Netflix’s New Sketch Show, I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson, Is Brilliantly Weird and Uncomfortable
Main photo by Lara Solanki, photos courtesy of Netflix
This is the fate of former SNL cast members: they’ll always be referred to as such, even the ones like Tim Robinson, who was only on-camera for a season and whose best work can be found elsewhere. The co-star and co-creator of Comedy Central’s dearly missed Detroiters, Robinson is equally comfortable on either side of the camera—he’s a fantastic sketch comedy writer who’s just as good of a performer, and who has carved out a unique and immediately recognizable niche in both. He puts both skills to brilliant use in his new Netflix show, I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson, which is now streaming.
Robinson is a master of embarrassment. His sketches tend to focus on two types of characters: people who tell small lies that grow larger and more obvious as they refuse to come clean, and people who are too irrational, confused or stubborn to understand what’s happening—or refuse to understand because that would require admitting their own ignorance. This might sound like typical cringe comedy turf, but Robinson keeps it fresh by extending ideas behind all bounds of logic, resulting in characters or situations so utterly absurd that you won’t even think of comparing them to such cringe comedy forefathers as Larry David or Ricky Gervais.
For instance: one sketch in a later episode starts off like a parody of rock ‘n’ roll biopics. A band is finishing up a gospel song in a small recording studio in what looks like the late ‘50s, and a dismissive label guy says they’re not interested. They’re looking for something new, something teenagers can get excited about. So the frontman—tall, handsome, with a deep baritone drawl—starts to make up a song on the fly, with Robinson on bass following along. They play the first verse of a Johnny Cash-esque country-rock story-song about a saloon murder, the label guy is instantly interested, and then Robinson’s character launches into a loud, tuneless, absolutely hilarious second verse full of nonsense lyrics that are still somehow internally consistent with each other. It’s a parody of a stereotypical biopic scene (one that was already terminally skewered by Walk Hard), but the execution is what makes it work so well. Robinson’s caterwauling and ridiculous lyrics are objectively terrible, and yet his character delivers them with the utmost confidence, acting not confused but angry and in disbelief when the label guy tells him they prefer the frontman’s lyrics. That sense of delusion, that utter disconnect between Robinson’s character and the world around him, is a recurring theme, and part of what makes this show so great.