“The Chair Company,” the latest hilarious and more than a little horrifying vision from the comedic maniac that is Tim Robinson, which is also his most bonkers, brilliant work yet, is not only about chairs. Eventually, there are indeed a lot of chairs, and even a few tables, but it’s also about oh-so-much maddeningly more.
Much as the classic modern series “Mad Men” is not only about advertising, “The Chair Company” uses the trappings of ordinary life to explore plenty of sharp and surprising ideas about people. But instead of Jon Hamm’s suave Don Draper increasingly failing to mask his own insecurities in a measured drama, it’s Robinson’s possibly mad Ron in a silly, borderline nightmarish satire, throwing his deepest anxieties all out in the open right out of the gate and proceeding to speed ahead even further into destroying his life.
Yes, the inciting hook does involve a seemingly ordinary office chair creating an extremely embarrassing incident for Ron at his demoralizing job where he is heading up a project to build a mall. However, this is merely the beginning of what proves to be Robinson’s best, most incisive and ambitious project to date.
After Ron is mortified by what happened, with his well-meaning colleagues laughing at him to his face when they think he’s moved on from it, and his fraught relationship with his loving family growing more strained as he carries his shame with him silently, he becomes fixated on proving there is something more nefarious going on with this chair. Already a weird guy, he rapidly descends down an even weirder rabbit hole where he believes he may have uncovered a grand conspiracy that nobody else is aware of. As he says at one point, “I’m right about a lot of things that people have zero clue that they even know is going on.”
What the hell does that mean? Whatever you want it to mean or, more importantly, whatever the hell Ron needs it to mean. As he goes from frantically poking around online and making angry phone calls, to going out into the real world and getting in altercations with an eccentric cast of supporting characters (of which Robinson’s fellow “SNL” alum Jim Downey is the standout), “The Chair Company” taps into something deeply disquieting about modern conspiracies just as it remains as sharply funny as anything Robinson has ever produced.
There is much that requires being coy, as there is plenty of madcap fun to be had in seeing how Ron is supposedly piecing things together, but it’s also clear that the ensuing shenanigans are as much about the emotional reasons behind his madness. Even when he uncovers what he thinks are hidden truths, how much of this is actually reality and how much is just him needing it to be real becomes the heart of the show. As Ron’s daughter (Sophia Lillis) becomes aware of her father becoming lost in his conspiracy, the series takes on an unexpectedly tragic dimension, just as it remains witheringly, diabolically funny.
It gives Robinson the chance to make his absolutely weirdest faces, deliver the most wonderfully wacky lines and undertake a whole host of magnificent acts of physical comedy that rival the expressive work of Jim Carrey. If you’ve seen his past work in the spectacular show “I Think You Should Leave” and this year’s uproarious “Friendship,” you’ll know this is really saying something. That the former’s creator, Zach Kanin, and the latter’s director, Andrew DeYoung, are also Robinson’s collaborators here makes sense. If you liked their prior work, you’ll likely connect with this. At the same time, it sees all of them continue to challenge themselves comedically.
Namely, just as he did in those past works, Robinson finds new, creative ways to launch everything into glorious chaos while exploring how these profoundly flawed people might not be as far away from us as we realize. With more room to work with in a full season of television, it gives him the chance to create a greater range of emotional beats. One shot further in of him staring at a mirror and crying alone to himself shows this in glorious action, proving to be as darkly funny as it is uniquely upsetting when you appreciate the full context of it.
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It’s a show as astute as it is anarchic, exploring the distinct strangeness of our present moment, the often deeply messy people living through it, how their anxieties can manifest into a need for grand conspiracies where they have a false sense of agency, and what happens when this all begins to unravel before our eyes. Once more, Robinson shows how good he is at taking common social situations and launching them to absurd heights, leaving us to look up at the sky in a combination of awe and terror as all the pieces come falling around us.
You have no idea where they’ll land or what damage to the characters’ lives will be caused in the chaos, though you wouldn’t dare look away for even a second. Just be careful you don’t yourself tumble out of your chair watching. Be it with laughter or in horror, you never know what you too may end up falling into.
“The Chair Company” premieres Sunday, Oct. 12, on HBO and HBO Max.