The Chair (2021)

Tightly written and expertly cast, “The Chair” deftly weaves absurdist comedy gold from what happens when a calling and a profession morphs into an industry where neither progress nor passion can blossom.

Within its tight frame, the series packs in more than shows three times its length. It’s particularly rewarding in its portrayal of Ji-Yoon’s personal life. ... What truly sells The Chair, though, is how fast and funny it is while throwing around a legion of informed ideas about a well-trodden subject.

This wry, observant portrait of the messy scholars charged with preparing young adults to live lives of purpose — and, ideally, some potential to repay their student loans — makes you wish the semester went on for a little while longer. The exacting vibrancy of the series is matched at every turn by its star, Sandra Oh. ... That fizzy rom-com nestled inside The Chair’s satire of old-school thinking and academic inertia adds another layer of joy to the series.

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.

There wasn’t the depth of a show like Dear White People, which is much more game to challenge the intricacies of student politics, but The Chair is nonetheless smart, subtle and extremely watchable.

What makes “The Chair” worth watching is Oh.

The writers and Peet, who has a writing credit on three of its six episodes, achieve a striking and complex emulsion of humanity, ego and ultimately decency – or in some cases, the lack of it.

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.

The Chair is funny as heck with some earned moments of real emotion, and a killer cast. Six episodes flew by, and we hope to see more of Pembroke’s English department soon.

It’s a great achievement that none of this feels worthy or didactic. It feels like a genuine exploration, a dramatised discussion of intergenerational differences and divides that few are seeking to take the heat out of and examine with real interest. And it’s funny.

It’s a measure of the script’s intelligence that there are no heavy judgments handed down here on the student’s choice. More impressive still is the portrait of a culture of bottomless sensitivity—now, to be sure, no longer confined to campuses—and the fever swamps to which it can lead. It’s a bleak picture. Still, “The Chair” is full of charm, and a captivating humor.

In its finest moments, The Chair is a workplace farce doled out in tidy 30-minute increments. ... The Chair’s greatest strength is in where it eventually lands: with an accurate, if heightened, sometimes satirical portrayal of what it’s actually like to chair a department (at least from my experience doing so at a private research university).

It’s probably a good sign that my biggest complaint is that we get too little time with this menagerie of flawed yet generally good-hearted characters. The show works as well as it does because it’s richly observed, wittily scripted, brilliantly cast and subtly acted, with a sense of humor that’s both sophisticated and incisive in its skewering of academia’s particular brand of pretentiousness.

“The Chair” is breezy, funny, and often very smart. It’s just that it’s the rare Netflix show that left me wanting more instead of watching the clock.

“The Chair” manages to demonstrate the layers at play for both factions without feeling like it’s equivocating too much to have any real bite.

There’s serious satisfaction in watching Oh, Taylor, Balaban, David Morse (as the masterfully inscrutable dean) and others go to town with this material. It’s the audience pandering that limits “The Chair.”

Peet and Wyman, along with series director Daniel Gray Longino, create a welcoming, authentic environment to explore their thesis, and they trust Duplass, Taylor, and especially Oh to convey every thought with the grace and wit it deserves. The limited series may lack the focus and follow-through needed to blow audiences away, but it certainly earned its notable position.

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.

Creators Amanda Peet and Annie Wyman keep the show loose enough for cute side storylines — David Duchovny! — but never let things wander aimlessly. With six quick episodes they offer a glimpse at the absurdities of modern academic life and cultural sensitivities, while also dancing on romantic comedy notes. Nice.

For all the jagged edges, there’s a sweetness to “The Chair” that works hand-in-hand with a perpetual sense of peril, an insistence on giving everyone a say — much as Ji-Yoon must as part of her new job. As the season progresses, it becomes clear that not everyone will land in the clear, and some blood will spill. There’s something refreshing about this impending doom, and the show’s refusal to enter the realm of happily-ever-after.

While The Chair misses some opportunities to explore the rich world of academia, it succeeds as a warm-hearted look at one department chair’s deeply resonant inner life.

“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.

The best parts of the miniseries involve Ji-Yoon’s life apart from campus. ... Oh utterly disappears into her role, but she’s especially funny and charming in her scenes with Duplass, their sweater-swaddled professors both sporting romantic clouds of dark curls. But the best reason to sit through the anemic first four episodes is for the series’ deepening portrayal of a Korean American woman in situations seldom explored in pop culture.

An exceptional cast mostly outshines the material, leaving what amounts to a mildly diverting binge with one inordinately amusing cameo baked into it.

I'd love a next season, if there is one to be all about her [Holland Taylor]. [16-29 Aug 2021, p.5]

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.

While The Chair is a smart, hysterical critique of the arbitrary politics in academia that have worked against women and people of color for decades, it struggles to shape a complete world beyond that limited scope.

The Chair bites off more than it can chew by expanding further into cancel culture and personal identity – topics which would require a few more episodes to properly explore – with the added effect of taking valuable time away from the principal characters.

One of several refreshing qualities in The Chair is that it puts the ostensible outsider immediately in a position of authority. The question for Dr Kim is not how she’ll gain power, but how she’ll wield it. ... But if anything lets The Chair down it’s that it rounds off too many of its sharp edges.

Enjoyable but uneven. ... It’s primarily a comedy, and a brisk one at that. So it often breezes through the kinds of cultural, social, and romantic mires that deserve a more thorough treatment.

Ji-Yoon is meant to be a flawed hero, and there’s a sense from the start that perhaps she’s not as ready to tackle this job as she wants to believe she is. Similarly, The Chair has goals it’s only sometimes equipped to achieve, even though its overall talent level keeps things interesting.

Both a breeze to watch, and a bit of a letdown. Like its protagonist, the series is too clever and well-intentioned to dislike. But in its determination to teach a lesson, it falls short of the brilliant art its characters have built their careers studying.

“The Chair” is entertaining in a knockabout way, if you don’t look too closely, and Oh is wonderful every minute she’s in it. But I found it frustratingly vague. ... Its attempt to honor multiple points of view, especially surrounding l’affaire Bill, feels more indecisive than incisive, more contradictory than complex. “What is this actually about?” you may wonder.

While it’s never less than a pleasant watch, The Chair struggles to resolve its own conflicting roles.