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[Editor’s note: The following review contains spoilers for “The Chair Company” Season 1 Episode 8, “Minnie Mouse coming back wasn’t on my bingo card” — the Season 1 finale.]
“Ron’s actually got it all figured out.”
So says Fisher Robay CEO Jeff Levjman (Lou Diamond Phillips) over drinks with his out-of-town friend Grego (Timothy Smallwood) and nearly out-of-work employee Ron Trosper (Tim Robinson). In a sense, it’s the opening Ron’s been waiting for. After shoving Jeff at the job site, Ron’s been on the outs with his boss and colleagues. In fact, unbeknownst to Ron, Jeff may be the last person at the office who still wants him to keep working there.
But instead of humbly thanking Jeff and using the acknowledgement to transition into getting his safe, well-paying position back, Ron takes the statement for what it is: a backhanded compliment — and a challenge.
“Ron, he’s content with a nice, simple life,” Jeff continues. “He doesn’t need to be constantly searching for thrills.”
Au contraire, mon ami! Little does Jeff know how excessive Ron’s thrill-seeking has become, nor how hard Ron’s been trying to rein it in. And Ron’s about to tell him as much when Jeff gets called up for karaoke, but it doesn’t matter: He already pulled the pin in the grenade, and Ron’s primed to explode. That he does so in the relative privacy of Jeff’s office — literally spitting with fury as he flips through secret documents — instead of in public only emphasizes the personal slant his quest is about to take.
Leading up to its closing twist, what Season 1 asks is also what the finale leaves so shrewdly, goadingly open-ended: Why can’t Ron let this go? Why does the Tecca conspiracy have such a hold on him? Is he rebelling against the “nice, simple life” that’s not enough for him, or is he tapping into an intrinsic compulsion that has to be sated?
In other words, is Ron’s investigation a disease he needs to treat, or is it the cure to a long-lingering ailment? And with the emergence of a bizarre new lead — one that pivots on Ron specifically, and one that pushes him to a whole other level of conspiracy thinking — will Ron be able to resist delving further into the darkness, even if he knows it will only exacerbate his sickness?
Throughout Episode 8, “Minnie Mouse coming back wasn’t on my bingo card,” Ron receives sound reason after sound reason to forget all about Tecca, their faulty chairs, and the money the company helped embezzle from citizens of Delaware City.
First and foremost, exposing the theft would torpedo his wife’s business, and Ron can’t do that to Barb (Lake Bell)… or can he? Sure, her top investor is Tecca conspirator Alice Quintana (Kathryn Meisle), but Beth worked so hard setting up Everpump and has been quietly supporting Ron’s secret investigation this whole time, which means she’s been quietly supporting her husband as he recedes from family life and falls deeper into his own private madness.
…except maybe she wasn’t so supportive? In Episode 8, Beth apologizes to Ron for making fun of him behind his back. She says she was just “frustrated” and didn’t mean to mock him for running around like a “dumb detective” on some “cute” case.
Wow, OK. That hurts. But Ron can take it. Right? He knows what he’s uncovered. He knows Tecca’s scam isn’t “dumb” or “cute.” It’s very, very real, and it’s very, very important. But he doesn’t need to tell anyone, because why would he need to tell people about something real and important that only he knows?!
Ron, after all, still has the rest of his family to think about. His son, Seth (Will Price), has been flailing since Ron’s attention drifted, and his daughter Natalie’s (Sophia Lillis) relationship is suddenly in trouble now, too. Things aren’t great at the Trosper house, and even if all their problems aren’t connected to Ron’s obsessive new hobby, for things to get better, he needs to be around more.
…except maybe Ron needs to follow the same advice he gives to Seth and chase what he loves? And maybe Natalie needs to know what her work led to, so the time she spent helping her dad doesn’t seem so trivial next to the fight she’s having with her girlfriend? They got to the truth! They uncovered a conspiracy! If he tells her, maybe it would help!
And helping his family has to take priority over whatever allegiance he once felt to his other “colleagues.” His coworkers threw him under the bus. (Fuck you, Douglas. Go back to the Christmas Adventurers Club and quit angling for Ron’s job.) His boss is part of the Tecca scandal. (I may be misreading things, but it seems like the songs Jeff’s bragging about — the ones that Red Ball International uses for hold music — were written by someone like the dad at the wedding in the opening scene? Stacy Crystals set up the deal, and Jeff bought the rights to “his” songs using some of the illicit money he earned in the Tecca swindle?) Then there’s Mike — oh man, Mike. To borrow a phrase from another outstanding HBO comedy: You’re a disaster, my guy!
