Happy Birthday, a friend.
Season 1
Episode 6
Editor’s Rating
3 stars
***
Ron’s dedication to the investigation is put to the test as his family life and work frustrations take a turn for the worse.
Photo: Sarah Shatz/HBO
This week’s episode of The Chair Company begins with a scene a little more reminiscent of another famous HBO Sunday show. Ron’s boss, Jeff, sits around a fire in Sedona with several of his wealthy bros, flaunting their wealth like the guys from Succession (albeit not quite that rich). Then, in a one-on-one with his buddy Danny, Jeff says it’s nice to get away from the grind and step away from real life. But this is real life, Danny points out. Life is all about these moments, not your nine-to-five. If all you have is that grind — if work becomes your entire reason to wake up, rather than a means to secure a stable and fulfilling life — what do you really have?
Danny’s comments clearly rattle Jeff, who seems to take a lot of pride in how much time and energy he puts into work. So when he returns to the office, Jeff is set on changing things up with the mall design. He shows the team some photos from his trip for vague inspiration but won’t offer specifics, shutting down all their ideas and mood boards. Everyone is completely frustrated and drained from the effort, but Ron takes it the most personally, especially after Jeff shoots him down during a meeting and orders him to “just keep us under budget.” Ron flashes back to the dented head he struck last week, tempted into the same kind of violence against Jeff. (Imagine this pair in a Horrible Bosses sequel.)
Beyond Jeff’s own exquisite dickishness, it makes sense that he can’t actually put a finger on what needs to change with the design. No single change would be enough, even if Fisher Robay procured the world’s best mall consultant, because there’s a different void that isn’t being filled. To Jeff, the mall needs to be more than just a mall, because his life needs to be more than just a mall. Ron and Jeff actually have that in common.
“Happy Birthday, A Friend” is a work-heavy episode in general, keeping all the balls from previous episodes in the air while adding some new ones. Douglas threatens to dress as a chicken to improve morale. Dr. Stevens, the outside observer brought in to watch Ron and Amanda share mundane interactions about muffins, is basically living at the office now, even inviting his parents to stop by and see where he works. And throughout the episode, we get a couple of different glimpses of some nefarious group sneaking onto the Canton site in the dead of night, seemingly sabotaging the development.
As is usually the case on The Chair Company, though, the truth is a lot less scary. When Jeff brings the whole team to the site on a Sunday morning, they run into the trespassers: a group of nerds using the area as a crawler course for their remote-controlled trucks. Enraged, Ron orders them to get off the property, then freaks out and shoves Jeff when he steps in to deescalate. It’s an interesting place to end things with the work storyline; we don’t know if Ron will face consequences from Jeff for that aggro moment, and in general it’s difficult to identify what exactly the “stakes” are for Ron at work right now. I’m genuinely not disappointed at all in the pacing of this show, because it’s so enjoyable on a scene-by-scene basis even when the plot doesn’t progress traditionally, but I did expect things to have unraveled a bit more by now.
There are only two episodes left, but the plot and intensity isn’t necessarily ratcheting up in a linear way, with many of the scariest and most violent moments occurring during deranged side quests. The actual Tecca investigation takes a slight backseat early in this episode, if anything. There is one new lead: a man who bolts when Ron pokes around his “life of the party” class for answers about the mysterious Maggie S. But nobody else there is helpful, even the woman he recognizes as the model who played board member Ronda Scott on the Red Ball Market Global website. Besides, this random guy who might have nothing to do with any conspiracy — after all, Ron coming at him and screaming “How do you know me?” while snapping photos doesn’t exactly encourage calm clarification, and most of these students aren’t comfortable in social situations. There’s not much to go on anymore. Ron is grasping at straws here.
