--- title: 'The Chair Company' Is 'Curb' for the Conspiracy Dad description: HBO's comic thriller casts co-creator Tim Robinson as an extremely online, Middle American version of Larry David canonical: https://time.com/7323957/the-chair-company-review-tim-robinson/ author: Judy Berman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2025-10-09T16:00:00.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-11T04:51:21.619Z article:section: Entertainment og:title: 'The Chair Company' Is 'Curb' for the Conspiracy Dad og:description: HBO's comic thriller casts co-creator Tim Robinson as an extremely online, Middle American version of Larry David og:url: https://time.com/7323957/the-chair-company-review-tim-robinson/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt6db0c128115931aa/6998ca82c8dcb40a35b508b8/tim-robinson.jpg?branch=production&width=1440&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: tim-robinson og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: 'The Chair Company' Is 'Curb' for the Conspiracy Dad twitter:description: HBO's comic thriller casts co-creator Tim Robinson as an extremely online, Middle American version of Larry David twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt6db0c128115931aa/6998ca82c8dcb40a35b508b8/tim-robinson.jpg?branch=production&width=1440&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Tim Robinson’s _The Chair Company_ Is _Curb Your Enthusiasm_ for the Conspiracy Dad > Sponsored content. 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Terms and conditions apply. * Savings buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Savings Account. * No ATM fees from Ally Bank at Allpoint and Moneypass ATMs plus we reimburse for fees charged by other ATM owners nationwide up to $10 per statement cycle. * Early direct deposit offers eligible direct deposits up to two days sooner. * Spending buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Spending Account.  by [Judy Berman](https://time.com/author/judy-berman/)  ## Judy Berman TV Critic Oct 9, 2025 4:00 PM UTC  Tim Robinson in The Chair Company Tim Robinson in The Chair CompanySarah Shatz—HBO  by [Judy Berman](https://time.com/author/judy-berman/)  ## Judy Berman TV Critic Oct 9, 2025 4:00 PM UTC Ron Trosper is losing it. _The Chair Company_, an HBO comedy that premieres on Oct. 12, traces the unraveling of this suburban family man, played by co-creator Tim Robinson, who believes he’s stumbled upon a criminal conspiracy following a minor workplace humiliation. But that conspiracy tends to manifest in the form of universal contemporary annoyances. “You can’t get a hold of anybody,” Ron rants after his investigation leads him into customer-service hell. “That’s the problem with the world today. People make _garbage_, and you can’t talk to anybody. You can’t complain, you can’t get an apology. I wanna scream at ’em!” The character will be familiar to anyone who knows Robinson’s work. In his Netflix sketch show [_I Think You Should Leave_](https://time.com/6125290/best-tv-shows-2021/) and recent feature [_Friendship_](https://time.com/7281936/friendship-review-tim-robinson/), the comedian portrays men who are hilariously, uncontrollably angry for reasons they don’t seem to fully understand. In his nitpicking and narcissism, the relatability of his grievances and his unhinged methods of redressing them, Ron also resembles a younger, Middle American version of [Larry David’s _Curb Your Enthusiasm_ antihero](https://time.com/6590886/larry-david-curb-your-enthusiasm-season-12/). He’s a great character—one portrayed with the explosive mix of awkwardness and rage Robinson has perfected and placed in situations that are funny because they’re absurd, but also because, despite their surreal trappings, they speak to modern discontents. It’s all just entertaining enough to make up for the show’s scattershot storytelling. Ron is, at once, an average guy and a mess of insecurities. At home, he’s overshadowed by an impressive wife ([Lake Bell](https://time.com/5568318/bless-this-mess-tv-show-review/)) and teenage son (Will Price), as well as his daughter’s (Sophia Lillis) upcoming wedding. (She and her wife-to-be want to marry in a “haunted barn.”) Now that his dream business venture has failed, he has returned to a stressful job at a construction company. All it takes is one blip to send him down the rabbit hole. Sometimes his quest for the truth takes the shape of a prototypical thriller—rendezvous at dive bars, threats issued by shadowy goons in parking lots. Other times, Ron is a terminally online Larry, typing screeds into customer support forms and cursing out chatbots.  From left: Sophia Lillis, Lake Bell, Will Price, and Tim Robinson in The Chair Company Virginia Sherwood—HBO Robinson’s style of comedy may not be best suited to longform narrative. Writer-director Andrew DeYoung’s _Friendship_, which cast him as a lonely guy who befriends, alienates, then becomes fixated on a cool neighbor ([Paul Rudd](https://time.com/5700808/living-with-yourself-netflix-review/)), has some great moments but falters midway through due to a predictable plot. In the six _Chair Company_ episodes I screened (out of eight), Robinson and co-creator Zach Kanin don’t make the conspiracy thriller funny so much as they use its tropes to connect characters and situations that are, in themselves, very funny. Robinson has a genius for channeling society’s ambient toxic vibes, in abstract but eerily evocative ways, through his odd alter egos. _Friendship_ is a funhouse mirror of the male loneliness crisis. Yet his sensibility is most potent in the concise scenarios of _I Think You Should Leave_. From the guy who won’t stop making filthy comments on an “adult” ghost tour to the one in the hot dog costume who insists he had nothing to do with the crash of a hot-dog-shaped car, these characters embody the anger, mendacity, immaturity, and allergy to accountability that define so many of today’s most powerful men without explicitly addressing politics. _The Chair Company_’s hero is the other side of that coin, a disempowered man whose earnestness brings him only embarrassment and whose attempts to find someone to blame for his misery only dig him deeper into it. Ron’s crusade against corporate shadiness (and shoddiness) never generates much suspense. But whether he strikes you as an everyman Larry David or as a modern-day David taking on a faceless Goliath, his plight is bound to resonate. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/7323957/the-chair-company-review-tim-robinson/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/7323957/the-chair-company-review-tim-robinson/"},"headline":"Tim Robinson’s The Chair Company Is Curb Your Enthusiasm for the Conspiracy Dad","datePublished":"2025-10-09T16:00:00.000Z","dateModified":"2026-05-11T04:51:21.619Z","description":"HBO's comic thriller casts co-creator Tim Robinson as an extremely online, Middle American version of Larry David","url":"https://time.com/7323957/the-chair-company-review-tim-robinson/","keywords":["Television","review","Magazine","culturepod"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt6db0c128115931aa/6998ca82c8dcb40a35b508b8/tim-robinson.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Judy Berman","jobTitle":"TV Critic","url":"https://time.com/author/judy-berman/"}],"articleSection":"Entertainment","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt6db0c128115931aa/6998ca82c8dcb40a35b508b8/tim-robinson.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"tim-robinson","caption":"Tim Robinson in The Chair Company","creditText":"Sarah Shatz—HBO","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/entertainment/","name":"Entertainment"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/television/","name":"Television"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/7323957/the-chair-company-review-tim-robinson/","name":"Tim Robinson’s The Chair Company Is Curb Your Enthusiasm for the Conspiracy Dad"}}]}] ```