Tim Robinson never met a social setting or norm that he didn’t want to detonate with awkward outbursts of rage and despair, and that impulse is alive and well in the third season of I Think You Should Leave, the comedian’s phenomenal Netflix series that premieres May 30. Once again trading in Robinson’s particular brand of taboo-smashing ridiculousness laced with crushing misery and frustration (and designed for instant meme-ification), it confirms that no one does unhinged better, or funnier.
There may be nothing in I Think You Should Leave’s return engagement that’s as uproarious as last season’s “Coffin Flop,” which built from a familiar TV-commercial premise into something so off-the-wall and maniacal that, a year later, it still brings me to tears. Nonetheless, the opening skit of Episode 3 comes pretty close.
In it, Robinson plays Richard Brecky, aka Jellybean, a theatrical performer whose show involves acting out 73 different stories with nothing but “gesture and emotion.” Miming his way through various narratives, he’s a silent clown who promises that he never talks—and if he does, he’ll pay the audience. To prove his sincerity, he has a digital screen at the side of the stage that dings and adds money to the running counter every time he utters a word.
The problem for Brecky, it turns out, is that this gimmick has made him a popular attraction for hecklers—especially frat brothers—who want him to explain himself. Thus, as he pretends to rake the lawn or pour a drink, the crowd screams, “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” over and over again until a frustrated Brecky snaps and clarifies his pantomiming actions.
This is pure, unbridled stupidity, and it mounts as the patrons become rowdier, refusing to let him go a second without demanding to know what he’s trying to convey. There’s no closing punchline, just delirious escalation, as customers yell louder and Brecky loses his mind—a clash of dim-bulb innocence and hostile harassment that explodes in exasperation and failure.
That could be the description of most of I Think You Should Leave’s sketches, which find Robinson (or one of his proxies, occasionally played by cameoing co-stars) navigating ordinary circumstances that blow up thanks to inappropriate behavior. At a live sitcom taping, a man (played by Robinson) is informed that the microphone dangling overhead is recording everything that’s said (and will therefore be heard by millions). This motivates Robinson’s weirdo to use the moments immediately following the crowd’s laughter to quietly make personal announcements: “TK Jewelers is a scam. The jewelry’s fake”; “L&L Limos is a scam.”
When confronted about this no-no, Robinson’s character tells his horrifying tales of woe—a watch exploding in his date’s face; a limousine with a fake wall—to a group of surprisingly empathetic listeners. His triumph, however, is less important than his prior humiliation, so things naturally end with dramatizations of his ordeals, punctuated by a final, “What the hell?”
Everyday aggravations are the lifeblood of the Netflix series, and generally beget confusion, fury and madness that’s epitomized by Robinson’s trademark crazy-eyed, scrunched-face expressions. In a corporate office, Robinson’s worker grows more perplexed and annoyed as he plays a computer game—in which he feeds small eggs to a giant egg—that doesn’t abide by normal mathematical rules. Combined with his colleagues’ complaints about his lack of communication, Robinson’s character becomes increasingly upset.
In typical I Think You Should Leave fashion, things ultimately take a right turn into genuine loopiness, with the game suddenly working perfectly once the coworkers view it, at which point the giant egg drops its pants to reveal pubic hair and bends over to display its anus. “You’re looking at a nude egg,” says one onlooker, to which Robinson’s dork replies, “We should be able to look at a little porn at work.”
There are times when I Think You Should Leave’s third season feels a tad too familiar for its own good; an opening skit about a talk show (“Barley Tonight”) whose host looks at his phone whenever he’s losing a debate is funny, even if its intro resembles other Robinson TV spoofs. Better is when the show’s inanity bursts into anguished desolation, the former an outgrowth of (or a desperate attempt to mask) the latter. That’s certainly true with an office Team Building Workshop seminar in which Robinson’s Stan takes play-fighting way too (profanely) far, only to be upstaged by an associate who outright ruins the event. Morosely sitting on the floor, the guy admits, “I’m so tired of this. Everything is out of control!”
Perhaps nowhere is hopelessness more ever-present, however, than in a commercial for Darmine Doggy Door, whose automated system is meant to prevent unwanted animals from entering your home—a feature that clearly doesn’t work, since Robinson’s host is beset by a mutant creature that’s actually a pig wearing a Richard Nixon mask that was sent to harass him by his neighbor.
Before long, the sketch devolves into delirium, with Robinson musing, “Anything could happen in the world. We really know very little. My life is nothing I thought it should be and everything I was worried it would become because for fifty seconds I thought there was monsters on the world.” It’s derangement of the most amusing order, and matched by a later bit about an old man who trashes a school classroom because a new pop-punk song has wracked him with existential despondency (“Yeah, I don't know. I think there just might be no rules").
Such sadness is vital to I Think You Should Leave, and yet Robinson’s gift for random, convention-violating strangeness is never depressing. From a prolonged joke about a man’s canine-inspired coiffure, to a Sam Richardson-led television spot for a marriage-proposal park that’s overrun by pro wrestlers, to a satire of dating shows, Robinson’s cult hit goes off in all manner of unexpected and irrational directions. It may not redefine itself in its third go-round, but it still affords a hilarious and endlessly rewatchable vision of a country whose inhabitants are spinning out of control—or, as one of Robinson’s wackos states, “I see the world wildly and in wild ways.”
