An uneasy feeling from the jump: the school looks too much like schools in movies and TV shows. Ivy League despite assurances from the writers that this school is fuuuucked up! Basement level ivy league or some such joke. Everything is so perfectly dignified and picturesque. And then the star of our program, the wonderful Sandra Oh, removes the first in a series of bad jokes that will surely bring a smile to anyone who thought Chandler Bing was funny: a nameplate that reads “Fucker in Charge of You Fucking Fucks.” Must’ve taken the writers weeks to nail that one.
Immediately after that lame joke, we see Oh sit at her desk. If you’ve ever seen a dumb sitcom, you’ll know what’s going to happen next. But no, this is supposed to be a smart show about smart people, right? They won’t. . . Nope, they did it. They tossed in a broken chair gag. I’m not the biggest stickler when it comes to lazy metaphors, but c’mon.
The concerns of Sandra Oh and her floundering English department ring sadly true, even if their depiction leans heavy on boilerplate. The politics of running a department, the ridiculous demands of donors, the capitulations, complaints, egos, and attitudes—it’s all here, often convincingly so. I mean, David Duchovny as guest lecturer? Seems plausible. Old guard professors scrambling to maintain relevance? Yep. New professors kissing ass for tenure? Oh yeah. Reactionary students? Well, you knew some of the cancel culture debate would make its way in.
What bothers me most about The Chair is the facile way in which it deals with what often seems the most important battle in our contemporary culture war. There is much to say about cancel culture. The Chair seems to critique it as a bunch of rabid, scandal hungry students who misunderstand their professor’s dumb joke and make it a cause, a chance to yell and virtue signal and ask questions in true cable news fashion (not letting one answer, bulldozing ahead with their agenda). While The Atlantic, in a shockingly positive review of The Chair, praised the show for not taking a side, I found the treatment of the issue kind of pointless. Are we supposed to root for the professor (more on him in a minute) who is obviously not the Nazi the students make him into, or are we supposed to side with the students who are justifiably concerned about the white supremacy that is baked into so much of our society, certainly academia?
In other places we see the students riffing on the absence of women in Moby-Dick, not to mention the American literary canon. The students sing/rap about this, to the delight of their young, female, black professor and to the chagrin of the dinosaur Melville expert who laments to his wife that he used to walk those halls as a giant. So I guess I’m supposed to feel bad for Bob Balaban’s aging prof when his wife offers spousal comfort before asking him to don adult diapers. No, I’m supposed to root for the struggling up-n-comer played by Nana Mensah who will get screwed by Balaban, her older peer (who, of course, would never see a woman—much less a woman of color—as a peer). Both, apparently. And that’s okay—I never need clear cut good and bad guys, but the pathos the writers attempt to give Balaban are meager, certainly not enough to get any viewer to see him as sympathetic. So why even try?
I’m happy to see a show aim at tough targets and even opt for ambiguity. Balaban is not such a bad guy? Oh wait, there he goes torpedoing poor Sandra Oh. He’s a shit after all. And what about the character played by the always fantastic Holland Taylor? Looked over too often, never went up for full professor, sidelined by patriarchy and sexist Rate My Professor reviews, struggling to get out of the basement (writers Amanda Peet and Annie Julia Wyman have certainly seen Office Space), struggling to make kids understand that Chaucer is “a badass,” and possibly cultivating a romantic relationship with an IT guy, though that subplot (like others) goes nowhere. Much like her character, this talented actress is given brief moments to shine, then put aside or used as a prop to move the main action along. Is this a meta move? No, that’d be giving The Chair too much credit, for even though it may invite praise for being “smart” the story is anything but. Smart people lobbing the easiest T. S. Eliot quotes about, sure, even a few casual references to Lacan, but much like Frasier was a standard comedy about smart people, The Chair is not as smart as one may think. It’s shockingly banal.
Perhaps I’m not the one to comment on what constitutes a strong female character. I liked Buffy the Vampire Slayer as much as the next person, but the slew of post-Buffy ass kicking fighting fuck toys (to borrow a phrase from Dr. Caroline Heldman) seemed anything but feminist. Sure, they fight men and are strong, though their strength is measured in ways crafted by patriarchy (violence). Maybe some can dismiss the scores of basement trolls jacking off to the heroines’ perfect legs and asses in those tight leather outfits (dress sexy for you, not him), but those badass female characters always felt like half-measures. Similarly, we have what should be a badass star here in Sandra Oh, who has proven to be pretty badass in Killing Eve. And, to be sure, she has badass moments in The Chair, but they feel too little, too performative. She’s tough talking, but bends way too much to Jay Duplass’s character. We’re supposed to feel frustrated that she has to yield to the demands of the machine she’s both leading and fighting, but then we have some half-assed romantic story? Might as well be a plot from Syd Fields. And that “fucking fuckers” name plate? Actually, it’s perfect for this show: easily obtained, purely symbolic, and, again, a watered-down joke only fast food culture finds hilarious. It is also a gag, much like The Chair, unworthy of Oh.
