S1E4: Unpacking Netflix’s The Chair

Welcome to unpack this where academic misfits go to unload their shit. Uh, I am Joe Shu and today we will be unpacking. Netflix is the chair. So a spoiler disclaimer, for folks who haven’t seen it yet. And we’d like to be surprised. You probably want to hold off on listening to this until you have fully watched this year.

That’s correct. I am consonance Bailey, and I’m the other half of this. Um, Pair. So the question I want to start with Joe is where were you when you first heard about the chair?

Honestly, I think. I probably came across it, not because of academic things, but because I am a giant fan of Sanford. Oh. And I probably ran across the preview somewhere on her social media, maybe on her, on her Instagram. and that was really actually beyond seeing academic representation, uh, seeing Sandra, oh, particularly seeing, uh, uh, Asian American woman as the protagonist of, uh, Relatively mainstream TV show was a big deal to me.

What about you?

Well similar in the sense that, I came across it on social media, but I have to say, and I probably have said this before for someone who studies and writes about pop culture, I am. Incredibly behind. So as amazing and talented as Sandro is, I have never seen prior to watching the chair, I had never seen anything with Sandro in it.

Oh, no.

so, yeah, I’m kind of embarrassed but there’s a lot that I have never seen. So you can write a book with the things I have never seen. So yeah, I do. I didn’t come across it on her social media, but people have dropped it as if you should know what it was.

So then I had to go to Google because people are saying, I think I’m going to watch the chair tonight, or, you know, have you watched the chair yet? So there were all of these things on my timeline and I was like, what the hell is it? You know? Cause you don’t want to be that person who says it was like out of the loop.

And so I felt very out of the loop, but, uh, so yeah, I saw, a social media posts from various. Primarily academics, primarily English department scholars, but certainly, some other fields as well. So yeah, on the internet,

Yeah. Yeah, So I guess we’ll, we’ll start off with a little bit of a synopsis, uh, for folks to maybe brush up or if they don’t plan on watching it for them to know what we’re talking about. Um, so very, very fundamentally Sandra O plays the first woman chair of an English department at what looks like a very posh college university.

I think it was largely shot at, uh, Chatham, maybe in Pennsylvania. So it, it looks, you know, like a small liberal arts school type of environment. Definitely not where you and I, we’re definitely not a big state campus or anything. Um, but anyway, she is, she’s the department chair and she’s grappling with a lot of issues that a lot of humanities departments are, which is declining majors, um, a declining, uh, funding for lines for tenure track faculty.

And I think one of the big reasons that a lot of academics were surprised at or eager for it is due to the absolute. Dearth of accurate representation of academics in popular media. I always think the portraits of professors on TV shows and movies are hilarious because I’m not sure. they ever look like they really do anything they’re just constantly on summer vacation or something.

Um, So it was, it was interesting to see a show that actually grappled with sort of the internal politics of a department of a university. Uh, and particularly from the perspective of, you know, uh, Well, I mean, who’s recently put in a position of kind of power, but not enough power and all of that.

Yeah, sure. So one of the things that I love about our podcast is it gives us a chance to catch up, see, you know, what’s been going on. Uh, but I also think that our audience will appreciate our transparency. So I haven’t been having all the technical difficulties today.

So yeah, I’m late, but, uh, so in terms of characters then as Joe mentioned, Sandra, oh, is, is, well, that’s something we could actually talk about it. It, is it Sandra? Oh, story. Right. That’s one of the things that my friends and I have been asking ourself, like, she’s the chair? Is it her story?

Right. So, so, so that’s a, the other thing, but so she plays professor J Kim and you know, again, first a woman of color, first woman, first, a lot of firsts in terms of, you know, that I think it’s Pembroke is the, is the fictional. Yeah, the fictional university, there is her colleague who is a hot ass mess.

We’ll just put it on out there. Bill, who is also, I think, a potential love interest, and that’s a whole other hot mess. We’ll, we’ll talk about that later. There’s uh, this professor Elliot, who is this? I think almost every department has one. That’s probably not true, but, but he’s, you know, very much depicted as like this old school character who is resting on his laurels.

