[tv post] Sex Education; The Chair
Sep. 15th, 2021 06:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
queenluaSEX EDUCATION (Netflix, season 1)
I have long complained that mainstream romcoms and romance novels miss the most important thing about sex: that it is fundamentally hilarious and awkward and goofy as all hell. Like okay yes it can be steamy and hot and mind-blowing and all that, but everyone already depicts it that way (right before tastefully fading to black). Where is my absurd physical comedy scene where people are getting all confused and flustered about positioning and weird noises and inconvenient leg cramps and, y'know, any of that low-hanging fruit?
Thankfully, Sex Education agrees with me, leans into that all the way, and the result is delightful.
The premise: Otis is a painfully-normie, kinda-awkward sixteen-year-old guy, who happens to have the weirdest possible home life: his mom runs a sex therapy clinic out of the house. Thus, for Otis, encountering random dildos lying around the house is about as mundane as seeing someone forgetting to hang their coat up; and while he himself has never done the deed, he's osmosed an impressively comprehensive understanding of Various Bits Of Anatomy And How They Work.
Shenanigans occur in episode one, leading Otis and fellow classmate Mauve to start a lil' clandestine sex therapy clinic right there in their high school, to help their classmates out (and also earn some extra cash).
All the goofy sexual comedy I was expecting, based on this premise, is definitely here, and it's consistently well-executed, relying far more on enjoyable silliness than uncomfortable cringe. What I was not necessarily expecting, but was very pleased with, was the show's overall tone/attitude, which manages to be warm and upbeat without ever veering into the saccharine or stilted. Almost all the characters are lovable, even when they're being frustrating or causing trouble: Otis's mom is strange and overshare-y as hell, but clearly loves her son to bits; class lunkhead Adam Groff can be a dick, but he's also a total mess in the way that sixteen-year-olds are wont to be, and you really do want him to come out okay; that sort of thing. It's not Deep TM or trying to tackle profound issues or anything, and that's fine; I'm happy to exist in the world of this oddly-sex-positive kinda-tropey high school so long as it's making me laugh.
There are a few missteps—in particular, there's a midseason plotline with Otis's BFF, Eric, that landed strangely for me... it seemed like a weirdly dark turn to take? relative to the overall mood of the show? but then it kinda pulled back from the implications of that dark thing? so that whole thing wound up just feeling tonally strange?
But overall this was a blast and an incredibly fun romp. Recommended if you need a laugh.
THE CHAIR (Netflix, season 1)
Sandra Oh is great, isn't she? Dreamy sigh. Love to watch her doing Sandra Oh things.
I picked this up because I apparently follow a lot of overworked grad students, and they were all a-twitter over this one, and at the beginning, I could certainly see why. The opening is laden with promise: Yi-Joon (Sandra Oh, who is great here) becomes the first woman of color chair of the English department at an idyllic fancy university, she's ascended the ladder, finally she can make some of the changes she's been dreaming of... and she's immediately, unceremoniously told that enrollments are down, you need to cut at least three people from the payroll somehow (yeah, we know they have tenure, bully them into early retirement or something), and also your funding is getting slashed, again. Welcome to academic administration!
The show's at its best in the realm of the intimate and personal. Ji-Yoon's harried single motherhood, her arguments with her dad when she leans on him for emergency childcare, and her family relationships in general, are well and poignantly drawn. And her warm colleagueship/friendship/maybe-something-more??? with fellow professor Bill rang true. It's obvious why she cares about this guy, obvious that this guy has believed in her career longer than anyone, obvious that he's charming and good-dad-vibes and all that. It's also obvious this guy doesn't get some stuff that he really actually needs to get because otherwise Ji-Yoon is going to tear out all of her hair before this gig is up! Ahh!!!!
I had high hopes that the show would be similarly deft when dealing with departmental affairs. An early scene, set during a beginning-of-year party for department faculty, feels just right: Yasmin, the new, young, brilliant, black, tenure-track hire, is shown hobnobbing with the almost-entirely-old/male/white faculty, and she seems legitimately at ease—they're all literature nerds, after all, making silly jokes about long-dead novelists. But there's still some quiet, subtle gaps between them—ranging from the benign (e.g., the awkwardness of Tryin' To Relate And Keep Conversation Going when the old dudes start talking about their old dude health problems), to the more sinister (e.g., the dude who's clearly got it out for Yasmin's tenure case). Yasmin knows this world, knows how to navigate it, and is doing so in good faith—but she's got an inkling of the caltrops that await her, and she seems both clever and agenic enough to do something about that. I was so interested in seeing that play out.