Luckily, the exterminator has plenty of straws on hand. He says that the bug he found in Ron’s home is from Eastern Europe (where both Tecca chair appendices and Thebaine are produced). According to his guys, they’d seen the bug once before in the government buildings of Delaware, Ohio. Ron, really operating at galaxy-brain levels of conspiracy thinking now, recognizes the color scheme on the Delaware website from both the RBMG site and from the “life of the party” guy’s tattoo pattern, blurrily captured on his phone camera. If not for Seth’s birthday party, he’d be heading to Delaware with Mike right away.
That party is good stuff, from Jeff’s unwelcome appearance to Mike’s failed attempts to invite himself inside. But the show is still a little hesitant to get into the meat of Ron’s issues at home. Natalie is still playing along with his delusions, actually encouraging him to visit Delaware City Hall during the fair tomorrow to find proof that the tattooed guy designed the site — possibly because she thinks it’ll help him come to terms with a nothingburger story?
Seth seems unwell. We know he has some project planned, and he’s enlisting the help of Tara’s old ponytailed friend Richard, the sight of whom really startles Ron late at night. But he’s still sneaking drinks in his bedroom, seemingly bummed about how he and his dad have drifted apart recently. Ron is still hounding him about focusing on basketball, and he won’t even do the Pee-Wee Herman dance at his birthday party like the old days. So Seth chugs some of his dad’s bourbon, inevitably vomiting while everyone sings the birthday song. You know what moment doesn’t feel inevitable, though? One unnamed guest making the bizarre choice to set the birthday cake down on the floor on top of the vomit, as if the mere agony of looking at it is intolerable.
Barb is upset that Ron didn’t handle Seth’s drinking like he promised, but everything going on here is still a slow burn, mostly isolated from what Ron has going on elsewhere. And even if Ron is good at jumping to conclusions, he’s not wrong to feel disturbed by the threatening phone calls he’s getting where someone threatens to finally “do something” to him. In Ron’s mind, this isn’t some lark. It’s about protecting himself and his family, making sure nobody shows up at their house in the middle of the night.
So he does go to City Hall after all, though he barely makes it to the file room before a guy credited as “Greaser Cop” confronts him, chasing him through the building until Ron reaches a big room full of Tecca chairs in neat rows. This could be the jackpot he needs, the smoking gun that proves an international drug smuggling operation is afoot. It’s more likely that it’ll all add up to nothing, probably, or a minor cover-up at most. Hell, maybe his own buddy is prank-calling him, and not even the substantiated threats are trustworthy. (I could see Mike doing something misguided to keep their investigation going because he’s lonely.) Ron may finally have to come to terms with the hollowness of this journey and acknowledge the ways in which his picture-perfect life isn’t always so fulfilling after all. Then again, maybe him being totally vindicated would be the biggest twist of all.
• I’m not sure which is more inexplicable and hilarious: Amanda violating a muffin’s structural integrity to check for chocolate chips, or her insistence on eating suggestively while in the middle of a meeting with HR.
• Ron remembers that one of Seth’s friends did something awful to his grandma, and his son clarifies: Todd Greys trapped his grandma in a bathtub with a mattress over the top.
• In one of the many funny-slash-unsettling interactions of the episode, Ron’s stressed colleague reveals her worry that a doctor left a screwdriver inside her during an appendectomy, based on noticing something “push toward the skin” when she moved a magnet near her stomach. What a horrifying detail, like something out of Titane! And in a surreal touch, we actually see a magnet on Ron’s desk pulled toward her.
• “Seth, god dammit! Now the door has a little mark on it.”
• Seth joins Richard to deal with a “fang problem.” What the hell is going on down there?
• At the birthday party, Tara mentions that she’s having vivid dreams from eating “pickles that are alive.”
• “Crazy boring neighborhood. I feel like I’m in The Lego Movie.”
• “Ron, this doesn’t feel like what I was hoping it was going to feel like. This is kinda like a kid’s party.”
• Mike gives Seth a Chocolate Kong for his birthday.
VULTURE NEWSLETTER
Keep up with all the drama of your favorite shows!
Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice