‘A.P. Bio’s’ Glenn Howerton and Mike O’Brien Discuss The Brilliant Absurdity of Season 3’s “Katie Holmes Day”

You have to respect a sitcom that’s unafraid to take a big swing. NBC’s NewsRadio had episodes take place in outer space and on the Titanic, while Community continuously innovated the genre with classic offerings like “Remedial Chaos Theory,” “Cooperative Calligraphy,” and “Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas.” The spirit of those brilliant small-screen iconoclasts lives on in A.P. Bio.

Premiering on NBC in 2018 before moving to Peacock for Season 3, Mike O’Brien’s inventive series about a disgraced Harvard professor (Glenn Howerton) who reluctantly returns to his hometown of Toledo, Ohio, to “teach” high school biology is no stranger to unorthodox comedy. But the show’s pièce de résistance is the Season 3 finale: “Katie Holmes Day.”

A delirious mix of How the Grinch Stole Christmas and a NyQuil fever dream, “Katie Holmes Day” is both very weird and very A.P. Bio. The episode centers on the town’s annual Christmas-like celebration of Toledo-native Katie Holmes earning the role of Joey Potter on Dawson’s Creek. Decider recently spoke with series creator Mike O’Brien and Glenn Howerton about how this wonderfully bizarre concept went from silly idea to season finale.

“Well, I grew up in Toledo in the same age group as Katie Holmes,” O’Brien told Decider. “The city is very proud of her. I was very aware of the real story of her getting Dawson’s Creek by skipping an L.A. audition and sending a tape — probably a VHS tape, literally, at that point — because she didn’t want to miss the local musical she was in. She did the musicals at my all-boys high school and everything. So I grew up very aware of her.”

O’Brien wanted to write a holiday episode of A.P. Bio, but he didn’t want to shoot a traditional Christmas episode because everyone would then know that the show would be halfway through the school year. Since a Christmas episode was off the table, the creative team decided to invent a new holiday and “Katie Holmes Day” was born.

“It was really fun,” O’Brien continued. “Every department, I kind of empowered. I was like, ‘Here’s 20 things about Katie Holmes Day. You guys take it and run with it. Make it your own. There are no wrong answers.’ They made up symbols and colors and everything that make a whole, what I hope to become, a real holiday some day.”

“Katie Holmes Day” has no shortage of humor — Jamie Farr Day, Anthony’s Dawson’s Freak t-shirt, the bucket of fate — but the crux of the episode is Jack going from Grinch to George Bailey after being blessed by the magic of the holiday. The actor behind the character, Glenn Howerton, is no stranger to absurd comedy, co-developing and starring in It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia since 2005. Having written countless episodes of Sunny, Howerton is intimately familiar with how a strange concept like “Katie Holmes Day” can go from abstract idea to instant classic.

“I feel like that’s one of those episodes that they’ve been joking about in the writers’ room for three years,” Howerton told Decider. “Having spent a lot of time in writers’ rooms, I know those episodes. You’re like… it’s such a stupid idea, but every time you and the other writers talk about it, everybody’s laughing. So this was one of those where they were like, ‘I think we just have to do this. Because every time we talk about it, it’s so funny.'”

Added Howerton, “I think it’s very easy sometimes to fall into a rhythm where it’s like… — we the audience, we’ve watched so many different shows and movies — we know what’s coming next. It’s important to kind of take a left whenever you’re supposed to go right, and to go up when you’re supposed to go down. You have to do that stuff, otherwise people get a little too comfortable. I don’t want people sitting back watching the show; I want people sitting forward.”

Despite the episode’s optimistic conclusion, “Katie Holmes Day” wasn’t initially meant to serve as the season finale. The third season was slated for ten episodes before COVID-19 halted production on the final two episodes of the season. The original idea was to end on a cliffhanger that centered on a new character entering Jack’s life. O’Brien told us that he’s “still hoping for Season 4” and that the original Season 3 finale could serve as the first episode of a potential fourth season.

“None of us want to end yet,” O’Brien said. “We’ve still got a lot more we want to do with these characters.”

All three seasons of A.P. Bio are available to stream on Peacock.