But instead of drilling into that, we see very little of substance involving Yasmin for the rest of the series. Most of the scenes are just so-so funny bits that end with the overall thesis of, I dunno, "poor Ji-Yoon"? Which, like, yeah! Her job does suck! Dealing with obnoxious donors suck; the university administration sucks; we get it. But that was clear from episode 1; surely the show wanted to expound on that idea a bit more? examine it from some other angles? (It's clear the show has ambitions for something beyond mere comedy bits, from the overwritten speeches that pepper it, so, y'know, I'll judge it for not doing much with those ambitions.)
Like, when it becomes clear to Yas that her tenure case is in danger, she goes and gets an offer from Yale, right? This leads to a final scene where Ji-Yoon appeals to Yasmin to "please please pretty please stay in the department because, like, sisterhood / shared PoCness!"... which, uh, seems pretty condescending/manipulative? kind of pathetic? toolish? And that'd be fine if the scene felt that way, if the show knew it was showing a pretty pitiful moment. But instead the vibe is more like "damn, Ji-Yoon's job is so hard, she's trying so hard, let's all feel for her" or whatever. idk. If the show had poured more into Ji-Yoon and Yasmin's relationship, this could've been a really heavy/strong moment, could've been Ji-Yoon being forced to reconcile with the gulf between what she wants and what she is (due to her new role), or just accepting some personal failures/shortcomings, or somehow recovering and making a stronger appeal to Yasmin, whatever. Instead Ji-Yoon just looks kinda harried and overwhelmed and it all just feels cold. And after all that, Yasmin is there in the last scene, having inexplicably decided to stay even though Yale gave her a way better offer... no stakes, no loss, just a frustrating middle-of-the-road thing.
(I'm not gonna bother even touching on the show's cringey handling of a cancelation/"cancelation" because ugh.)
So, yeah, I dunno. It was okayish. If you want a more interesting take on this sort of thing, here's a story about a rather Yasmin-like prof who was denied tenure at Harvard (h/t here), which I found both frustrating and enthralling to read. Though, it's more depressing overall, which is maybe why it'd make for poor TV :P Academia sure is a shitshow and I'm glad I'm not in it!
I have long complained that mainstream romcoms and romance novels miss the most important thing about sex: that it is fundamentally hilarious and awkward and goofy as all hell. Like okay yes it can be steamy and hot and mind-blowing and all that, but everyone already depicts it that way (right before tastefully fading to black). Where is my absurd physical comedy scene where people are getting all confused and flustered about positioning and weird noises and inconvenient leg cramps and, y'know, any of that low-hanging fruit?
Thankfully, Sex Education agrees with me, leans into that all the way, and the result is delightful.
The premise: Otis is a painfully-normie, kinda-awkward sixteen-year-old guy, who happens to have the weirdest possible home life: his mom runs a sex therapy clinic out of the house. Thus, for Otis, encountering random dildos lying around the house is about as mundane as seeing someone forgetting to hang their coat up; and while he himself has never done the deed, he's osmosed an impressively comprehensive understanding of Various Bits Of Anatomy And How They Work.
Shenanigans occur in episode one, leading Otis and fellow classmate Mauve to start a lil' clandestine sex therapy clinic right there in their high school, to help their classmates out (and also earn some extra cash).
All the goofy sexual comedy I was expecting, based on this premise, is definitely here, and it's consistently well-executed, relying far more on enjoyable silliness than uncomfortable cringe. What I was not necessarily expecting, but was very pleased with, was the show's overall tone/attitude, which manages to be warm and upbeat without ever veering into the saccharine or stilted. Almost all the characters are lovable, even when they're being frustrating or causing trouble: Otis's mom is strange and overshare-y as hell, but clearly loves her son to bits; class lunkhead Adam Groff can be a dick, but he's also a total mess in the way that sixteen-year-olds are wont to be, and you really do want him to come out okay; that sort of thing. It's not Deep TM or trying to tackle profound issues or anything, and that's fine; I'm happy to exist in the world of this oddly-sex-positive kinda-tropey high school so long as it's making me laugh.
There are a few missteps—in particular, there's a midseason plotline with Otis's BFF, Eric, that landed strangely for me... it seemed like a weirdly dark turn to take? relative to the overall mood of the show? but then it kinda pulled back from the implications of that dark thing? so that whole thing wound up just feeling tonally strange?
