Chris Sheridan
The following recap contains spoilers for The Chair Company S1E7 “I said to my dog, ‘How do you like my hippie shirt?'” (written by John Solomon and directed by Andrew DeYoung).
John Solomon returns for writing duties after the madness that was E5 “I won. Zoom in” and this episode has that same unhinged feel but with an even sharper edge. This is Tim Robinson at his most Tim Robinson-est. The Tim Robinson subreddits will be feasting for the foreseeable future.
Overjoyed at his discovery of the massive room packed with Tecca chairs last week, Ron (Tim Robinson) returns home and sleeps soundly…until the next morning, when he checks his phone and flashes back to shoving his boss Jeff (Lou Diamond Phillips) at the construction site. Nonetheless, he returns home later that day with a new dog in tow, named Baby. Seth (Will Price) is disinterested, while Barb (Lake Bell) is bewildered. Outside in the backyard, while Baby gets into the rat trap and eats either a rat or the rat bait, Ron admits what he did to Jeff and that he is “a little suspended from work” and they’re “figuring it out”—meaning that he may or may not be allowed to return to work. He and Barb get into it, during which Barb rightfully states that she is shouldering almost all of the burden on the family while Ron does virtually nothing. It comes to a head when Baby bites Ron on the arm.
A remedy for the bite isn’t in the bathroom, but Barb says it might be in Seth’s room. I expected Ron to find empty bottles of alcohol, but instead finds the small hat from the fake fingerprint kit he ordered from Amazon a few weeks ago in the trash. Returning downstairs, Ron is told by Barb that he should avoid mentioning any of this at tonight’s party: the party that Ron completely forgot about, the party for Barb’s associate Alice, the party that Ron absolutely doesn’t want to go to. Barb forcefully says that she doesn’t know what Ron wants. He doesn’t have an answer.
Retrieving the hat from Seth’s trash, Ron angrily sets off to confront Teresa Bonaventura, the Purchasing Director at Delaware City Hall, but awkward calls to her office aren’t getting him anywhere. Later, he visits an expert, who shows him a sample of the bug found in his house (and the same bug seen crawling into his phone earlier in the season). He tells Ron that he first found the bug in the Public Works building, and then in the Detention & Probation building, in Public Utilities and across the street at a sandwich shop.
Ron arrives at Detention & Probation, but as he heads across the parking lot, he spots the cop that caught him the file room last week, and as that cop spots him, he quickly takes his leave. “F*cking cops everywhere!” he yells as he races down the freeway. “F*cking pieces of sh*t pigs!” before smiling and vibing to apparent music on the stereo that we cannot hear.
Ron comes across a porn shop, and inside, he shows the clerk some of the photos he took from the photocopier from the pilot. He asks the clerk if the photos could be connected to something bigger than porn, like corporate fraud. The clerk isn’t really helpful, but is impressed because the pictures are “some of the newest stuff out there.” He asks to borrow Ron’s phone, and plugs it into his computer to immediately start downloading all of Ron’s photos. As Ron attempts to wrestle his phone back, the clerk tosses the phone into a water centerpiece, ruining it. Ron goes to a phone repair shop (“Do y’all fix…phones?”) and is told he can return in an hour.
While waiting for his phone to be repaired, Ron is angrily chowing down at the sandwich shop across the street from Public Utilities. Glancing over, he sees men loading chairs into the back of a truck. He follows behind the truck, to another facility where the chairs are being unloaded. While taking pictures, he’s approached by a group of juvenile hooligans who start throwing rocks at him. He retaliates by chucking his temporary phone at them and drives off.
