In elementary school, students are taught to play musical chairs as a means to prepare them to learn how to compete in the real world for the last chair at the table. Those savvy enough to secure a seat when the music stops playing persevere, and the one, who, in the end, manages to remain afloat by securing themselves a chair at the table every single time, wins the game.
When those young students go off to college and become professors themselves, they play a similar game of musical chairs, only this time the stakes are exceptionally higher, with the competition fiercer and the music wonkier. Take Sandra Oh’s exceptional performance in Netflix’s The Chair, a hidden gem everyone should enroll in this fall. Topics include Chaucer, Melville, and a Duplass grieving and pontificating while educating. The salary will be low, and the job very demanding, but there will be chuckles, mayhem, and a cursing Latinx girl with a potty mouth and a charming scowl.
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It’s an atypical comedy set on campus, with socially conscious students, grumpy tenured professors, and a body-positive administrative staff. None of this would be all that interesting, let alone relevant, if the series hadn’t been executive produced by D.B. Weiss and David Benioff, the writers, directors, and producers of HBO’s massive fantasy drama series Game of Thrones. But wait. How does the world’s hottest, most sought-after big-budget fantasy genre producers go from dragons and zombies to college students and faculty emeritus?
The Creatives Behind the Series
Netflix
In true Hollywood fashion, this deal probably took place at the Chateau Marmont, the iconic and historic go-to hotel off Sunset Boulevard for Tinseltown Executives to woo A-list talent. It was probably sometime in early 2019 after the last season of Game of Thrones wrapped production. Ambitious Netflix executives with deep pockets, Peter Friedlander and Scott Stuber, probably lifted most of the weight, offering Weiss and Benioff, who had by now cemented themselves a deal with Lucasfilm, an even more lucrative deal that would rival the one they offered to Shonda Rimes.
The shows they pitched must have had Thrones-like appeal for Netflix to dangle $200 million at them, like Three Part Body, the wildly successful Chinese sci-fi epic. Or The Overstory, another series with a fantasy element to it akin to The Leftovers. All of these make sense. A comedy series about a motley crew of English teachers? Not so much.
A Well-Written Show Highlighting Sandra Oh’s Comedic Genius
That is until you watch the limited series and realize that The Chair is just another Iron Throne. Pembroke is just another Westeros, and Professor Yoon (Sandra Oh) is just another Ned Stark, primordially selfless and dangerously close to getting her head put on a spike for no real good reason. It’s a near-perfect follow-up to Killing Eve for Oh, who unsurprisingly radiates pure comedic genius as Professor Yoon thanks to the doctoral-level chemistry she has with Jay Duplass. Thanks to the strengths of the teleplay by showrunner Amanda Peet, this comedy elevates to the top of the class, a fact lost upon at the Television Academy.
The show does more than a great job at entertaining. It actually educates viewers as to the challenges, hijinx, politics, debates, and compromises that academics must make in educational institutions across America. The high price of higher education is a topic ripped straight out of the headlines, with so many American students pressed financially to pursue a degree of any kind. It’s such a sensational phenomenon that President Biden just forgave billions in student debt for millions of Americans. So why didn’t the show manage to succeed in building an audience?
It’s delightfully witty, well-crafted, and in no need of a second season, but rather ten. The story is universal, and each season could center around a different college, here or abroad, and the shenanigans that occur across these exceptional places of higher education, similar to what The White Lotus is doing or what American Horror Story managed to accomplish in the early aughts. There’s no lack of interest either. From Abbott Elementary to Glee, Fame, Dear White People, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 90210, shows set in schools are fun, popular, and easy to digest. More importantly, they are easy to relate to, such as the case with The Chair.
Netflix Tight-Lipped on a Second Season
It’s unfair to hear that Netflix is tight-lipped on a second season, especially given the Weiss and Benioff connection. Perhaps it’s a conflict of interest or scheduling or contract negotiations, or maybe Netflix has cast a vote of no confidence on the show, and that’s a shame. The show even has David Duchovny playing the best version of David Duchovny since Mulder smoldered our late-night screens. It begs the answer to the following question: if the creators of Game of Thrones can’t get greenlit on a second season with a show starring some of television’s biggest actors, then who can?