Right. He presents. Or wrote this groundbreaking book, you know, 20 years ago or something and you know, and so yeah, he’s he’s yeah. Anyway. And so he’s standing in the way of progress in some ways. Uh, if we think of Yaz, who is the young amazing black woman is feminist or inter intersectional, feminist scholar, whatever.

However, we want to describe it as, um, you know, she, in some ways is representative. Yeah, but I also say progress as we can unpack all of this later. So just throwing that out there, these are brief descriptions. Let’s see. There’s the Dean. Um, I think this is Dean Larson or something. He’s interesting because he seems to also be in an academic deans do come from different departments.

I have their tenure homes. And so he seems to be a, I think he was a former chair if I remember correctly. So I think he is English faculty. Uh, I won’t go through everybody. Joan is the other, you know, uh, very interesting, hilarious character. She. Uh, one of the old guard, so to speak one of the professors that, that they, and by they, I mean like upper administration is trying.

Put out to pasture, which is probably not a great metaphor as a horrible metaphor. Right. But when we think about older faculty, older people and ways that institutions try to, uh, if not save money, I don’t know, in terms of say reputation, she hasn’t looked at her. There are, there’s a great meme where, where Sandra was like, when was the last time you looked at your student evaluations and it’s taken from a stool from the, from the show, we actually be clear.

Right. And I think she says 1984 or something like that. So, so there’s some hyperbole, but. It’s also, there’s a little bit of there’s this sense that yeah. You know, Joan is in some ways representative of a certain, you know, type, which I think that’s, again, speaking to the popularity, I think a lot of academics see themselves or see colleagues.

Like we see, uh, at least to some vestiges of ourselves in ways that we haven’t previously. So those are some of the main folks I think, you know, over the course of this.

You’re

missing?

I said yes. Cause I said Elliot is standing in the way of progress of, of, yeah. I hope I, oh my gosh. Amazing. Like, why am I.

Okay, well, so, so I want, wanna, I want to pause on what you said about, uh, whether or not this is Sandra or do you and Kim’s story, because I think that was a really great point that was circulating, um, among certain folks, which is that. Regardless of the, the diversity of the cast that is to say really June came in and he asked McKay, um, regardless of how part of the narrative was trying to send her what it is to be a structurally marginalized faculty member in this environment.

A lot of the story belongs to bill. I mean, he’s the center of the conflict, right? Um, stories are created by conflict and he is the reason there is conflict in the entire country. Revolves, mostly around him and, uh, how we’re going to deal with the fact that he, uh, somewhat ironically, I guess, performed a Nazi salute that got captured on video and then was circulated on the internet.

And then, you know, um, students are protesting for, for him to be, um, I guess, rejected from the department. Um, and so I, I don’t know for me, it does seem like it is. It is in some ways his story, perhaps in a way that is not particularly generative

yeah. Well, you know what, that’s interesting, right? Because I think that is when the the person pose the question. I think that was the juxtaposition that they were trying to allude to. Right. Is it Sandra oh, story or is it, um, I’m trying to think of the actor’s name now. Is it J

Jade.

yeah. J yeah.

I’ve got, gotta use it. I’m going to use

I don’t know how

Sorry. So is it, is it June Kim’s story or is it Bill’s story right. And your response was a great one. I think, I think when I initially articulated the question, what I was actually thinking. Is the title, the chair, because it’s more about the department, the machinations within departments within universities, you know, is it about the bureaucracy of academia, right.

Um, as opposed to thinking about like, is it about these very interesting. Troubling, um, overwhelming, you know, lives that all of these characters have. So I think there’s two or three questions that we could ask, right. In terms of like, whose story is it? It’s, it’s really compelling because there are so many.

Narratives or, or vignettes that are, that are subsumed under the auspices of the chair. Right. Because not only is June Kim, the chair, but then by the end of the series, Joan is the chair. Right. And so the chair, is literally a shit show. I think they have some, I forget what the sign says, but you know, it’s a thankless job.

