The Chair Season 1, Episode 1 recap: Brilliant Mistake

SPOILER WARNING: This recap contains spoilers for The Chair Season 1, Episode 1. 

Dr. Ji-Yoon Kim (Sandra Oh) arrives at Pembroke University to start her new job as Chair of the English department, the first woman and one of only a handful of non-white staff members. It becomes evident within just a few minutes of The Chair Season 1, Episode 1, “Brilliant Mistake” that Ji-Yoon has her work cut out for her.

The first official meeting is absent at least one key player in this story, former Department Chair and current Death and Modernism professor Bill DuPont (Jay Duplass). Since they have a history together, Ji-Yoon does her best to cover for him while addressing the rest of the English department, the bulk of whom are old white male professors.

Throughout the first episode, we’re introduced to the main characters and the obstacles they’ll face throughout this season. Professor Yaz McKay (Nana Mensah) is a popular and ambitious woman who teaches Sex and the Novel and wants tenure. Yaz is easily one of the better professors of the bunch and genuinely appears connected to her students.

But on Ji-Yoon’s first day, Dean Paul Larson (David Morse) immediately saddles her with an unfortunate task. She’ll need to pick three professors to fire/send into early retirement because the department’s enrollments are catastrophic. Larson outlines the three professors with the highest salaries and the lowest enrollments.

The Chair Season 1, Episode 1 recap: Ji-Yoon has her hands full

One of them is Professor Elliot Rentz (Bob Balaban), who has taught at the school for ages but is mostly a dinosaur when it comes to his methods. A Melville scholar, Elliot hasn’t updated his syllabus in years, and it shows. He only has a few measly students in his class.

Ji-Yoon saddles Yaz with Elliot, combining their sections. This decision complicates things for Yaz as Elliot is the chair of her tenure committee and immediately rebukes most of her strategies to take over the classroom setting, relegating her to passing out papers and mostly treating her like a T.A., which is exactly what Yaz feared would happen.

Then there is Professor Joan Hambling (Holland Taylor), one of the few women in the department. However, unlike her forward-thinking colleagues Yaz and Ji-Yoon, Joan is also stuck in her ways. She hasn’t even looked at her student evaluation in decades and doesn’t consider updating her curriculum to suit the changing world around her.

Early on, Joan is forcibly moved to a gross office tucked in the basement level beneath the gym. Ji-Yoon assures her that this is a Title IX lawsuit waiting to happen but then doesn’t show up to the meeting to discuss the possibility. Instead, Joan makes a fool of herself with the Title IX advisor by admonishing her for wearing short-shorts in the office.

The Chair Season 1, Episode 1 recap: What’s the deal with Bill & Ji-Yoon?

Finally, we have Bill. Despite being the former Chair, Bill could not be more different from Ji-Yoon. When we first meet him, he’s dropping his daughter off at the airport as she departs for college. Still mourning the death of his wife, Bill’s life has completely fallen apart. Both his daughter and Ji-Yoon tell him to get his s**t together.

He shows up late to class, is completely unprepared, and doesn’t even have the syllabus worked out for the semester. His T.A. Lila (Mallory Low) handles almost everything in this episode. Joan tells him the only reason his course has high enrollments is because of his reputation. Before his wife’s death, Bill wrote a successful novel and was more or less at the height of his career.

By episode’s end, Ji-Yoon’s admonishment appears to have struck a chord, as he actually puts effort into his next class. But will that be enough to keep him off the chopping block?

And further complicating things is the relationship between Ji-Yoon and Bill, which is obviously flirtatious. While we don’t know exactly what happened to them in the past, Yaz comments that now that Bill’s wife is out of the picture, there is no more “guardrail” preventing things from progressing between them.

That said, Bill also doesn’t seem like he’s mentally stable enough to have a healthy relationship right now.

At home, Ji-Yoon also has her hands full with her family. Her young daughter appears obsessed with death and worries about what would happen if her mom died, leaving her with her elderly grandfather Habi (Ji-yong Lee). We see Ji-Yoon pick up a business card for family therapy.

The Chair Season 1 is now streaming in its entirety on Netflix.