• by Barbara Lippert , Columnist, October 11, 2024

Vince Staples, a season two regular on “Abbott Elementary,” again finds himself inside a school, this time hosting “Unbreak My Break Room,” a piece of breakthrough brand content in the form of a miniseries from Coffee Mate.

The three-episode endeavor, created with agency Wieden + Kennedy, NY, chronicles how the team found a broken-down breakroom at the historic George Washington Preparatory High School in Inglewood, California, and, in three days, renovated it as a haven for the teaching staff, turning it into “a real coffee paradise.” 

As my grandma would say, it’s a mitzvah.

It’s also:

A sitcom!

A faux home renovation show!

Real community outreach!

Rapper/comedian Staples brings his laid-back charm to the project as he’s shot closing a locker and walking the halls with Tony Booker (there’s an apt name), the principal of the high school.  Booker shows him the sad-sack state of the (mostly unused) teacher’s lounge. You can just smell the stale coffee sitting in an old glass coffee pot on some ancient burners in a room that now doubles as storage.

Among the cardboard boxes, I also detect some giant media devices on high carts that were wheeled into classrooms (from the AV department?) in the 1980s.

And “Unbreak” also delivers breakout stars in the form of two of the school’s educators: Ellen Wood, who teaches English, and STEAM coordinator Chris Brandon. They have an ability to connect -- to be natural on camera while being chatty and funny.

We all know that working with high schoolers is demanding, to put it kindly, and we’re rooting for these pros to get a place to hang out, relax, and recaffeinate.

In the first episode, Staples assures the staff that the lounge will go from “broken to smokin.”

The second episode is all about the renovation, and it follows standard real estate makeover show tropes in a self-aware way. The contractor is worried about delays and talks about problems with the electrical grid. And what do you know, within a blink of the eye, something pops and we’re plunged into darkness.

Plus, the construction crew relies on a poignant delivery robot named Jeff, though it looks like the little guy might have gotten lost. 

We get answers in the third episode, otherwise known as the big reveal.

Jeff returns!  And Staples walks us through a colorful custom-built and designed room, with comfy seating and inspired features while serving as a shrine to Coffee Mate. (Fair enough.)

There’s taste testing of a dizzying array of flavors while the giant fridge is stocked with enough product (that will be restocked) to last the school year. There are high tech coffee stations surrounded by America’s number one coffee creamer on tap, like beer. And, in a piece of education comedy, there’s a low-tech wall screen for projectors, just to keep it old school.  There’s even a secret refuge (a nap room within a room) for the neediest cases.

My favorites of the Willy Wonka-level inventions include the water fountain that flows with iced coffee instead of H20 (truly my dream), and an amazing apparatus dubbed “Extra Arm” that fits around one’s chest like a plastic Snuggli, with a cupholder that allows teachers to wear their hot java like a baby while keeping two hands on the chalkboard.  These devices are hanging on the walls and look like sculpture or bondage mechanisms.

“Unbreak” broke this week on YouTube, and can be seen on TikTok and other digital and social channels.

The series gets an “A” from me. It’s a smart way to promote coffee drinking as an all-day affair while migrating the Nestle brand from traditional ads into making pop cultural content. And I’m all for helping beleaguered teachers and schools in this country to get a real break in the day. That filters down to recharging our kids, too.