As someone who’s been embedded in the world of elite higher education for the better part of three decades (depending on how you count my grad school and post-doc years), the last twenty of them as faculty, including a stint as department chair, the new Netflix series The Chair is the sort of thing that’s aimed very much in my direction. It dropped last week, but was generating a bit of buzz in academic social media circles even before that, so I made an effort to squeeze in a few episodes. I’m halfway through it (three of the six episodes), and as with a lot of tv I’ve started recently, I’m not sure I’ll finish it.
This is not necessarily a knock on the actors involved, all of whom are doing a nice job. It’s also not a complaint about the realism or lack thereof (though, hoo boy, do I have questions about the fictional school where this is set…). The problem I have is that I feel like the show is unevenly split between two very different things, and I wish it would pick one or the other.
One of these is a faintly comedic take on serious issues in academia, centered around Sandra Oh’s performance as Ji-Yoon Kim, the first woman of color to serve as Chair of the English department. This involves her trying to navigate the demands of the administration, the intransigence of the senior faculty (most of whom are extremely senior…), and to push through the tenure case of her one junior colleague Yaz McKay (Nana Mensah). It touches on a lot of live issues in academia today: race, gender, financial and enrollment pressures, declining enrollments, balancing family and career, etc. Oh is terrific as a slightly frazzled woman being pulled in many directions at once, and scrambling to stay on top of many conflicting demand.
The other thread is a much more absurdist and slapstick-y campus comedy, mostly revolving around Jay Duplass as the recently widowed Prof. Bill Dobson (who was chair immediately before Ji-Yoon and is a maybe-love-interest for her) and Holland Taylor as Prof. Joan Hambling. Their scenes on their own are terrific— Duplass does some excellent physical comedy with scooters and bikes and the scene where Taylor sets her office on fire is great. It’s just that they feel like they’re from a completely different show.
Both of these shows, the issue-driven academic satire and the zany workplace comedy, are really good. The problem is that they’re awkwardly trying to be part of the same show. And I find it really jarring when they intersect. For example, one of the central conflicts of the show involves Bill drawing the ire of student activists after a clip of him ironically doing a Nazi salute in class goes viral, which poses a huge problem for Ji-Yoon trying to keep the department out of trouble. Given that his very first appearance involves him drunkenly stealing and then crashing an airport golf cart, though, it seems like that would be wayyyyy down the list of his problems. That opening event just… never really comes up, though.
The true problem with the realism of the show, then, isn’t the gigantic wood-paneled chair’s office, it’s that when Oh isn’t on the screen, Duplass and Taylor seem to be operating in a completely different universe. It wouldn’t take all that much to bring them together— Oh’s problems could easily be made a little zanier, or the Duplass and Taylor threads could be made more serious— but they’re tonally distinct to such a degree that I have a lot of trouble with the show as a whole even though I enjoy almost all the individual scenes.
It’s only three more episodes, so I may yet finish it— it depends a bit on the weather, and if I’m forced to bike-to-nowhere a bunch before the next new show comes along. And as always, this is largely a Me Thing— the show seems to land better for a lot of other people, so, you know, good for them. As of the halfway point, though, it just doesn’t quite click for me, which is a little disappointing.
I’ve done enough heavy topics this week that it seemed like a good time for some pop culture, especially since we’re headed out of town for the weekend to a land of little to no wi-fi. Here are the traditional buttons for you to click if you so choose:
And if you want to tell me I have terrible taste in comedy, the comments will be open.
From Scott Aaronson's review of it, I would never have guessed it's a comedy.