The Chair · Season 1 · Netflix
The Chair Season 1
The Chair Season 1 is a WORTH-IT, BollyMeter 7.5/10. 6 episodes on Netflix from 20 August 2021.
Updated
What BollyAI Thinks
The Chair earned 86% from 73 Rotten Tomatoes critics and a 73 Metacritic score - the warmest reception any academic-satire comedy had attracted in years. Amanda Peet and Annie Julia Wyman's script draws on genuine institutional knowledge: the battles over tenure, relevance, and student cultural politics are specific enough to read as documentary. Sandra Oh's Ji-Yoon Kim inhabits the role of a first woman of colour in an institutional seat built for someone else entirely - she's managing the optics of her own authority while the building's plumbing fails around her. The 6-episode run (each around 30 minutes) was called too short by reviewers who wanted more, and too slight in its comedy-drama balance by those who found it unresolved. Both criticisms are accurate; both miss that the show's compression is a feature - it ends before the satire calcifies into thesis.
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The Room
“What makes The Chair worth watching is Oh.”
The New Yorker“A darkly funny satire, skewering aspects of modern higher education with veritable glee.”
USA Today“Oh, Duplass, Taylor and Balaban all are outstanding as they bounce from pratfalls to Chaucer jokes to poignant moments.”
Reason.com
Standout Episodes
The hours worth arguing about - premieres, finales, and the turning points. BollyAI reads the room episode by episode.
- E1The New Chair7.8
Ji-Yoon's first day as Chair is a masterclass in institutional gap-between-authority-and-power comedy. The English department's senior faculty - Bob Balaban's ancient Joan Hambling, David Duchovny cameo aside - perform deference while resisting every actual decision. Oh's timing is extraordinary throughout.
The moment: Ji-Yoon's office - discovered to be the size of a utility closet - announces the show's central joke and central sadness simultaneously.
“What makes The Chair worth watching is Oh.” - The New Yorker
- E4The Absurdity of Things7.5
The cancel-culture subplot escalates to crisis point as Ji-Yoon is forced to choose between institutional loyalty and personal relationship. Jay Duplass's Bill Dobson - the charismatic professor whose context-free Nazi salute has gone viral - gives the show its most uncomfortably honest academic freedom debate.
The moment: Ji-Yoon's realisation that the institution she has finally been allowed to lead will also be the institution that consumes her if she defends the wrong person.
“A darkly funny satire, skewering aspects of modern higher education with veritable glee.” - USA Today