The Chair Company Recap: Pure Hell

Up to this point in The Chair Company, the show hasn’t touched much on backstory. We know the basics of Ron’s idealized home life, but I didn’t expect to see any flashbacks. It just didn’t feel like that type of show to me — maybe because each episode so far has nestled its bits of characterization within weird digressions and absurd gags as much as the actual ongoing plot.

But “Bahdl Harmon Birthplace (Disputed)” is the strongest episode yet — arguably the first to truly prioritize the central character study of Ron Trosper — and backstory is a big part of that. Credit the script by former SNL co-head writer and The Other Two co-creator Sarah Schneider, who deploys flashbacks to perfect use and delivers an absolute wallop of an ending.

Following the first of three dips into the past (more on that later), we pick up with Ron still understandably freaked out by the security cam footage of the masked guy in his backyard and regretting the drunk voicemail he and Mike left Tecca. He’s still keeping up the investigation, possibly closer than ever to figuring out the real truth at the heart of the Tecca conspiracy (if there is indeed something there).

This time, Ron is less focused on Red Ball Global than the chairs themselves. They’re sold out on the Tecca website, so he resolves to steal one from the office and take it apart. He enlists the help of the janitor at first, but aborts the mission when his coworkers step outside for the beignet truck. By the end of the episode, though, Mike has pulled it off, transporting a chair to Ron’s garage. And there’s another solid lead courtesy of Steven Droyco, who apparently tracked down RBGM CFO Ken Tucker himself. That provides a minor cliffhanger going into next week.

And that’s just a fraction of what’s going on. This one ratchets up the paranoia even more than usual, putting Ron through the wringer once again with a series of bizarre and possibly related inconveniences. Most specific to this episode is the multiple instances of stolen identity, if you could call it that. First, Ron wakes up to a visit from a stranger who supposedly arranged to buy a vintage Beatles figure collection from him, and is verklempt when Ron has nothing for him.

The biggest issue, though, is that somebody submitted his name, phone number, and headshots to multiple modeling agencies. Now he’s hearing back from them one by one, learning that he couldn’t have a career in modeling even if he wanted to. (The first agent says his face is “a bit too extreme.”) In one case, the agency goes with the titular “Bahld Harmon” instead, prompting Ron down a brief jealous spiral.

This is an unnecessary distraction at work, obviously, especially when Jeff confronts him about yet another fake email, this one “aggressively” asking for a raise. (This time, Ron seemingly doesn’t even have the strength to fight back and say it was an impostor, maybe because he is interested in a raise?) And it’s not the only work-related stressor in this episode. There’s also the ever-lingering Amanda issue: HR found a photo of Ron with his arm around her in high school, which supposedly conflicts with his earlier comments about their dynamic. As he explains to the outside observer, Dr. Stevens, Amanda was a dork back then whose mom worked in the basement and “came out of this little door in the hallway all dirty to give Amanda her lunch. She worked with the pipes or something.”

There are also other, more serious sources of stress, like the fact that Douglas is a no-show at work — most likely because he’s ashamed of his behavior at the mistakes party. In Ron’s mind, though, Tecca may have had Douglas murdered after Ron used his name at the county clerk’s office. As usual, the real explanation is neither the expected version of events nor Ron’s worst-case-scenario version. It turns out Douglas was stuck under a fallen refrigerator for two days, and Louis saved him by delivering a beignet (at Ron’s panicked request). He even bathed him before the paramedics arrived. How’s that for a good person, Ron?

And then there’s the instantly heart-sinking sound of police sirens outside Ron’s house when he arrives home. We know there’s probably nothing really wrong despite all the flashing lights and cops standing around — the show has taught us how to watch it at this point — but Ron’s terrified reactions feel pretty justifiable this time around. And again, the truth is neither what we’d predict nor what he imagined (“Barb’s throat ripped across the counter”): The cops are just here to collect a grill the impostor offered to donate to the station.

That visit from the cops is the final straw for Ron, who immediately pulls the trigger on getting his family out. In practice, that just means having Mike’s friend (a “really bad guy,” he makes sure to mention) fake a bug infestation while dragging Barb and Seth to stay with Natalie and Tara in his future daughter-in-law’s guest room. And with everyone under the same roof, the earlier glimpses of backstory start to pay off.

