The Chair Company is, in many respects, the ultimate Tim Robinson vehicle: a collection of the star’s favorite fixations that invariably devolves into deranged, hostile madness.
Although an eight-episode half-hour HBO mystery series, Robinson’s latest, premiering Oct. 12, is an extension of his work on Saturday Night Live, Detroiters, I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson, and Friendship: He plays a mild-mannered family man whose response to embarrassment proves exceedingly over-the-top. In this case, that reaction instigates a quest to uncover a supposedly wide-ranging plot involving office furniture. However, the end result is more of the same inspired lunacy that’s made its headliner a cult comedy hero.
Co-created by Robinson’s long-time writing partner Zach Kanin and directed by Friendship’s Andrew DeYoung and A Different Man’s Aaron Schimberg, The Chair Company is a show about William Ronald Trosper (Robinson), a middle-class nobody who’s spearheading his employer Fisher Robay’s design and construction of a shopping mall in Canton, Ohio. Ron is successful and admired at his job, including by boss Jeff (Lou Diamond Phillips), and he’s equally beloved at home by wife Barb (Lake Bell), son Seth (Will Price), and daughter Natalie (Sophia Lillis).
Nonetheless, for all the positives in his life, Ron can’t quite catch a break, as evidenced by a dinner out with the family during which Barb’s toast to him is interrupted, weirdly, by a young waitress, leading to inept pronouncements and multiple people trying, much to his exasperation, to take his unfinished deviled egg.
A man whose façade of normalcy masks frustration and anger that manifest in awkward and clumsy ways, Ron is a typical Robinson creation, and his saga truly begins at a company-wide presentation about the mall project when, having wowed the crowd, his triumph is spoiled by a sudden, humiliating mishap. The incident gets deeply under Ron’s skin, such that when he returns to his office, he’s compelled to hide under his desk for a brief private moment of freaking out.
In the aftermath of this calamity, Ron starts researching Tecca, a chair company, only to learn that there’s no way to contact them save for a phone number that connects him to a generic answering service—a call that concludes with him screaming, “DO NOT RECORD! I DO NOT ALLOW RECORDING!”
Ron is dealing with a variety of family issues—Barb is seeking investors for her breast pump start-up; Seth is a basketball prospect on the cusp of attending college; and Natalie is planning her wedding to fiancé Tara, whom nobody seems to like—but in The Chair Company, those are mere impediments to his main mission of having his voice heard and figuring out who’s to blame for his day-to-day’s escalating disarray.
His sleuthing points him to an abandoned warehouse filled with photocopied porn and a giant red ball. More troubling, he’s accosted by a heavy who warns him to drop his investigation and strikes him with a lead pipe. During their tussle, Ron gets ahold of the assailant’s shirt, which he traces to a clothing store where the clerk makes him sign up for a membership group (thus saddling him with endless texts) and proclaims about the owner of the shirt—whose buttons are stretched near the stomach area—“I’m positive he’s at his limit.”
This is the usual Robinson bats–t insanity, and The Chair Company doles it out in sharp, unexpected bursts, such as Natalie’s announcement that she now wants her wedding to be held at a haunted barn—as well as her attendant request that Ron convince her future father-in-law to go along with this change of venue.
With the metal rod in his possession, Ron orders a fingerprint kit, discovers that it’s just a bunch of plastic junk, and gives one of its pieces (shaped like a hat) to Seth in a gesture of wacko love. Things are no more normal at Fisher Robay, considering that Ron is at odds with elderly Douglas (James Downey)—whose bubble necklace he rips off his neck, causing a stir—and is being investigated by HR due to the fact that, inadvertently, he looked up colleague Amanda’s (Amelia Campbell) skirt.
The Chair Company is equal parts corporate workplace comedy, paranoid ’70s thriller, modern conspiracy theory drama, and off-the-wall absurdist whatsit, with Robinson and Kanin taking familiar scenarios to avant-garde extremes. The material’s humor comes from its often jaw-dropping bizarreness; rarely has a series generated so many laughs from situations that, at first glance, aren’t explicitly funny.
It’s a unique dynamic that’s fueled by Robinson’s zealous anxiety and exasperation, and it gives the action its live-wire edge. Ron’s fanatical desire to get answers to his questions—which he surmises might have to do with drug smuggling or government malfeasance—is part and parcel of his inherent obsessiveness, which years earlier drove him to quit his job to launch a jeep tours company in suburban Ohio, and the show rides waves of fury and mania as the protagonist immerses himself in intrigue.
Robinson and Kanin throw all sorts of nonsense at the audience, less because of a lack of focus than because they’re interested in beleaguering Ron with random craziness, and the beauty of their finest gags is that they’re even more amusing in hindsight.
Bell and Phillips maintain admirable straight faces amidst Robinson’s volatile buffoonery, although the lead’s strongest support comes from the no-names who assume key roles in this affair, most notably Joseph Tudisco as Mike Santini, a stranger with a fondness for violence and pornography who also has a sweet heart. The ungainliness of Robinson’s rapport with his co-stars is central to The Chair Company’s peculiar tone. DeYoung and Schimberg’s direction is as well, blending ominousness and outlandishness with off-kilter glee.
Robinson doesn’t stray far from his trademark path with The Chair Company, and yet he adds just enough wrinkles to his winning formula to keep it from feeling stale. Those who can’t attune themselves to his idiosyncratic wavelength are better off staying away; the rest, however, are in for one of the year’s most bonkers comedies.
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