It is well it’s. Okay. Now that you’ve broken that up into different possible center points for the show, I have to say, I, I have fraught feelings about the show, which I think, you know, I, I know a lot of folks binge watched it and I, I couldn’t, it was uncomfortable in the way that it captured. Just the emotional difficulty of a lot of parts of this job.

in ways that I just couldn’t sit with for very long periods.

Um, I do think that there was phenomenal acting on the part of say Sandra. Oh, um, I do, I did appreciate, uh, sort of small nods to, uh, just academic life. Like the concerns about getting butts in seats. How many times have we heard that phrase? I just, I also really struggled with. Just the discomfort of, of what it was capturing.

And the other thing is that despite the fact that I think it’s a very well-made show and I really appreciate the sort of representation is putting out there. I’m not sure it arrived at a satisfying place for any of the plot lines that it introduced. Um, so I, I just to elaborate a little bit, it is sort of in some ways, ruminating on the lack of power.

Uh, for someone in a position of a department chair. And the sort of way that gene is pulled in multiple directions. I’m unable to use this position in any way that is able to insight the sort of change that she intended. It is kind of trying to talk about cancel culture in a way that doesn’t. Make a clear statement about it.

And it is also sort of set up as a, as a romcom, which by its own nature, I don’t find particularly satisfying. So there are, there are these different threads throughout the narrative that I just, I didn’t arrive at a sort of emotional catharsis for, in terms of any.

Yeah, I completely agree with that. And I think that’s the sense that many viewers, myself included had. I mean, we had. There is this sense of anticipation? Like what will assuming there’s a season two, what will bring, but it’s also, it’s dread and anticipation. It’s like where, you know, where is this going?

But to your point about the precarity of faculty and department chairs, it just felt so, it felt horrible. It’s just, yeah. I mean, Literally feel ill and some people did, you know, watching it because it just invokes a sense of dread quite honestly. And one of the things I, I I’ll, I remember this from a conversation I had with an associate Dean at some institution, that I worked at.

I don’t think it was this one, but one of the things that, uh, that the associate Dean said, or the Dean said that, , chairs control the department budget and they control faculty. And that’s it. And I don’t think that was trying to be dismissive. And I also don’t necessarily know that that was earnest.

You know what I mean? But it did give me a sense of. Wow. On the one hand, this person has a great degree of latitude in terms of, working with their faculty in terms of being flexible with their schedule and whatever. But on the other hand, this person has a whole lot of fricking work and little to no power.

But as I was is what I heard. That’s not what they say, but that’s what I heard.

Yeah. Well, and, and I mean, I think some academics have made this point online already is that one of the things though that the show is, does capture some parts of academic life that other representations have not, it misinterprets the sort of role of a chair. They kept calling it PR in a promotion where we know we’ve been in departments where it is not a desire.

Position, right? Because it takes away from a lot of the things that you actually came into this job for it, from your research, from your teaching. It’s actually, you know, for me, it’s a nightmare job in terms of like herding cats and trying to get academics into the right places, doing the right things.

Also constantly apologizing for what you do not have the funds for the resources for. Um, so, so it. It kind of, while it was working on the limitations of that position, still also saw it as framed it as a sort of elevation in prestige that it wasn’t quite, um, but the thing I wanted to say about both what the show did well, and what made me feel icky about it was that it captured something about this job that I’ve been sitting with long time, which is that.

The everyday stakes of what we do. Are not life-threatening. I do think that what we do changes lives. I do think that the, the importance of, of words, of how we interpret communication of how we engage with representations of other humans affects how we engage with those humans in real life. But it’s not like a pressing emergency type situation, but the stakes that this institutional procarity creates.

Creates this sort of hyper competitive hyper cutthroat, uh, environment where it feels like, particularly for those of us without tenure, it feels like the wrong step. And you might be out of a job out of a career that you’ve put, you know, the better part of 10 or 20 years of your life into. And so for me, that was the part that I had a really hard time sitting with just because it just stirred up all of those feelings for me.

I’m wondering if you got that.

