And so does the feeling that everyone Ron and Mike meet on their out-of-town jaunt has, as an improv teacher might call it, a strong “game”—that hook of a comedic scene or character that can be repeatedly revisited and heightened. For Oliver, it’s the Scrooge thing. Ron sets one up for the ponytailed guy with the dented forehead plate when he spots his elbow hovering dangerously close to some cheese soup. It might sound like one-dimensional writing, but it’s all we need from characters who largely exist as obstacles to the next clue. They get in some good gags, contribute to the feeling that Ron is in over his head, and then The Chair Company moves on.
If nothing else, it is, as previously stated, an interesting approach to making narrative TV. The spine of “I Won. Zoom In.” is relatively straightforward—Mike and Ron get a lead, pursue it, suffer the consequences, and come out of the experience with a new closeness—but it’s supporting all of these funny little interludes and tangents. Some of them advance the plot, like Oliver’s anecdote about how he became “Ken Tucker” or Steve’s scatological revenge plot and its overlap with Ron’s Tecca visit. Others are just there for the laughs, like Douglas’ tale of surviving his fridge ordeal by grabbing stuff from the freezer—the sort of comedic nonsense that Jim Downey was born to deliver with the straightest of faces.
This all comes together spectacularly at Oliver’s apartment. I’m bowled over by the way the sequence moves: In such a short span of time and a small amount of space, multiple fights break out, a guy climbs a light pole, and several setups from the bar are paid off. The copper mug, the squatting acting coach, the dealer Oliver paid in phony “Scrooge money”—they all come back in an impressive flurry. When Ron gets slammed through the bedroom door, it doesn’t just open up another room for the chaos to flow into. With its contrasting paint color and brighter lighting, it’s like they’ve busted into a whole other dimension. That feeling only intensifies when Ron chases the dealer into the basement, where a subterranean labyrinth leads to yet another disturbing and baffling realm where Ron has to degrade himself to escape.
If I may get highfalutin for a moment, there’s this whole motif of crossing thresholds and barriers this week that really brings The Chair Company’s “down the rabbit hole” nature to life. Even more so than the detour to Tamblay’s, Oliver’s unnamed hometown feels like it’s worlds away from Ron’s day-to-day—an impression underlined by the way day turns into night during the driving scenes and how their layered, bleary-eyed imagery slams into that intimidating shot of the mounted fox’s head at the bar. From that point forward, we can expect things to get curiouser and curiouser, and they do with every new room the camera wanders into—until Ron wakes up in the emergency room. (Want to push the Alice In Wonderland parallels even further? Get a load of the Cheshire Cat grin on Ron’s fellow patient. Also: As Humpty Dumpty, Oliver is technically playing a Lewis Carroll character in the photo-hunt punchline to episode four’s cliffhanger.)
And yet the biggest surprise of the episode lies in the dimensions it gives Mike. Why did he bring an extra shirt with him, and why did he previously spend some time in this Twilight Zone outside of Dayton? It turns out he has an estranged daughter who lives nearby. He and Ron are able to make it back home after their dark night of the soul—but, as the situation with Mike’s daughter proves, there are some lines that, once you cross them, can never be uncrossed.
It’s a telling inverse to the band of idiots we meet in “I Won. Zoom In.” Despite a taste for meatballs made of “gray beef” and ramshackle living quarters where the neighbors are always screaming, Mike is no cartoon character. He’s a person with wants and regrets that The Chair Company treats almost as seriously as Ron’s. They are, perhaps to Ron’s eventual dismay, kindred spirits. It’s to the show’s credit that I can laugh at their foibles and still be touched by the care they show each other in those texts at the end of the episode. It helps that the scene is capped off by one final quasi-sketch flourish, with a Dickensian porn parody that would fit in right alongside the I Think You Should Leave holiday classic “The Night Scrooge Saved Christmas.”
For all I’ve said about the uniqueness of “I Won. Zoom In,” I have to admit that at its chaotic peak, I was reminded of another half-hour HBO wrecking ball from a Saturday Night Live alumnus: Barry’s “Ronny/Lily.” I recall that episode getting a lot of flack at the time for breaking the reality of what had previously been a fairly grounded show; The Chair Company’s own drift into Wackyland was well underway before “I Won. Zoom In.” It feels like this is by design: The deeper Ron digs into Tecca, the stranger things get. Heightening from “a bar full of coke heads descends upon Ron and Mike in the apartment of a method-acting Scrooge” may seem difficult, but consider this: Barry did the surrealist bike chase of “710N” the season after “Ronny/Lily.” As outrageous as this week’s episode was, I have a feeling we’ve only begun to see the depths of The Chair Company’s rabbit holes.
Stray observations
- • The Chair Company fun facts: Alberto Isaac is married to Emily Kuroda, a.k.a. Mrs. Kim from Gilmore Girls.
- • Jamie clutching her newly adopted crucifix as she watches her boss sadly walk away from the ledge is a good button on the road-trip scenes. And if you watch Douglas’ fridge monologue closely, you’ll notice she’s doing the same thing. That’s some smart prop work from Glo Tavarez.
- • Kudos to The Chair Company’s sound team on some eerily immersive work: While watching the scene in Mike’s apartment, I got spooked about somebody screaming bloody murder outside of my apartment. It wasn’t until I took the headphones off that I realized the noises were just in the “I Won. Zoom In.” sound mix.
- • Mike’s apartment holds all sorts of mysteries: “Ah, what the hell, there’s barf in the sink. Goddamn it.”
- • Isaac puts English on every one of his lines in the bar, but the way he says “I tried to do Scrooge in a jail” really tickled me.
- • The detail that Ron suffered two concussions in short succession—once when Mike hit him with the pipe, and later when the coke dealer smacked him in the head with Oliver’s iPad—feels like something to make note of. Likewise the nurse’s warning that “another hit could cause some very serious permanent damage.”
- • No joke: An invitation to opening night of a local production of A Christmas Carol landed in my inbox while I was writing this recap.
