“Do They Keep Their Washer and Dryer In Here?”

This week on The Chair Company, Ron went further down the rabbit hole. What’s great about The Chair Company is that the whole show is built around a classically Robinsonian crash out, but here it’s extended over 4 hours rather than 5 minutes as it might be in a sketch. Episode 3, “@BrownDerbyHistoricVids little bit of Hollywood? Okayyyy.”, is a definite step toward the eerie, a mode that the first two episodes only hinted at.

Picking up immediately after the last episode’s cliffhanger, Ron walks over to the closet, opening it to find a freaky little guy who jumps out and attacks him. Chasing him out of the house, Ron is intercepted by Mike Santini, who tells Ron that LT (that’s the guy’s name) works for him. LT is super drunk, having accidentally sent the wrong text to Ron. Ushering Mike and LT into the garage, he tells them to leave him alone, which is interrupted by LT kicking a bunch of Ron’s boxes and knocking them off the shelves (most notably, one labeled Jeep Tours). Ron returns to the Twister game, disturbed, which catches Barb’s eye. The next morning, Barb finds Ron sitting on the couch after a sleepless night. Ron decides to buy a security system for the house.

At Fisher Robay, Ron meets with some outdoorsy types who want to open a location of their REI analogue at Canton Marketplace at Bear Run. As the meeting wraps up, an actual bug climbs into the charging port of Ron’s phone, which one of the reps catches. While Ron’s colleagues thinks collaborating with ARC is an unqualified success, Ron notes that they will want a say on store design and neighbors, interfering with his vision for the mall. Back in his office, Ron takes another dive into the information superhighway to find info on Tecca. After looking up the address on the Licking County, Ohio (this is an actual real place) website, he finds he can only get a report in person.

On his way to the county office, Ron runs into Douglas who brazenly tells him that he’s not invited to his “Green and Yellow Mistakes Party” because you “can’t let your hair down in front of the boss”. At the records office, he signs under Douglas’ name, only for his TV spot to come on the office TV, with his name proudly splashed across the chyron. All goes well (except for the clerk being ordered to go home and shower), and he surreptitiously takes a photo of the record on his iPhone. Elma, the smelly clerk, informs him that the last guy to check the deed for the Tecca address was a “really Mean Guy”. Checking his sneaky photo, Ron finds that all roads lead back to the same address in Newark, Ohio.

While Ron’s on his crusade, Jamie mentions to him that a comment he made about a lack of football-related elements at Canton Marketplace at Bear Run is causing quite a stir. After all, Canton is the home of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and a former Cleveland Brown cried about it on the local news. One guy said in the YouTube comments that “he wants to fuck [Ron] with football”. Continuing his quest, he finds that the deed is owned by Red Ball Market Global. He is immediately placed on hold, and we see him scrolling through their corporate slop website accompanied by their deeply dumb hold music . In the site’s pictures, he notices the red ball he saw in the pilot and he looks up all of the board members. The search turns up nothing of value, and he runs into Mike on his way home. 

Over some beers at a bar, they have a relatively tender moment, where Mike reveals that his ex-wife used to poison him. “Used to make me smell like a duck,” he laments. Hanging up his call to Tecca (he has been on hold for FIVE hours), Ron decides to call his old friends at National Business Solutions to yell at Tecca. He also gets an alert on his phone from his new security system, which has picked up movement in his yard. It turns out that Seth, his high school-age son, has been drinking beers in the yard under cover of night. He leaves a glass of water and two aspirins with a note that says “we gotta talk tomorrow”. It’s quite sweet that, even as he loses himself in his search for answers, Ron is still an earnest, devoted family man. 

The next day, it appears that the football discourse is “blowing up”, and Ron’s feet are going to be held to the fire. Mike lets Ron know that he’s found Steven Droyco, one of the other people who has checked out the Licking County deed. While Ron and Seth talk about the drinking ( all he does is watch Abbott and Costello in his room at night after four beers and feel “happy that they found each other”), Mike shows up and leads Ron to Droyco. When confronted, Droyco reveals that he worked at Tecca and flees the house. 

