In episode 7 of The Chair Company, Ron bought a dog named Baby in order to make up for his rude behavior at Seth’s birthday party and soften the blow of his suspension from Fisher Robay. That backfired on him, as Seth wasn’t impressed by Baby, and Barb pointed out that, since Ron never pulled his own weight, she knew that the dog would be added to the mountain of responsibilities she was already handling. Instead of returning the dog and focusing on his family as well as his job, Ron drove off to Delaware City to investigate the hundreds of Tecca chairs at City Hall. He lost both of his phones in the process, and while recovering the data of his smartphone, he was hit with the realization that Tecca and the government of Delaware City were running a massive scam where they were selling used chairs at full price. Since the purchasing director, Teresa, was out of commission, her deputy, Alice, was signing all the deals. Alice turned out to be the primary investor in Barb’s start-up, Everpump, which meant that if Ron tried to expose Alice, he’d be ruining Barb’s chances of achieving her dreams. And if he didn’t expose this massive controversy, he’d have no way to prove that the broken chair that led to the unraveling of his whole life was the result of a criminal conspiracy. Well, what did Ron do? Let’s talk about the finale of The Chair Company to find out.
Spoiler Alert
Stacy Is Shot
Episode 8 of The Chair Company opens at the wedding of a woman named Juniper. Her dad is extremely stressed and nearly loses his balance during the father-daughter dance. Later on, when the dad goes to the bar to have some whiskey, the bartender rejects his request, because he is already pretty drunk. That’s when Stacy Crystals, another guy sitting at the bar, orders a whiskey and gives it to the dad so that he can go up to him and have a chat with him about his excellent songwriting skills. In fact, Stacy is so impressed by the man’s talent that he explicitly says that he is limiting himself by focusing on running his sheet metal company, and that he should branch out by writing songs professionally. Stacy leaves his card with the man and tells him that if he comes to Los Angeles any time soon, he should get in touch with him, and he’ll make sure that a simple sheet metal company owner gets a shot at becoming a star. On that note, Stacy takes the guy’s leave, and when he’s exiting the banquet hall, he gets a call.
We don’t see who is on the other end of the phone, but you can interpret their conversation in two ways: either Stacy is worried that the songwriting sheet metal company owner isn’t going to take his offer seriously, or Stacy isn’t exactly sure if his grift has worked on the songwriting sheet company owner. I am leaning towards the latter because, out of nowhere, a kid armed with a DIY gun confronts Stacy, accuses him of ruining his dad’s life, and then puts a bullet in Stacy’s chest. It’s unclear if Stacy is dead or not, but based on the positioning of the entry wound and the exit wound, and if we take Stacy’s age into consideration as well, I’d say he is a goner. After this cold open, we re-enter Ron’s life. In last week’s episode, we saw that Ron didn’t care if he had a job anymore or not because he was devoted to solving the mystery around Tecca and RBMG. But after the altercation with Alice, it looks like Ron’s whole attitude has changed. He wakes up to see 15 missed calls from Mike, and instead of rushing to get back to him, he tells his wife to seize the day while he goes to Fisher Robay to see if he can get his job back.
Ron Drops the Tecca Case
Barb advises Ron to not return to Fisher Robay, because returning to your workplace after quitting it or being kicked out of there usually means that you won’t get the respect that you enjoyed prior to your exit. Barb knows that even though Ron has dedicated several years to Fisher Robay, he didn’t exactly enjoy working there. That’s why she advises him to use this downtime to figure out what he actually wants to do in life. What are Ron’s chances of returning to Fisher Robay even if he wants to? Well, going by the scene where Jeff and his employees are reviewing the footage of Ron shoving Jeff, it’s shockingly mixed. Douglas is Ron’s number one hater, and he doesn’t want him to be fired. He wants Ron to be demoted so that he can personally humiliate and look down upon Ron on a daily basis. In an attempt to underscore the severity of the crime that’s been committed against Jeff, Alice (not that one) and Alon go really hard in terms of describing how Ron assaulted Jeff. Jeff is an incredibly insecure man, and he thinks his manhood is at risk because of Ron’s actions.
