The Chair: Netflix Comedy Finds Bitter Humor In College Awakening Politics

Inside the opening minutes of Amanda Peet and Annie Wyman’s six-episode Netflix comedy miniseries The chairIt’s clear that Ji-Yoon Kim (Sandra Oh), the new professor of English at Ivy University in Pembroke, is in trouble. She is not just the new woman of color in the chair position, she is the first. And he’s inherited a list of problems, including a student body unwilling to shore up a canonical literature full of troublesome white males, a department with dwindling tuition and funding, a trio of aging professors, and a self-destructive colleague. . Ji-Yoon is also a single mother to her uncontrollable daughter Ju Ju (Everly Carganilla).

Wyman and Peet are the perfect writing combo for the goofy comedy that emerges from that setting. Wyman, an Asian-American scholar, understands both the contours of a suffocating university and the rapid charge toward diversity that he is battling. His experience allows for crisp character dynamics. And Peet’s experience in acting may have led her to offer her cast a number of important and memorable changes. But while The chair is a clever and hysterical critique of arbitrary politics in academia that has worked against women and people of color for decades, struggling to shape an entire world beyond that limited scope.

Oh, it’s a blessing for this series. She has the wit and time to pass on the scholarly jokes, and the dramatic range to bring this emotionally torn woman to life. It is clear that you have been given a time bomb with this role. It’s a family concoction: An institution wants to show that its diversity is authentic, so leadership promotes a person of color to an unwinnable situation, where they are expected to do magic, or otherwise. Oh dramatizes those competing interests the same way Claire Foy did in The crown – another series in which a woman analyzes her role as leader, lover, mother and friend in front of the rugged white establishment.

The series is full of catchy dynamics, like the old-new-school divide between Melville scholar Elliot Rentz (Bob Balaban) and Yaz McKay (Nana Mensah). Rentz once filled the hallways, but his class size has decreased. Yaz is fun, energetic and on the rise as a teacher and tackles the troublesome components of older literary works. She is ready for tenure, so she must still be respectful to Rentz, a white man with enough power to blunt her career. It is a series that is very space conscious: the lack of space for people of color to advance, exercise their intellectual freedom without suffering the rejection of their white colleagues, and the extent to which those same privileged colleagues physically occupy space.

Another larger-than-life personality is Joan (Holland Taylor), an elderly scholar from Chaucer who is often as horny as the medieval era she studies. The university’s first full professor, she has spent decades turning the other cheek against gender insults. Joan, Rentz, and another teacher are at the cutting board – the dean (David Morse) wants to fire them for decreasing class sizes. They are stubborn in the face of change and totally out of touch with their students, technology, and trends in their studies. The dynamics are played for a laugh, but it smacks of unconscious age discrimination on the part of the showrunners.

Beyond the college corridor, the rest of the show languishes. An affair is sparked between Bill (Jay Duplass) and Ji-Yoon, but the brief half-hour episodes lack the time to organically develop their relationship. Bill is also spiraling. He is under threat of dismissal after making a tacky Nazi salute joke, drawing the ire of the openly awakened student body. Yet those students are reactionary to a flaw, more like a far-right wet dream about the supposed ills of diversity-obsessed college campuses than a compliment aimed at the critical thinking skills or sensitivities of students who care. by politics.

Ji-Yoon and Ju Ju’s relationship is also woefully underdeveloped. Ju Ju often misbehaves, sometimes hurling hurtful insults at her mother. Ju Ju is grappling with inheritance and diaspora issues, but those issues are so flat and unexplored that it’s hard to see her as more than a narrative device, a half assent to a richer family dynamic that never emerges. Even Ji-Yoon suffers from added character development in an episode that begins with Ju Ju working on a Day of the Dead project for the school, and ends with a revelation so sudden that it achieves none of the anticipated emotional impacts.

Wyman and Peet know enough to vocalize the situation faced by characters like Yaz: After watching Ji-Yoon’s fight, she reconsiders the pressures of being the first titular black woman in Pembroke. But the story is too superficial to really explore his situation. The writers also cannot articulate the inner turmoil that rests within a girl like Ju Ju, who is caught between two cultures.

A lot of good things are happening in The chair, although. Oh’s talent for balancing dramatic reality and side-split comedy with poise has always been evident. Especially here. Characters like Joan are so endearing. And there’s a delightful detail in the way the series plays academy politics for a laugh. There is also a celebrity cameo explaining how the rise of famous professors, in search of prestige, can damage the careers of serious academics. It’s the best articulated point on the show, leading to its funniest beats. But their characters of color are subscribed to degrees so fractured that it is difficult to know them in ways other than broad. The chairThe creators try to do too much in a short time, barely making the grade in their lofty representative goals. But the series is still flexible and sweet enough to win the hearts of any college graduate.

The chair debuts on Netflix on August 20.