The Best Sketch in Season 3 of 'I Think You Should Leave' Is…
Baby, baby, baby, baby, bay-bay-bay! The funniest show on streaming is back for a third season. Yes, I’m talking about I Think You Should Leave, Tim Robinson’s sandbox of chaos and discomfort.
And, for better or worse, nothing much has changed. Season Three follows the same form as the previous two seasons—six episodes, each hovering around 15 to 20 minutes, composed of four or five sketches—with Robinson and co-creator Zach Kanin sticking firmly to their lane: absurd, cringe, and outrageously silly.
As the show returns to settings like the office, first dates, and social gatherings, there are echoes of many previous sketches–in the set-ups and punch-lines, but also in the wonderful, unique ways Robinson contorts his puttylike face and voice. ITYSL is still a show that finds nothing funnier than a boorish man-child who doubles and triples down on a mistake; there is still no one better at embodying that man-child than Robinson. Really, other than the salt gradually edging out the pepper in Robinson’s hair, it would be almost impossible to distinguish a sketch from any one season from a sketch in another.
Which is fine. Though Season Three is admittedly my least favorite of the show so far, Robinson hasn’t lost his fastball. ITYSL remains the show most likely to make me keel over on the floor, my eyes wet with laughter. If there are fewer of those moments this time around than in Seasons One or Two, well, come on, those seasons set a pretty impossible bar.
Season Three’s high points come in Episode Three, “Cut to: We’re Chatting About This at Your Bachelor Party.” There, Robinson plays a man who accidentally gets a haircut that looks like floppy dog ears ahead of a first date; Tim Heidecker plays a doctor who desperately wants to join his patient–whose heart he’s monitoring–at Club Haunted House; and a man (also played by Robinson) 'pays it forward' in a drive-through with the intention of circling behind the next car so they’ll pay for him to enjoy $680 in fast food. Elsewhere, there are more of Robinson's characteristically inspired concepts (“the driving crooner”), names (Don Bon Darley), and quotes (“We should be able to look at a little porn at work…”). The season may not tread much new territory, but in expanding the Tim Robinson library, it does beg the question: Could these guys make these sorts of sketches forever, like their own miniature, cracked-out SNL?
My favorite sketch from this season suggests they could. It comes in the fourth episode, and it’s called “Summer Loving Farewell.” Robinson plays a contestant named Ronnie on Summer Loving, a Bachelorette-esque reality show. To place Robinson, whose smolder is even goofy, among the statuesque hunks that inhabit that sort of show is funny in itself. Of course, he’s one of the two contestants Megan (this show’s bachelorette; played pitch-perfect by Jessica Parker Kennedy) is considering sending home. The other is a heartthrob named Alexander, who just didn’t really “click” with Megan. As for Ronnie?
“I feel like you’re just here for the zipline,” Megan says.
Robinson gives one of his trademark guilty-confused, My hand’s not in the cookie jar looks, and slips out a quiet “What?”
“All you do all day is go on the zip line.”
Cue video of Ronnie, wearing a wetsuit shirt (the details!), repeatedly ziplining into the pool–stone-faced, legs dangling, trying a spin–during the luau cocktail mixer. Of course, he denies and deflects the accusation, somberly claiming that Cody is a drug addict, that Carmelo “said your face looks like a clock,” and that “What’s waiting for me at home is really bad.” When Megan officially sends him packing, he puts his hands on his hips and… honks? Alexander can barely stifle a laugh.
The best part of the sketch, though–where I really lost it–comes midway, when the show flashes back to that afternoon’s lunch. To get back to the zipline, Ronnie eats as fast as he can. Another contestant earnestly asks, “How do you think your connection with Megan is?” And Ronnie, mouth stuffed with food, gives a hasty, “Good,” before returning to the zipline. In Robinson’s hands, the single word–followed by the incriminating cut–is gold.
I’ve rewatched that bit a dozen times, alone in my apartment, and it never fails to make me laugh like a maniac. Keep ‘em coming, gang!
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