THE DISCOMFORT COMPANY
You know the moment after someone cuts you off on the road when you have to choose to either let it go or have it ruin your entire day? Well, in The Chair Company do you not only NOT let it go, your life actually recalibrates to the guiding principle that the perceived slight has always been there and the only way to resolve the situation is for complete and total revenge.
To be clear, I say that in the most complimentary way possible.
When I heard that HBO greenlit a conspiracy thriller from the sociopaths behind I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson, an image of said Tim Robinson in a hot dog costume holding a magnifying glass yelling about the importance of having to find some guy instantly popped into my head. Normally, the notion of which would sound pretty hilarious. What was less enticing, however, was the idea of just doing that and only that for a whole season’s worth of episodes.
Boy, was I wrong.
While the parade of memorable (not to mention meme-able) ITYSL-esque supporting characters were definitely present, it was Tim Robinson’s surprisingly nuanced performance as corporate everyman turned hangdog private eye Ron Trosper that made this into an oddly addicting show about a loser’s search for validation. Everything I loved about ITYSL and Robinson’s other collaboration with director Andrew DeYoung, the film Friendship with Paul Rudd, (the absurdity of the mundane, the scene stealing cast of misfits that’s introduced at a breakneck pace, the shocking bursts of sex and violence, etc.) really took to being a ported over the continuing narrative of the Tecca chair mystery. After I got over the shock of this not being done in 4-5 minute sketches, this really started to remind me of another off-kilter, darkly comedic mystery show that was also unabashedly all over the place.
Yup, say it with me; Twin Peaks.
Tamblay’s members club shirt guy and little plastic junior spy kit hats aside, Ron’s manic headfirst dive into uncovering the secret history of the shadowy cabal who made the chair that wronged him gets unexpectedly colored by his wife and daughter’s (played beautifully by Lake Bell and Sophia Lillis, respectively) all to real concern for his well-being, made even more serious by the fact that this wasn’t Ron’s first time in this rodeo. The scene between Ron and his daughter Natalie where the former excitedly revealed to the latter his investigation would’ve normally been received with anxiousness or pity, but instead Natalie responded to her father with empathy, understanding and love.
It’s moments like that, peppered between Mike Santini’s listening to audio only porn in his car during stakeouts or the murder of a man named Stacy Crystals by a kid with a 3D printed gun, that sold me (and continues to sell me) on this show. A show that, considering the events of its season finale, might’ve already Laura Palmer’d it’s central conceit as a bit or is just getting ready to follow the car who cut it off to the ends of the Earth.
Count me in, either way. It’s a 5 Ron club now and you know I’m not about to miss THAT.
>> Words & Illustration: Jericho Vilar
>> Published 12.24.25
THE LAST OF THE SHOWGIRLS
In hotel rooms late at night, in coffee shops during the warm autumn midday, I have been thinking about the idea of performance, lifting a skull to the lights above, talking over the audience who will not listen.
Taylor Swift’s newest record, The Life of a Showgirl arrived with us on 3rd October, a week ago at the time of writing this piece. I watched the countdown on Spotify tick slowly down during the early morning and autumn heat, but it was only at night that I really heard the record, and in hearing it I felt a fundamental distance with where I was and the place in which the album was written.
I think it is the ostentation of its misery that causes the disjoint more than my physical distance; maybe I am not the performer that the album asks me to put myself in the shoes of, an actress in the wings, something rotten in the state of Denmark. A day or so later, beneath the curling leaves of heavy trees, standing on trains as they cut through the city, eyes full of the sight of rivers and high-rise buildings, I was reminded that you cannot trust the opening track of any big album, that such agenda setting is always determined to lead you astray and sell you the idea of the storytelling, but the truth comes later, and, as such, The Life of a Showgirl asks you to move through several moments that you will not understand before it speaks to you of what it truly values; stories of spite and diamonds and lovers past, reflections of Elizabeth Taylor, standing patiently in the hall, watching Richard Burton work through his own grief maybe, and then, in the centre of the record, amidst drum machines and big ’80s keyboards, at last comes the honesty of Opalite, stadium rock and confessions, this autumn awaiting its November rain, a place in which we can see ourselves but cannot reach.
It follows this up with Father Figure and the borrowing of George Michael melodies for a message that continues into Eldest Daughter, our disappointment given words, the compromises we make, the performance we enact to be seen as worthy of your time. The sun between the billboards and the shapes of buildings, falling on your face, crowding your eyes with light, is that a pang of regret your feel? Like all our riches, it is frittered away by the end of Ruin the Friendship, the mask returned, the curtain rising on the second act, and we are back to the performance, bring on the younger, blonder guest stars, roll out the sharp words for those who have spoken poorly of you, forget that you are an institution, that everyone owns you now; the secret is that everyone owns all of us, our details in the hands of audiences far grander than even Elizabeth Taylor dreamed of, and you realise that what you hold in your hands is not lacking in value, but rather it is a work in a language you do not understand, so different are your experiences.
When folklore arrived, when evermore followed, perhaps you sung these praises so readily because they echoed how you felt, Sylvia in Cambridge, your own Christmases in cold North London, the dust settling on as you grew older. You are a performer too, but you cannot sing your grief like this, you cannot dress it in diamonds and pour champagne over it —instead there is the stage, the skull in your hand, the audience who won’t listen to you even as you continue to orate.
Elizabeth Taylor does not stand behind you; she does not watch you in that hall, she does not understand the poverty of your pain.
In places outside of our everyday, in cities that are not our homes, what we fail to admit when we tell our stories is that all narrative needs an editor.
>> Words: Courtney Milnestein
>> Illustration: Jericho Vilar
>> Published 12.07.25