The Chair Company Is The Perfect Conspiracy Thriller
It’s a cosmic gumbo of absurdist comedy, corporate espionage, and melodrama.
Tim Robinson lives in a world built against him.
The SNL alum has crafted a legacy with his Netflix sketch show, I Think You Should Leave, entirely predicated on characters who refuse to conform to the social norms of those around them. Stubbornness is his secret sauce, from the first-ever sketch showing Tim as a man refusing to admit he’s opening a door the wrong way, to the one where he almost fatally chokes because he wants to act cool around a designer. He doubled down on this in the Andrew DeYoung-helmed feature for A24, Friendship.
But in his latest project, HBO’s The Chair Company, Robinson leaves comedy (somewhat) behind to tell the story of a man hell-bent on exposing something huge. As you watch, you realize this conspiracy thriller isn’t one long I Think You Should Leave sketch. In fact, it’s just the opposite: he’s been writing conspiracy thrillers for years, we just haven’t noticed.
Tim Robinson is Ron Trosper in HBO’s The Chair Company.
In The Chair Company, William “Ron” Trosper suffers an embarrassing moment at work, something so top secret we’re not allowed to reveal it here. At first, he tries to laugh it off, but as he stews on it more and more, he decides to investigate who exactly is responsible. The pilot makes it seem like he’s on a wild goose chase, but it soon becomes clear he’s onto something — and it starts to consume his life.
As with most Tim Robinson projects, The Chair Company is chock full of fantastic character actors, from the famous, like Jim Downey of “...the financier?” fame, to the unknown, of which there are too many to count. They are equally balanced by the constants in Ron’s life, like his entrepreneur wife (Lake Bell), his wedding planning daughter (Sophia Lillis), and his football prodigy son (Will Price.)
There may be one central narrative in this series, but it’s very obvious that plenty of sketch ideas wormed their way in, like a predatory menswear company, a class to become the life of a party, and uproar centered around the lack of football in a mall. Each of these moments is hilarious on its own, but together they build an unsettling portrait of a man desperately searching for meaning. In one heartbreaking scene, Ron listens to Jim Croce’s “I Got a Name” while looking at pictures of his kids. “It really does go by so f*cking fast,” he types in the YouTube comments. “You think you’re going to do something with your life, and the next thing you know it’s too late.”
Ron is a family man, but his obsessive mission drives them away.
That’s the greatest strength of this series (of which critics received 7 of the 8 episodes): the balance between paranoia and pragmatism, cringe and earnestness, and comfort and tension. All the best conspiracy thriller series have this balance down, and it’s exhibited all throughout Robinson’s body of work. In reflecting on what I’ve seen, I realized this is a pattern that goes straight to the top: he’s always made conspiracy thrillers. So many I Think You Should Leave sketches are focused on situations where a character is determined that everyone is working against him, like the one with the jurist in the funky hat, or the one about the baby that won’t accept change, or the one about cheeseburger blackmail.
The Chair Company is just the first of his projects that can finally let that element breathe and stretch itself to its full potential, and the result is a twisting saga with more whiplash than a hundred rides on a zipline. It’s a haunting tale of what happens when our desire to know the truth clashes with a desire not to embarrass ourselves. And in Ron’s case, the former always wins out.
