In an age filled with gritty murder dramas, high-concept fantasy series and 50 Taylor Sheridan shows, you may want something a bit…different. And a new HBO Max series, The Chair Company, is about as different as you get.
The Chair Company is delightfully weird, so much so that it’s racked up a certified 100% fresh Rotten Tomatoes score from dozens of critics. The weekly HBO Max comedy has launched a number of new memes already, as its star frequently does. That would be Tim Robinson of I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson, his absurdist Netflix sketch show that I would compare to The Chappelle Show, perhaps. Not in content, obviously, but with its type of cultural influence with references and inside jokes among viewers.
The Chair Company is the same style of humor stretched into an extremely long skit. Or rather, a bunch of skits stitched together in something that resembles a coherent plotline. Oddly, it also has a compelling mystery in the middle of it as Robinson’s Ron tries to uncover the shady origins of a company that sold him a faulty chair that broke and embarrassed him at a presentation.
The show also stars Lake Bell and Sophia Lillis as Ron’s wife and daughter, but they are essentially the only “straight” men (women) in the show, while Robinson and his cast of supporting characters are doing the wacky comedy lifting. There have only been two episodes so far, but each has produced at least 3-4 quotable jokes in the vein of I Think You Should Leave already.
It is, of course, very important to put a warning label on this. You really have to be accepting of this style of comedy or else it’s going to come off as bizarre and off-putting. In that sense, heading to Netflix to watch I Think You Should Leave, at least some of it, as a primer, is probably recommended. I mean, you can go in cold if you want a longer story instead of five minutes of jokes at a time, but I do wonder how that might go. Maybe it’s better? You can let me know. Here’s a sample skit below:
I think this is why audience scores may be a bit lower, a 79% compared to the 100% critic score. That’s almost an identical mirror to the 73%/97% audience/critic split for I Think You Should Leave itself. Robinson can be an acquired taste.
How is The Chair Company performing? It’s #2 on HBO Max, only behind the high-profile crime series Task, which just ended its run. This is also a zero-budget production, more or less, so it’s just a matter of keeping Tim Robinson around to do more, or if he’s heading back to I Think You Should Leave, or doing something else entirely. At this point, he has to have a blank comedy check.
Watch it, see if it’s for you. If not, keep watching it. You’ll get there.
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