Yeah,. I mean, it’s so hard to articulate all the reasons that it is, uncomfortable, uncomfortable , is for sure an understatement. Yeah. The politics for any, faculty who is marginalized, right?

So for people of color, for trans scholars, yeah, it’s it there’s so much. I think, you know what? We should transition to what we loved about the show, because I don’t want to sit with the discomfort, especially for folks who haven’t seen it.

Is it phenomenal, acting quite funny? Uh, you know, and again, if you’re an academic, you will certainly see some things that, that you can identify with and that will bring you both, you know, bring you joy and pain. Right. But what did we love? Who are some of the characters that we loved?

Okay. So, I mean, beyond loving, uh, GM GM, and yes, uh, Holland Taylor as Joan was surprisingly delightful to me.

 

 

So I, so I will agree, right. That, that casting out Joan and Joan was one of my favorite characters that I didn’t particularly care for that arc only because again, as we think about, you know, what’s at stake for professors, I was just horrified like, oh my gosh, what if, you know, she like her place in the institution.

You’re right. She’s being completely devalued. She doesn’t have an office. Like she’s treated like crap, you know? So I want redemption for Joan for sure. But I was also. Barry pulled into this narrative where I’m like, oh my gosh, she’s going to get sued by a stupid, like she stuck, you know, I was just really, I don’t know, but, so, so yeah, I did like Joan, I think it probably, I don’t want to say it goes without saying, but I suspect that most, you know, black women scholars, black women academics see themselves in, in yes.

So I think that that’s, you know, it’s just probably no surprise that I just, I just loved her and I mean, I also feel. It’s not, I do also there’s this, this thing, and I feel very, I have mixed feelings, right? Because sometimes I I’ll say I’m not doing edutainment. I’m not here to, you know, to educate or to, to entertain my students.

But at the same time I have, you know, regularly we have social media assignments and have them engaged with music. And with podcasts and with, you know, I try to de-center traditional literary texts in my class and try to make the experience more. I just try to enrich their classroom experience. Right.

And so I, and so in terms of pedagogy, I identified with her strategies, but also how. And I’d always feel like when I’m being, you know, evaluated or reviewed, like, how does this play with, with faculty who are older and who don’t necessarily not so much even that they are dismissive or wouldn’t maybe embrace different pedagogical tactics, but that, that is not something they’re familiar enough or conversant enough with to even.

Have the ability to talk about why it matters or what, you know, so-so I think, you know, and when she sees this review or external non-physical external review or a letter, you know, that her colleague has written, you know, I, I feel like I’m waiting for the shoe to drop because I, I think to myself, you know, could this be me?

Right? And, and I just, yeah, so.

I think something that they capture in that show is the way that particularly, I think it was Elliot who viewed this teaching strategy as some, in some way, pen pandering or, uh, reducing the material when it’s fundamentally, not that it is making it relevant, making it engaging in a way that, uh, other approaches might not.

And for me, it’s also. What we study is not necessarily just the text, but also the life of the text. Right. In terms of, of how it affects humans. And it is able to give that text a different sort of life in the ways that the students take it out, which I, I actually really like. Um, but I, I agree that, uh, Yeah, it’s definitely represented a range of experiences that particularly black women in the academy are intimately familiar with.

For me, I actually think, uh, under appreciated character is, uh, Lyla. The so Bill’s grad student, um, who I found particularly empathetic. I also, I, I found it really meaningful to see Asian-Americans represented as English, uh, scholars and faculty. In that we are almost never seen it as members of the humanities and that sort of perpetual foreigner model minority stereotype.

We’re supposed to be scientists or doctors, um, and never sort of part of language because we’re also supposed to be foreign to, to the English language. Um, so I, I appreciated both, you know, Sandra Owen and, uh, Mallory Lowe, who, who played those roles and there was this. This really heartbreaking moment when, um, she’s the grad student Laila is in, in, um, June’s office and Jean is trying to set her up basically, so that she’ll she’ll have an advisor and be able to finish her degree.

And she, she says something like you’re putting me on a life raft or like boat. Um, and she, she asked you and do you have one? And for me, I don’t know. I don’t know why, but that moment just crushed me.

