wrestles with these questions throughout its six-episode debut season. Ji-Yoon begins her job at the fictional Pembroke University with a warning from its dean, Paul Larson , that English enrollments are way down, and the only way for the department to survive is by getting rid of elderly, long-tenured professors like fiery Chaucer expert Joan Hambling and smugly stubborn Elliot Rentz .
“I don’t feel like I inherited an English department,” she laments at one point. “I feel like someone handed me a ticking time bomb because they wanted to make sure a woman was holding it when it explodes.”one of the year’s more thematically ambitious shows. But they’re also trying to juggle too much, often losing track of the characters who are asking the same questions their creators are.
No spoilers on who it is, but I will offer three hints: 1) He has an actual history of English scholarship prior to his acting career; 2) He has acted with Amanda Peet once in the past; and 3) This is at least the third time he has very effectively satirized himself on a television comedy. , which feels fitting for a show that’s not averse to a fart joke now and then.
Ji-Yoon is very clearly the story’s main character, yet its interest is much less in her as a person than as a symbol of all that’s wrong with academia, and all that could be made right if anyone were willing to listen.
Ji-Yoon is meant to be a flawed hero, and there’s a sense from the start that perhaps she’s not as ready to tackle this job as she wants to believe she is. Similarly, has goals it’s only sometimes equipped to achieve, even though its overall talent level keeps things interesting.