Sandra Oh is one busy lady! Somewhere in the middle of a pandemic I imagine she had to get in the headspace for the final season of Killing Eve, but then went ahead and filmed this short but awesome comedy-drama, The Chair. Even more fascinating about this show is that it was created by actress Amanda Peet! I truthfully had no clue she wrote or anything like that outside of acting. Really cool find on Netflix if you ask me!
The word I will use for this show is chaos. For the entirety of the season, I felt like Oh’s Ji-Yoon never had a true moment to sit and really do anything. She’s just become chair of the English department at a fictional New England school, Pembroke. It sounds like it’s a step down from say Yale or Harvard, but pretty well revered. Almost immediately she’s told by the dean that she needs to try and force retirement on three of the oldest faculty who get paid the most but have the least enrollment in their classes. One of those teachers is her old friend and mentor, Joan.
Poor Joan just tries to get Ji-Yoon to go to bat for her so many times, but is fighting most her battles alone throughout the season. First, she gets her office moved to the basement and then she has to read her ratemyprofessor reviews, which are…not favorable. I think Joan was the much needed comic relief in this series. Another professor on the chopping block is Elliot, whose current class has only seven students…yikes! In an effort to help him out, Ji-Yoon begs Yaz to merge their classes together. Yaz is in a tough spot because she is on her way to becoming tenured and is friends with Ji-Yoon. I think to sort of make it up to her, and because she deserves it, Ji-Yoon offers the distinguished lecturer to Yaz, but the dean announces that David Duchovny (yes, the actor) is going to do it instead. Yaz has the most interesting storyline in my opinion.
Perhaps the biggest issue in this dysfunctional English department is Ji-Yoon’s best friend and maybe secret lover, Bill. His wife died of cancer a year ago and he’s a hot mess. We spend a good deal of time with him at the beginning just drunkenly trying to get places. But then he finally shows up to class and gets filmed doing a Hitler salute. Rather than handle an apology the way the school lays out for him, Bill tries to do a town hall which only makes things worse. Ji-Yoon is struggling with what to do because she knows Bill isn’t racist and that he’s an excellent professor, but he’s making things increasingly difficult. Their personal connection is also a bit messy, and it’s a long season of will they/won’t they.
Speaking of Ji-Yoon’s personal life, she’s a single mother to a young adopted daughter, Ju-Ju. Ju-Ju is not Korean, which seems to rub Ju-Ju and Ji-Yoon’s family the wrong way. Poor Ji-Yoon just wants someone to love her unconditionally! Bill barely meets Ju-Ju for five minutes and they have a stronger connection. I think the fact that Ji-Yoon is so busy with her chair duties isn’t helping them connect any more. That is the ultimate balance that Ji-Yoon needs to find in her life, and I think by the end she gets there. It’s unfortunate that she couldn’t keep the chair position, but for the mess that was Ji-Yoon’s life, it wouldn’t have come out too realistic if everything would have worked out perfectly. Life is a give and take, and I think she reached a good balance.
For such a brief show, it really packs a lot in! The show takes a hard look at the times we’re living in now, where old and all white prestigious schools are not looked upon so graciously anymore. It also makes me realize that while people can try to make big changes, it will be big steps forward with a lot of little steps back or a lot of resistance. The show also tackles a real hot-button issue in Bill’s actions, where he’s not racist, but there was no reason at all to do what he did. Hopefully he really learned something from all of that. All in all, this was a pretty darn good effort from Amanda Peet and camp! Do I hope for more? Sure, but if we don’t get more, I think this one ended up just fine.