Yeah, that wasn’t a really good,, I forgot about that moment. Yeah. And in Sandra, oh’s inability to really have a, you know, I, yeah, there were so many moments in that show that are, hilarious moments, but they’re also man moments where you’re just.

Senator. O’s so good at emoting with just.

her face and possibly like not even movement in her face. Um, they’re just moments of closeups where she’s in trouble. Something that’s heartbreaking and it’s she communicates it so well, the other thing I wanted to say is that the positioning of an Asian-American woman in particular, in this sort of liminal position, that is the chair.

That is somebody who particularly associate professor, who is a chair and the sort of middle generation that she is in her own department. It captures the sort of liminality of Asian-Americans in terms of racial politics in the United States and within universities a lot on top of all the other sort of in-between positions she’s already in, in a way that was, um, I don’t know that that demonstrated a sort of reflectivity about the position of Asian-Americans that I don’t see often reflected in a lot of.

Oh, yeah, that’s awesome. I really, I hadn’t thought about that, but I can definitely see that. And yeah, to your point, Laila is a great character. I, one of the things, I mean, of course, when any pop culture, phenomenon, Springs up, especially a new Netflix series or whatever, or new HBO max series, academics or. Whoever people write these things pieces. And so one of the things that I remember reading was this critique of, graduate students or students aren’t accurately reflected. And, I think the thing that we have to say is that.

One show can’t get it. All right. Right. And so that’s always, you know, that’s the dilemma with representation, right? And so that’s why we have to have more diverse representations of not just different groups, but different spaces.

So, I think that other than just people want to see a diversity in terms of different, types of bodies, the racial and ethnic makeup should be different. We want to see, not just cIS heterosexual people, I think just different spaces, right?

That, that you can have a show about an academic space. You know, I, the network producers are always, you know, wondering what will sale what’s going to be commercially successful. And so that’s always, for them part, part of the negotiation, right? Is this, you know, is there a market for it? And I just think that, maybe it’s just maybe the talent probably, but that may be certainly the talent made the difference.

It could have not been a good show, but yeah, I think that. The timeliness of the chair, just, um, it was a great for a lot of reasons.

Yeah. And I want to understand something you said about art. Can’t be perfect because I think that that’s something we’ll have to repeat as we unpack things, I think are, you know, people have a right to critique art. That’s kind of part of our jobs. Uh, but also it’s impossible to demand that any one piece do everything.

And I also. I hesitate to say that, you know, we should expect, I mean, I don’t want to say that we should expect perfection because then nobody would be able to create anything. And that sort of paralysis would impede all sorts of generative representations and conversations. And you’re right. That’s why we need, we need the privilege of having a proliferation of representation so that no one item has to bear the burden of doing all of the things.

I did. There was one other moment in the show that that really stuck with me because there were these. Gems in this show that captured emotional complexity and nuances and power in ways that were, that hit home, uh, in ways that were both heartbreaking and possibly uncomfortable. And there’s that moment when Yaz and G are arguing.

Um, and I think he has says something like you should be running this place and instead you’re, you’re running around trying to please everyone. And you use June says something about, um, is that how you think I got here by, by playing nice. And I just, it stuck with me, I think, because I’ve seen that conversation play out between structurally marginalized, people of different rinks.

Who’ve had different amounts of time in the university, sort of like the inevitability of us being here is that. In some ways be a part of the institution sometimes, but also that for the, for the large, for a large part of that experience, we are going against the grain of that institution. But it, it looks different to people who maybe just stepped in or who occupy different, uh, positionalities within that marginalization.

Um, and. There aren’t enough conversations about how to discuss that in ways that are coalitional rather than a terroristic, I guess this is where I’m going with this.

No, that’s an excellent point. So here’s the thing, right? There are obviously different characters and different, you know, different moments in the show will resonate with different people in different ways. But I felt that particular exchange deeply, but one of the other sites of emotional complexity that I think to me, this show gets right.

