{"id":138992,"date":"2025-11-17T05:40:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-17T05:40:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/138992\/"},"modified":"2025-11-17T05:40:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T05:40:08","slug":"the-chair-company-recap-season-1-episode-6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/138992\/","title":{"rendered":"The Chair Company recap: season 1, episode 6"},"content":{"rendered":"

To pick up a thread from last week\u2019s The Chair Company recap<\/a>: If there\u2019s anything that bonds Fisher Robay CEO Jeff Levjman, Canton Marketplace at Bear Run lead Ron Trosper, and low-level hood Mike Santini, it\u2019s loneliness. For Ron and Mike, it\u2019s been apparent from the start: Ron sealed off in his home office or office office, conducting frantic Google searches; or Mike shining his shoes in a sad bachelor apartment where the obscenities of Wazy Wayne\u2019s mingle with his neighbors\u2019 blood-curdling screams. In \u201cHappy Birthday, A Friend,\u201d we see further evidence of this in the way new workplace stress puts more distance between Ron and his family or the heartfelt (if incredibly silly) note Mike writes in a birthday card.<\/p>\n

But we\u2019re getting our first true look at Jeff\u2019s isolation this week. We sense it during the gathering in the cold open, when the camera separates him from fellow jagoff executives who include a dead ringer for dead software mogul\/occasional presidential hopeful\/frequent fugitive John McAfee and a guy with the heinous bowl cut of Las Vegas Raiders owner Mark Davis. And it carries over to the rest of the episode\u2014which, to me, is a bit of a step down from the delirious heights of \u201cI Won. Zoom In.<\/a>\u201d\u2014as an emboldened Jeff cuts a bewildering, lone-wolf path across the Canton Marketplace project.<\/p>\n

He tells Ron and Brenda to scrap their current layout, without any clear instructions or coherent requests for what he\u2019d like to see next. He, bafflingly and hilariously, presents Zillow-worthy photographs from his trip to Sedona as a blueprint for a new design. While overworked colleagues crowd together to brainstorm ideas that will satisfy their mad king, Jeff invites himself to Seth\u2019s birthday party, hoping to bounce some ideas around with a more \u201crelaxed\u201d Ron. He arrives and leaves alone, disappointed that the gathering is \u201ckinda like a kid\u2019s party.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s maybe the first time I\u2019ve seen this sort of corporate brainrot parodied so precisely on TV\u2014a more banal variation on the Succession<\/a> or Silicon Valley<\/a> thing of mistaking wealth and a place in the C-suite for intelligence and wide-ranging expertise<\/a>. If you\u2019ve ever worked for someone like this, it\u2019s worth a knowing snicker: You\u2019ve been in Ron\u2019s shoes, and his frustrations are familiar. With the McAfee guy\u2019s taunt about \u201cboxes\u201d burrowing under his skin, Jeff invents a bunch of problems. Naturally, he, and he alone, knows the solutions.<\/p>\n

The Chair Company’s rabbit holes get curiouser in a virtuosic road-trip episode<\/a>The Chair Company flashes back, but its best stuff is in the present<\/a><\/p>\n

And that\u2019s the operative term: alone. Like Mike in the store, staring at that chocolate King Kong and wondering who he could give it to (so sad, so funny). Like Ron at the\u00a0 end of \u201cHappy Birthday, A Friend,\u201d all by himself in a crowded room (of chairs).\u00a0<\/p>\n