Seizing the opportunity to enter the seemingly empty home, they find a bona-fide hoarder house piled high with papers and detritus, plus a t-shirt-clad old woman moaning “popcorn” over and over and laying in a pile. Santini says this is Droyco’s presumed-dead mother, so they grab some important-looking papers to hold as collateral over Droyco so he can spill information. After they leave, a mysterious woman with an interesting hairline stomps down the stairs.

Ron enters his home to find Barb sitting at the kitchen island with a glass of wine in her hand. “I didn’t know you would be up drinking wine,” Ron bumbles, joining her. After all, if a wife in a movie is up drinking wine, something bad is happening. Barb pointedly asks if Ron is doing his Jeep tours again, having noticed the box LT knocked over in the garage. When he says he isn’t, she is still suspicious, so he tells her about Seth’s dalliances with the beers, claiming that he bought the security system to keep tabs on Seth. He’s got it handled, though, and they make up. But he still can’t get himself to be honest with her about Tecca.

The next day at work, we see the notorious crying football player video, which has necessitated an all-hands meeting with Jeff, the big boss. During the meeting, Droyco shows up and demands his papers back from Ron. After some pushing, he revealed that he worked for Tecca for four days. Droyco reveals that Tecca “made me work in the nude,” dissembling and reassembling chairs. He also recognizes one of the board members Ron shows him. Back in Jeff’s office, Ron gives an impassioned speech about how Canton Marketplace at Bear Run should not bow to pressure from football fans and stay true to the initial vision. But he’s too late, as his coworker Alon (played by ex-SNL and current Chair Company writer Gary Richardson) successfully advocated for a football theme while Ron was dealing with Droyco. The mall will have “a little something” nodding to Canton’s football legacy. As Ron slumps back, Jeff snaps at him, “Please don’t lean on my wall. This is an office.” Wounded from this exchange, Ron checks a notification on his phone from the security system. He sees an empty office chair in his yard, which someone wearing a hockey mask sits in. Ron looks closer, asks “Jason!?!” And, again, we cut to black.

I really appreciate the ramp-up into full absurd terror that we got with episode 3. Lots of reviewers (myself included) have compared The Chair Company to the work of David Lynch, which often feels like an easy comparison for something kind of weird and spooky, but a few moments (especially LT in the closet) have the same truly strange and off-center style of surprise that Lynch became so known for. I also found myself thinking about comedy makers who have pivoted to horror like Jordan Peele and Zach Cregger. Famously, the function of a joke and a scare are the same, and are structured similarly as a result. It stands to reason that Robinson and Kanin have the skills to not just create a disturbing atmosphere, but also pepper it with surprises.

What was great in this episode?

• The slow arc of Douglas’ “Mistakes” party, from his non-invite to Ron, the office buzz about it, Jamie’s announcement that he “turned into a monster” at the party, and the final beat of Amanda (who Ron accidentally upskirted) wearing a green bracelet, indicating that she was eager to make mistakes.
• Ron’s worship of his father… Chris Fleming has a bit about Tom Cruise listening too much to his father (which is actually not true but that’s beside the point), and those traits are on display in spades with Ron.
• Ron gives a kind of enshittification thesis while he’s drinking with Mike: “People make garbage, and you can’t talk to anybody… I wanna SCREAM at them”. This line encapsulates what about The Chair Company speaks to our moment. Nothing works and you can’t hold people accountable for it, whether that’s via AI, ghosting, or just incompetence.
• The plot line about Seth and beers was kind of fun. I think Seth might just be a little dumb, if he’s just having four beers because it makes him feel silly. There’s no strife here, just a teen boy watching Abbott and Costello in his bedroom at night.
• The performances of various guest stars subtly playing to the inherent chaos is also excellent. Shout out to Grace Reiter, who has made the jump from front-facing videos to off-Broadway to playing Tara, Natalie’s fiancée. Her freak out about possibly injuring herself while playing Twister was a lovely sprinkling of paprika in the background of the scene, like Jamie sobbing in the background during Ron’s interview last episode. I also really like Lou Diamond Phillips’ icy performance as Jeff. I have a theory about Jeff, but I’ll hold off if it starts to play out.

What do you think will happen next week? Are we about to see a bunch of Tecca workers building chairs in the nude? What’s going on with Droyco’s family? According to IMDb, episode 4 is directed by Aaron Schimberg, director of the underseen Chained for Life and last year’s black comedy A Different Man, so expect some wild shit. See you next week!