HBO Hits Concurrent Home Runs with “The Chair Company” and “IT: Welcome to Derry”

By Kira Zahara Ahsan | KZA Entertainment

Two months ago, HBOMax debuted two new shows with weekly episodes: the hilariously unhinged dark comedy The Chair Company and the poignant horror prequel IT: Welcome to Derry. Streaming services are taking a risk whenever they premiere only one new episode (of an original show) each week in an era where audiences are demanding instant gratification and have more content available to them than ever before. As with HBOMax’s first entry into the medical-drama genre with THE PITT, the content is excellent and the gamble seems to be paying off in terms of both viewership and critical acclaim.

I usually speak in basketball metaphors, but the baseball metaphor in the title of this piece is apropos because of the “vintage” appeal of these two new shows. Both The Chair Company and IT: Welcome to Derry lean heavily into nostalgia, though the former, set in the present day, is more subtle about it. The Chair Company weaves classic 70’s and 80’s music into the fabric of the show during emotional moments in the protagonist’s life. The title of the pilot episode, in fact, is based directly on a comment that Ron reads underneath a song recommendation as he searches for an inspiring “father-daughter dance song” for his daughter’s upcoming nuptials. IT: Welcome to Derry is a direct foray into nostalgia with the associated music, fashion, and wartime angst of the early 1960s.

The best thing about The Chair Company, the thing that makes what would be an otherwise ridiculous show work, is creator and lead actor Tim Robinson. I first saw Tim Robinsion when a friend recommended I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson on Netflix, a delightfully awkward long-form comedy skit show. Robinson’s “cringe comedy” is apparently polarizing, but I absolutely loved it. I’ve been told that I need to watch Detroiters, so I’ll get on that soon if my ADHD doesn’t distract me too much. Robinson turns the everyday thought patterns of neurodivergent folks into comedy gold, and it seems that a lot of neurotypical folks are able to enjoy it, too ;)

The Chair Company is a quintessential neurodivergent comedy. I haven’t found anything official online about Tim Robinson having a diagnosis of Autism or ADHD, but my forays onto Quora and Reddit forums confirm that I’m not the only one who feels this way. Ron Trosper is a middle manager at the fictional “Fisher-Robay,” a mall-development company with a grand vision of bringing back the indoor mall in suburban Ohio – nostalgia, anyone? Trosper is terribly embarrassed when a chair he sits in on a stage at a company event breaks suddenly, right after he makes an inspiring speech about breaking ground on the project. He takes a big spill and accidentally ends up seeing up a co-worker’s skirt after falling backwards, leading to further shenanigans like HR trying to figure out if Ron might have some kind of a past or nefarious motives regarding said co-worker since they’d gone to the same high school.

Ron becomes hyper-fixated on the chair, convinced that “The Chair Company” owes him an apology and angry that he can’t get ahold of or get contact information from anyone who actually works at the company. He is not happy to be back at a corporate job – we find out through conversations and flashbacks in subsequent episodes that he had quit to start some kind of “backyard JEEP adventure tours” company that was not successful – and keeps letting his anger about the chair company cloud his judgement and affect his concentration on his actual role at Fisher-Robay after he rejoined the firm to keep his family afloat. When Ron goes to the address listed on one of the chairs and finds a huge red orb in an empty office, he’s attacked at work the next day by a hired security guard paid to scare him so that he will “stop looking into the chair company!”

Ron and the guy hired to scare him, lonely gig worker Mike Santini, eventually end up teaming up to investigate what they’ve stumbled upon - what truly could be a massive conspiracy surrounding the chairs. It becomes apparent that “TECCA,” the official name of the chair company according to the physical sticker and the limited information available online, might be part of a series of shell companies hiding the flow of drugs or money or both. I just finished watching episode 7, and the mystery continues to unfold in unexpected ways, albeit with predictably great 70s and 80s music at some point during each episode. There is only one more episode to go for The Chair Company, while IT has three more.

I thought that IT: Welcome to Derry would be somewhat predictable because the IT novel by Stephen King and the movie adaptations are so well-known. IT is a shapeshifting entity, most often taking the form of “Pennywise the Clown,” that presents itself differently to each individual in order to align with that person’s deepest fears. IT feeds on fear and grows stronger, and I recalled from the original adaptations and the recent IT: Chapter Two movie sequel that the disappearances of children tended to happen in cycles – after which the monster would go dormant for many years (27 to be exact).

IT: Welcome to Derry is set 27 years before the original novel, with at least one of the protagonists having a familial tie to the kids in the IT movies. Lilly Bainbridge, Ronnie Grogan, Will Hanlon, Marge Truman, and Rich Santos are 12-13 years old and are all considered outsiders in Derry junior-senior high school. Ronnie and Will are black, which is enough to make them outsiders in the 1960s even here in the Northeast USA. Lilly’s father had died the prior year, and Lilly herself ended up spending time in a mental institution. She was good friends with another outcast named Matty whom we see snatched by the monster in the pilot episode.

Ronnie’s father works at the movie theater where Matty was last seen before his disappearance, leading her to invite Lilly and some of her friends (all of whom ultimately get snatched by IT in the form of a demon baby coming through the movie-theater screen) to the venue to work on solving the mystery of Matty’s disappearance and on potentially finding him alive. Both Ronnie and Lilly had been hearing Matty’s voice in the drain pipes and hadn’t told anyone until they confided in one another. The show builds in significant commentary about the time period via the military base operations and the fact that Ronnie’s father is afraid to use his truthful alibi – that the was in another part of town having an affair with a married white woman – to exonerate himself from being involved in the disappearance of Lilly’s friends at the movie theater.

Will Hanlon is a lovable nerd who knows everything about space travel, and his father is the newest military recruit for a top-secret project happening at a base right outside of Derry. It becomes apparent a few episodes in that the adults higher up at the base, especially the commander played by James Remar (Harry Morgan in Dexter, and a perfect choice for this new role) are very much aware of IT, and that they know the monster feeds on fear. Will’s dad shows a “clinical lack of fear response,” as confirmed by local mind-reader and fellow military personnel, Dicky Holleran. Dicky is able to read the mind of a local indigenous boy to discover more information about how to potentially contain the monster, and it’s a WICKED COOL piece of lore regarding how the monster came to be.

Marge Truman is Lilly’s former best friend, and she struggles – and oscillates back and forth until episode 5 – with whether to support Lilly or to go “all-in” against her to gain acceptance within a group of popular girls called “The Pattycakes.” Marge ultimately joins forces with Lilly, Ronnie, Will, and Rich after IT attacks her directly. Marge is self-conscious about her glasses and can’t see well, so her “greatest fear” is played upon when she sees her own eyes bloodied and bulging out in the bathroom mirror after her glasses fall on the floor. She ends up sawing out her own eyeball with a woodshop tool, though Lilly jumps in to stop her before she ruins the second eye. Marge apologizes to Lilly for doubting her and joins the others in following a resurfaced Matty into the sewers to confront the monster.

On the surface, The Chair Company and IT: Welcome to Derry couldn’t be more different. The former is an offbeat cringe comedy, and the latter is a horror-movie prequel. However, the power of friendship is a common thread between the two shows. Mike and Ron team up to figure out what’s really going on at the chair company, while the kids in Derry join forces to figure out why children in town keep going missing and how they can work together to stop the shapeshifting titular character from literally feeding off of their deepest fears. Both shows are about misfit humans forming unlikely connections amongst themselves – a concept that isn’t even “vintage” because it never goes out of style.