RECAP: ‘The Chair Company’ Episode 8 – “Minnie Mouse coming back wasn’t on my bingo card.”

There is no television show I’ve loved recently quite as much as The Chair Company. Therefore, as a season finale, The Chair Company Episode 8 had a lot riding on its shoulders. I’m proud to say that this episode, entitled “Minnie Mouse coming back wasn’t on my bingo card.”, directed by Aaron Schimberg and written by series creators Tim Robinson and Zach Kanin, didn’t give me what I wanted, but absolutely what I needed. A massive swing that’ll be likely to make as many mad as it did thrill me, this is the perfect season finale, so let’s dive into the madness.

The Chair Company Episode 8 begins on a strange note. Stranger than usual, that is. At a wedding, a father walks his daughter down the aisle. Later on in the wedding, it’s time for the father-daughter dance. The man, who has had ten cigars over the course of the wedding, falls over and goes to the bar to drown out his embarrassment. A cheesy, older gentleman with white hair comes up to him and compliments a poem he wrote earlier. He says that the poem could be a song, deducing the father’s interest in music.

He then claims, in a very similar scam to an I Think You Should Leave sketch, that he can help this father record the song and then turn it into a hit. He’s incredibly excited by this proposition as the man walks away. That’s when a child comes up to the man and asks if he’s Stacey Crystals. When Stacey replies in the affirmative, the kid says, “This is for ruining my dad’s life!”, whips out a 3D printed pistol, and shoots Stacey in cold blood. What a way to open the episode! How could this possibly tie in with Ron’s shenanigans at Tecca?

Ron has pretty much reached the end of his rope in The Chair Company Episode 8.

As The Chair Company Episode 8 shows us, Ron’s shenanigans are pretty much over. Barb (Lake Bell) is proud of him for supporting her at her launch event the previous night, and when he says he’s going to spend the day trying to get his job back at Fisher Robay, she even suggests he take a break to focus on himself.

Here’s where things get tricky: Ron (Tim Robinson) clearly wants to tell everyone what he’s uncovered, but can’t, not even to his daughter, who helped him, Natalie (Sophia Lillis). This includes an attempt to spill the beans to a local newspaper, which he ultimately chickens out on.

Over at Fisher Robay, the staff debates whether Ron (Lou Diamond Phillips) should even be allowed back after pushing Jeff. The staff exaggerates Ron’s push, saying he could’ve killed Jeff, with Douglas (Jim Downey) clearly doing so for selfish reasons, suggesting Ron be brought back but moved down “four or five rungs.” Jeff seemingly does not agree with any of this, calling Ron to say they can hash it out over a beer. Ron declines for now, clearly incensing Jeff.

Ron’s peaceful acceptance of his situation isn’t as peaceful as he’s portraying it. The cracks begin to show when his son Seth (Will Price) makes a tearful admission that he doesn’t want to play college basketball, instead wanting to do stop-motion animation. Although Ron is supportive, he goes on a tangent about how he’s done something great for the family yet can’t tell anyone. Seth is, understandably, frustrated. How long can Ron keep this up?

It’s been a while since we’ve seen Mike Santini (Joseph Tudisco), a problem that The Chair Company Episode 8 quickly remedies. Mike comes over to tell Ron he’s made a breakthrough in the case, only for Ron to brush him off. Ron tells Mike he needs to go back to his family, which deeply hurts Mike, given his strained family life. Feeling bad, Ron goes to Santini’s ex-wife’s house, where she seems frightened to hear about Mike. She tells him, curtly, that Mike isn’t who Ron thinks he is. This ominous note continues throughout the rest of the episode.

Here’s where things start to get more odd. Ron returns home to find the new family dog, Baby, eating a chocolate cake left out. In a panic, Ron takes her for a walk in the woods to burn off the chocolate. As he struggles to get a hold of her, Baby runs off the leash, jerking Ron so hard he falls and hits his head on a stone. Given the concussions he’s had before, it’s tough to tell if we can even trust what Ron’s seeing from here on out. 

Ron awakens and walks to a mysterious house, where he sees Baby curled up on the couch in the window. The house’s owner, who seems at once gentle and undeniably creepy, says that’s his dog that had escaped. He makes Ron walk him to his shed, where the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, hillbilly horror vibes are at their maximum.

The tension creeps, and the man presents Ron with a neon sign of a strange shape, one he claims is a “brand new shape.” An impressed Ron stares at the sign until he looks up and sees the man’s face has taken on a demonic form! Ron screams, cut to black.