Just because again, it speaks so much to my experience is June’s identity as a parent. And how challenging that is because so often the mantra has been, do the job. So whatever that means, if it’s publishing, if it’s working on your research, if it’s teaching in her case, if it’s, you know, being an administrator as if you don’t have a life outside the academy.

And so many of us have, you know, children. Pets how we might just have plants, right? You cannot be everything to the institution because at the end of the day, and I literally just said this to someone yesterday, whenever I have the opportunity to mentor junior scholars, which is not all that often, I just, especially if it’s a trans scholar, a woman of color or person of color, I just, we try to be so.

Many things to so many people. And at the end of the day, you have to be able to, you know, to, to take care of self, but also, you know, what’s, what’s going to, you know, what’s, what’s going to help you sleep at night. What’s like your family, or, you know, whatever your thing is, you know, you have to hold tight to that and don’t let the institution try to pull you from those things.

Because at the end of the day, you can serve on every committee. Pelvis, all the books. If, if I kill over dead tomorrow, they will have someone teaching, uh, the classes that I teach next week or the week after I promise you. So, and that is not, I’m not trying to be fatalistic and I’m not trying to be this, maybe a little bit of Afro pessimism, which I don’t think we’re going to try to unpack that anytime soon.

But I mean, it’s the nature of the beast. I mean that, but that’s just, you know, In many ways, although our colleagues and, the administrators within your department have probably a great degree of personal, affection for you. Like you, they still have a job to do.

The institution still has to. Take care of itself. Right? And so I just try to caution people with any issue. It’s not just that, I mean, we’re talking about this here, but with any, I don’t give your soul to a career because that, that career is not going to, I mean, it will feed you and take care of your family when you have to still save some emotional space for yourself is what the ramblings, that was the purpose.

I was going somewhere with it.

Yeah, no, it’s a good purpose. And I think, I think you do do that better than I do. It is something I try to keep in mind, but also something that I, I know that I fill out. Repeatedly, because this job is so good at trying to claim every, every bit of space that you have. It is, it is insatiable and how it will take your energy.

Uh, particularly because we are invested in say, you know, junior colleagues or students who are structurally marginalized people and that we want them to be able to thrive. And you know, it is, it is too easy to pour out too much of yourself that you will never get back.

For sure. Yeah. I think earlier my ramblings and I’ll just kind of close this discussion out, but I was mentioning, you know, one of the criticisms. I do think, you know, Laila is, is great, uh, in terms of representing this liminal space, but also, I mean, she’s phenomenal acting at Mallory low, I believe is the actress’s name, but assuming it comes back for a second season, I think, you know, in terms of this burden on, on artists and creators, there’s room to grow.

We don’t know what, you know, what season two or season three or whatever, you know, may hold. So potentially we might see, you know, what, you know, greater representation of graduate students or, or we may not, you know, it may still focus on, you know, the administrative aspects of, uh, you know, small humanities programs at a liberal arts college.

So, I mean, I think that, um, her role was so well acted that to get hung up on what’s. Missing, like we were engaged in a critique of the, so now, like here’s what we liked, what you didn’t like, but you know, to, to say. Well, it doesn’t do you know, and then have this list of like 50 things that it doesn’t do yet.

Yeah. To reiterate Joe’s earlier point, no one piece of art can do that north nor should it, right. We shouldn’t want that burden on, on artists and creatives. So, yeah. So that’s a lot of our, you know, kind of take on the characters and we did a lot of spoilers without this literally saying, and this happened and then this happened and this happened.

So there’s, there’s a whole lot. We didn’t tell you all, but I, I do want to ask what you think of. Oh, there’s this whole romantic subplot thing. I just, I don’t know. What’s the deal with that?

I, I cannot with Compulse. I can barely accept compulsory, compulsory monogamy in general. Media and that, you know, there always needs to be this romantic thought that I add a couple of somehow the like central relationship of any given media when you’re right. There are all of these. Fascinating relationships to explore.

For example, you know, Jean’s relationship with her daughter and the sort of cultural conflicts they’re having about wanting to raise her daughter to be familiar with Korean culture. Um, and, and I just think that the romantic comedy took up too much emotional and discursive space in a way that I found completely uninteresting.

