Ron (Tim Robinson) sums up the state of… well, just about everything in the new trailer for HBO’s The Chair Company, released Thursday.”There’s so much badness in this world,” he says. “We’re completely helpless in here, we have no protection at all.” But how does anybody deal with this much badness? We’ll see how Ron handles it when the series premieres on October 12, but by the looks of the trailer, he doesn’t do particularly well.
HBO hasn’t revealed much about The Chair Company, keeping the logline simple: “After an embarrassing incident at work, a man (Robinson) finds himself investigating a far-reaching conspiracy.” A few more details are available on, of all places, the show’s poster. “There’s a whole world under the surface and only Ron has any idea about it. And sometimes the two worlds collide, and sometimes they don’t,” it reads. “Ron holds them at arm’s length from each other. Watch every week to find out when he can and when he can’t.”
The Chair Company trailer is quintessential Tim Robinson—that is to say, funny but also kind of unsettling, straddling the line between silly and serious. His persona is also helpfully summed up in the trailer: “There’s a darkness to you, Ron… but there’s also a light.” Speaking with Variety, Friendship director Andrew DeYoung (who serves as director and EP on The Chair Company) said, “Zach [Kanin] and Tim are pushing into brand new territory, and it’s really exciting to watch them do that. It’s a comedy that’s wrapped in a mystery, and the premise is so perfectly Zach and Tim. [It feels] like a sketch that becomes an entire show. It’s really beautiful what they’re doing. I feel so lucky to be involved.”
Similarly, series co-star Lou Diamond Phillips told The AU Review that the process of making The Chair Company was “Incredibly gratifying, but also very different, in the respect that Tim and his (writing) partner, Zach Kanin, came from SNL (where) they rewrite constantly. They’re trying new things. I mean, I can do a scene a dozen different ways and I’ll usually leave set knowing how it’s going to be cut. In this, I don’t know. You just have to be so fluid. You just have to roll with it. And that’s a wonderful tight rope to walk.”