Mike (Joseph Tudisco) and Ron’s relationship has always been built on delusion. Mike convinces himself he’s part of Ron’s family (based on an incidental comment no normal person would take seriously), while Ron convinces himself Mike isn’t a dangerous nutjob — even though he knows, deep down, that’s exactly what Mike is. (Whether Mike knows he’s not really a Trosper family member is unclear, whereas Ron’s innate understanding of Mike’s… unpredictably is explicit: He wouldn’t even let Mike inside for Seth’s big group birthday party.)
But that delusion is shattered in the finale when Ron speaks to Mike’s fake daughter — who, it turns out, isn’t his daughter at all and had to get a restraining order against Mike (in addition to an even weirder, kinda heartbreaking, kinda terrifying backstory). Ron now has a choice, and it’s the same choice forced on him by the mystery caller to end the episode:
Will he stop digging, or will he see how far this rabbit hole goes?
Even if he does want to stop, Ron can’t be totally free of Mike just yet — not when Mike’s got the mayor of Delaware City, Greg Braccon (Tom Alan Robbins), chained up in his bathroom (based on another poorly interpreted conversation with Ron). That’s going to be a problem whether Braccon has anything to do with the Tecca scandal or not.
As for the mystery caller, aka the man in the Jason Voorhees hockey mask, aka Amanda’s boyfriend (played by Jeffrey Bean) — well, he represents a brand new temptation. “Jason” (as he’s billed in the credits) tells Ron his chair didn’t fall apart because it was a shoddy old chair rebuilt with used parts; it fell apart because Amanda (Amelia Campbell) made it fall apart with her mind.
Per “Jason,” his girlfriend was exacting her decades-long revenge against Ron for accidentally spitting a jelly bean down her shirt when they were both in high school. Ron embarrassed Amanda back then, so she embarrassed him now. “Jason” had seen her move things with her mind before — is she responsible for Monica’s “magnetic” paper clips in Episode 6? — but now he knows “if she wants something really bad, she can break it.”
OK, so, the rational reaction to this is that Jason’s cuckoo for cocoa puffs. He’s even more deluded and dangerous than Mike, and Ron should just get the hell away from him, forget their conversation, and go back to focusing on Tecca.
…except what about Ron’s quest has ever been rationale? Throughout his pursuit of the truth, he’s seen things and done things that few sane people would believe. He’s pushed himself to perilous extremes, and as he’s done so, “The Chair Company” has pushed further and further into the surreal.
Just in Episode 8, Ron’s encounter with “Baby’s” owner is indecipherable: What’s real and what’s a dream? Logically, you assume Ron walking into the shed, seeing a “new shape,” and being attacked by the strange dog owner is all part of a dream he had after falling down and hitting his head in the woods. But he wakes up twice after falling down, and who’s to say which ensuing encounter is more real in Ron’s extremely strange world? Lest we forget, Ron also wakes up at the start of the episode, after the whole wedding ordeal with the cigar-smoking dad, Stacy Crystals, and a vengeful little boy. Did he dream all that, too?
“The Chair Company” purposefully blurs the line between what’s real and what’s in Ron’s head, as it has from the start. The finale just takes things to another level: What was a financial conspiracy rooted in a big shadowy business is now being framed as a personal transgression carried out with telekinesis.
When considered from a conspiracy theorist’s point of view, that makes sense. Conspiracy theories only tend to get bigger — more and more theories are looped in, their explanations weaving and winding from one justification to the next, as the full picture expands until it’s impossible to see exactly how everything connects (hence the iconic “It’s Always Sunny” meme of Charlie in front of his “evidence” board). Malevolent forces are out to get all of us, sure, but they’re also out to get them, personally. The theory needs to be important, which usually means it affects a lot of people, but the theorist also needs to feel important, which can end up positioning them at the center of the conspiracy.
Is that Ron? Does he need to feel important? And does that need run so deep he’ll be willing to believe the impossible? Or will he retreat to what he’s already proven, closer to his nice, simple life, and away from further, darker, thrill-seeking?
Either way, one thing is clear from that hysterical final freeze-frame: Ron does not have it all figured out.
“The Chair Company” Season 1 is available on HBO Max. Season 2 has already been renewed.
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