Tim Robinson is hilarious as a man hellbent on taking down a negligent chair manufacturer in this cringe caper full of roaringly good slapstick.
Meet Ron Trosper, a faithful office grunt in small town Ohio. Ron works for a company that builds shopping malls, and their latest one is the first for which Ron has been made project lead, despite some of his superiors’ misgivings. Today is his big day. He’s giving a speech at the launch!
Ron is the creation of Tim Robinson, the former Saturday Night Live writer/performer who reinvented the American sketch show in 2019 with I Think You Should Leave. In a new half-hour, eight-episode series that starts as a workplace comedy before sprawling into mystery/thriller territory, his alter ego is a stock Robinson character, a variation on the textbook comic protagonist who has to bear the burden of being the only sane man in every room.
The opening scene sets the tone: Ron is quite rightly vexed by a waitress crassly hovering over the family’s table while his wife, Barb (Lake Bell), is trying to raise a toast to him. But by the time Ron has finished speaking to the young woman, he has got into a ridiculous argument caused by his refusal to accept that she never shops in malls, and has too aggressively insisted on boxing up half a devilled egg to take home.
Of course, Ron’s big presentation goes haywire, via a moment of roaringly well-executed slapstick that causes our friend to embark on a truly wild crusade against a negligent office-chair manufacturer. The overarching story, in which Ron’s obsessive persistence leads him to become entangled in a strange conspiracy – there are hints of Only Murders in the Building in the way the narrative is unafraid to unfurl haphazardly – might be more ambitious than the traditional office comedy, but both are ideal vehicles for Robinson’s comic gifts.
