Service: Netflix
Show Title: “The Chair”
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The television show “The Chair” on Netflix offers a glimpse into the behind-the-scenes of a failing English department at the fictional Pembroke University. The show follows Sandra Oh as department chair Ji-Yoon Kim, the legendary Holland Taylor as Professor Joan Hambling and other college faculty as they function in their lives inside and outside the classroom.
The series is a quick watch with only six 30-minute episodes, so it is great for people who do not want to commit a lot of time to a show. While some of the issues are dramatized to keep up with the rest of Hollywood, there is truth in the events and issues the show depicts.
These topics and characters reflect the ever-changing world around us on a micro scale. Pembroke is America. Topics include gender inequality in the workplace, aging adults’ unwillingness to change for the better, complicated relationships with both familial and romantic love and technology’s ever-present role in documentation and accountability.
“The Chair” takes you on an emotional journey through the character’s experiences in unprecedented times, which left me unsure of what to feel at the series’s closure. Perhaps the brevity of the series is the cause of this. I believe the series would benefit from one or two more episodes to flush out the plot lines of each individual character.
The “wokeness” of the show’s content was a bit much at times, almost seeming too forced, which made me just as frustrated as some of the characters, but it does have good intentions. Nevertheless, the series does a wonderful job portraying events of a much larger system that frequently occur in real life. I truly felt the frustration, anguish and love of the show’s charming but flawed characters. The beautiful set, stunning costuming and cast’s charisma are all elements that drew me in and will be sure to keep the audiences flocking.
Overall rating: 7/10