TV Tellings IV: The Chair

"Villains!" I shrieked, "dissemble no more!"

Sandra Oh playing the chair of an English department at a small liberal arts college? I had read nothing about this--I hadn't even watched a trailer--but even sight unseen, I could almost guarantee, pre-watch, three things:

1. I'm going to spend most of the watch screaming at the screen WRT academic politics and processes
2. They are going to get English, as a field, almost completely wrong
3. At least one professor is going to seem to be having an illicit and gross affair with a student

But Sandra Oh, y'know? Plus, as all my English colleagues know, this is pretty much all non-English academic people will ask about come the winter holidays.

Anyway, this is a first watch reactions sort of post. Spoilers for The Chair may abound. Also, I cuss a lot.

Logline:
Sandra Oh plays the chair of an English department at a small liberal arts college.



Dramatis Personae
Sandra Oh is Ji-Yoon Kim, titular character and incredibly, incredibly bad at the politics of higher administration.

Everly Carganilla is Ju-Hee, Ji-Yoon's precocious daughter who is clearly modeled upon Louise from Bob's Burgers.



Holland Taylor is Joan Hambling, a classy broad drunkenly resisting being put to apparent pasture by stalking students who write mean things about her online.

Nana Mensah is Yaz McKay, who is better than every single other character in this narrative and should nope the hell out of Pembroke as quickly as possible, GIRL, SAVE YOURSELF.



Mallory Low is Lila, a long-suffering grad student who probably gets a lot of shit about being the Model Minority.



Jay Duplass is Bill Dobson, some Sad White Dude who they expect us to care about right off, for some reason.



Bob Balaban is Elliot Rentz, a teeny old-school Great Books professor who does not understand anything about young people and their newfangled electricity or whatever.



Episode Rundown

1. "Brilliant Mistake"
   Sandra Oh's character, Ji-Yoon, being gifted a Fucker in Charge of You Fucking Fucks nameplate and then falling out of a broken chair is the epitome of badass ladies running things in a humanities-oriented department. (How is it that, pretty much everywhere, the halls of English departments are where furniture goes to die?)
   
   
   
   On the other hand, Ji-Yoon starts off a meeting about low enrollment and segues directly into Harold Bloom, so to hell with her, perhaps? I can't decide. Anyway, her first crisis of firing three tenured professors is nonsense.
   
   Meanwhile, I lost my shit when it was revealed two American lit courses were scheduled against each other, and Ji-Yoon's proposed solution was combining the two sections and making them co-taught? After the semester starts? THERE IS NO WAY IN HELL. First of all, did she even CONSIDER what requirements her majors need to take in the first place? Second of all, you can't merge lecture courses, particularly if they have two different foci. You are canceling one and moving students to the other--scheduling software does not friggin' merge classes. Further, the textbook confusion ALONE would cause riots for folks trying to get their financial aid settled up and funneled to the campus bookstore. (Anyway, we're headed towards a heartwarming tale of two pedagogues learning to appreciate each other, aren't we? Ugh.)
   
   This show is causing me administrative rage blackouts and I'm only ten minutes into it. Did anybody writing this ever, like, do admin work?
   
   Joan's office move from an academic building to underneath the gym is 1) NOT a Title IX issue WTF, 2) NOT anything insulting, because student services buildings are going to be the newest, and 3) not possible because nobody EVER wants to move to another faculty office unless it has the good windows. And Joan's office, pretend shambles that it is, has gigantic windows and is clearly freshly painted.
   
   The Title IX officer would IN NO WAY be wearing jean shorts with a cable knit sweater. They would never even try to slip in, "Truth is a very loaded word," because WHAT THE HELL. Did anybody on this set ever MEET a Title IX officer?
   
   I do not care anything at all about Bill. GTFO with his acclaimed white male manpain. Though is it unbelievable that Ji-Yoon inadvertently prioritized the fuck-ups of a now-mediocre white man over those of the older white lady? Nope. And then he got a cheery alt-rock play-off into the credits? Even though we're supposed to clock that he's going to get into hella trouble for doing a Nazi salute? (And yet, not in trouble for showing a home video of his bare-breasted pregnant partner while he jokes about ejaculation? Geez.)
   
   SIGH.
   
   
2. "The Faculty Party"
   Still don't care about Sad White Dude, still skeeved out by the student that he will inevitably bone. Everybody JOKING about the inevitable boning isn't a hanging a lantern on the storyline, it's just making it grosser. If that's at all possible.
   
   WAIT, Ji-Yoon is pre-tenure and they made her the goddamn chair? WTF. And the Dean makes a scant chance of hiring BIPOC faculty contingent on firing another professor? This is bullshit. (I have all the sympathy for Ji-Yoon's trouble with childcare. I'm all for boundaries, but a small child asking about vaginas isn't, like, abnormal. BUT ALSO, aren't there a billion students around that aren't Ji-Yoon's students? Surely one of them is babysitting-qualified.) Fine, fine, this part seems quite real.
   
