Pinning down why Tim Robinson is funny is very difficult. The closest I have come to deciphering the humour in Netflix’s sketch comedy series I Think You Should Leave is that it follows the logic of dreams: no one in the sketches acts entirely human, with tiny slights and jealousies provoking mind-melting terror and rage, in scenarios and settings one step to the left of reality as we know it.
Take the baby of the year competition, which has been going for “a gruelling three months”. The infamous hotdog guy, who pretends he didn’t crash a hotdog-shaped car into a shop and is now internet shorthand for people trying to dodge blame. A driver’s ed class that gets derailed by an overly detailed backstory in an educational video. Or a personal favourite: an advert for an automatic dog door that quickly veers off track as Robinson’s character begins ranting about the time a pig burst into his house through a dog door, and ends with him having an existential meltdown about why, when he thought he was about to die, he only felt relief that he wouldn’t have to go to work the next day. It starts profoundly stupid, and ends up being stupidly profound.
