Following in the footsteps of the hit show PEN15, comes Chad. A sitcom about a 14-year-old Iranian boy Chad who is played by 40-year-old Saturday Night Live alumni Nasim Pedrad. As PEN15 showed, adult women playing their teenaged selves surrounded by a cast of 13-year-olds can lead to comedy gold. Chad takes this one step further. Pedrad not only plays a boy, she has created a character who from the outset can seem quite unlikeable – lucky then he is surrounded by a likeable support cast of characters. His loser status at school results in some seriously cringeworthy moments, but they also lead to a lot of laughs.
As anyone who has grown up being the outsider in their school, especially because of their cultural heritage, fitting in can be hard. Especially if your school isn’t particularly diverse, as is the case for Chad. But while many of us who have been in that position find some kind of workable middle ground, for Chad it’s all or nothing. He wants to be one of the popular kids at school and nothing is going to get in the way of that.
In the pilot episode, when Chad finds out his divorced mum, Naz (Saba Homayoon), is dating a Muslim man, he is automatically horrified:
Naz: "Chad you know technically we are Muslims.”
Chad: “Yeah we’re Muslim enough. We don’t need people thinking that’s our whole thing.”
Naz: “What is your problem with our heritage?”
Chad: “I’m embarrassed by it and I’d like to fit in. I thought I’d made that very clear to you!”
This is most apparent in the fact that Chad, whose real name is Ferydoon Amani decided to go by the name 'Chad' because not only did it sound very American, but also because there were no Ferydoon’s in the rack of personalised keyrings he saw at a store. But there was a ‘Chad’ keyring and thus the name was set.
But it’s not just about fitting in. Now that Chad is in his first year of high school he tells his friend Peter, who is similarly an outsider, that he finally wants to be invited to a party. After all the only party he had previously attended turned out to be Peter’s aunt’s baby shower – a party his own friend was late to. However because of Chad’s own awkward and stubborn personality, there are no invites forthcoming. So Chad decides to lie as a way to make friends.
It’s Chad’s lies that get him into some seriously uncomfortable situations which may test the cringe tolerance of many an audience member. In the first episode, for example, he tells everyone he’s had sex with a girl, but later when he is alone in a room with a girl he freaks out so badly only his mum can comfort him. Or when he tells his younger sister’s friends he drinks alcohol, leading to having his lie found out in the most awkward of ways. And in the finale, Chad decorates his own locker to make out as if a girl decorated it because she has a crush on him. Except the whole school soon thinks the decorations are a hate crime and Chad doesn’t have it in him to correct them.
While PEN15 was heartfelt and relied on early 2000s nostalgia as well the power of female friendships to pull on viewer’s heartstrings, Chad doesn’t do any of that. This is cringe comedy through and through and it pulls no punches about it. In the Seinfeld vein of comedy, there are no take home messages or lessons to be learned in Chad. It is works by having an awkward, weird protagonist in a school where most of Chad’s cohorts are often supportive and likable. When Peter’s grandfather dies in one episode, rather than neglect him like Chad does, the popular boys gather around him and try to bolster his mood. In the finale when everyone thinks Chad has been the victim of a hate crime, the school come out in show of their ‘wokeness’ and there is a discussion on white privilege.
Chad works mostly because it deals with matters that have often been neglected in comedy: about feeling like an outsider, trying to hide your ethnicity and showing performative wokeness for what it really is – a way for white people to feel better about themselves. Yes it it’s cringey in many ways, but it is also very funny and dealing with subject matters not often talked about, making it a show worth seeking out.
The complete Season 1 is now streaming at SBS On Demand. Look out for Season 2 later in the year.
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