But overall this was a blast and an incredibly fun romp. Recommended if you need a laugh.
THE CHAIR (Netflix, season 1)
Sandra Oh is great, isn't she? Dreamy sigh. Love to watch her doing Sandra Oh things.
I picked this up because I apparently follow a lot of overworked grad students, and they were all a-twitter over this one, and at the beginning, I could certainly see why. The opening is laden with promise: Yi-Joon (Sandra Oh, who is great here) becomes the first woman of color chair of the English department at an idyllic fancy university, she's ascended the ladder, finally she can make some of the changes she's been dreaming of... and she's immediately, unceremoniously told that enrollments are down, you need to cut at least three people from the payroll somehow (yeah, we know they have tenure, bully them into early retirement or something), and also your funding is getting slashed, again. Welcome to academic administration!
The show's at its best in the realm of the intimate and personal. Ji-Yoon's harried single motherhood, her arguments with her dad when she leans on him for emergency childcare, and her family relationships in general, are well and poignantly drawn. And her warm colleagueship/friendship/maybe-something-more??? with fellow professor Bill rang true. It's obvious why she cares about this guy, obvious that this guy has believed in her career longer than anyone, obvious that he's charming and good-dad-vibes and all that. It's also obvious this guy doesn't get some stuff that he really actually needs to get because otherwise Ji-Yoon is going to tear out all of her hair before this gig is up! Ahh!!!!
I had high hopes that the show would be similarly deft when dealing with departmental affairs. An early scene, set during a beginning-of-year party for department faculty, feels just right: Yasmin, the new, young, brilliant, black, tenure-track hire, is shown hobnobbing with the almost-entirely-old/male/white faculty, and she seems legitimately at ease—they're all literature nerds, after all, making silly jokes about long-dead novelists. But there's still some quiet, subtle gaps between them—ranging from the benign (e.g., the awkwardness of Tryin' To Relate And Keep Conversation Going when the old dudes start talking about their old dude health problems), to the more sinister (e.g., the dude who's clearly got it out for Yasmin's tenure case). Yasmin knows this world, knows how to navigate it, and is doing so in good faith—but she's got an inkling of the caltrops that await her, and she seems both clever and agenic enough to do something about that. I was so interested in seeing that play out.
But instead of drilling into that, we see very little of substance involving Yasmin for the rest of the series. Most of the scenes are just so-so funny bits that end with the overall thesis of, I dunno, "poor Ji-Yoon"? Which, like, yeah! Her job does suck! Dealing with obnoxious donors suck; the university administration sucks; we get it. But that was clear from episode 1; surely the show wanted to expound on that idea a bit more? examine it from some other angles? (It's clear the show has ambitions for something beyond mere comedy bits, from the overwritten speeches that pepper it, so, y'know, I'll judge it for not doing much with those ambitions.)
Like, when it becomes clear to Yas that her tenure case is in danger, she goes and gets an offer from Yale, right? This leads to a final scene where Ji-Yoon appeals to Yasmin to "please please pretty please stay in the department because, like, sisterhood / shared PoCness!"... which, uh, seems pretty condescending/manipulative? kind of pathetic? toolish? And that'd be fine if the scene felt that way, if the show knew it was showing a pretty pitiful moment. But instead the vibe is more like "damn, Ji-Yoon's job is so hard, she's trying so hard, let's all feel for her" or whatever. idk. If the show had poured more into Ji-Yoon and Yasmin's relationship, this could've been a really heavy/strong moment, could've been Ji-Yoon being forced to reconcile with the gulf between what she wants and what she is (due to her new role), or just accepting some personal failures/shortcomings, or somehow recovering and making a stronger appeal to Yasmin, whatever. Instead Ji-Yoon just looks kinda harried and overwhelmed and it all just feels cold. And after all that, Yasmin is there in the last scene, having inexplicably decided to stay even though Yale gave her a way better offer... no stakes, no loss, just a frustrating middle-of-the-road thing.
(I'm not gonna bother even touching on the show's cringey handling of a cancelation/"cancelation" because ugh.)
So, yeah, I dunno. It was okayish. If you want a more interesting take on this sort of thing, here's a story about a rather Yasmin-like prof who was denied tenure at Harvard (h/t here), which I found both frustrating and enthralling to read. Though, it's more depressing overall, which is maybe why it'd make for poor TV :P Academia sure is a shitshow and I'm glad I'm not in it!
