The greatest furniture in pop culture history

The late great Paul Reubens transformed Saturday morning television with Pee Wee’s Playhouse by filling his insane creation with talking appliances and furniture. The most famous, by far, is the big, blue-green Barcalounger with a face named Chairy. She was more than just a furnishing. She had a bubbly personality and a friendly demeanor even though she looked big enough to swallow a whole human being.

There have been many captain’s chairs in the long history of the Star Trek franchise, but only one of them gets put on display in the Smithsonian Museum. The OG swivel chair from the bridge of the USS Enterprise looks like the kind of office furniture that screams, “Let’s get to work.” It has all the buttons and gizmos a space captain needs to operate a massive space destroyer without wasting time walking to a control panel and an intercom system to broadcast through the whole ship. It’s also got a cushy leather seat and back because someone responsible for the lives of 430 crew members should have some comfort.

There aren’t many royal sitcoms, but Archie’s chair is undoubtedly the closest thing we have to a throne. The beloved wingback chair that sits in the living room of 704 Hauser Street is considered off-limits to anyone but Archie unless he needs you to do him a favor or you’re Sammy Davis Jr. It gave Archie a place to watch Cronkite at the end of a long work day and blow raspberries at the newspaper and the Meathead. It represents the only constant Archie thinks he can count on in a world that rapidly changes until, of course, the Meathead breaks it in the seventh season.

The undisputed king of late-night television informed the whole world behind that oak desk that held his precious cigarette box, coffee mug, and beloved rubber chicken. Millions of people tuned into Carson every night before bed as he sat behind his desk to find ways to skewer the day’s news and pick the minds of interesting, famous people. It also served as the place where Carnac the Magnificent would divine the answers to hermetically sealed questions and read lists of interesting things so that he could call Ed McMahon “[insert theme of desk piece here] breath.” Some of the most significant careers in comedy were launched behind that iconic piece of office equipment.

If The Smithsonian could figure out a way to break the dimensional laws of physics, you can beat you’d see The Simpsons’ couch behind glass in the media wing. It’s hard to imagine such a boring, brown sofa working in any living room, but The Simpsons’ living room couch does for some reason. Maybe that’s because the people are yellow. We’ve seen the thing for over 30 seasons involved in around 750 couch gags at the start of every episode, so we’re kind of used to it by now.  

This dark swivel chair holds the butt of the most evil being in the universe, who’s really been the force behind the Dark Side of the Force the whole time. Even if the leathery-skinned despot weren’t sitting in it, the design of his chair would give you an uneasy feeling the minute you set eyes on it. Every part of it is jet black and sits high enough off the ground not to be a stool but low enough not to be an office chair. It’s the throne for someone whose only job is to tell the whole world what to do without having to do any of the work. You’d throw Mister Rogers over a balcony if this were his chair.

These completely useless pieces of furniture, even for the snootiest '60s hipster, became part of a crucial test for employment in the secret alien immigration organization. Future Agent J and his fellow candidates are plopped down in these completely covered living room pieces to take a standardized test, but the true test is the ingenuity they are forced to use because the chairs don’t even offer a simple armrest to sign their names on the front page. This makes it an iconic piece of movie furniture, but it also fits into the futuristic art-deco style of MiB headquarters.

There aren’t many pieces of pop culture furniture that can say they are responsible for so many deaths (assuming, of course, it could speak). The forged sword throne for the King of the Andals, the Rhoynar and the First Men is the major McGuffin of George R.R. Martin’s long-running book and TV series. Whoever sits in it gets to rule the Seven Kingdoms, and there is little that people are willing to do to put their chainmail-covered butts in it.

Game shows had become boring as hell until this MTV gem from the '80s turned the genre on its head. Host Ken Ober’s lifelong ambition is to become a TV quizmaster, so instead of waiting for Television City to give him one, he builds one in his basement using the stuff in his parents' house on 72 Whooping Cough Lane. It only makes sense that a TV trivia show would use off-brand color recliners for contestants to sit in until they are literally ejected from the show for daring to have the lowest score at the end of the game.

We never knew much about the evil head of MAD thanks to his old-style office chair that hides Dr. Claw’s entire body except, of course, for his metal hand. Why didn’t they ever put the camera IN FRONT of his chair? Actually, it’s a good thing they didn’t because it forced our budding imaginations to come up with what the gravely voiced villain looked like every time he ran his evil empire from a computer with only three buttons. Dr. Claw’s chair created a sense of mystery to match the cartoon buffoonery that the live-action remake couldn’t even come close to capturing.

