TV Review - The Chair (2021)

The series focuses on the internal politics of a college campus that's akin to an Ivy League school. It's a comedy that in ways spoofs academic administrations or the hierarchy of higher education. Most films and television shows about colleges and universities tend to center on the students. One of the best recent examples is Dear White People (2017), which deals with race relations between students and faculty at an Ivy League school. This series, created by Amanda Peet and Annie Julia Wyman, two white women, touches upon the same subject. Mainly though, the series is about the first woman and first woman of color as a department chair at a seemingly Ivy League school.

Sandra Oh (Killing Eve and Grey's Anatomy) stars as Ji-Yoon Kim, a Korean-American woman who is a professor at Pembroke University, a school somewhere in New England. She has a doctorate and mainly teaches literature. At the start of this series, she's made Chair of the Department of English. She's basically the head or the leader of the faculty in that department. She's one of the very few women and even fewer women of color in that whole school. Her mission as the chair is to promote education of literature and grow the department but also promote women and particularly women of color at the school. Specifically, she wants to give a young Black women tenure at the college. Unfortunately, this plot takes a back seat to a story line about a white man.

Jay Duplass (Transparent) co-stars as Bill Dobson, a fellow professor of literature who himself is a successful author and was formerly a dean at the school. He starts off in a bit of a slump as he's still dealing with the death of his wife a year ago. I'm not sure though if he's depressed or drunk, as he's mostly stumbling around and showing up to work late. The series becomes all about him when he does something that is offensive in class, which gets recorded on a cell phone and then posted online where it goes viral. The rest of the series becomes a vortex that becomes all about dealing with that and circling around him that literally everyone else is pushed to the side or background, even Ji-Yoon herself.

The show becomes all about how we should feel bad about Bill because of his dead wife. Given that he's also a love interest for Ji-Yoon, the show becomes all about her being in love with him and her being there for him. The show becomes about how great he is with Ji-Yoon's adopted daughter. It also becomes how great a writer and professor he is, so much so that female students throw themselves at him and fill out his classroom. For a series about a woman of color, it's bizarre that this show is so much about a white man and how we should feel sorry for him.

Nana Mensah (Bonding and 13 Reasons Why) plays Yazmine McKay, a professor at the college. She's one of the only Black women as a professor there. Ji-Yoon wants to give her tenure in order to give more power and influence to women of color at the school. Giving her tenure is a plot that gets pushed aside in order for the show to focus on Bill's issues. Mensah literally gets less screen time than Duplass, which is a shame. We learn practically nothing about Yaz. We don't learn about her love interest, her family, her background, her heritage or anything. It's just frustrating.

Rated TV-MA.
Running Time: 30 mins. / 6 eps.

Available on Netflix.