‘The Chair Company’ Review: Tim Robinson’s New HBO Series Is ‘Twin Peaks: The Return’ Meets ‘I Think You Should Leave’

Over the course of his comedy career, Tim Robinson has reveled in mining the horror of humiliation for laughs. His most iconic characters long for connection, but miss some key social cue or suffer a critical slight that renders this simple dream impossible.

Tim Robinson and long-time collaborator Zach Kanin‘s new half-hour comedy series The Chair Company — premiering this Sunday, October 12 on HBO and HBO Max — takes the grotesque, absurdist humor they’ve honed in Detroiters, I Think You Should Leave, and Friendship and blows it up tenfold. When Ohio-based mall developer W. “Ron” Trosper (Tim Robinson) becomes convinced of a wide-ranging conspiracy, he embarks on a journey that will leave you laughing, disgusted, and borderline broken.

The Chair Company is the latest highbrow comedy series that feels far more influenced by David Lynch and Mark Frost‘s Twin Peaks: The Return than classic sitcoms. Like Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie‘s equally discomfiting The Curse, The Chair Company uses a warped fun house mirror to give us an unflattering, yet unflinching, portrait of modern life. The jokes are there, but more often than not they are born out of terror, not joy; confusion, not catharsis.

The Chair Company opens with family man Ron Trosper enjoying what appears at first glance to be a picture perfect life. His beautiful entrepreneur wife Barbara (Lake Bell) is fully devoted to him, his daughter Natalie (Sophia Lillis) is getting married, and teenaged son Seth (Will Price) is getting scouted for sports scholarships to college. Ron is also about to ascend the corporate ladder at Fisher Robay, where he will oversee the creation of a modern and sustainable mall.

The Chair Company knows that Ron’s job is tied to a dying American dream in 2025. “I don’t think I’ve been to a mall,” a perky young waitress tells Ron in the cold open. “Yes, you probably have,” he insists, their back-and-forth quickly cratering into the comic push-and-pull of many ITYSL sketches.

Everything seems to be going great for Ron — until he is publicly embarrassed in a big way. That’s when Ron begins living a double life, struggling to maintain face while digging deeper and deeper into a dark conspiracy he sees sprawling right under our noses. A dark conspiracy he believes is actually responsible for his shame. At first glance, Ron is just another one of Robinson’s trademark misfits, but he has a heart of gold. Throughout The Chair Company, Ron pauses to appreciate the people he loves, the comforts he enjoys, and the moral code he sees faltering around him. This tenderness allows Ron to remain an everyman no matter how bizarre the situation gets. It also means that we, the audience, often want to hide under a desk in shame or scream in confusion alongside with him. The Chair Company becomes all the more disturbing because of how relatable it is.

After watching the seven (of eight) episodes HBO sent to critics for review, I felt like I was becoming Ron myself, seeing patterns and conspiracies that may or may not be there. I began to notice the similarities between the retail scams and small injustices Ron suffered with what exists in plain daylight every day. At one point, I began to feel like I was losing my mind. “Was this half-hour comedy about a dude in Ohio obsessing over chair really about the Epstein Files?” I wondered to myself. A standout supporting performance by comedy great Jim “I’m talking about Jeff Epstein, the New York financier” Downey as Ron’s office rival only made me think it was! (It’s not.) (Wait, is it?)

The Chair Company depicts life in modern middle-class America as a flat, beige hell, dotted with the odd copse of green trees, occasionally warmed by the glow of Christmas lights. We learn that Ron once had a dream to run a Jeep tour company that drove guests around nature in circles. Now, in his search for clues, he circles through leads that just redirect him back to where he started. It’s an endless loop of more questions and few answers.

At times, I hated watching The Chair Company. It made me reflect upon the strange nightmare of being alive in 2025. Grifters enjoy glory, AI has replaced actual thought, and the system seems increasingly rigged against everyday folks. A conspiracy theory offers a unique form of solace in times like these. It not only gives the victimized a shadowy leviathan — greedy tentacles infecting every part of life — to blame, but also semblance of order in the chaos. After all, a conspiracy is a plot. For some, that’s more comforting than the reality that we’re all just a bunch of cells colliding at random in the gaping maw of the universe.

The Chair Company drives the shank even deeper by constantly questioning if we should be taking Ron’s investigation seriously or not. The show is, after all, a comedy full of biting satire and zany humor. Both Ron Trosper (the character) and Tim Robinson (the actor) love to contort their faces into clownish expressions for laughs. We’re supposed to find all this funny, and yet, the Lynchian energy of the show — right down to shots that seem borrowed from the late, great auteur’s oeuvre — warn us otherwise.

The Chair Company is a strange, sensitive work of art that once again establishes co-creators and long-time collaborators Tim Robinson and Zach Kanin as the evil comic geniuses of their generation. This show might be the worst time I had watching TV all year, leaving me upset, perplexed, and yearning to shower with a power washer. The extreme reactions it will no doubt inspire marks The Chair Company as an absolute triumph, especially for those who find themselves missing the singular manner in which David Lynch explored of the underbelly of American life.

The Chair Company premieres on HBO and HBO Max on Sunday, October 12 at 10 PM ET.