PLOT: After an embarrassing incident at work, a man finds himself investigating a far-reaching conspiracy.
REVIEW: Earlier this year, Tim Robinson headlined the hilarious cult comedy Friendship opposite Paul Rudd. The film was a surreal and darkly bizarre comedy featuring Robinson in a role written specifically for him. Tim Robinson has carved out a unique style of comedy, drawing from his tenure as a writer and cast member on Saturday Night Live, as well as his fan-favorite series, Detroiters and I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson. The Chair Company combines the narrative style of Friendship and I Think You Should Leave into a mystery unlike any other as Robinson plays a man investigating a conspiracy of meaningless proportions. It is an absolutely hilarious journey that will please fans of Robinson’s trademark comedy and leave many people scratching their heads as they try to figure out what the hell The Chair Company is all about.
The Chair Company centers on Ron Trosper (Tim Robinson), a mild-mannered project manager for a company that designs shopping malls. After a traumatic event several years earlier, Ron is in the limelight at his job while his wife, Barb (Lake Bell), is working on a start-up. His daughter Natalie (Sophia Lillis) is about to get married, and his son, Seth (Will Price), is preparing to graduate from high school. Everything is going well for Ron until the day of his big job presentation is sullied by a broken chair. Ron begins to fixate on how the chair could have broken, which sends him down a rabbit hole of investigating the chair’s manufacturer and discovering connections to various entities that may be more duplicitous and dangerous than they seem. Ron’s personal life and professional life collide as he looks into his theories, creating a wide range of bizarre circumstances that propel The Chair Company to some odd places.
Having seen seven of the eight, half-hour episodes of The Chair Company, I am convinced that Tim Robinson is a genius at playing weird characters who no one else seems to think are strange. With his goofy facial expressions and random, explosive outbursts, Tim Robinson would be a coworker or neighbor you would distance yourself from in a heartbeat. Like Craig Waterman in Friendship, Ron Trosper appears to be the average suburban dad with the ideal nuclear family. His wife is clearly out of his league, and yet they have a balanced and loving marriage. His boss and coworkers look at Ron as a superstar, but there is always something just a bit off about what the audience sees in Ron compared to those within the story. When an accident occurs, we may seek a way to explain or justify the cause, but Ron delves deeper and becomes obsessed with it. Obsession seems to be a recurring theme in Robinson’s characters, and this in-depth exploration of Ron’s mental state and past incidents provides a portrait of a troubled individual. Thankfully, it is presented in the most oddly humorous way possible.
Most of The Chair Company treats Ron’s investigation as a Watergate-level conspiracy, complete with security cameras, fight scenes, chases, and espionage, but at the small-town level. Ron partners early on with Mike Santini (Joseph Tudisco), and the pair find a friendship along the way. The series also combines elements of workplace comedy as Ron’s investigation jeopardizes his standing on his mall project and draws the attention of his boss, Jeff (Lou Diamond Phillips). The series shifts between Tim Robinson acting like a complete psychopath and losing his composure over random things, and then shifting to Ron being the straight man as kooky characters pop up around him and say and do odd things. Like his sketch series, I Think You Should Leave, there are bursts of random non-sequiturs that blend into the overall narrative, even if they have no direct impact on the main story. I do not think I have seen a better blend of main narrative with elements of sketch comedy in a very long time. It helps that, alongside talented actors like Lake Bell and Sophia Lillis, who play their roles straight, we have an ensemble of unknowns who play right into the strangeness of this series.
Friendship director Andrew DeYoung helms the first three episodes of The Chair Company. Aaron Schimberg also directs additional episodes. Tim Robinson and Zach Kanin wrote three episodes with Gary Richardson, Sarah Schneider, John Solomon, and Marika Sawyer credited on the other five. The Chair Company features a tone and visual style very similar to Friendship, but with a more surreal feel reminiscent of David Lynch. While not nearly in the same ballpark as Twin Peaks, DeYoung, Robinson, and Kanin definitely aim to plumb the depths of the strange with multiple characters, such as workers at a sex shop and a clothing boutique, who feel ripped right from a dreamscape rather than being characters in a comedy series. The half-hour chapters will also have audiences tuning in week to week to try to figure out what the core mystery is, something that was equally engrossing as I binged all of the episodes in one sitting.
The Chair Company works well as an ongoing series that forces you to contend with the uneasy feeling that builds across eight episodes. Tim Robinson is a master of cringe comedy, which Zach Kanin and Andrew DeYoung magnify with this unsettlingly odd series. Not a laugh-out-loud comedy like Curb Your Enthusiasm or even Barry, The Chair Company could be the weirdest series to air on HBO in a very long time. I am eager to watch the finale and see how Ron Trosper’s quest concludes, or if Tim Robinson will return to make this an ongoing series. Whether Trosper gets his man or the mystery keeps going, The Chair Company is a lot of fun to watch, even though it will definitely divide audiences who will either get what Robinson is going for or check out after the first episode.
The Chair Company premieres on October 12th on HBO.
