I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson Proves Triples Is Best in Season 3: Review
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The post I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson Proves Triples Is Best in Season 3: Review appeared first on Consequence.
The Pitch: It’s hard to describe just what makes I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson so damn special. The SNL alum, along with co-creator Zach Kanin and a phalanx of writers that include Patti Harrison and John Solomon, have built two gut-busting seasons to date centered around breaking down our carefully-crafted, exceedingly brittle senses of social cool and running roughshod over them.
Now, they’re back for a third helping, with six more episodes and nearly thirty sketches covering everything from virtual reality’s liminal space, the crushing obligation of following a coworker’s social media page, and the bone-deep bond that occurs between men who just happen to be wearing the same shirt (“shirt brothers”).
I’m Really Crossed Up: As usual, the season’s inaugural sketch sets the high-concept tone for what Robinson et al are doing here. In a VR-based take on Supermarket Sweep (hosted by The Bear’s Ayo Edebiri, one of many welcome guest stars), Robinson straps on some virtual reality goggles to zap into the CG supermarket, only to suddenly forget how to breathe in this new world.
Not only that, the experience sends him into an existential spiral about the relationship between our physical and metaphysical selves. “How do we move our bodies ever?” he muses quietly. It’s the undercover prosthetic prank show sketch from Season 2 all over again, the weight of our physical existence suffocating someone who’s just been reminded how fragile our meat-bag bodies really are.
From there, it’s a cavalcade of strangeness, buoyed by an array of signature Robinson weirdos either played by the man himself or one of a host of great guests. Connor O’Malley returns to play on his own rep as an out-there YouTube comedian, now as a clingy weirdo who crumbles under the self-imposed weight to “be funny” to an audience of one (Robinson) who doesn’t even want to follow the guy’s Insta. Tim Meadows pops up as a frazzled dad at a wedding reception undone by the pressure to do something funny with the props at the photo booth: “Three seconds to think of something silly! That’s not enough time!”
But whether it’s Robinson or one of his many avatars, the show delights in its usual mix of goofy slapstick (see: Robinson’s reality dating show contestant, who’s not there for love but for the house’s amenities) and subversive probing of our insecurities and pride (the debate show host who boasts that he will just start going on his phone when he starts losing the argument).
I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson (Netflix)
The shorter sketches blissfully sell their gags and get out, but the real rewards come from those with the space to shift focus and surprise you from minute to minute. It could be Jason Schwartzman dodging an overeager colleague (Robinson) committed to holding him to his jokey demand to make him stop talking about his kids at work functions; or the cardiologist (Tim Heidecker) who uses his patient’s heart monitor app to find out when he’s going to the horror-themed disco Club Haunted House (despite Robinson’s repeated claims that he’s, in fact, just jerking off).
I See The World Wildly And In Wild Ways: But for all the avant-garde ridiculousness the show still has in spades, it’s hard not to feel like Robinson and the show are starting to run out of new angles to explore these same social niceties. Some Season 3 sketches feel like minor riffs on ones from previous seasons — see: the aforementioned VR game show treading similar ground as Karl Havoc — while there are yet more sketches about the etiquette of adult house parties, efforts to spice up the banality of office culture, insecurity around dates and friend groups, and more.
One extended (and admittedly great) bit sees Robinson playing an eager member of a sitcom studio audience, who decides to use the fact that “millions of people will hear our voices” to warn listeners of specific businesses whose defective products or services have caused havoc on dates. And yet, there’s the same flavor of that ghost-tour sketch from Season 2 — the man so desperate to let his freak flag fly within the rules set for him. It’s still scorchingly funny, but you don’t feel like the show is treading new thematic ground.
Still, these are minor quibbles, and God forbid a sketch show carry forth such a consistent vision and stick to it. In “Shirt Buddies,” Biff Wiff returns as a guy who asks Robinson’s similarly-dressed stranger to help him clean up a classroom he just trashed. “There’s no rules,” he confesses, inspired by a rock song that’s claimed his brain. “You gotta promise never to do a rule again.” Amid Robinson’s bizarro syntax lies the thesis of the show: His characters either violate long-standing social rules or build themselves an entirely new rulebook, and expect everyone else to keep up.
I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson (Netflix)
The Verdict: Even as Robinson, Kanin, and the writers begin to repeat themselves a bit in Season 3, there’s still something so delightfully anarchic about I Think You Should Leave’s unpredictability. Yes, the brief is clear by now: Tim Robinson is downright addicted to probing the little niceties and social contracts we take for granted, exploring what happens when we double down on violating them or going along to get along.
But though the sketches occasionally feel like pale repeats of classics from seasons past, you still can’t beat that rollercoaster feeling of not knowing where a sketch will go, or what Robinson will do with his rubber-faced physicality and downright feral line delivery. Triples may not be best, but triples is safe, and you’re in good hands with this show. Just don’t talk about your kids at the office party.
Where’s It Playing? I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson ziplines down into your Netflix account May 30th. That means now, go watch it now!
Trailer:
I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson Proves Triples Is Best in Season 3: Review
Clint Worthington
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