Seen at SXSW: The Cultural Specificity of Nasim Pedrad’s CHAD

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Seen at SXSW: The Cultural Specificity of Nasim Pedrad’s CHAD

In the last few years, popular culture has really sharpened the way that coming of age gets portrayed on screen. The hazy and nostalgic strategy that drove movies like Stand by Me and Now and Then has given way to an admission of awkwardness in projects like Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade, Netflix’s Big Mouth, and Hulu’s PEN15.

I have to imagine that TBS’ forthcoming Chad (which had its Episodic premiere “here” at SXSW), created, executive produced, and starring Nasim Pedrad (SNL, New Girl) has, or will, endure all of those comparisons. And to an extent that makes sense. Chad is about a painfully awkward boy – played by Pedrad in makeup so convincing she once fooled the on-set teacher – barreling through the early days of high school with a singular focus on being popular…because “fitting in rocks.” Chad is gangly, painfully self unaware, and dramatic in the moments that don’t go his way (a hysterical crying fit includes calling a classmate “terrifying” because she doesn’t carry a backpack to class, only a broken pencil and a ripped piece of paper). It feels familiar in many ways because of these latest entries to the “coming of age” TV category, and yet there is something different about it.

Pedrad cites herself as the main inspiration for Chad (whose real name is Fereydoon but he insists he’s had it legally changed), saying, “I don’t know why the core of my spirit is a fourteen year old boy” in an interview with Glamour’s Samantha Barry. Growing up as an tomboyish Iranian immigrant with mostly boy cousins, she sees the character as such an analogue to herself, she pulled plot points from her diaries during that time. “I wanted it to feel honest,” she said. And while the strategy may, again, feel similar to a few other shows covering this time period in such personal ways, there’s an added dimension to Chad that stands out: the cultural specificity of its awkwardness.

Chad isn’t just about a teenage boy trying to fit in, it’s about a teenage boy trying to fit in by distancing himself from his Persian heritage. “His heritage was the whole genesis of the show,” Pedrad points out, noting that when she first started developing the show there hadn’t been a half hour sitcom featuring a Middle Eastern family – to date, there still hasn’t been one to center that experience. The project was initially developed for FOX, and had it landed there it would have been the first network program to do so; having landed at TBS, however, offers other benefits, including a whole storyline in the pilot that likely wouldn’t have made the cut.

So what, then, sets Chad apart from its other contemporaries in the adults reflecting on their teenage years, is the cultural specificity that drives Chad’s desire to fit in. He says as much early on in the pilot about his Muslim heritage: “I’m embarrassed by it, and I’d like to fit in. I’ve made that VERY clear to you.” “Teenagers are already struggling to find themselves, and for immigrant kids it’s an extra bump in the road,” she said of the increasingly desperate measures her main character takes to be seen as cool by his peers.

And about that increasingly desperate bit…it makes the show hard and hysterically funny to watch all at once. In the pilot, that discomfort comes courtesy of an attempted sexual encounter that has Chad way out of his depth; in the second episode, it comes from Chad’s increasingly bold attempts to connect with his mother’s Black boyfriend. While the show is admittedly still finding its footing, it finds much of its humor from the cringing we get to do at what Chad’s attempt at logical behavior look like. Pedrad knows that it’s cringy, and deliberately set out to write it that way. Citing HBO and Lisa Kudrow’s The Comeback as inspiration, she admitted, “the goal is to come from a true place for the character, but oftentimes it feels like a very slow car accident.”

And yet, we can continue to watch (or at least Pedrad hopes!) because what might have us running for cover, never seems to faze the main character. “[Chad] just keeps getting his ass handed to him, but he never loses hope that tomorrow will be different.”

Chad premieres on Tuesday, April 6th on TBS.

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Amma Marfo

Amma Marfo is a writer, speaker, and podcaster based in Boston, MA. Her writing has appeared in Femsplain, The Good Men Project, Pacific Standard, and Talking Points Memo. Chances are good that as you're reading this, she's somewhere laughing.
Amma Marfo

Amma Marfo

Amma Marfo is a writer, speaker, and podcaster based in Boston, MA. Her writing has appeared in Femsplain, The Good Men Project, Pacific Standard, and Talking Points Memo. Chances are good that as you're reading this, she's somewhere laughing.