HBO's Great New Show Is a Masterpiece of Cringe Comedy

"It seems like an absurd request, not just because it's the equivalent of asking someone recounting the plot of Star Wars to keep quiet about the whole Death Star thing, but because "the chair incident" in question is so trivial, hardly the kind of thing you'd expect to be treated like a state secret. (The network's official one-sentence summary describes it as "an embarrassing incident at work," which honestly gets you 90 percent of the way there.)"

"Ron is what, in a short span of years, has already been established as a classic Tim Robinson character, a middle-aged man with a nebulous office job whose emotions fluctuate between starry-eyed idealism and apoplectic rage. The short-form comedy of Robinson's Netflix series I Think You Should Leave-created, like The Chair Company, by Robinson and Kanin-matched his history as a writer for Saturday Night Live."

"But though I Think You Should Leave's sketches were brief and disconnected, sometimes cutting off abruptly after less than a minute, its three seasons painted a cumulative portrait of a particular type of guy, one who thinks he's figured out the rules by which the world operates but can't seem to manage to play by them. On the outside, he's loudly entitled and perennially aggrieved, but the slightest challenge to his brittle authority prompts an immediate collapse."

HBO has repeatedly asked reviewers to avoid describing the workplace mishap that sets the series in motion. The mishap appears trivial but carries enormous personal significance for Ron Trosper. Ron embodies a recurring Tim Robinson persona: a middle-aged man with a nebulous office job whose emotions swing between starry-eyed idealism and apoplectic rage. Tim Robinson and Zach Kanin created The Chair Company and previously made I Think You Should Leave and Detroiters. I Think You Should Leave used brief, disconnected sketches to build a cumulative portrait of a man who believes he understands social rules but collapses when those rules are challenged.

Read at Slate Magazine