How ‘The Chair Company’ sets up ‘a sense of normalcy before things go insane’

After a big corporate presentation, a man falls off his chair. Chaos ensues.

For most creatives, it would be the setup for a single joke. But for Tim Robinson and Zach Kanin, best known for co-creating the sketch comedy show “I Think You Should Leave,” it’s an idea that spawned an entire series: the bizarre, brilliant comedy-cum-conspiracy thriller “The Chair Company.” You’ve never seen anything else like it.

When I joined a Zoom call to speak to writers Robinson and Kanin and director Andrew DeYoung about their Emmy-nominated work on the premiere episode, “Life Goes by Too F— Fast, It Really Does,” I found myself staring at an empty room full of chairs. A fitting irony, given everything in the show is changed when Ron (Robinson) falls off one.

Robinson and Kanin’s creative process is all about pushing things as far as they can without going over the edge. “It’s a balancing act,” says Kanin, noting everything has to serve the overall story. “It’s a gut feeling,” adds Robinson.

“The Chair Company” opens on a family dinner with Ron, wife Barb (Lake Bell) and their two children. Barb is toasting Ron and his accomplishments, but he can’t pay attention because the waitress is standing awkwardly at the table. When she finally leaves, Ron declares: “The f— was that? What a weird person!”

The scene sets an expectation for what we can expect from the show as a whole: It’s funny, but there’s something unsettling to how it unfolds. It’s off-kilter. And it’s chock-full of quirky, larger-than-life characters.

For Kanin, the scene delivers “a sense of normalcy before things go insane.”

That insanity comes when Ron delivers a big presentation announcing the development of a mall in Canton, Ohio. He’s a project manager, and it’s his company’s most ambitious project to date. Ron pulls off the speech and gets an enthusiastic round of applause. “You want to make it feel real, but you also want to subvert it. You need to think: ‘We’re following his rise,’” says Kanin.

But when Ron sits back down onstage, his chair breaks, and he falls flat on the floor.

An embarrassing fall onstage at a corporate presentation sets “The Chair Company’s off-kilter conspiracy in motion.

(Virginia Sherwood / HBO)

It’s impossible not to laugh. But a feeling of horror washes over you when you realize this is the darkest moment of Ron’s life. “The horror is coming directly from Ron. He’s a proud person who has [his] heart broken in front of everybody when he falls,” says Robinson. “He cares about his appearance and how he’s perceived all the time. Now there’s a massive blemish on that reputation, even if it’s in his own mind. You want the audience to feel sad for him.” The word “humiliation” came up repeatedly in our conversation. “We share a lot of joy around humiliation,” DeYoung says about what makes the three of them laugh. “Protecting ourselves from that humiliation is a very human instinct, and that’s what a lot of our jokes are about.”

It’s a feeling Ron is overcome with in the moment. He’s completely and utterly humiliated. He becomes desperate to protect himself from it and tries to save face, saying “I guess I shouldn’t have had that last Cheez-It this morning.” It falls flat, and the panic on his face is impossible to ignore.

It’s in this moment, as we see Ron collect himself on the floor, that “The Chair Company” merges comedy and horror. There’s an overwhelming sense that from this point on, Ron will never be the same again.

“It had to feel like real life,” explains Kanin. “People aren’t laughing at him — if it was your boss or your father, you wouldn’t jump up and laugh. But your opinion of them would change for a minute. You might refer to it later, and that’s enough for Ron to be like, ‘That will be my identity. Everyone thinks I’m pathetic.’ It shouldn’t change him. But it does.”

After Ron falls in front of everyone, “The Chair Company” pivots into the unexpected. It becomes a full-on surrealistic conspiracy thriller, albeit an exceptionally funny one. Out of desperation, Ron seeks vengeance against Tecca, the company that made the all-important chair. But his attempts to get in touch with the company keep falling short.

Making that shift believable involves the show’s unique visual style. “We didn’t want it to look like a comedy,” DeYoung says. Working with cinematographer Ashley Connor, DeYoung drew from 1970s conspiracy thrillers like “The Parallax View” and “All the President’s Men.”

The episode sets out Ron’s mission. “He’s trying to change the narrative of that day from ‘I fell out of a chair’ to ‘there was a criminal conspiracy I uncovered,’” says Kanin. Robinson agrees: “The whole show is about how if Ron figures out this chair stuff, the fall becomes nothing. If he gets what he wants, his legacy is set in stone.”

“If he can do it, the whole idea of the day he fell is changed. That’s his dream of what’s going to happen,” adds Kanin.

It’s all balanced with carefully constructed and outrageously funny physical comedy. Ron spasms under his desk, stifled by the small space; a colleague dries a co-worker’s hair with a piece of paper after blowing bubbles in it; Ron does the loudest meal prep you’ll ever hear. You’d anticipate moments like that to be embellished with improv, but it’s all tightly scripted.“Of all the TV comedies I’ve worked on, this one has the most already on the page,” says DeYoung.

At the end of the episode, Ron is approached by Mike (Joseph Tudisco), who warns him to stop looking into Tecca. The two get into a fight and Ron chases Mike down the street. He grabs at him and pulls off his shirt, but Mike keeps running. Ron stops and stares ahead, dumbfounded, with a man’s shirt in his hand and blood running down his face.

Robinson explains what Ron’s feeling in that moment in a way that perfectly encapsulates what it’s like watching “The Chair Company”: “He’s happy, scared and exhilarated.”