HBO

What do you get when you take a show about mindless excess and complete, weaponised vacuity, and then have everyone in it suddenly realise that they want to do something meaningful with their lives?

If you ever wanted concrete proof that The Chair Company is not like other shows, then look no further than its ending — if you...

I was going to start this recap by saying that things aren’t looking too good in It: Welcome to Derry, but now that I think about it, that’s only a matter of perspective.

Ron did it. He finally found out what Tecca is up to. And, as predicted, Tecca are up to something.

Networking is a deliberately nebulous word, one typically used as an excuse for getting drunk with people whose company you stand to benefit from in one way or another.

It: Welcome to Derry has held off on leveraging the iconic smirking visage of Bill Skarsgård’s bulbous-headed Pennywise the Clown.

I’m not the type to ever be caught in the heart of a scandal – unless there’s a group of people somewhere who really care...

The Chair Company isn’t getting worse in any meaningful sense, but I think Episode 6, “Happy Birthday, a friend”, is the point where it has reached the outer limit of how much great throwaways and weird juxtapositions alone can sustain it.

It’s hard to critique It: Welcome to Derry. It has been since the beginning, really. On the level of its broad storytelling, it leaves a lot to be desired, with two pretty ill-fitting concurrent storylines playing out simultaneously, and little overlap as yet.

It’s a rare show – and, in case it wasn’t obvious, The Chair Company is a very rare show – that doesn’t seem any closer to meaningfully explaining what it’s about by the time it’s halfway through.

The best joke in I Love LA is that the funniest character isn’t any of the Gen Z influencer caricatures that Rachel Sennott has clearly created the show to mock.

I think it’s safe to say that It: Welcome to Derry has been much better than anyone expected it to be.

It is highly probable that I am so far removed from the target demographic of an HBO comedy about single twenty-something Californian girls – and guys! – trying to make it in L.A., that any opinion I may or may not have on the subject is utterly worthless.

After what was pretty unmistakably a Halloween special in disguise, imagine my delight when the cold open of The Chair Company Episode 4 suggested we were doing a Christmas special this week instead.

You can tell a lot about a show from its title sequence. It: Welcome to Derry boasts a fun one in Episode 2, “The Thing in the Dark”, which fittingly released on Halloween on Max and will occupy its usual timeslot on HBO.

There’s a thing about jump scares where they almost never work because savvy viewers have come to expect them.

There are openings, and then there are openings. It: Welcome to Derry has an italicised version.

All the comedy in The Chair Company lives in the space between how other people see Ron Trosper and what he’s actually like.