HBO has asked—not just once, but numerous times, in bold and underlined type—that reviewers of Tim Robinson and Zach Kanin’s The Chair Company refrain from describing the workplace mishap that sets the entire series in motion. It seems like an absurd request, not just because it’s the equivalent of asking someone recounting the plot of Star Wars to keep quiet about the whole Death Star thing, but because “the chair incident” in question is so trivial, hardly the kind of thing you’d expect to be treated like a state secret. (The network’s official one-sentence summary describes it as “an embarrassing incident at work,” which honestly gets you 90 percent of the way there.) But rather than roll my eyes at an act of spoilerphobic overkill, I’ve come to see the restriction as an ingenious c

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