So, Jeff thinks that if he fires Ron, he’ll be admitting the fact that he has fired Ron because he is afraid of him. If he keeps Ron on the job, it’ll seem like he has no self-respect and his employees can assault him and yet face no repercussions. Hence, instead of Ron, it’s Jeff who is stuck between a rock and a hard place. While Jeff is fussing over this particular conundrum, we see Ron enjoying a leisurely walk with Baby. That’s when he gets a call from Natalie, who, shockingly enough, is still looking into the Tecca-RBMG-Delaware-City case by investigating the charges that have been leveled against Mayor Braccon. I thought that she’d be worried about her father’s well-being, because she’s seen him lose his mind during his Jeep Tours phase. But now she’s echoing his behavior for some reason. Maybe this is the show’s way of highlighting how children criticize their parents’ actions up till a certain point, only to then emulate their behavior eventually. However, since Ron knows what’s at stake, he advises her to drop the case entirely. Of course, he doesn’t reveal that he has decided to do so because the person behind the Tecca-Delaware-City scam is the primary investor in Barb’s business, but he makes sure that Natalie doesn’t look into it any further, as that’ll jeopardize her mother’s dreams.
Jeff Calls Ron
Ron senses that the sudden change in plans is going to disappoint Natalie, as she had invested a lot of time and energy into this (she went to Delaware City to track down Teresa’s address), which is why he appreciates her presence of mind and intelligence and advises her to turn it towards something that truly speaks to her. Natalie doesn’t protest and gladly accepts Ron’s suggestion. As a consequence of this conversation between the father and the daughter, a rift forms between Natalie and Tara, because the former had used the ham from Wendy’s Carvers, which was a part of Tara’s upcoming ad campaign, when nobody was supposed to see the product until it had been launched. Ron doesn’t learn that immediately. Hence, he assumes that he has given some sane advice to his daughter, and it’s time to do the same with his son, who has been struggling for a while. When Seth returns from school, Ron sits down with him to have an earnest chat. Seth opens up and tells his father that he’s not interested in playing basketball anymore.
Ron wanted Seth to play the sport, which is why he has been forcing himself to like basketball, but his heart is just not in it. Seth says that he wants to dedicate every waking moment of his life to stop-motion animation, and he wants to go to the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) so that he can pursue a career in this field. So, Ron tells him to venture down that path without worrying about anything else. Also, Ron apologizes for not being a responsible dad and then goes on a tangent about what he has been occupied with recently, without exactly going into the details, which understandably frustrates Seth. Anyway, now that Seth has dealt with his family issues, he sits down to contemplate what he wants to do for work. That’s when he gets a call from Jeff, where he asks Ron to meet him for a beer, bury the hatchet, and figure out a way to script Ron’s return to Fisher Robay. Ron remembers Barb’s advice and rejects the offer. It must have taken a lot of effort for Jeff to swallow his ego and make that call. So, to hear Ron one-up him in such a nonchalant way sends him over the edge, and he essentially tells Ron that if he had completed the mall, his legacy would have become associated with something historic. By choosing not to finish what he had started, he’ll be forgotten. Ron responds to that by saying that he’ll think about it, and he hangs up.
Ron Breaks Up With Mike
Ron calls on the Columbus Herald Tipline to see if the newspaper would be interested in publishing a covert hit piece on the Tecca scam. As soon as those words come out of his mouth, he is hit with a sudden pang of realization that he is risking his whole family’s life by doing this, and he hangs up. But the bullet has already left the gun, and he gets a call from the Columbus Herald Tipline asking him if he wants to go ahead with publishing that story that he was talking about. Ron claims that it’s a prank call and tells the caller to never contact him again. Now, what’s noteworthy here is that “Columbus Herald” calls back Ron right after he hangs up, and they know his name. They claim that they found out about it through the caller ID, but why would a tipline number have a caller ID checker on it? That defeats the whole purpose of an anonymous tip. That means that that wasn’t the Columbus Herald calling Ron, but someone pretending to be a representative of the newspaper. How did they figure out that Ron had called the Columbus Herald? Well, in last week’s episode, Ron had lost both his phones, and the smartphone that he purchased to retrieve the data from his old smartphone was bought in a city that had seemingly been taken over by Tecca. I predicted that that new smartphone was bugged so that Tecca could keep track of everything Ron was doing through it. If my hypothesis is correct, that’s how the operator pretending to be from the Columbus Herald knew what Ron had done.
