Stream It Or Skip It?

Tim Robinson has made his post-SNL years a success by having a keen sense of satire and parody, and an innate ability to play hilariously aggrieved everyman. That was what we saw during his Netflix sketch show I Think You Should Leave, and he’s carried it to his new HBO series, which is a comedic conspiracy thriller.

Opening Shot: A family having dinner at a nice restaurant.

The Gist: William Ronald Trosper (Tim Robinson) is out with his wife Barb (Lake Bell), daughter Natalie (Sophia Lillis) and teenage son Seth (Will Price). They’re celebrating a lot: Natalie’s impending nuptials, Seth’s prospects of getting a basketball scholarship to college, and Ron’s long-awaited promotion at work. He’s been named the project manager on a huge mall project his company is developing, but even a toast for his promotion gets interrupted by the waitress talking to Seth about basketball. When Seth tries to redirect her over to his dad, the teenage waitress has no idea what a mall is.

Ron has had a lot of ups and downs getting to this point, and his boss Brenda (Zuleyma Guevara) has put a lot of faith in her. The CEO of the company, Jeff Levjman (Lou Diamond Phillips), gives a rousing speech about the project at the kickoff meeting, introduces Ron, and he gives his own impassioned speech. He’s riding high… until an incident involving a chair.

Ron, not exactly the most relaxed person on the planet, is red with anger, and he decides to call the company that makes the chair to tell them how dangerous it is, especially to older employees like Doris (Evangeline Johns). He goes back to the meeting room and finds the name of the manufacturer — the janitor thinks Ron is about to rat him out for using a wheelbarrow — but gets a runaround from the clearing company the manufacturer uses for customer service.

He tries to laugh off the embarrassment with his team, but he’s pretty enraged. Threatening phone calls to customer service don’t help. When one rep tells him he needs proof it might hurt someone, he tries to get the hobbled Doris to walk, but just gets in a confrontation with the amiable Douglas (Jim Downey), who was also in line for the promotion Ron got. He starts to slip on some of the project’s major tasks, like finding security for the build site.

When Ron sees the address of the company, he actually drives there early in the morning, only to see a near-abandoned factory. Then, that night at work, he meets a strange man (Joseph Tudisco), who in no uncertain terms tells him to stop looking into the chair company.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Take Tim Robinson’s Netflix sketch show I Think You Should Leave with a strange comedic series like The Curse, and you get The Chair Company.

Our Take: The Chair Company, created by Robinson and Zach Kanin, works on a couple of different levels. Yes, it’s a purely ridiculous parody of conspiracy dramas that are all over the cable and streaming landscape. We laughed a number of times at how deep Ron is willing to get into his investigation into the chair company, given the low stakes of the incident that sent him down this rabbit hole.

But the show also works as a commentary on the decided lack of transparency and customer service in corporate America; going through the phone tree of any big corporation’s service line could make any of us as enraged as Ron gets.

Third, it’s the examination of a man whose life hasn’t gone exactly as he wanted it to be, but now that it is, even incidents like what happened with the chair will shake him to the core. There’s a scene where Ron looks at pictures of his family as he puts together a rehearsal dinner slide show for Natalie, and he laments over how fast life is going. Playing Jim Croce’s “I’ve Got A Name” before doing it probably didn’t help.

By the end of the first episode, it does seem that Ron has stumbled onto something a whole lot bigger than a broken chair. We’ll see how that affects him, his job and his family. Also, we suspect that things will remain funny, given what the spiraling situation we expect to see the rest of the season.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: Ron is left bleeding and holding a shirt in the parking lot of his office.

Sleeper Star: Jim Downey is creepily dry as Douglas. He’s mostly known as one of SNL‘s most legendary writers, but when he acts every so often, he’s pretty damn funny.

Most Pilot-y Line: “This is a workplace, not a grab-ass parlor!” Ron yells to Douglas.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The Chair Company is a funny parody of conspiracy thrillers that works on a number of levels, thanks to the clever writing of Tim Robinson, Zach Kanin, and their writing team.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.