The Cutprice Guignol

Sit down, make yourself comfortable, hope the seat you’re in doesn’t break – it’s time to talk about The Chair Company.

Where to begin with this show, honestly? Created by Zach Kanin and Tom Robinson (best known for his superb sketch comedy show, I Think You Should Leave), The Chair Company’s premise is simple: Ron (Robinson), a recently-promoted project head managing the development and construction of a new mall, is humiliated in a work meeting when his chair breaks underneath him. Consumed by the accident, he sets about trying to make a complaint to the company responsible for the production of the chair, only to find a bizarre conspiracy underlying the corporation.

Tonally, The Chair Company lands somewhere around Twin Peaks: The Return if it was told through an outrightly comedic lens. As with Robinson’s iconic work on I Think You Should Leave, there’s an uneasiness to everything, a surreality that never lets you get your feet (or your chair, for that matter) entirely beneath you. Characters that start out in classic tropes, like Mike (Joseph Tudisco), who at first seems to fit into the low-level criminal ally role, slowly spin out into oddly comic weirdness, the world packed with people who are just two degrees to the left of normal. It walks the line between unsettling and comedic, often in the same scene, sometimes in the same sentence –

The Chair Company is a nightmare of bureaucracy, a horror drawn from the endless fucking corridors of Ron’s quest to get to the bottom of what is going on with this damn seat. Ron himself, as the project manager of a new mall, is absolutely part of the system that torments him over the course of this first season – at times, it seems like he’s only comfortable expressing himself via corporation, searching up a random emotional song via keywords so he can cry over pictures of his family while listening to it, leaving existential dread in the confines of the comments. He spends countless hours in the almost liminal space of corporate responsibility, nudged between phone lines and websites and contact forms, where, despite appearances, nothing really seems to mean anything or lead anywhere. The Chair Company is hardly the first to tap into the inherent absurdity of bureaucracy as a form of comedy, but this overlap with horror and conspiracy is a welcome addition that works surprisingly well.

Though I could see how this might be a frustrating first season for some; the finale closes out the series’ mystery with a blunt-ended sort-of explanation that defies all the show’s previously-established sense in a way that feels entirely deliberate. But honestly? I think it’s exactly the ending this season needed. With so many shows built around the engine of a puzzle that is slowly unravelled over the course of a few seasons, The Chair Company is defying that, delivering all this meaning and sense and structure that is completely unravelled in the last few seconds. It’s an anti-puzzlebox show, one that draws you in to a conspiracy only to burst into your living room and stick a finger up your nose in the final scene – it feels very true to Robinson’s style of comedy, which leads you down one mental corridor only to divert you into another at the last second. With a second season on the way, I’ll be interested to see if they keep this approach up, or if there’s going to be a more traditional focus on the mystery in the episodes to come.

The Chair Company is one of the most authentically and brilliantly weird pieces of TV I’ve seen in the last decade – impossibly funny and dense, you really just need to strap in for the ride, and pray to God that the furniture doesn’t make a fool of you in the process. I’d love to hear your take on the show below, and especially what you thought of that ending and where it leaves us for a potential season two!

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(header image via Giant Freaking Robot)