Or maybe I’m overthinking this and that was the actual tipline operator of the Columbus Herald, and Ron has just lost a golden opportunity to anonymously expose Tecca and Alice. Ron puts all that on the backburner and takes Baby for a walk again, and he is confronted by Mike because Ron hasn’t been taking his calls. Mike is shocked to learn that he is putting a stop to the investigation into Tecca. He was sure that this was his shot at doing something memorable before dying. He drew parallels between himself and Scrooge to illustrate his point that he could have gone into the afterlife knowing that he had done something worthwhile before his demise. But Ron has snatched that chance away from him, and that’s why he is mad. When Mike says that Ron has the luxury of abandoning a passion project like this and running back to his family and his “fancy job,” Ron retorts that he should do the same and focus on his own family. This irks Mike very much, and he leaves, seemingly with the intention of never meeting Ron in this lifetime.
Ron Encounters a Monster?
Ron realizes that he has taken things too far. So, he goes to the house where Mike’s daughter, Lynette, lives, probably so that she can convey his note of gratitude to him, because he knows that Mike won’t let him into his apartment anytime soon. Lynette is at work, so her aunt receives Ron. As Ron starts talking about Mike and how grateful he is for all the things that Mike has done for him, Lynette’s aunt gets angry, tells Ron that he doesn’t know anything about Mike, and slams the door on his face. This commences the unraveling of Ron’s life again. Ron goes home in the hopes that he’ll be able to process what just happened, but that’s when he learns that Natalie has moved out of Tara’s house because they had a falling out over using the ham from Wendy’s Carvers for Ron’s Tecca investigation. Tara had signed an NDA for that product, and Natalie has accidentally jeopardized her career. So, Tara thinks that she can’t trust Natalie with her work, and if she can’t trust Natalie with her professional stuff, how can she marry her? Hence, I guess Natalie and Tara’s wedding has been temporarily suspended, all because Natalie tried to help Ron with his wild-goose chase. As if that’s not horrible, Baby gobbles up Mike’s Chocolate Kong, and since dogs can’t digest chocolate, Ron takes Baby for a run so that she can “sweat out the chocolate” (that’s not how it works). He gets distracted by a call from an unknown number, and Baby uses that opportunity to sprint towards a guy standing on the trail in the forest. Ron tries to go after Baby, but since he is really unathletic, he trips over and knocks himself out. When he regains consciousness, Ron spots a big house and approaches it. Upon peering through its window, he sees Baby lounging on the couch. The owner of the house comes out, and Ron tells him that he has come looking for his dog. The man says that that’s his dog and her name is not Baby, but Minnie Mouse. Apparently, someone stole her from his front yard, put her up for sale, and Ron bought her. Well, now that Minnie has returned to her rightful owner, everyone is happy, I guess. Anyway, the man takes Ron over to his shed to show him a brand-new shape. What is that exactly? Gun to my head, I won’t be able to describe it. It seems like a holographic projection of some kind of abstract art, and when Ron turns to the man to admit the fact that he has never seen anything like it, the man turns into some kind of a monster—he reveals his yellow teeth, dark circles appear around his eyes, and he snarls aggressively at Ron. Ron seemingly loses consciousness again, and when he wakes up, he is in the man’s living room.
Ron Calls Jeff
Minnie’s owner thanks Ron again for saving his dog, and, oddly enough, Ron asks him to post about it on Instagram and Facebook. The man obliges; he takes pictures of Ron with Minnie Mouse, and once Ron is happy with the social media posts, he leaves. One of two things could have happened here. Either Ron lost consciousness in the woods, woke up in the man’s living room, and imagined the rest, or Ron actually encountered a monster masquerading as a human being who knocked him out after showing him its true face. I am willing to settle on the first option, but at this point, things have gotten so weird that I don’t know what to believe anymore. Coming back to the plot, after exiting the man’s house and bidding farewell to Minnie Mouse, Ron gets a call from the Tecca representative who has been toying with him all this while. Through their brief conversation, Ron finds out that this guy isn’t associated with Alice at all. So, if he doesn’t know who Alice is, is he linked to Tecca at all? I’ll come back to that in a bit.
Ron goes home, and after checking the comments on the social media post about Minnie’s return, he looks into RISD’s tuition fees, which are substantial. Then he spots a letter in his inbox regarding changes to Fisher Robay’s staff. Realizing that he won’t be able to support his son’s dreams of becoming a stop-motion animation artist without a job, he calls up Jeff and arranges a meeting with the intention of rejoining Fisher Robay. On his way out, Ron gets into a bit of a tiff with Barb over his intelligence. In last week’s episode, at Alice’s party, George (Barb’s friend) had told Ron that Barb knew all about his detective business and she was quite impressed by it. However, the truth of the matter is that Barb thought that Ron was being pretty juvenile by going on his silly, fantastical adventures, and that it was frustrating her a lot. Hence, she was glad that he had given up on that and had decided to focus on real life again. Ron is aghast that he misread George’s description of Barb’s “compliments” so poorly that he thought that he was doing Barb a favor by cancelling the Tecca case. It seems like he is about to explode on Barb, but he chooses not to, because that’ll delay his meeting with Jeff.