The fusion of horror and comedy further morphs things into madness, with Ron at the center.

The Chair Company Episode 8 leaves this scene brilliantly and frustratingly vague, as Ron awakens on the man’s couch, with the man claiming Ron had passed out. Upon waking up, Ron asks if they can do a little photoshoot to show that Ron had found and returned the dog. This turns out to be a bad idea, as later, when Ron checks the Instagram post, the commenters are angry that Ron returned it, as the owner had been screaming at the dog and otherwise mistreating it. What a hilariously cruel twist of fate. Yet it’s clear, more than ever, that Ron needs to be seen.

Ron can’t take any more of the purgatory he’s in, so he calls Jeff to set up a meeting to find a way back to Fisher Robay. On his way out, he’s stopped by Barb, who apologizes for making fun of Ron’s detective work. Ron seems at first confused, then disappointed, when it’s clear that his wife’s respect, the whole reason he gave up on exposing Alice for her embezzlement, wasn’t really there. She just saw what he was doing as a goofy, dumb side project. A dejected Ron goes off to his meeting with Jeff.

At a nearby bar, Jeff has brought a friend, one from the same retreat we saw at the beginning of Episode 6. Jeff has less of an intention of actually talking about work than he does of having a night of debauchery. Jeff goes up to sing karaoke, then is mad when the song’s not in his key. He goes back to the table and hands Ron his phone, showing him his music. While Ron is impressed by the vocals, one of the songs sounds… oddly familiar to him. 

As Jeff is called back to do karaoke, Ron runs to the bathroom with his phone. There, he compares one of Jeff’s songs to the Red Ball Market Global jingle, realizing they’re the same song, only with different lyrics. This reveal is outstanding, and by this point, I was ready to give The Chair Company Episode 8 a standing ovation. Ron bolts to the Tecca offices and finds a hidden drawer in Jeff’s wall that contains documentation revealing that Jeff and Stacey Crystals, the man who got shot at the beginning of the episode, are responsible for Red Ball Market Global.

In turn, they then must be responsible for the whole Tecca chair scam. Yet, Alice Quintana, the investor in Barb’s company whom Ron discovered was running Tecca, is nowhere to be found. What this must mean is that Alice was told to pretend to be the head of Tecca, possibly by Barb or Natalie, who wanted the investigation to end. Regardless, Ron now has his culprit, and Jeff makes a hell of a lot of sense in that role. As Ron returns home, Mike’s daughter is waiting for him.

That’s when the second bombshell of The Chair Company Episode 8 is dropped. Mike’s “daughter” reveals she’s not Mike’s daughter at all. In fact, when her real father died, his heart went to Mike, so as a nice gesture, she invited Mike to her wedding to walk her down the aisle. From there, he started to grow attached to her and started to make unwanted romantic advances, continuing to harass the family. At this moment, Ron realizes he’s let Mike into his life, as the daughter says, “He’s a scary man.” 

A cliffhanger reveal and escalation leave The Chair Company Episode 8 ending on the edge.

This moment is chilling and completely redefines his entire character, complete with a cutaway to Mike, who has the mayor’s friend chained up in his apartment. Nothing, and I repeat, nothing, dear reader, can prepare you for how The Chair Company Episode 8 ends the season. Ron receives a call from the mysterious voice who’s been calling him throughout the season. Ron meets the man, still dressed up like Jason from Friday the 13th, in a high school gymnasium.

The man takes off his mask to reveal a face we’ve never seen before, a face swelled up with extreme plastic surgery. The man tells Ron to remember back to high school. He tells Ron that he once threw a gummy bear that accidentally landed in the breast of his co-worker/high school classmate, Amanda (Amelia Campbell), and that from that moment onwards, Amanda became obsessed with him. Not only that, but Amanda can move objects with her mind. 

It appears that, in a jealous rage, Amanda broke Ron’s chair… with her mind. When Ron asks who the man is, he says he’s Amanda’s boyfriend. He lunges at Ron to attack him, and the final image is a freeze frame of Ron, his mouth agape in terror. And that’s how The Chair Company Episode 8 ends.

There are too many questions left open to count. We’ve now gone through the rabbit hole and have entered a wormhole that takes us into whole new, stupendously weird territory. I have no idea where Tim Robinson and Zach Kanin plan to take us next, but they brought the ship home in the first season in the most confounding, hilarious, and altogether perfect way possible in The Chair Company Episode 8. The Chair Company is a miracle, and I can’t wait for more.

The Chair Company Episodes 1-8 are now streaming on HBO Max.

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