This classic piece of TV furniture opened almost every episode of the sitcom created by Carl Reiner in the early 1960s. The opening credits always feature Rob Petrie entering his home to greet his wife and see that his co-workers have stopped by for a visit, only he doesn’t notice the ottoman as he walks over to greet them. He takes a huge tumble, and his family and friends rush over to help him back to his feet. Then without warning during the middle of its five-season run, the writers switch the script on us, and Petrie finally notices the ottoman and steps out of the way. From then on, the show randomly played one of the two introductions, and America became obsessed. Las Vegas bookies even started taking bets on whether Rob would take the tumble at the beginning of each new episode.

A whole generation of children learned lessons like tolerance, acceptance, and love from Fred Rogers, and every episode started on the little living room bench, where he changed into his sneakers to “make the most of this beautiful day.” You may not have noticed it because it wasn’t always in the frame, but Mister Rogers taught some important lessons from that bench to impressionable children who needed a voice of sanity in the insane world of children’s television.

If you thought the golden chair in which the head of Hogwarts sat in the Great Hall looked more like a throne, you’re not far off from the truth. The look of Dumbledore’s chair is based on the Coronation Chair for English monarchs that sits in St. George’s Chapel. Of course, Dumbledore didn’t act like a king. He was more of an inspirational malevolent mentor when others just ruled over the school. If anyone has earned the right to sit on a majestic throne, it’s him.

It’s hard to pick just one piece of furniture from TV’s greatest primetime soap opera because every piece of scenery looks like it came from the 1960s through some kind of wormhole. So we narrowed it down to Don Draper’s office because it witnessed so many deals and drunken revelations about the mysterious ad man. Everything about the office screams business, but its slick looks feel like just another way that Don hides from his friends, enemies, and even himself.

The elevated chairs on the long-running quiz show feel like something designed for a torture test. They don’t have mobility, and your feet are always hanging off the ground, so you can’t run away. It turns out those chairs are the only help you’ll have when you run out of lifelines, and you can’t remember if the Earth is 39 million or 93 million miles away from the Sun. They force you to focus on the screen and the camera while millions of people watch you squirm in fear at multiple-choice questions.

Designer Olivier Mourgue always had an eye for futuristic designs long before the industry had a word for it, and he cemented his place in it when this odd-looking chair appeared in director Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. These chairs have one of the lowest centers of gravity that look like they’d work best in a setting where zero gravity is the norm. They also look like something you’d see on an episode of The Jetsons, so they blend into the frame perfectly.

Sitcoms are full of odd couples like, well, The Odd Couple, but few of them captured the animosity and struggle to cope as well as the long-running Cheers spinoff. The well-worn recliner Martin brought into Frasier’s Seattle condo became the first of many moments of tension between the father and son the minute he had the movers plop right next to his Coco Chanel reproduction sofa. It’s the one way that Frasier’s dad can feel a sense of independence after moving in with his son when he can’t take care of himself anymore. It’s also the one thing Frasier has to learn to live with if he wants to reconnect with them, even if it’s the only furniture in his living room held together by duct tape.

You don’t tug on Superman’s cape. You don’t see how mad you can make Bruce Banner. And you definitely don’t sit on Norm Peterson’s barstool at Cheers. You probably don't remember what it looks like because Norm spent so much time sitting on it. Just like so many other iconic TV chairs, it’s the one thing in Norm’s pathetic life that he can count on at the end of a long day of avoiding work so that he can get to Cheers and hear his bar mates yell his name as he enters the door. God help the man or woman who dares to sit in it, whether they know the rules of the place.

When Neo learns the horrible truth about his and all of humanity’s existence, Morpheus chooses this classic leather Chesterfield to break the bad news. Of course, it’s just a line of code in a long simulation program, but it’s the personal touch that makes it unique. Clearly, he or whoever is running the training program chose the chair the way someone using a computer chooses a screensaver or their favorite pattern for desktop wallpaper.

Normally, a bright orange chair would only work in an '80s Nickelodeon promo, but Central Perk’s couch became the point of many plotlines and reveals for the long-running NBC sitcom. It says something about a show and its ability to capture your attention, even if it’s one of the weaker episodes. The only way a loud, neon-colored couch can blend into a scene is if the people sitting on it do all the heavy lifting.