That shot, widening in time with Tim Robinson\u2019s dopey grin to reveal row after row of Teccas, is the defining image of the episode. But the one that encapsulates The Chair Company so far comes earlier, when Jeff comes out of the house while Ron is trying in vain to shoo away Mike. Slightly hunched over, awkwardly craning his neck, he\u2019s trapped between the two lonely men helping Ron to make his life a living hell: The one he thought he could be, pre-chair, and the one he\u2019s in danger of becoming, post-chair.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a tug-of-war that\u2019s all over \u201cHappy Birthday, A Friend.\u201d We see it in the hectic, Pere Ubu-backed montage of tense days and nights at Fisher Robay and in Ron\u2019s explosion at the trespassing R\/C enthusiasts that leads to his physical confrontation with Jeff. The inserts of the fight with the dented forehead guy and the barrage of photos and footage timed to the machine-gun breakdown in \u201cLife Stinks<\/a>\u201d are a touch literal, but the point stands: Between his investment in exposing Tecca and Jeff\u2019s unreasonable demands, Ron is coming apart at the seams.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Though this episode begins with more garden-variety strangeness like chasing the headphones guy out of life-of-the-party class and a stilted, monitored coffee break with Amanda, the workplace disruptions and the stuff going on at home gets weirder as the pressures on Ron mount. Mind you, this is different from saying we\u2019re seeing these things because he\u2019s getting more stressed out. Storytelling-wise, I feel like the escalation from \u201cDr. Stevens moved into the office\u201d to \u201ccredible proof that a co-worker has a screwdriver in her abdominal cavity\u201d runs in tandem with the increased tension. Those kinds of gags aren\u2019t always as seamlessly blended into the narrative as they were in \u201cI Won. Zoom In,\u201d but they\u2019re still pretty funny. I got a big laugh out of the guy putting the birthday cake on top of Seth\u2019s puke and declaring, \u201cIt\u2019s fine. It\u2019s covered.\u201d<\/p>\n

Punctuating too many scenes like that takes some of the unpredictability out of The Chair Company, though it\u2019s restored in the final sequence at the \u201c\u201950s Cop Hop.\u201d Amid the doo-wop, carnival rides, and omnipresent police officers, the paranoia and suspense of a big-time thriller set piece intersects with the surreality of Ron potentially getting busted by somebody wearing Halloween-store nerd and Elvis accessories on top of their uniform. I admire the episode\u2019s reverie of a climax, with its maze of connecting rooms and woozy audio\/visual presentation. The exterminator\u2019s hunch paying off is a dream come true for Ron at the end of a nightmare made up of Jeff\u2019s meddling, Mike\u2019s clinginess, and threatening phone calls from some unknown entity.<\/p>\n

But hitting the mother lode like this probably isn\u2019t going to help Ron\u2019s loneliness, something he\u2019s only contributing to by trying to put space between himself and Mike. It\u2019s worth noting he\u2019s by himself in his moment of triumph just as he is when he finds the dubious link between the headphone guy\u2019s tattoos and the color schemes on the Delaware City and Red Ball websites. There\u2019s already so much he\u2019s missing because of work and the investigation, as he\u2019s not up to date on where Barb stands with the Everpump investors and he\u2019s totally unaware of the project Seth started in the basement with Tara\u2019s ponytailed friend Richard.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s humming along in the background of this installment, but while Ron is giving his daughter more reasons to worry about him, he\u2019s also growing alienated from his son. He can\u2019t keep the kid\u2019s friends straight anymore, the clandestine drinking is getting worse, and he\u2019s too distracted\/keyed-up to give into a request to do \u201cthe Pee-wee dance<\/a>\u201d at the party. In his obsession with the chair, Ron is making Seth into a whole other lonely guy. And at the end of this episode, nothing could seem more destructive.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Stray observations<\/p>\n

\u2022 You can feel the aggravation and credit-card debt of a writers\u2019 room full of former improv students in that description of the life-of-the party class. \u201cIt\u2019s mainly people that are really bad at socializing, people that work with their computers a lot. It\u2019s basically a scam\u2014you move up the levels, but they\u2019re basically the same.\u201d\u00a0
\n\u2022 One for The Big Book Of Screamable Tim Robinson Quotes: \u201cSeth! Goddammit. Now the door has a little mark on it.\u201d
\n\u2022 On top of everything else, Ron has to deal with Douglas\u2019 latest idea for boosting office morale: \u201cI\u2019m going to come in dressed as a chicken tomorrow.\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"To pick up a thread from last week\u2019s The Chair Company recap: If there\u2019s anything that bonds Fisher…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":138993,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[156,111,139,69,437],"class_list":{"0":"post-138992","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-new-zealand","10":"tag-newzealand","11":"tag-nz","12":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138992"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138992\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}