And it also, I don’t know. I wanted G I mean, I understand that, you know, romance happens and that is sometimes the large part of people’s lives, but I also wanted to be able to see June sort of independent from that?

and to see all of the other aspects of her life, it fleshed out more fully rather than to watch her fret over this one, dude, over and over again, for most of the episodes, what.

Oh, God. Yeah. Yeah. I really hate how, yeah. How the romantic subplots always sneaks in and re I want say ruins a perfectly good show or a good film. Cause it didn’t ruin the chair for me, but I just hated it once. It just didn’t feel. And it’s not even so much. I, I don’t, I don’t get into all that cause like, oh, they didn’t have cameras that I, I didn’t pay enough attention to the nuance of that, you know, to, to even, and I’ve never really do, because I don’t tend to, like romantic comedies as a genre in general.

So I should just give that disclaimer. So that’s probably speaks to my bias, but what I will say is that even though bill as a character is a hot ass mess, I think to me, The romantic subplot. And romantic tension. It was, you know, again, I there’s, I just think it was a thing that was thrown in and didn’t feel natural if he was, I think he was widowed just like a year or maybe a year and a half ago.

That felt not necessarily that. Everybody mourns differently. So even if it was intended to be representative, you could be dating someone a year later, but the idea that you would be dating a colleague or in that she would be pining over someone for all these years. I think to me seems not realistic, but also bill is a hot ass mess in some ways, because he still hasn’t worked through his own emotional issues, but he could have been, I thought the potential in terms of his friendship with June’s daughter, Did he could have been redeemed, right?

Some of his, whatever, like if the, if there wasn’t the romantic subplot and he was just being a good dad, cause he does seem to have a relationship, a close relationship with his, with his older daughter, with his daughter, his actual daughter who’s gone off to college. So there’s this potentially. Okay.

Maybe someone doesn’t have all the aspects of their life together, for sure. Like your career might be, you know, so, but the potential, like, okay, he’s a good guy because, or not a good guy, but, but that, you know, he has the potential to be a good dad, even though as a professor or academic, you know, he probably needs to go through some intense therapy and work through his own personal issues before he should really be in a classroom, I think is, is something, you know, we could say, you know, about its character arc or whatever, but.

It, to me, it felt like, oh, he’s forming this relationship with this, with this kid because her daughter, because her mother is in, is incapable of it. And, and it was feeding into the romantic narrative in a way that I didn’t like, right. He could have just been like a good, you know, a colleague who, like I brought my kids in the office and someone’s giving them markers to play with and been kind to them.

And. Yeah, we didn’t have this BR you know, budding relationship. Like, I don’t know. It just, it was, uh, it just felt I didn’t like it, whatever it is, there’s this. Um, so you may be, cause we do, I don’t know if we’ve said this in terms of general age, like age wise, but I have about at least 10 years on maybe 12.

So I’m not sure how familiar you are with in living color, but there were, there was a. Segment, I think David Allen Greer and maybe Tommy Davidson, I’m going to have to look this up and revisit it on a future episode. But anyway, they were like cultural critics. And so they would always do this thing where they were trying, it would be, it was the equivalent of like Siskel and Ebert gives something two thumbs down.

Right. So they would be like, hated it. And so it was very much like that’s how I felt about that. So I applied I’m like, Ugh, hated it.

Yeah, I just had to Google in living color. So that answers your question. Um, but I did, I want to pause on something that you said, which is that this plot could have been in my mind much more interesting if the, if the romance weren’t there. And I know we just said that we can’t ask for our to do everything, but I.

I would love to see more rich, complex, interesting representations of platonic intimacy, you know, just because there’s just there few interesting friendships on television or movies, and that could have been a space for one, right? Uh, she, she could still have a crisis about what she’s going to do about this faculty member of hers.

If she cared deeply for him in a platonic sense, and they really didn’t need to shoe horn the romance in there for that to work.

