Summary
The Chair Company is proudly weird and expertly funny in Episode 1, repurposing a sketch show vibe into a serialised comedy.
The clue is in the name, sometimes. Even if you didn’t know that HBO’s The Chair Company comes from I Think You Should Leave’s Tim Robinson and Zach Kanin, the simple fact that it’s called The Chair Company should be a bit of a giveaway that it’s slightly off-kilter as far as comedies go. And off-kilter is very much the best description for Episode 1, “Life Goes By Too F**king Fast, It Really Does”, which uses a relatively everyday moment of social embarrassment as the hinge in a spiralling downturn that may or may not be the beginning of a much wider-ranging conspiracy.
And it’s really rather good, honestly. It’s quintessential fare, in a way, the idea of what to most people would be a minor moment of social humiliation becoming an all-consuming obsession and quest for vengeance – or at least recompense. Cringe comedies have been built on less fertile ground. But what seems like the true greatness of this show is the possibility that Ron Trosper, the project manager for a new mall development in Canton, Ohio, might be right. There really might be something amiss with the chairs.
There’s evidence to support the claim, some of it quite hard to dispute. But the comedy lives in the idea that Ron’s sleuthing is treated as though he’s uncovering some kind of vast Enemy of the State-style conspiracy, instead of investigating why his chair collapsed during a corporate presentation, embarrassing him in front of his bosses. Sometimes this premiere looks like an espionage thriller, or at least a corporate one, so it becomes especially funny how quickly Ron unravels over seemingly minor things.
Episode 1 of The Chair Company is careful to point out that Ron wasn’t exactly even keel before the chair thing. He’s happily married – insofar as anyone is ever really happily married – and has two kids who seem fairly well-adjusted, but a bit of light banter in a restaurant-set opening on the eve of his project manager appointment turns demented quickly. This is a guy who is prone to stress, at the very least. It’s also a guy who’s really rubbish at addressing potential sources of his stress, keeping everything bottled up – or, in some cases, literally hiding – in the hopes that the root of his latest anxiety will simply sort itself out on its own. Often, it probably does. But in the case of the chair, it doesn’t, and Ron completely lacks the toolset to rationalise it.
This leads to the more overt comedy moments of the premiere, with Ron going postal at Douglas, a sweet-seeming older dude who was passed over for the promotion Ron ended up with, ripping his bubble necklace straight from his neck in a fit of pique. It’s one of two HR-worthy incidents in the episode – the other an accidental upskirting – that ultimately have Ron hiding in his office, peeping through the blinds, and crouching behind the desk. But while this is the funniest stuff, it’s the same level of obsession that underpins his increasingly rabid investigation into the mysterious chair company, Tecca, which ultimately gets him assaulted in a parking lot and warned away after trespassing on its property.
All this stuff gives The Chair Company the shape of a serialised story instead of a sketch show, but it still often feels a lot like a sketch show, with frequent cutaways to tiny, largely needless moments of characters saying or doing something eccentric. There are a couple of scenes wherein a guy with a wheelbarrow frets about whether he has been caught inside with an outside wheelbarrow, or outside with an inside wheelbarrow, and Ron’s utterly perplexed reaction is a superb reminder of how ridiculous his own issue must seem to other people.
But we once again return to the crux of the matter – what if his own issue is valid? What if there’s really a conspiracy afoot? And what if the only guy who is willing and able to expose it is only doing so because he’s cripplingly embarrassed and has no meaningful outlets for his bottled-up stress? That sounds like an interesting enough quandary to sustain a comedy series to me.
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