2 l August
15 - 21, 2021
Northeast Oregon TV Weekly
BY JAY BOBBIN
Holland Taylor, Nana Mensah and Sandra
Oh (from left) star in “The Chair,” which
begins streaming Friday on Netflix.
A college department head is up
to her ears in problems in Netflix’s
‘The Chair’
Professor Ji-Yoon Kim may represent a first
at her university but she might be the last
person who’d want to take on this mess.
As played by Sandra Oh (“Killing Eve,”
“Grey’s Anatomy”) in the Netflix half-
hour comedy “The Chair,” which begins
streaming Friday, Aug. 20, she’s the first
woman chair of the English department at
Pembroke University as well as one of the
few staff members of color at the prestigious
Massachusetts institution.
Though its stately buildings and finely
manicured campus suggest wealth, the
university is in fact hemorrhaging money and
Dean Larson (David Morse, “Outsiders”)
instructs his department heads to find the
dead wood among the faculty and push them
toward the door. Translation: Pick out the old-
timers with high salaries and low enrollments
and make them want to retire.
Which puts two profs squarely in Ji-Yoon’s
crosshairs – Elliot Rentz (Bob Balaban) and
Joan Hambling (Holland Taylor, “Two and
a Half Men”) – both of whom are painfully
aware of the budget cuts and the fact that their
advanced age makes them a target.
For Taylor, the script by Amanda Peet (an
actress who steps behind the camera as creator,
executive producer and showrunner here) and
the opportunity to play a character her own
age were big drawing cards.
“(This is a woman) who has no f...s left to
give,” the 78-year-old Taylor explains. “She’s
sort of, as Amanda Peet ... said to me when
we began, ‘This character is unedited at this
point in her life.’ And that really appealed to
me because I would say that I was brought up
with a lot of manners and a lot of awareness
of others and I definitely have an editor that
controls how I behave very, very well. And I
can sort of see that loosening as I get older.”
There are other issues making Ji-Yoon’s
life interesting. Bill Dobson (Jay Duplass,
“Transparent”), a popular instructor, suffers a
series of embarrassing episodes as he struggles
with his wife’s tragic death during childbirth;
Yasmin McKay (Nana Mensah, “New
Amsterdam”), a younger professor, agitates for
change and advancement in the department;
and young daughter Ju Ju (Everly Carganilla,
“Yes Day”) acts out, much to the dismay of her
single mom.
Meanwhile, Joan deals with the prospect
that her longtime friend might also turn out to
be her executioner, professionally speaking.
“This is a mentor/mentee relationship,”
Taylor notes, “and when the mentee has
excelled and climbed the mountain and done
very well, it’s very exciting for the older person
who has been her friend and advising her. And
even though Joan is being pushed aside by
(Ji-Yoon’s) generation, Joan would not see (Ji-
Yoon) as a personal threat at all until she does
feel that she’s been let down by her, which is
very crushing. So it’s a very, very human story.”
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