I Think You Should Leave Season 3 Review: Tim Robinson's Hilarious Sketch Series Is Weirder Than Ever
When people look back at our present hell-time, if they look back at all, the one piece of art firmly representing what we all seemingly went through, together and alone, will be "I Think You Should Leave." Tim Robinson and Zach Kanin's sketch comedy series is the show of our current moment; a perfect encapsulation of what it's like to be trapped on a planet with increasingly odd weirdos who love to shout and never, ever admit they're wrong about anything. It's the living encapsulation of the "Watchmen" quote, "None of you seem to understand. I'm not locked in here with you. You're locked in here with me!"
We cannot escape the freaks, loudmouths, and downright lunatics that inhabit our world as they do the world of "I Think You Should Leave." All we can do is laugh at the absurdity and wait for a comet to hopefully come and kill us all.
In a series of quick, hysterical sketches, Robinson and his players — some professional comedians, others seemingly random people plucked from the street and dropped in front of a camera — create moments destined to be meme-ed. Memehood isn't the test of true art, and indeed, it can be reductive to turn everything into a damn meme. But as the world grows increasingly strange and hostile, we have no choice but to apply the "I Think You Should Leave" absurdity to our own reality as a kind of outlet for our cosmic pain. In short, we're all trying to find the guy who did this, and the guy who did this is us.
The Driving Crooner and company
How does one even review "I Think You Should Leave"? I'm really asking, because I have no idea. It's not that the show is above criticism, it's that the series unfolds at such breakneck speed, overloaded with such lunacy, that it begins to overwhelm you. You have no choice but to sit back and laugh your ass off. I could tell you that the visual aesthetic of the show continues to bend and jump and alter itself depending on the sketch. I could tell you that the performers are all at the top of their game, including guest stars. I could say that returning favorites like Sam Richardson, Patti Harrison, and, yes, Biff Whiff, aka Santa Claus, aka Detective Crashmore, are all back and killing it.
But all of that is window dressing. What matters most is how you react to the madness on display from episode to episode. Game shows turn into screaming nightmares. A performer attempts to recreate silent movies on stage, only to enrage his audience. A woman gets in trouble for bringing her rats to work. A commercial for an automated dog door morphs into a story about fighting neighbors. A contestant on a dating show seems only to be there to use a zipline. A man plays a video game about an egg at work. And, in my personal favorite sketch from season 3, a character announces himself to be something called "The Driving Crooner," which means he drives around with decals of a cigar and a hat on his window for ... some reason. Why? I don't know. No one knows.
'I can do whatever I want'
That's the thing: You can't apply logic to what happens on "I Think You Should Leave," just like you can't apply logic to the way certain people behave in the real world. No one in the universe of the show is "normal," whatever that means. Even the straight men and women eventually succumb to the craziness, accepting what's happening in the end even if they don't like it. They have no choice. All of this is strange and yet familiar because the current time we find ourselves in feels like a mirror image of "I Think You Should Leave."
The series is funnier than real life, and a lot less terrifying since it's a TV show. But like many of the characters of "I Think You Should Leave," we're surrounded by bullying, screaming weirdos who will never, ever admit they're wrong about anything. Politicians and world leaders (you know the ones) proudly boast their ignorance and thrive on being called out for being complete a**holes. It's a sickness, and "I Think You Should Leave" takes that sickness and transmits it out to us for huge laughs. It's all so very weird, and this season feels like it's the weirdest entry yet. Perhaps because the world itself only continues to grow more deranged.
You could argue that I'm putting too much thought into such a silly show. That Robinson and his crew want nothing more than to make us laugh. And I'm sure that's true. But art — especially great art — always reflects the era in which it was created, and "I Think You Should Leave" just happened to be created right now, at a time when we'd all probably like to blast off this planet and start off somewhere new. But we can't. We're stuck here. So we might as well find something to laugh about.
"I Think You Should Leave" season 3 is now streaming on Netflix.