Yeah, that was a much more articulate than what I said. Yeah, exactly. Yes. But platonic friendships are a thing and they exist in the academy and in real life. So it would have been amazing to just see that. And I do think. That the series is trying hard to make bill this redemptive, whatever.

And most of the people I know are like, uh, he’s a piece of shit or not bad, but did he just, yeah, it, we were rejecting the white savior trope that was seem to be trying to, I don’t know there was something going on there that we weren’t feeling, but I do think if he had just been a good friend.

It would have been less. I would’ve hated his plot or storyline, less maybe. I don’t know.

I th I, I agree with that sentiment. I see that we have written in our notes takeaways. Do you have.

Ooh. Takeaways that I don’t know. I don’t know. I mean, I, so here’s what I would say. Assuming you have not watched the series. I do think. You could, you could certainly binge it in the sense that it’s, I think six episodes. They’re 30 minutes. If you are not an academic or if you are an academic who is not in an English department, right.

An easy watch. You could get some great laughs. You could have, you know, like some there’s some highs and lows and the ebbs and flows of the episode would, would play well for like a movie night. So I would totally do it. But if you are a. You know, if you have any sense of precarity and you are an academic, I think it will feel very tense, very fraught, and it might invoke, again, I don’t think this is hyperbole.

It might invoke feelings of dread or an anxiety. Yeah. Anxiety, I think is what it triggers for a lot of academics. So, I would just say, I enjoyed it. It’s it’s a worthwhile. Yeah. I don’t have a big picture. Like here’s what I think you should take away.

I mean, yeah. It’s worth your time.

Yeah, I agree. And I think we covered some caveats in that the representations of students are not at all fleshed out or three-dimensional, they’re missing for sure. Conversations about contingent faculty and the ways that labor is now predominant in the academy, particularly in humanities departments.

Um, I think that it is. Still a nuanced representation of a lot of struggles that structurally Margaret and marginalized faculty have, um, in that, in their positions in ways that are emotionally difficult. And I see the thing about, about art and it having potential to be. An actor in the world is that I kind of, I kind of wish the like large amount of, uh, university faculty who watched the show were also thinking about, you know, the faculty who see themselves reflected in say yes or June, and that, that would carry further into academic politics.

But I think that that would be probably too far of a stretch for me to wish for.

Yeah, well, but so, but to your point, right, art absolutely can be transformative and you know, it might. In terms of, of bureaucracy. So here’s the thing I will say. It’s at least in terms of academic bureaucracy, I think because a lot of institutions have gone to a student centered almost customer oriented model, rightly or wrongly.

I do think the whole David Duke seventies, storyline, which we’re, we’re taking, doing takeaway. So you have to Google it or watch it. So I’m not going to go into that, but. To your point, I think where. The series has the potential to be transformative is, is if it’s student initiated. So if students have a watch party and invite faculty and upper administrators to come in and talk about what are the issues like, what, how is this relevant to our institution?

What, what can we do to, you know, think about. You know, even Laila is, is she in some ways it’s representative of contingent faculty, um, although graduate students, aren’t quite the, yeah, there’s a lot of nuance there, but, but yeah, I mean, I think the conversations, it won’t happen from, let’s say junior scholars and junior faculty saying, uh, and marginalized people saying, you know, these are some really good issues that, that I don’t think.

Yeah. I don’t think that’s gonna, but it could be a fruitful and generative. You know, try to engage, you know, uh, for admin and some dialogue. At the very least they could get them a David Duke company to come in for bids. I don’t know.

So we’ve covered most of the show. Is there anything else we haven’t talked about that you wanted to.

Not that I can think of. I mean, I’m Chris. I always, you know, I’d love to discuss all the things, but that’s of course, while we have, you know, that’s what the next episode is for. But yeah, I think there are a ton of things that, that I could say, but, um, but I, but I won’t, I think that you have to probably watch it.

See for yourself and then chime in and let us know what you think or what you thought about the episode. We are always available on the social medias@theunpackthispodcastatgmail.com and on Twitter at the unpack this podcast. So, uh, give us your thoughts, let us know, uh, what you, what you thought about.

Awesome. Well, thanks for listening. And we will see you all next time.