   I do NOT, however, buy Ji-Yoon completely whiffing on every. Single. Opportunity. To talk about the actual work. Of her goddamn. Department.
   
   Also, giving your father shit about being traumatized by the Japanese occupation of Korea? Do you, like, know what happened during that occupation? WTF. Meanwhile, I'm going about dueling anybody who dares to flippantly refer to anything as a death march.
   
   I hope you are all enjoying what is APPARENTLY a hatewatch on my part.
   
   
3. "The Town Hall"
   I'm not even going to address the folderol about Sad White Dude's rage against the bureaucratic crisis machine, because as Ji-Yoon states:
   
   

   "This is not about whether you're a Nazi. This is about whether you're one of those men who, when something like this happens, thinks he can dust himself off and just walk away without any fucking sense of consequence."

   
   PREACH. And then poor Lila, being loaded down with being the TA of that fucking asshole.
   
   ALSO, if you've got a professor who's only teaching ONE seminar with seven students, that's honestly a result of poor curriculum planning.
   
   ALSO ALSO, WHO is sending Joan to Rate My Goddamn Professors as if those are legit student evals?
   
   The David Duchovny thing makes me snicker, but dude's a legit author. And Ji-Yoon can blow me with her moaning about content, I SAY AS I WRITE THIS BLOG.
   
   
4. "Don't Kill Bill"
   Y'know, they can make a big whoop about highlighting the struggles of BIPOC and white women within the Ivory Tower, but have we clocked the time we're spending on the woes of Sad White Dude in comparison to the extremely real trials of Yaz, Ji-Yoon, and Lila?
   
   Having earnest humans spouting out the well-known issues of white supremacy within academia doesn't have the same heft as spending 75% of every episode on feelings from and about Bill Frickin' Dobson.
   
   At least Joan's Chaucer rant was amazing. (We will...disregard the circumstances that led to it.)
   
   
   
   
   
5. "The Last Bus in Town"
   Who is this crisis management dude? One of the university's attorneys should be in on all these conversations, people.
   
   

   "I have a responsibility to protect my--"
   "You have a responsibility to this institution to prevent issues like this from spinning out of control."

   
   WELL ACTUALLY, you both have a responsibility to provide a safe environment for your students to experience growth through intellectual challenges, so.
   
   Anyway, this is the David Duchovny episode.
   
   
   
   Bless 'im. I kinda want to read his books now. And: "The Doctor Duchovny Chair in English Studies." That is goddamn brilliant.
   
   

   "You act like you owe them something. Like you're here because they let you be here, not because you deserve it. I mean, what are they without us at this point? A name? A pile of bricks?"
   "And a shit ton of money."
   "Seeded by benefactors who got rich off of sugar and cotton and railroads--off the backs of Black people and yellow people....You should be running this place. Instead you're running around playing nice."
   "You think that's how I got here? By playing nice? Is that how you think I fucking got here?"

   
   
   
   WOW. I'd been thinking I would never identify with Ji-Yoon, and then HERE WE ARE. Because, like, I dig Yaz and I get what she and they, the show, are trying to say, but...saying that a BIPOC woman (and let's not EVEN get into the way Asian women are read in a white supremacist society) is in a position of power because she's playing nice.
   
   Guys. GUYS. That's also really fucking racist to say.
   
   At least the Dia de los Muertos altars are sweet.
   
   
6. "The Chair"
   So many isms, friends. So, SO many isms. Racism, sexism, ageism, classism, anti-semitism. And daaaaaang, isn't everybody, on every front, positioning Ji-Yoon to be the sacrificial lamb even though she's actually a scapegoat. Because she's screwed up, like, A LOT, but yikes.
   
   This isn't fair, y'all. I was all ready to fully disdain this show, and then they have Sandra Oh get all Sandra Oh on us.
   
   

   "My students are turning on me. I am being seen as complicit."
   "Who gives a fuck about how you're seen? How about helping me by doing what's right?"

   
   Oh, you can go STRAIGHT TO HELL, Sad White Dude.
   
   
   
   And then she's like...well, then. (Here's the thing, though. Helping people doesn't have to be, like, revolutionary every single time. Helping people can be just helping make one single person's day suck just a little bit less. If, as teachers, we can do that? Make students feel less insecure, more confident in the way they interact with the world, through analysis and inquiry and a little bit of absurdity? Guys, that's what my job is. That's the doctoring.)
   
   Anyway, Sad White Dude gives a weepy speech about being transformed by stories, and I'm just like, "Hey, you could have just not done the Nazi thing, WILLIAM."
   
   Then Ji-Yoon takes every single drop of rage and indignation she's collected in the past week and uses it to hand the slightly poisonous chalice to Joan. AN OFFICE. A BEAUTIFUL, WINDOWY OFFICE.
   
   
   
   ALL HAIL JOAN.
   

Bottom Line
Well, this...happened.