Ron Learns the Truth About Mike
When Ron arrives for his meeting with Jeff at a karaoke bar, he is surprised to learn that Jeff’s friend Grego is there too. Ron assumed that it’d be a part-work, part-casual session, but Grego’s presence has clearly derailed this evening. So, instead of talking about Fisher Robay, the discourse becomes about who has had the craziest experience in life. Ron feels left out, and he almost ends up talking about his Tecca conspiracy theory. Call it fate or luck, but Jeff’s turn at the karaoke stage comes up, thereby preventing Ron from shooting himself in the foot. Jeff isn’t impressed by the karaoke setup, and in order to prove to Ron that, under the right circumstances, he can sing really well, he gives Ron his phone so that he can listen to a recording of his performance. The tune of the song that Jeff is singing sounds exactly like the jingle that RBMG uses for its hold music, and that causes Ron to panic. He returns Jeff’s phone and bolts out of the bar. He rushes to Fisher Robay HQ and starts rummaging through Jeff’s office, because he thinks that Jeff is clearly connected to Tecca. He finds a secret drawer that has a photo of Jeff with a woman, Danny (who is his friend), and Stacy Crystals!
Upon further investigation, he finds documents related to RBMG and Tecca where Jeff’s name has been listed alongside Stacy as their “present directors.” Alice’s name isn’t in any of them; it’s just Stacy Crystals. Due to this shocking development, Ron calls up Mike to tell him that they have to resume their investigation into Tecca. When Ron gets home, he finds Lynette waiting at his doorstep. Ron wonders if she is looking for her father, Mike. However, Lynette reveals that Mike is not actually her dad. Lynette’s real father died in a tragic car accident. Since he was an organ donor, Mike received his heart. During Lynette’s wedding, her mom decided to invite Mike because then her dad would be with her on that auspicious day in spirit. Mike apparently used that opportunity to sexually harass Lynette’s mom and then Lynette herself. Hence, they had to distance themselves from Mike, and she tells Ron to do the same, because Mike can be pretty dangerous.
Amanda Has Superpowers?
As Ron starts regretting his friendship with Mike, he gets another call from that unknown number inviting him to a meeting at Ron’s high school. While Ron heads over for that confrontation, we see a brief montage of Jeff exiting the karaoke bar after learning about Stacy’s shooting incident, Mike holding the guy who was talking to Braccon during his pub crawl hostage, and Seth showing his stop-animation short to Barb and Natalie. Then we go back to Ron, who, in the ending of The Chair Company episode 8, comes face-to-face with a guy in a Jason mask. When he takes it off, we see that his whole face has been disfigured with fillers and Botox to such an extent that it’s impossible to know who’s even playing that character. He claims that he is Amanda’s boyfriend and he is working with her to get revenge against Ron. Why? Because when they were in high school, Ron accidentally spit a gummy bear into her cleavage. That embarrassed Amanda, and she began planning to return the favor to Ron. When she got the chance to do so, she used her supposed telekinetic abilities to break the chair that Ron sat on.
The Chair Company’s finale ends with Amanda’s boyfriend screaming like a madman while Ron expresses an understandable amount of shock. What the hell does that mean? Well, as usual, I’ll give you a couple of options. Firstly, yes, Amanda does have telekinetic superpowers, and she did use them to embarrass Ron. She has nothing to do with Tecca, but in an attempt to make a fool out of Ron, she sent him down a path that caused him to unravel the connection between Fisher Robay, Tecca, and RBMG. Secondly, Amanda doesn’t have telekinetic superpowers, but she is the mastermind behind Fisher Robay, Tecca, and RBMG. She set up all of these companies so that one day she’d be able to embarrass Ron. However, instead of just being ashamed, Ron became an amateur detective and is about to blow the lid on the scam that Fishery Robay, Tecca, and RBMG are conducting. There’s a secret third option, which is waiting for the second season of The Chair Company because only the writers of this amusingly absurd show can answer the questions that they have posed. In the meantime, please, feel free to share your thoughts on the finale in the comments section below.
