“They’re Just Saying Stuff.”

Welcome back to the Chair Company recap!

When we last left our intrepid hero Ron Trosper, he was chasing down a man who hit him with a pipe. Ron’s prey evaded capture by unbuttoning his patterned shirt and slipping out of it, but perhaps that was a foolish idea.

Episode 2, entitled “New blood. There’s 5 Rons now”, opens with Ron’s wife Barb (Lake Bell) in bed, surprised to find her husband gone. He’s out on a run when he receives a text from Barb that he has to come home right away. Fearing the worst (perhaps a shirtless man wielding a pipe?), he dashes home, only to find that the emergency is about a change of venue for their daughter Natalie’s wedding. Erebus, a haunted barn in town, has been her fiancée Tara’s dream venue and it’s finally opened up. Despite protests from Ron (“Grandma’s 91! No, 93!”), he decides to forge ahead to make his daughter happy. All he has to do is convince Tara’s reluctant father. But that’s business for later on, since Ron is making an appearance on the local news later that day. 

The trip to the work site offers Ron a perfect opportunity to follow up on some leads from his assault. Pulling up at work, Ron finds the pipe. Like any great Tim Robinson character, he covers his relatively innocuous behavior with a far-fetched excuse. He’s looking for a chocolate that he dropped because he wants something sweet for after lunch. “I’m supposed to get spaghetti,” he tells a coworker.

At his desk, Ron takes a picture of the shirt and runs a reverse image search, via an airdrop facilitated by him aggressively tapping his phone on his desktop monitor. He finds a match and a local store that sells that particular shirt, and asks his assistant, Jamie, not to accompany him to the shoot. Citing HR’s shakiness on Ron’s ability to deliver, Jamie has to go along with him. Ron compromises, asking her to drive herself and follow him in his car. Before he heads out, Ron purchases a fingerprint dusting kit on Amazon for the pipe. On the way, Ron runs a red to lose Jamie, where she almost gets cut off by a large truck. Jamie, who previously mentioned she was a nervous driver, loses her shit, sobbing as Ron speeds away.

On the way, he stops at Tramblay’s, the men’s shop that carries the shirt. Asking the clerk if he knows who may have bought the shirt, the clerk analyzes the shirt, noticing that the buttons are at their limit and that there’s dirt on the back. He “know[s] a guy who’s at his limit,” a member of Tramblay’s exclusive club. Ron can’t get any information as a non-member so he joins for $65 dollars, only to learn that the clerk was bluffing.

During the TV shoot, Jamie is inconsolable, and the interview plugging Canton marketplace at Bear Run goes smoothly, only interrupted by Tramblay’s members-only group chat which is overstuffed with middle-aged dudes celebrating Ron joining. At home, Ron is disappointed to find that the fingerprint kit’s magnifying glass is way small and the included hat is even tinier, with “no seam or anything”. He gets some emails from the Tramblay’s gang as well, including an announcement of one of them becoming a grandfather.

The next day at work, Ron is called in to HR to discuss the upskirt incident from the first episode. Among the line of questioning is if “there were any way that” Ron “doctored the chair” and questions about his relationship with Amanda. While they went to the same high school, Ron insists that they “were in completely different crews”. While it’s just a formality, Ron has to watch a video on Peeping Toms, where the dirt on a character’s jacket inspires Ron to check the trees next to the parking lot.

Finding white rocks that match the stains on the shirt, he digs around, finding a styrofoam container from Jan’s Cafe half-filled with rice. At Jan’s, he finds a chaotic hive of scum and villainy, full of dirtbags of various stripes screaming and throwing things. When he tries to get help, the security guard emerges, only to be the very man who hit Ron the other night. Cornering him in a closet, the mysterious man tells him to disappear, throwing garbage at Ron and claiming he doesn’t know who hired him. He does reveal that his name is Mike Santini and is a mercenary of sorts. All Ron needs are answers, though, so Mike offers him a burner phone where he will contact him with more information.

While Ron is at the office apologizing to Jamie, the phone goes off in the thermos he has stashed it in, and he joins Santini in the car. Listening to Wazey Waynes, a hyper-obscene shock-jock duo, on the ride, Mike reveals his plans to ambush a guy, forcing a gun into Ron’s hands. Panicking, and listing all the things he likes about his life, including “making love to Barb on a soft bed”, he runs off.

Back at home, Tara and her parents have joined the Trospers for a game night. Ron talks to Tara’s dad out on the patio and convinces him to let the wedding go ahead at Erebus. Bonding over their love for their daughters, he agrees, and they go inside to play some more games. Silently confirming to Natalie that they’re on for Erebus, Ron once again feels pretty good about things. But just as his life starts looking placid, he gets a text on the burner phone that reads “no way out”, accompanied by a picture of Ron taken from the hall closet. Before he can get up to investigate, the Twister mat unfurls, and there’s a hard cut to black.

The mystery at the heart of The Chair Company is beginning to reveal itself. I’m excited to see what we learn about Mike Santini, Ron’s Charonesque guide to the dark side. Does he know anything about Tecca? Is he bluffing? Or is he more important than he’s letting on.

Here are some highlights from the episode for me:

• The continuing trend of Lynchian service worker characters. I guess the guy at Tramblay’s is the owner of the store they shot at, and his uncanny energy is just perfect.
• Tara’s father hyperfixating on the Trosper’s poorly-behaved (deceased) dog, and then trying to find issues with the family’s home (“it stinks around here”, “Stone’s loose!” on the patio) in the dog’s absence.
• The through line of the the tiny hat from the fingerprint kit, from Ron gifting it to Seth to Seth putting it on his backpack.
• The sheer chaos of Jan’s Cafe.
• Glo Tamarez’s performance as Jamie! Her softly sobbing in soft focus behind the camera crew was so subtle and silly.
• And, of course, Wazey Waynes. I don’t feel comfortable typing out any of what those guys are saying, but if you’ve seen the episode, you know what I’m talking about.

I also really appreciated seeing recurring themes from Robinson and Kanin’s work showing up in Episode 2. Some of the present themes in this one include: haunted buildings, driving faux pas, paying too much money to join groups, and extremely strange informational videos.

What did you love about this episode?

See you next week!