The Chair - August 23

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us talk about… ‘The Chair’ for a change; the change here is that it is not a Marvel show, and so I doubt that it will take us long to talk about it either.

Is ‘The Chair’ any good? Frankly, to me, it was reminiscent of the ‘Over the Moon’ movie, and not just because Ms. Sandra Oh was featured in both productions: in ‘The Chair’, she is the main character, and in ‘Over the Moon’, she is the stepmother (to be) of the main character instead. No, the similarity here is that both works are well-done, solid, fun to watch, and – instantly forgettable.

No, this isn’t Ms. Oh’s fault; in ‘Over the Moon’, her role is episodic, more or less, while in ‘The Chair’… in ‘The Chair’ her character is depicted, (by her), not unlike her character in ‘Killing Eve’ – a harried Asian or Asian-American woman; I cannot help but feel that that is Ms. Oh’s default character setting, or at least – her best one; when she deviates from it – say, in ‘The Chair’, it just isn’t the same.

…To elaborate, ‘The Chair’ is not bad, it just cannot decide if it wants to be a comedy, a drama, or something else entirely. Yes, it tackles serious issues…that it undercuts with various comedic moments – from example, Ms. Oh’s character falling off her chair, (visual pun intended, no doubt). Ha-ha, hilarious, and it rather undercuts the show’s main message of racial, sexual, and age equality.

It is also reminiscent of the upcoming ‘Cinderella’ movie, the Camilla Cabello movie, one where Cinderella’s dream is not to marry the prince, but to open her own dress shop, for a start. Personally, I think that it has the potential to be a truly good movie, but the humor – seen already in the trailer, for example – is clearly extra here; for example, a mouse turned human claims that he cannot keep his balance without his tail, ha-ha. How funny and completely unconnected to the movie’s main message…but where were we?

…Pretty much where ‘The Chair’ has went: it could have been a serious drama dealing with some serious issues… or it could have been a comedy show, maybe even a rom-com… or it could have been something like ‘Bob Hearts Abishola’, which is a rather touching romantic interracial ‘comedy’ show…notably naïve, but it works… but ‘The Chair’ is none of that; rather, it is a well-delivered mess that is well-loved by the critics. Well, the critics have also loved ‘The Suicide Squad’-2021, and we can see for ourselves that that isn’t enough for the audiences to love it; the same, and more, can be said for the ‘Over the Moon’ Netflix film, which was also panned – a lot – by the critics and the like – and which has also disappeared without a trace into Lethe, the river of Oblivion. ‘The Chair’, it seems, is destined for the same fate; the fact that Netflix tends not to release various clips of its’ shows, movies, and the like doesn’t help either – the promoters often don’t have a lot of material to work with, and people these days are still rather frugal with their monies and may not invest it, as well as their time, into a relative unknown such as ‘The Chair’. That is that.

…And that is also the end of our discussion for ‘The Chair’…at least for its’ 1^st season. This is it for now; see you all soon!