Sandra Oh’s character Ji-Yoon has her moments, and if the show succeeds anywhere it’s in demonstrating that myriad challenges a woman of color faces in an absurd job like department chair, especially of English. The show rightfully points out that the field is hemorrhaging students and fighting for its existence now that college has been equated with job training. And the show nicely details the wheeling and dealing one must do to make the machine creak along, as well as the ways in which idealism can take a few hits along the way. I felt sincerely bad for Oh when she had to consider optics, cultivate allegiances, and sacrifice desires. I believe the job is far worse than The Chair makes it seem, and that’s saying something. That Oh (spoiler) is ousted by the old men under her simply because they feel their time on campus is at a close, well, that sucks, but when Oh names Taylor as her successor, thwarting Balaban’s ambition for the gig, we’re supposed to see that as a victory, I guess. The stalwart Chaucerian got out of the basement and got the recognition she deserves. So it’s a happy ending? Maybe, but there are loose threads aplenty. Oh was nearly out of a job entirely after sorta kinda gagging a student from speaking about a scandal. Then she’s forgiven by what we are made to understand are unforgiving young people, all simply because she is no longer on top, no longer chair, just a lowly professor. Now there’s a message! Oh’s Ji-Yoon keeps her job and lectures passionately on Emily Dickinson, which is all she ever really wanted to do, apparently. Never mind the chair position. Who needs institutional power when you can stay in your lane?
If the badassery of the leading woman is complicated, the mopey cliché that is our leading man is crystal clear. Maybe it’s because I am a frequently scruffy, mildly disorganized, occasionally intoxicated lover of Modernism and Samuel Beckett that Jay Duplass’s character made me wince. Because I hope to god I’ve never been the cookie-cutter asshole he is. Recently widowed, the “rock star professor” gets away with being a prick and is only pulled from his funk by a woman and her adorable daughter (another prop that is half-heartedly given a story of her own, but who cares?). If you’ve seen Barton Fink you might remember the old screenwriter’s dilemma: dame or kid? Which do we saddle the leading man with? Remember what Barton Fink says: “Both, maybe?” Remember the movie producer’s worried look?
Come to think of it, why is Jay Duplass even in this thing? Why bother with a (barely) sympathetic man? Just ditch his character. He’s not developed, perhaps because there’s nothing to develop. Of course, I’m willing to accept the argument that, after years of being used as satellites and sex objects in male-driven stories, women creators are having their revenge by writing shitty one-dimensional male characters. I guess that’s equality? No, it’s not—I expect more of the women wresting control from us men. We’ve done crap jobs. If you’re up to bat, and you should be, it’s not enough to phone in a character like Prof. Dobson. Again, don’t bother—just focus on the women. They’re far more interesting.
But no, Duplass bumbles along, sport-coated and unshaven, occasionally spouting some professorial lines about Camus and Pavese and, for some reason, he innocently gives a Nazi salute in class, which get filmed and goes viral and costs him his job. But the kids got it wrong—he’s no Nazi, just a tired caricature of a young English professor/lit bro. His interest in Beckett and Modernism is supposed to do all the heavy lifting, and it, sigh, does. We see his existential depression as a given. Those gloomy Modernists! And then there’s a dumb red herring in the form of an adoring student who we’re sure wants to fuck him but really only wants him to read her novel. Yet another prop picked up and too quickly put down.
The show is a mess, but a fun mess. For all the shit I’m complaining about, I wasn’t bored. It’s a sloppy bit of distraction I enjoyed between drafts of my syllabi for the coming semester. And while it offered no real ideas that couldn’t have come from a USA Today article on cancel culture, it didn’t exactly preach either. These days, I’ll take half-baked comedies over sanctimony. But my concern is that the show is being seen as more than it is. It’s being rewarded for not taking a side, which seems stupid. Too often in socio-political discussions, I’m told to consider both sides, as if all perspectives are equally valid. Sure, that’s the ideal, but when one side is objectively loony, both-siding is just plain wrong. And I have no answer to the cancel culture debate, just feelings that are as complicated as The Chair kind of recognizes them to be. But the debate is given less attention than it deserves. We’re meant to sympathize with the misunderstood dude who gave a Nazi salute and shake our heads at the overreactions of the students. And while I would hardly classify Duplass’s salute as sincere, there is a point here: the tenured asshole should’ve known better. His misguided attempt at addressing the issue with what quickly becomes a mob of angry students is born of belief in the power of truth and open discourse, honorable ideas that the show wants us to think are under threat by our snowflake culture. I think. I dunno. . . I’m not sure how to read this subplot. Maybe that’s the point. That ambiguity would be fine were the rest of the show not beholden to old tropes and stereotypes. But hey, it kept me from seeing horrifying images of Afghanistan or thinking about environmental catastrophe for a few hours.