You can’t have a conspiracy thriller without the conspiracy theorist, and The Chair Company has a doozy in Ron Trosper. He’s an impulsive square with a hair-trigger temper, a destructive need for recognition and attention, and, most dangerous of all, unfettered internet access. We’re compelled by Ron’s quest to find order and logic in a disorderly and illogical universe, a trait he shares with other characters who’ve seen through the matrix and attempted to awaken all the sleepers around them. We laugh at Ron because of the teensy, tiny dimensions of the domino that’s causing all the other ones around it to fall.
But do we need that explained to the degree that “Bahld Harmon Birthplace (Disputed)” does? Dipping in and out of flashbacks to Ron and Barb quitting their jobs to pursue their dreams, this is the series’ most structurally adventurous episode to date. But it’s shouldering a lot of plot, too, delivering Ron to a grandiose conclusion about what Tecca is hiding (opioids in the chairs).
Meanwhile, we see a map of how we got to this point with glimpses from six and five years in the past, when Barb and Ron each, as mentioned, quit their jobs to pursue their dreams. She wanted to develop “a portable, stylish breast pump” (a.k.a. Everpump, which was referenced last week). We already know what he wanted to do, but now we get to see just how spectacularly his plans for a Jeep-adventure business imploded. The flashbacks are neat, casting the Trospers’ big risk in the optimistic glow of sunlight through living-room windows and barroom Christmas lights. But I feel like if this is The Chair Company capitalizing on the length of its episodes and first season in order to flesh out its characters, then Ron using a spreadsheet to assemble his Pepe Silvia board illustrates just as much about him and his personality as viewing excerpts from his business’ collapse.
And so the question “Is Ron seeing connections that aren’t there?” runs headlong into the question “Is it enjoyable to know this much about what makes Ron tick?” At least his drunk declaration about showing the kids “that you don’t have to settle—you can do what you love” grounds his actions in some sincerity. If we’re going to spend four more weeks with this guy, I suppose we ought to be able to sympathize with him and his desire to make something of his life. We’re clearly meant to connect the dots between his new obsession and his spinout over his expensive, potentially investor-concussing entrepreneurial failure.
Natalie certainly does, with the episode’s final flashback showing us what Ron looked like from his daughter’s POV five years ago (read: bad times at the Trosper house). But it sets up a tricky balance for The Chair Company to maintain: to keep us laughing at Ron’s outlandish behavior even though we know the concerns his family has about it and the all-too-human motivations behind it. Whatever happens after this week’s episode, there’s bound to be a tinge of tragicomedy.
Fortunately, there are still heavy doses of comedy comedy in “Bahld Harmon Birthplace (Disputed).” “That’s really bizarre,” Ron remarks a couple of times while he sifts through the dirt he and Mike have gathered on Tecca. But his day-to-day life is plenty bizarre to begin with, punctuated by co-workers popping into his office to fret about the “treat” their boss has planned for later in the week (“Do you think it’s going to be like a dessert or like a book?”) and a future daughter-in-law whose current work assignment involves making Wendy’s new Almond Pimento Burger look photogenic. It continues to be fun to see where and when the Chair Company team decide to flex their sketch-comedy instincts within this type of serialized story. I can totally picture the goateed tuba mascot for Miss Maddy’s Beignets causing trouble for Tim Robinson in an I Think You Should Leave sketch.
Here, however, Ron is tormented by an escalating series of online impersonations seemingly orchestrated by the Tecca people. They’re all amusingly novel and (save for the email to Jeff demanding a raise and declaring a love of being paid money) harmless: first a fake eBay listing for some Beatles figures, later a couple of applications for modeling gigs. It’s another game of proportionality, each little nuisance engineered for a big Robinson blow-up. This extends to the look and feel of “Bahld Harmon Birthplace (Disputed),” too: During the second of the modeling calls, Ron ducks into an empty office, and the camera shoots Robinson as if he’s trapped in an impenetrable white void. A fake out later in the episode, blinding police lights, handheld cinematography, and some ominous clanging (plus, naturally, Robinson shouting at the top of his lungs) combine to create a sense of peril that’s cleverly undercut by the reveal that the cops are there to collect a donation of one Big Green Egg.