Let’s take a moment to talk about those first two flashbacks, which deal with Ron and Barb’s parallel career tracks. Six years ago, Barb came up with the idea to start her own business selling stylish breast pumps, and Ron decided to join her by striking out on his own, too. But while she excelled right away, he struggled to find investors for his Jeep tours. He recounts one particularly disastrous investor meeting — and by “disastrous,” I mean “manslaughter-adjacent.” He took one guy out on the trails and sped up to impress him, then hit a log that he thought the Jeep could comfortably clear. The man hit his head hard on the windshield and stopped talking, most likely concussed, so Ron dropped him off back at his hotel to sleep.

This is frankly an insane and character-defining confession, and it might not even come up again for the rest of the show. But Ron’s reactions are telling. He wanted to do something good, to provide an avenue for soldiers to live on the edge a little during peacetime, but the investors are more interested in cheesy VR potential. Still, he can’t give up. In pursuit of his noble goals — or, more accurately, in order to keep up with Barb’s success and avoid returning to Fisher Robay with his tail between his legs — he’ll keep investing his time and money. Of course, we know that Ron did come back to work eventually when Jeep tours didn’t work out.

Back in the present, Ron checks in with Natalie about her engagement, concerned about the way Tara dismisses her artistic passions and, even worse, forces her to add olives to everything. Here’s where the script draws a really interesting parallel between the generations: Ron says he doesn’t want his daughter just “brought along” to support Tara, and Natalie points out that he does that with Barb. But Ron doesn’t think of himself as taking a backseat role in his career, or at least he doesn’t want to. The idea feels emasculating. And in retrospect, that insecurity makes his criticism of Tara sound like total projection, even if he has a point.

So Ron does something risky to prove how much he’s doing with his life: He tells Natalie the truth about the conspiracy he’s looking into. In his explanation, he goes much deeper than even we realized, filling in a scene we didn’t see of him dissecting the Tecca chair. Apparently, the chair was missing its appendix, a lever manufactured in Hungary roughly the same shape and size as sticks of an opiate called Thebaine. He’s now delusionally confident that Brucell Pharma (a company with Ken Tucker on the board) is smuggling Thebaine into the country using Tecca as a front.

But Natalie doesn’t react by calling him crazy like you might expect. Instead, she offers unequivocal support, saying, “I love you, I trust you, and I got you.” It’s a nice subversion in the moment, and I’ll admit I was touched by how much Ron was touched. But when he leaves Barb’s work dinner to meet with Droyco, Natalie tracks his location on her phone, clearly concerned. And the final flashback of the episode reshapes our understanding of what we just watched. At the height of Ron’s denial about the failure of Jeep tours, he totally broke from reality, forcing Barb and the kids to handle him delicately and play along until he let go. “He’s going to come out of it,” Barb reassures a teenage Natalie as she watches Ron muttering to himself in the garage. “All we can do is tell him that we love him, we trust him, and we got him.”

Those closing moments recontextualize our understanding of this man, but also the investigation around which the whole show is structured — and yet they also totally fit with what we’ve seen thus far. This isn’t the first time Ron became obsessed, and it might not be the last. As I contemplate whether The Chair Company just leveled up from good to great, I fear how dark things will get.

Company Secrets

• Shout out to Aaron Schimberg (who directed the excellent A Different Man), who captures those emotional final moments in a sickening close-up.

• It was really hard for me to not just list every single funny or weird moment in this recap, but that’s what this section is for! I’ll start by saying I like how Ron jots down random key phrases and clues in a spreadsheet.

• One of Ron’s colleagues is obsessed with what Jeff’s treat for the office could be: “I’m just really worried.”

• Tim Robinson’s exaggerated delivery of “That’s really bizarre” might inexplicably be my biggest laugh of the episode. The way he says “What the heck, that guy beat me?” is also great.

• Not sure how Ron knew to spell the name “Bahld” when he Googled.

• It turns out the yearbook photo HR found was after the curtain call, which makes Ron’s gesture of affection with Amanda even more meaningless. As if he’d mess around with the girl playing a beggar.

• Cool little brief hallucinatory sequence with the patterns from the eyelid-pressing goggles Ron wears to sleep.

• “I found this one in your underwear drawer. It was all tangled up in your tiniest little pair of panties.”

• “It stinks.” “It doesn’t stink. It just smells like burger. That’s good.”