Back at the phone repair shop, the clerk informs him that he’s had all of his data transferred to a new phone, but his preferences have been set to default. In his car, with those settings defaulted, Ron is inundated with text notifications from the Tamblay Menswear membership program, but one of them sticks out, suggesting an evil corporation or crime syndicate. He clicks into the message to find a long-winded text from one of the shop’s patrons describing how he returned a shirt with a stain because he hated that it was short-sleeved, but then found a long-sleeved version a few months later. Upon purchasing the new long-sleeved shirt, he realized that the shirt had the same stain, and that the shirt was the same one he returned just with long sleeves. This whole sequence, partially including a floating head of the patron narrating, is hysterical. This gives Ron the revelation that Tecca is replacing the parts on the chair: taking them back, swapping out the parts, and reselling them. Someone in the government owns or is involved with Tecca and is laundering money.
When sharing this information with Natalie (Sophia Lillis), his daughter tells him that she visited Delaware City Hall under the pretense of delivering a ham to Teresa. They didn’t want it and instead gave her Teresa’s address. Going there, Ron cautiously enters the house and finds her, a kindly old woman lounging on a couch. Ron asks whether Teresa approves all purchases, and she tells him she was told that she doesn’t need to come in since she got sick, implying that someone else is doing the purchasing approval. Getting back into his car, Ron does some more Google searching to find that Delaware Mayor Daniel Braccon is under scrutiny for multiple alleged fraud investigations.
Going to Mike (Joseph Tudisco), Ron sincerely apologizes, and is buzzed in. He explains to Mike that they’re using Teresa as a “rubber stamp” to approve Tecca purchases, pretending there’s oversight and buying chairs from themselves. He shows Mike a picture of Braccon, affirms that no scandals have ever stuck to him, that Braccon is doing a promotional pub appearance, and begs Mike to attend in his stead until he can escape Barb’s party. Mike agrees.
Ron and Barb arrive at the party, where Barb greets Alice (Kathryn Meisle), who mentions a post-dinner toast where Barb will give a speech; something that will throw a wrench into Ron’s plans to tag out with Mike at Braccon’s press event. After mingling uncomfortably, Ron receives two missed calls from Mike, and escapes to the garage to call him, where he tells Ron that Braccon is present at the bar and might be leaving soon. At the dinner, Alice calls for the patrons to congregate in the living room. Mike calls back urgently that Braccon will soon be leaving the pub.
Ron escapes to the study, where he finds a photo of Alice and Teresa. He digs through the desk and uncovers a blank journal. Oliver Probblo calls, telling Ron that the person that took the pictures from RBMG wasn’t Maggie S.: it was Alice Quintana, the very Alice hosting the party and the person who runs Tecca. She’s been using taxpayer money to buy the chairs and embezzle money. Ron is attacked by Headphones Guy (Brendan Jennings) and manages to overpower him. Alice says that when Ron attacked Headphones Guy outside the Life of the Party, Alice realized that Ron was getting close to the truth. And the money she’s been embezzling is now invested in Barb’s business and tied up with Ron’s finances.
Alice dares Ron to reveal the truth, which would kill Barb’s chances of growing her business after all of the times Barb stood by him. Ron counters that he is going to tell everyone. As he goes out to the main room where everyone is congregated, one of the patrons asks Ron how the mystery is going. Apparently Natalie had told Barb about Ron’s investigation, and Barb was telling everyone how smart and dedicated Ron is, as well as a multitude of other nice, sweet things. This gives Ron pause again. Now, it’s entirely possible that Alice is pulling the strings again, but to Ron, he is about to torpedo the love of his life. Ron realizes that he can’t do it.
Barb gets up to give her speech. As Barb thanks everyone around the room, Ron glares over at Alice, who smugly looks back at him. As Ron and Barb dance at the end, Barb acknowledges how stressed they’ve both been, and how much she loves him. Ron states how proud of her she is, and the episode concludes with him looking at his reflection in a mirror, weeping with a smile on his face.
So with things seemingly ending on a positive note, where does that leave us with one episode left in the season? We still haven’t learned who was in the Jason Vohees mask, what the “project” is that Seth is doing in the basement (you’d think Ron or Barb would have gone there by now), and whether there’s going to be another huge revelation at the end of the season finale. I had thought this was going to be a one-and-done, but with the acclaimed show being renewed for Season 2, anything is possible. See you next week!
