Economist Writing Every Day

The Chair on Netflix is entertaining and I’d recommend it to EWED readers.

Plot, via Wikipedia: Professor Ji-Yoon Kim is the newly appointed chair of the English department at Pembroke University. The first woman chosen for the position, she attempts to ensure the tenure of a young black colleague, negotiate her relationship with her crush, friend, and well-known colleague Bill Dobson, and parent her strong-willed adopted daughter.

Something I like about the writing is that there is genuine suspense. Going into the last episode, I didn’t know what would happen with the romance or the threat of job dismissals.

The show is funny, occasionally. If you are looking for something easy to watch in 30-minute episodes at the end of the day that won’t leave you too upset, this will work.

Some of the issues they raise deserve serious treatment, but the serious treatment will not be found in The Chair. It’s for Netflix, with binge watching potential. Without offering any spoilers, I’d say they supply the kind of ending that viewers want. You need not overthink it.

Even though the show is over-the-top for purposes of being entertaining, nothing felt so divorced from what is realistically possible in academia that it took me out of the story. The writers did their research on what issues come up on the inside of a university department.  

I did a very brief search for other reviews of the show and that is exactly what John Warner concluded in his review called “‘The Chair’ Isn’t a Satire: But it is a decent TV show, as long as you don’t think about it too much. This is me thinking about it too much.” In his review he states, “But then I reminded myself — it’s just a TV show.” 

The Chair is rather on-the-nose when the topics of equality and academia come up. I’m not dismissing any of it, but I don’t feel like that’s where The Chair approaches great art. There are two aspects where I felt like the show did a great job portraying facets of modern America: blended families and mixed-status romantic relationships.

There are at least some phases of the relationship between the two leads in which the guy has lower job status than the girl. It’s a reversal of the traditional trope. The writers give us an example of what that can look like. This is something we will see more in fiction, as people try to navigate a new world where some highly educated women need to “date down” in the professional sense if they are going to date at all.

The portrayal of family life in modern American with blended families and an ongoing cultural melting pot was interesting. The mom is Korean with a Korean-speaking family. She adopted a Mexican girl. The man is white. How do they all love and understand each other? (There is a lot of love and understanding. The misunderstandings are mostly for humor.)

I can see a possibility for a second season of The Chair. The writers leave some stories feeling like they could continue, especially Joan and the grad student. However, I’d hate to see it done badly. Ted Lasso had a successful season 1 but then never felt real again. I think it would be hard to handle the new situation with Bill’s job in a way that feels both realistic and entertaining.