Why Everyone Is Obsessed With HBO’s ‘The Chair Company’ – Tim Robinson’s Hilarious New Series (That Currently Has A 100% Critic Score On Rotten Tomatoes)
By Erin Whitten
The Chair Company is very much a done deal, folks. The insane new comedy from Tim Robinson has arrived, and it has already claimed its spot as one of the most bizarre and cringe-inducing shows in HBO history. The new series from Robinson premiered with 1.4 million viewers in its first three days, the biggest HBO comedy launch in over five years. It currently holds a 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes, and is already being called the best comedy of the year. No one expected a show about a man’s literal downfall from a chair to become a pop culture phenomenon this year, but then again, it’s only the second episode.
Tim Robinson stars as Ron Trosper, a middle-manager working to develop a shopping mall in Canton, Ohio. Ron is your basic Everyman, living a comfortable, if uneventful, life with his family. His life is upended, however, when a chair breaks beneath him at a presentation, embarrassing him in front of his co-workers and bosses. This humiliation starts a snowball effect of even more ridiculous, petty humiliations, kickstarted by Robinson’s inimitable gift for writing what might be the cringe-iest comedy on television. Instead of letting it go, Ron doggedly sets out to find the company responsible for the faulty chair, and the show spirals completely out of control from there. He burrows into warehouses, encounters a mysterious giant red ball, and is threatened by a complete stranger who punches him when Ron is caught snooping for information.
At its core, the new series from Robinson is a one-man ego trip turned into a wonderfully uncomfortable horror comedy. The show’s direction and cinematography feel rich and theatrical, with an eye for a heightened sense of anxiety that the series bends between outright comedy and creeping paranoia. The writing is impeccable, with a gift for teasing the very essence of humanity’s most low-stakes insecurities. Robinson has built a career on pulling out the worst possible outcomes of bad social interactions and spinning them into something stranger than fiction and now, he’s taken it and made a whole TV show on it. Even better, it somehow works. The show makes you laugh while reminding you that any of these situations could also happen in real life, and that’s the gift of the best comedy, making you realize how stupid you are.
Robinson also has a touch for the details that make his world so specific, weird, and instantly recognizable. The made-up company names, the outsized importance of office politics, the unexplained mundanity of life in an Ohio mall development business. Even the series’ fake brands, like the faceless manufacturer of the chair, Tecca, and Ron’s own employer, Fisher Robay, feel viscerally like they could be real, down to actual websites for both that you’ll want to explore for Easter eggs throughout the entire show It’s the same finely honed eye for comedy that has made Robinson’s work this past decade such a singular joy in any form, now taken to the ninth degree with HBO behind it.
The supporting cast around Robinson is the cherry on top. Lake Bell offers a great mix of calm annoyance as his wife, Sophia Lillis and Will Price play their twin children trying to figure out if dad is losing it or not, and Lou Diamond Phillips is a joy every time he’s on screen, perfectly un-phased by all of Ron’s antics. Even the side characters in Ron’s office keep the ball bouncing, from a girl reprimanded for handing her coworker a paper “too hard” to a janitor who could be the next office hero undone by taking his “inside wheelbarrow” outside to clean. Every scene is packed with the kind of odd, specific worldbuilding you won’t find in any other show on TV right now. Thankfully, the show also shows no signs of running out of gas from its initial premise. There is real story and stakes here, with every new humiliation adding a little more mystery, which only spins further and further out of control with every week,
HBO has been on a bit of a streak of intense dramas as of late, and while their content has been good, they are overdue for a banger of a comedy that the world can rally around and quote for months, if not years. The Chair Company is the show that can change that. It’s absurd, cringe-y, and bizarrely moving all at once. It’s a great collection of what’s made Tim Robinson one of the most creative comedians of the past few years taken to a level and polish no other show on television can touch. The Chair Company has the first couple episode already available to watch on Max, with new ones being released every Sunday night. Don’t get left behind, jump in, and prepare to have your mind turned inside out by cringe only the HBO budget can give you.
