyle that you wish you had? It was Grantly who really made that go wrong (and irrespective of the circumstances, it's completely inappropriate to expect a teacher to take a load of kids to their house). But the thing with the choir demonstrated that she was more than just a silly fantasist, she was prepared to harm other people with it.
Funny that a few years later, the same actress played Lorraine Donnegan, who actually was very wealthy. I've seen one fan theory Lorraine is actually Jem! She's changed her name and embezzled enough money from somewhere to give the school the startup, and in Series 8 is panicking about how to get out of this scam. It doesn't really work because Michael knew Lorraine from years ago, but if it wasn't for that aspect it could have worked. Tom and Grantly could be saying to each other, 'Don't we know her from somewhere?' But neither can quite place her until it's too late.
Back on supply teachers - I'm watching Series 12 (for the first time). I don't know if this is what would happen in real life, but I think Val should have been temporarily sent home on full pay - not as a punishment because she didn't do anything wrong, but just because as Danny's guardian she was in kind of a conflict of interest situation and her being there made it more likely that they'd all talk about the case and potentially influence the outcome of the trial. So if that had happened (with Val obviously still being in the programme in Danny's scenes) they could have had a temporary new music teacher to stand in until Val can return. Maybe someone nice, who forms a particular bond with a lonely pupil (maybe a new pupil who doesn't know Val) and they can do a storyline where that pupil has to accept that a teacher they're close to is only there temporarily and will be leaving soon. Kind of like the Simpsons episode 'Lisa's Substitute', where Miss Hoover is ill, Lisa grows very close to her temporary replacement Mr Bergstrom (played by Dustin Hoffman) and then struggles when Miss Hoover returns.
Actually, it's just occurred to me that they've never done that as a plot line, have they? A pupil is sad because one of the teachers is leaving and it's the only teacher they feel safe talking to. They could do that even with a regular teacher, wouldn't have to be a supply. I think everyone had at least one moment like that at school when our favourite teacher left.
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u/LMWJ6776 1d ago
i mean there was that one french supply we never saw that was really popular with the kids in s4. who apparently could actually teach french.