Meet Ron Trosper, a loyal office worker in a small town in Ohio. Ron works for a shopping mall construction company, and his latest project is the first one on which Ron has been appointed project manager, despite the misgivings of some of his superiors. Today is his big day. He'll be giving a speech at the launch!
Ron is the creation of Tim Robinson, the former Saturday Night Live writer and actor who reinvented the American sketch show in 2019 with "I Think You Should Leave." In a new half-hour, eight-episode series that begins as a workplace comedy before delving into the mystery-thriller genre, his alter ego is a typical Robinson character, a variation on the typical comic protagonist who has to bear the burden of being the only sane man in every room.
Creators: Tim Robinson, Zach Kanin
Stars: Tim Robinson, Zuleyma Guevara, Eileen Noonan
Ron is genuinely beset by absurdity, misfortune, idiocy, and the selfishness of others, but he always manages to react in a way that makes everyone around him conclude he's the problem. While Larry David, in Curb Your Enthusiasm, addressed the world's little annoyances rationally but callously, Ron combats them irrationally and with oversensitivity.
The first scene sets the tone: Ron gets angry, and rightfully so, with a waitress who rudely hovers over the family table as his wife, Barb (Lake Bell), tries to toast him. But by the time Ron finishes talking to the young woman, he's engaged in a pointless argument over her refusal to accept that she never shops at malls and has insisted too vehemently on packing half a deviled egg to take home. Later, in the stillness of the night, a restless Ron raises his head, irritated by something else: "I swear I have the worst pillow in town!"
Robinson fans may hear him mentally uttering that line, or the one where he gets overly excited at how good the restaurant's food looks: "This is awesome!" Countless amateur comedians on YouTube and TikTok have borrowed that frantic, off-the-cuff delivery, but without nailing the character details with the same precision as Robinson. Everything his fans would expect from a protagonist is present: Ron, hunched over and always hyperventilating, lurches from one embarrassment to another in his shitty suit, squinting through unflattering glasses, smeared with fingerprints, and tilted to one side.
Of course, Ron's grand introduction spirals out of control with a moment of incredibly well-executed physical comedy that leads our friend to embark on a riotous crusade against a negligent office chair manufacturer. The main story, in which Ron's obsessive persistence leads him to become entangled in a strange conspiracy—there are hints of "Only Murders in the Building" in the way the narrative isn't afraid to unfold haphazardly, while director Andrew DeYoung sometimes films Robinson as if he's in a 1970s paranoid thriller—may be more ambitious than a traditional office comedy, but both are ideal vehicles for Robinson's comedic chops.
In addition to embodying pure, embarrassing rage in his performance, as a screenwriter, Robinson, along with his frequent collaborator Zach Kanin, is brilliant at creating characters and situations, both supporting and one-off, a bit more extreme than what an average comedy would consider appropriate. Whether the script calls for a strangely behaving clerk, a coffee shop owner too busy to answer Ron's questions, or an unhelpful customer service representative who knows nothing about the business he represents, Robinson and Kanin ensure that the interaction has the unforgettable unpredictability and intensity of an "I Think You Should Leave" sketch. All comedy is essentially based on surprises, and in The Chair Company, you never know exactly when the next stupid, massive laugh will arrive. Ron's colleagues also have just the right amount of eccentricity, from the janitor who jealously guards his wheelbarrow to his nemesis, a kindly older colleague who has stopped taking his career seriously and starts blowing bubbles during important meetings.
The test of whether The Chair Company turns out to be great or just very good will be Robinson's ability to sustain itself in a longer, narrative format. Episodes of his hilarious but exhausting sketch show were only 15 minutes long. There are positive signs: beneath all the nonsense, there are hints that Ron is acting out because his two children are growing up and he's worried he's too old to achieve anything, but we can see that his wife and children don't agree that he's a loser and that they are his greatest achievement.
Comments
Post a Comment