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The Chair (2021)

METASCORE

Generally favorable reviews based on 36 Critic Reviews

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73

USER SCORE

Generally favorable reviews based on 16 Ratings

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6.6

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6.6	Your Score
6.6	User Score Generally favorable reviews based on 16 Ratings

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The Chair: Season 1

Now Playing: The Chair: Season 1

The Chair (2021)

Series Details & Credits

Netflix | Release Date: August 20, 2021

Summary: Dr. Ji-Yoon Kim (Sandra Oh) becomes the first woman of color named Chair of the English department at Pembroke University in this dramedy series written by Amanda Peet.

Genre(s): Comedy, Drama

Recent Episodes

No episode information is currently available for this season

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Metascore

73

Positive:

28

Mixed:

8

Negative:

0

Critic Reviews

100

Reason.com

Glenn Garvin

Aug 22, 2021

Season 1 Review: Carganilla's blasé exposition of juvenile sociopathology may even be the finest performance of the whole cast, which is saying something: Oh, Duplass, Taylor and Balaban all are outstanding as they bounce from pratfalls to Chaucer jokes to poignant meditations on adult diapers and other detritus of old age. College, when I was there, wasn't nearly this funny. Read full review

83

TVLine

Dave Nemetz

Aug 4, 2021

Season 1 Review: Rich with intriguing characters and armed with a breezy comedic tone, the campus comedy from first-time showrunner Amanda Peet is a smart, low-key charmer that sneaks up on you. Read full review

80

The Telegraph Ed Power

Aug 20, 2021

Season 1 Review: It’s breezy, funny and Oh and Duplass throw up sparks off each other. Like a day idling around campus when you should be going to lectures, The Chair won’t change your life. But it kills the time very pleasantly. Read full review

75

USA Today

Kelly Lawler

Aug 20, 2021

Season 1 Review: In addition to Oh's charms, "Chair" is a darkly funny satire, skewering aspects of modern higher education with veritable glee. The characters are sharply written and feel real and grounded, even as the events surrounding them become more crazed. Read full review

70

Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

Rob Owen

Aug 20, 2021

Season 1 Review: “The Chair” has a lot it wants to address — gender dynamics in academia, cross-cultural adoption, grief and self-destruction, white privilege, wokeness and cancel culture — and it’s probably too much for a six-episode, half-hour show that’s also a romantic comedy. ... To its credit, “The Chair” offers no easy answers. It’s more interested in exploring the complexities of transgression and the multitude of reactions than in villainizing or lionizing the individuals involved. Read full review

70

TV Guide

Keith Phipps

Aug 4, 2021

Season 1 Review: As a narrative and a send-up of academia, it's sometimes distractingly loose and ultimately anti-climactic (though it still finds ways to end each episode on a note that almost demands viewers press on right away). But as a rich world stocked with endearingly messed-up characters fumbling their way through some hard choices, it's tough to resist. Read full review

46

Paste Magazine

Lacy Baugher

Aug 4, 2021

Season 1 Review: The Chair slowly shifts from being an intriguing story about a groundbreaking woman to a sadly predictable one about a tiresome man. Read full review

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6.6

User Reviews

10

Dmk1982

Aug 29, 2021

This show is endearing, funny and well-written. Sandra Oh’s acting is top-notch, as always. It has nice balance and flows well for only 6 episodes.

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

8

Henrique2

Aug 28, 2021

Muito boa a série. A Sandra Oh perfeita como sempre. Um humor muito sagaz e diferenciado

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

8

Flipje

Sep 11, 2021

The Chair was a nice surprise for me. While the previews gave me the impression of being more 'woke', ticking the typical boxes and the rest, thankfully this was more human with politics revealing character. Sandra Oh plays a newly-elected chair of Pembroke University, and it is a big deal.The Chair was a nice surprise for me. While the previews gave me the impression of being more 'woke', ticking the typical boxes and the rest, thankfully this was more human with politics revealing character. Sandra Oh plays a newly-elected chair of Pembroke University, and it is a big deal. She oversees quite a crew with a trio of cantankerous older professors (Balaban, Taylor and Crawford), a young and up-and-coming professor (Mensah)and of course, the love-interest, academic messed-up-prof played by Jay Duplass. On top of that, Oh's Ji-Yoon Kim is a single mother managing a plucky, wise and yet equally difficult adopted daughter. The first episode, you might think, oh no, Cliché-ville, next stop. Duplass's Bill Dobson is too Buster Keaton-drunken mess with a series of vaudeville accidents. Alas, we learn he is a widower. Okay, we can forgive him and when the series gets going, his little academic faux-pas during a lecture - conveniently captured by students with smartphones - lands him in a mess dealing with generation participation-trophy. The faculty politics were captured well here and provided for a great deal of sympathy. Academia is cutthroat and with identity politics the new gauntlet, The Chair actually sympathizes more with the professors dealing with the overly-triggered students. I admired this about the show. The Chair was written and directed to perfectly convey the chaos on campus while givings some rather poignant moments between Oh and Duplass. At the same time, there is a lot here and in six thirty minute episodes, there were moments I wished we could have spent more time with the other characters. Holland Taylor's Joan Hambling offered that perfect balance of being both vulnerable and wry. I wanted to get to know her more. The same with Balaban's Prof. Rentz and Mensah's Yaz McKay. The show offered some good moments, and I wondered why the creator (Amanda Peet here... cool...) and writers weren't writing hour-long episodes to flesh-out these roles. And while the Pembroke students here are basically the angry pitch-fork mob, it would have been nice to have been offered some humanity or at least a lesson for them and their bloodthirsty drive to cancel people and have them fired. The Chair navigates some interesting territory, and perhaps avoiding some depth helps it stay in that comfortable place of seriously light. Overall, a pleasant way to cap off a weekend.… Expand

1 of 1 users found this helpful10

4

Volrath316

Aug 23, 2021

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Personally this show is everything wrong with modern academia. It's all about pandering, preserving emotional student, bad parenting, it's basically what it's like when kids are running the show. Chaos and over reacting on all points. The infantile attitude of the world showed in that show is one of the reason for the moral decay of the western society. Using David Duchovny as a cameo star is a low hanging fruit.

It may just be me, but over sensitive, emotionally childish, super woke television shows are not good.… Expand

0 of 1 users found this helpful01

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Seasons & Episodes

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Series Overview
Season 1

73
- Season 1 Overview
  Air Date: August 20, 2021
- No episode information is currently available for this season