Chris Sheridan
The following recap contains spoilers The Chair Company S1E5 “I won. Zoom in.” (written by John Solomon and directed by Aaron Schimberg).
Okay, this episode was funny as sh*t. Last week, Ron (Tim Robinson) and Mike (Joseph Tudisco) set off to find Ken Tucker, the CFO of Red Ball Market Global. This week begins with them on the road and arriving at Anson’s Back Room bar, where the man previously employed by Tecca, Steven (Bardia Salimi), directs them to a “Spot the Difference” touchscreen game where “Ken Tucker” is featured in a costume. Ron immediately concludes that Red Ball is a shell company employing actors to be models, not actually executives of the company.
Ron asks Steven what’s up with the papers he and Mike took from his house, and Steven says “it’s stupid,” and mentions it being a revenge plot against his boss. He lowers his voice to discuss his plot, and not only can we not make out what he’s saying, neither can Ron: “I can’t f*cking hear you, you have to speak louder to me.” Steven then mentions something about it being f*cked up seeing “something you did flushed down the toilet and then returned to you with the date and time you did it?” He also mentions doing a “test run” a while ago where he got his hand stuck in a pipe and ran out screaming. We flash back to the pilot when Ron was startled by the scream in the bathroom of the abandoned building.
Ron asks Steven why he hates his boss so much, and Steven angrily replies that he was told that everyone at Tecca works naked, but when he went into a communal work bathroom, the four other guys were fully clothed. He went to his boss to complain, only to learn that he was supposed to be that guy’s, boss, that guy just got there first and made himself the boss. All the while, Mike is still playing the Spot the Difference game, marveling “Oh my God, she’s gorgeous” at the different models he’s encountering. Next, Ron confronts Steven about the lack of a hydraulic lever on the chairs in which drugs could be inserted, but Steven counters that there are levers. Ron angrily leaves (but Mike opts to keep playing the game with its gorgeous women), having told his daughter Natalie (Sophia Lillis) everything, which might not even be true.
That night in bed, Ron receives a text from Mike of him posing with the Spot the Difference game and the message “I won. Zoom in.” Doing so, Ron sees that the screen Mike is posing with has credits, and the name “Oliver Probblo” as one of the models in the game. The next day, Mike has located him and gives Ron a call at work. On his way out, Brenda (Zuleyma Guevara) tells Ron that she has some news for him, but wants to wait until Jeff (Lou Diamond Phillips) gets back from his trip, as it may take “a little while to process.” This gives something new for Ron to worry about, but in the meantime he heads to Mike’s apartment.
Mike, in his horribly dirty apartment, offers Ron something to eat, but Ron politely refuses. Mike insists, opening his fridge (after angrily noting the “barf in the sink”) and producing a small takeout box. “You want some uh, some uh…chicken? You want some fried, uh…” He looks contemplatively into the box before deciding to place it back into the fridge. Tudisco’s delivery is flawless (commonplace with Robinson projects), and it just keeps getting better. As some very upsetting yelling/pounding comes through the wall from the adjoining apartment, Mike gets dressed. He is reaching Charlie Kelly levels of squalor here. Ron notices on Mike’s fridge a “Save the Date” note. The note is dated for what appears to be 2018/2019. As far as I know the show is set in the present day…
Under the pretense of being fans of Oliver Probblo and coming to meet him, Ron and Mike set out. During the drive, Ron ignores a call from Natalie as Mike rambles on how Oliver acted in A Christmas Carol and now method lives as ways to do things as Scrooge. Mike mischievously glances over at Ron before reaching over to grab the steering wheel, then silently staring at him with a “whoops, what did I do?” grin. At the bar with Oliver (Alberto Isaac), the man goes on a ridiculous rambling monologue, but Ron cuts straight to the chase on Red Ball. Oliver says they’re just photos he took for a class that were used for the shell company, and was directed by a woman. With more coercion, Oliver mentions that this woman has an email address…Maggie S. But before he can get the full name, they’re interrupted by a bartender who Ron had, a few minutes earlier, tried to warn him about dipping his sleeve in a bowl of soup. Oliver advises against antagonizing the man, given that this is a “cult bar.”
Oliver continues that he has the full email address of the woman back at his apartment, and invites them back, after he does some coke. A patron of the bar states that he recognizes Mike, but before that can go any further, Oliver runs up, saying that they have to go because he paid for the coke using “Scrooge money.” The bartender Ron spoke to earlier has now drenched his sleeve in soup and is trying to get him to kiss it, the man who recognized Mike is trying to get a selfie, the coke dealer Oliver paid in fake money converges on them, and, noticing a dent on the bartender’s head, Ron strikes it.
All hell breaks loose. Set to metal music, the three flee the bar, pursued by everyone else. As they get in the car, Ron again gets a call from his daughter, who says he was supposed to be in Campton (which he currently is not). He claims he is, but she responds, “…Dad.” He says everything is good, and hangs up. At Oliver’s apartment, the horde of bar patrons are converging on the apartment like zombies. They manage to break into the front door of the complex, and one of them begins climbing the light post outside, but Oliver forcibly places a Scrooge hat on the man’s head, causing him to fall. The horde breaks into the apartment and one of them throws Ron through a locked door and into the room in which Oliver’s acting coach has been squatting. As Oliver and the acting coach scream at each other over her not paying rent, the brawl continues, and someone runs in, snatches the iPad, and takes off with Ron in hot pursuit.
Faced with a choice on which door the man has gone through, Ron chooses the wrong door and encounters a man getting a little frisky with a woman. The man draws a gun, stating that his wife paid Ron to catch him cheating. Ron, panicking, vehemently denies it, but the man forces Ron at gunpoint to cheat on his own wife and kiss the woman on video, which he…kind of does. After that’s done, the man lets Ron go, and he resumes his chase, finally catching the man but also catching a blow to the head with the iPad.
Ron wakes up in the hospital, insisting to the nurse that Mike is allowed to come into the room by telling her that he’s his brother. Very slightly, Mike’s face lights up. The nurse asks Ron if he’s experienced and recent head trauma, and Mike looks down in shame. Ron asks Mike to get his phone as far away from him as possible, as he’s figured out that Natalie is tracking him. Back in the car, Mike tells Ron that he’ll get them home while Ron sleeps. Ron wakes up to find that they’ve made a brief stop, and looks over to see Mike at the door of an unknown house, attempting to talk to a woman before she slams the door in his face. Mike gets back into the car and explains that the woman is his daughter: he wasn’t the best father, and he doesn’t want people to think he was a bad guy. Mike states that he no longer wants Ron to pay him for his services. It’s not a job for him anymore, he just wants to help: it’s the right thing to do.
Later that night, Ron receives a text from Mike, calling him “buddy” and making sure he got home okay. They briefly exchange texts before Ron goes to bed. As Mike looks away from his phone for the night, we see that he’s watching a version of A Christmas Carol. The Ghost of Christmas Future’s hood comes off to reveal a woman. She gets on her knees, and Scrooge pulls back his nightgown to reveal a, quite frankly, extremely impressive erection, which the Ghost inserts into her mouth. I never thought I would write those words, but here we are.
This week was hilarious, and while we only got a few answers, the tradeoff is easily the most humorous episode of the season so far. But I still have to think: is Tecca actually a sinister corporation responsible for this vast conspiracy, or has Ron spun himself into an epic delusion to escape the mundanity of his home and work life? That said, Ron has encountered enough chaos and confusion to keep us on our toes. We have passed the halfway point of the season, and we still have a lot of questions to be answered (and probably a lot of questions on the way). Hopefully we learn more next week.
