The Chair: A witty collegiate drama masquerading as a by-the-numbers comedy

After notable dramatic turns in huge titles like Grey’s Anatomy, Killing Eve, and most recently Invincible (and that’s not even mentioning her many film roles), actress Sandra Oh once again returns to comedy with her latest project, Netflix’s The Chair. Though the series doesn’t deliver nearly enough laughs to live up to the offbeat workplace comedy it bills itself as, there’s more than enough meat in The Chair‘s more grounded, dramatic storylines to make for a thoughtful, witty six-episode series about collegiate life and the state of university-level academia.

The Chair follows a semester in the life of Ji-Yoon Kim (Oh), the first female chair of the English department at the stuffy, elite, Ivy League-adjacent Pembroke University. In addition to attempting to manage the severe proposed budget cuts that would pressure her to force 3 professors into retirement, Ji-Yoon struggles to navigate her complicated personal life with precocious adoptive daughter Juju (Everly Carganilla) and will-they-won’t-they romance with fellow professor Bill Dobson (Jay Duplass).

From the beginning, The Chair struggles to land the vast majority of its jokes – which is unfortunate, because Oh has tremendous comedic talent that can and should be used to the show’s full advantage. Instead, most of the gags are slapstick, physical ones (often involving the bumbling, drunken but undeniably charismatic Professor Dobson), which feel strangely out of place for a series that explores a number of incredibly pressing, grounded issues with surprising depth. Even in comparison to some of the better jokes involving Ji-Yoon’s neurotic daughter Juju (a scene-stealer who has a number of the series’ best one-liners), the physical comedy a) falls flat and b) feels like lazy, low-hanging fruit for a series that clearly has enough talent in the writers’ room to craft wittier jokes.

However, as the episodes pass, The Chair begins to move away from being a comedy-drama and (smartly) focuses its energy on purely being a drama that dissects modern collegiate life and culture – and it’s a miracle the show does because The Chair (though silly and overblown) has a strong, thoughtful voice to add to the conversation when it comes to everything from cancel culture to the value the workforce places in math and science over language.

The main conflict (though Ji-Yoon deals with a number of smaller, more personal issues) revolves around the aftermath of Professor Dobson making an off-color Hitler joke during a lecture, which is filmed by his students and then spread online in a boomerang-style out of context clip.

Although at first Bill seems incredulous that he’s taking heat for something that he feels is clearly a joke, as the pressure mounts, he (and the rest of the Pembroke English department) begin to re-evaluate the culture on campus after students mount several protests calling for his dismissal and for a school-wide crackdown on ignorant, Alt-Right behavior and rhetoric. Having your romantic lead make a Nazi joke and then become a victim of what could easily be labeled as “cancel culture” is certainly a gutsy move for a show of The Chair‘s caliber, and at first, it does look as if the series might be toeing the line in the wrong direction.

However, the more the series explores this topic, the more it gets right – Ji-Yoon and Bill don’t just dismiss that the clip was taken out of context and therefore Bill should be let off scot-free: Instead, the professors listen to their students, and try their best to acknowledge their voices – even if Bill is being crucified for something he feels was blown out of proportion. Ji-Yoon is constantly listening to her students in this regard- especially when it comes to the presence of minority voices on campus.

Though the administration wants to hire David Duchovny (yes, that David Duchovny) to give the university’s annual distinguished lecture, she instead pushes for Yaz – a bright young Black literature professor whose methods engage her students and help the department move away from stuffy traditions of old.

Not all of the plot lines are as engaging – speaking of stuffy old traditions, a significant portion of the show’s runtime is dedicated to the insurgent movement growing among the department’s older faculty, who feel like they’re being disrespected and pushed aside by the administration, the students, and later Ji-Yoon herself, despite their years of service to the university. Though there’s certainly a story worth telling there about how Universities treat older, more distinguished faculty, the series doesn’t give the subplot enough time, and the older professors instead serve as secondary antagonists in Ji-Yoon’s way.

A further mixed bag are the show’ remaining narrative threads – which include original female professor Joan (Holland Taylor) attempting to track down a disgruntled student who keeps leaving her poor, crude review on RateMyProfessor.com, Ji-Yoon’s daughter grappling with her status as an adoptee and trying to engage with her Mexican culture, and Ji-Yoon’s will-they-won’t they romance with Bill, which is further complicated by the fire he comes under following the Nazi scandal.

With just six half-hour episodes, we almost wish The Chair had a 10 or 12 episode run so the series could dedicate more time to the smaller stories – because though they feel half-baked and at times inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, there’s a strong enough foundation to more than provide for several episode’s worth of content in the first season. Though it may not succeed as a comedy, when The Chair shifts its energy towards being a full-on drama (and harnessing the magic of Sandra Oh) it succeeds as a witty look at collegiate level-academia.

Are you planning to give The Chair a look? Sound off in the comments.