Whether the heat is coming from the shadowy forces of Tecca or an HR investigation that has now roped in an outside observer to Ron’s interactions with Amanda, he can’t help but take it personally. In an episode full of priceless Tim Robinson reactions, my favorite is Ron’s disbelief at the titular Bahld Harmon beating him out for the second modeling job. And when pressed about a yearbook photo that seemingly shows that Ron and Amanda hung out in high school, his response suggests he’s offended at HR impugning his campus social standing, not his sense of honesty.
This is the truly illuminating material in “Bahld Harmon Birthplace (Disputed),” and it aligns with the righteousness with which Ron describes dissecting the Tecca chair to Natalie. That spiel and its accompanying montage of chair-part inspection and zoomed-in web pages are kicked off by Natalie telling her father that she admires how he’s supporting his wife while Barb courts investors for Everpump. All this, plus the overriding paranoia that someone, somewhere, was out to get him with the faulty chair, shows how deeply Ron wants to be the center of attention. This is where the flashbacks are at their subtlest, what with Ron piggybacking on Barb’s bold leap into the unknown and the way he talks about his dad.
Well, joke’s on him, because thanks to the nose he poked into Tecca’s business, now he is. And with a head full of half-baked ideas about hydraulic levers, Hungarian exports, and pharmaceutical-company boards of directors, he’s about to make sure that they’re not the only ones keeping tabs on Ron Trosper. Fortunately for Ron, Natalie’s got an eye on him, too. As we learn from the “Bahld Harmon Birthplace (Disputed)” flashbacks, she’s been through this kind of thing before. But as we know from The Chair Company’s present, she has no idea what her dad’s conspiracy theory has dragged her into.
Stray observations
- • The Chair Company stocked its writers’ room with some Saturday Night Live all-stars: This week, it’s Sarah Schneider of “(Do It On My) Twin Bed” and The Other Two fame. (And if you’re wondering why Schneider wasn’t joined here by her longtime writing partner and The Other Two co-creator Chris Kelly, feel free to read news coverage of that utterly timely comedy’s untimely end.)
- • The prominent place that Christmas and Halloween iconography holds in the Robinson-Kanin canon is really charming to me. Before the cold open was revealed to be a flashback, I was thrilled at the idea of The Chair Company doing a full-on Christmas episode. Alas, it’s just scene-setting—but it sets up the ending nicely, too, with the brass-and-choral rendition of “Ding Dong Merrily On High” that soundtracks the escape from Barb’s office party returning to underline the triumph of the investors’ dinner.
- • There is some top-shelf drunk acting from Tim Robinson and Lake Bell in that cold open. They really epitomize a longtime couple cutting slightly loose during that conversation in the bar.
- • From opening the exchange with “Hello, I’m here for the boys” to his response to Ron’s “Have a nice day” (“How?”), the disgruntled eBay buyer feels like another I Think You Should Leave refugee who found their way to The Chair Company.
- • It’s sad not to see Douglas this week, but it’s for a couple of good reasons: 1.) to give Ron more reason to worry about forging Douglas’ signature at the recorder’s office, and 2.) to reveal that following the mistakes party, he got trapped under his fridge.
- • Fisher Robay being within the vicinity of two competing beignet places is a nice world-building touch.
- • Ron and Barb’s accommodations at Tara’s are far from ideal: “It stinks.” “It doesn’t stink. It just smells like burger. That’s good.”
- • Is Ron worked up about the Tecca-Brucell Pharma connection? Yeah, I guess you could say that. “Can I see your phone?” “Yeah, absolutely. It’s a little wet—I’ve been squeezing it.”
