Red Scare — Day 27

Genre: Comedy

Premise: Burnt out and eager to escape the craziness of city life, Claire Lennon, a grade-school teacher from San Francisco, accepts a teaching position in a small town. As part of the history curriculum for her 6th grade class, she needs to introduce the idea of Communism to her students, but the 11-year-olds couldn't be less interested. Who the heck cares about Communism? Everybody knows Islamic Terrorists are the only bad guys we have to worry about anymore, one of the kids offers by way of explanation for the class' disinterest. Shocked, (and feeling quite old), Claire resolves to find a way to help bring history alive for her students.

After striking up a flirtation with the school's drama teacher, Hank, a handsome man and former professional actor, Claire decides to kill two birds with one stone and proposes that the kids stage a play dramatizing the Russian Revolution, with Hank's help of course. "If you like Game of Thrones," she tells her students "you are going to LOVE the Russian Revolution. There are just as many characters, twice the intrigue, and ten times more blood." Finally, she has their attention, and the kids throw themselves into the production enthusiastically.

Unfortunately for Claire, the school's German teacher Gerte also has an unrequited crush on Hank the drama teacher, and doesn't like Claire moving in on her territory one bit. Gerte decides she must crush Claire, and secretly declares war on the unsuspecting interloper. Gerte's master-stroke is simple enough: she raises the alarm that a teacher from San Fransisco is preaching Communism, and has begun indoctrinating the impressionable students—going so far as having the students star in a "victory play" about the Russian Revolution. The school and the community predictably explode in controversy, placing Claire in the middle of a firestorm.

At first Claire finds the controversy too silly to engage with, and simply hopes it will blow over. But on her first real date with Hank at a fancy restaurant in town she receives a shock when the manager comes out and tells her that unfortunately they can not serve her since she has been "blacklisted." Soon, under pressure by parents whom have been whipped into a frenzy by Gerte the German teacher, the superintendent of schools and the mayor create a commission to look into the allegations of the new Communist Threat.

As the the town's hysteria spirals out of control, and the comic-tragic parallels to actual history continue to increase, the students get a taste of just how easily history can repeat itself.... and ultimately, they must come to the rescue of their teacher—and save their town from itself—before its too late.