The Chair Review (with spoilers)

The new Netflix series The Chair, starring Sandra Oh as chairwoman Ji-Yoon Kim, alongside Jay Duplass and Holland Taylor, is an interesting yet somewhat unsatisfying look into the lives of senior academics in a university English Department. As someone who has just completed an English and Creative Writing degree, this show was of immense interest to me, not only to gain insight into the lives of lecturers and academics, but I was curious about the genre of the show and the creative approaches it would take.

Let’s kick off with the show’s use of comedy. It is very effective in places, especially when one of the senior lecturers, Joan, attempts to track down the student who had given her a bad review on ratemyprofessor.com. Another moment, whereby Ji-Yoon is talking to a therapist about how her husband left her as well as the issues going on at her university, got me laughing out loud when it turned out it was her daughter’s therapist, not hers. These nuggets of brilliance are exceedingly effective. However, several times, especially at the beginning of the show, when characters fall down and off objects for reasons unbeknownst to the viewer, in the context of what the show is trying to be, it feels a little forced.

But The Chair isn’t really a comedy, more of a dramady; a genre that has revolutionised television in recent years with outrageously profound shows such as Fleabag. Dramadies, in many ways, have more of a power to reflect real issues present in our society today, as life does run across several genres. They are comedies placed in more real and grounded contexts.

In The Chair, the subject matter is what we can do to ensure that all voices are heard in authentic ways. When a video of one lecturer, Bill, resurfaces of him doing the Nazi salute, it ends him in, as you can imagine, a lot of trouble. His unwillingness to apologise, stipulating that it was only a joke, is something that is a common occurrence in society today, and this stifled the voices of those horrified by his actions.

The show also grapples with what it truly means to apologise. Bill, by eventually relenting and apologising, but saying he was sorry for how the students took what he did, shifts the blame onto them. Such an apology meant Bill side-skipped taking full accountability.

However, the complexities of human emotion amidst such public outrage are discussed here. The fact that Bill is able to connect with Ji-Yoon’s daughter, to whom she had been struggling to bond with, is what makes it truly hard for her to fully condemn and denounce him, not so much her attraction to him – although that is present. There is also the irony of an older female professor teaching feminist works and calling for her own personal payrise, but not celebrating or recognising the other women in positions of power at the university. Particularly the women of different ethnic backgrounds. Jealousy? Surprise? Some underlying xenophobia? Or just bitterness? I’d imagine it was a combination of all four.

But the ending, whereby the students suddenly appear to forget Ji-Yoon’s role in supporting Bill does not feel natural or realistic. The events of Bill’s misdemeanour are almost jarringly glossed over at the end, which is why I feel the show could have done either with longer or just a few more episodes. Either way, I hope the show gets renewed. With context, it could add a lot to the content of its first season and may even give it new meaning.

Overall, I’d give the show a 7.5/10. The dialogue was well written, the characters well-established (for the most part) and there was important commentary within the pages. If only the ending was more satisfying. Oh, and give Nana Mensah more to do if there is a second season! Her character, Yasmin, became rather passive within the story – the script spent more time talking about her in comparison to her actual screen time. She had more to give as the most popular lecturer at the university.