How I made my peace with “I Think You Should Leave” – a cringe comedy I was one reluctant to watch

Legs tucked underneath me as my head lolled to the side, my whole body buzzed with sunburnt warmth and fatigue from a day of walking through echo-y museum hallways and cobblestoned streets across Paris. I was eager to unwind with some quiet screentime — Paul Hollywood calling some middle-aged mother of two’s chocolate cake stodgy, perhaps. But what I got could not have been further off course. 

“What should we watch?” I asked my boyfriend — looking equally as sleepy and satiated — from across the couch at our Airbnb.

I thumbed through channels of French sitcoms from the ’80s, watching lithe and leggy women strut around cardboard set apartments in sea-green workout gear. 

A voice tinged with caution, reservation, and sheer blind hope squeaked out: “Have you watched the new season of ‘I Think You Should Leave’?”

I bristled immediately. Of course, I had not. Netflix’s cult-favorite sketch-comedy series “I Think You Should Leave” created by Tim Robinson and Zach Kanin had long been a polarizing linchpin in our relationship. My boyfriend remains utterly enraptured by the show’s unhinged absurdism, while I usually struggle to give rise to an audible chuckle, save for a few smirks and snickers. Ever since the show’s third season dropped late last month, my subconscious had been silently prepping for this moment.

“I think you’ll really like this one sketch!” he said, clambering toward me as I passed him the remote through limp fingers. As the show’s signature geometric, pastel-hued intro rolled on to the screen, overlaid by John Lewis’ “Baby Bay,” I let my legs unfurl and sank deeper into the couch, bracing myself for disappointment. 

In the skit, Robinson plays Ronnie, one of numerous contestants on a sudden-elimination dating show called “Summer Loving.” Unlike the other men who are vying for a shot at love with bachelorette Megan, Ronnie has only joined the show to make overzealous and nonstop use of the zip line over the pool. Megan tells Ronnie she is considering ousting him from the show, saying, “I feel like you’re just here for the zip line,” followed by sepia-toned flashbacks of Ronnie zipping above the pool.

“You never joined us at any of the group meals, and when you were reprimanded and asked to join us, you ate as fast as you could,” Megan says, while Ronnie shakes his head in denial, his lips pressed in a hard line. Then, another clip in which a contestant asked Ronnie how he thinks his connection with Megan is. “Good,” Ronnie replies before the Thor lookalike can even finish speaking, choking back bites of a burger before boomeranging back to the zip line.

A springy feeling in my chest bubbled to a breathy snort as I watched my boyfriend throw his head back and land a primordial thump on his chest every time Robinson flung himself from the zip line into the pool. Soon enough, I was chortling right alongside him. 

I certainly never imagined that a relaxing trip to France would be the backdrop for my mental pivot about “I Think You Should Leave.” A year ago, I wasn’t laughing at this show. Whenever it was on, I became huffy, knitting my brows and aggressively scrolling through my camera roll or Twitter in silent protest.

My state of elation was undeniable. Now I just had to figure out how I’d gotten there. 

Tim Robinson in “I Think You Should Leave” (Courtesy of Netflix)The skit itself was, admittedly, hilarious. Watching Robinson, wrapped in a sopping rash guard and baggy swim trunks, pedal his feet furiously above the water while the rest of the contestants socialize at a luau cocktail mixer was simple, stupid, comedic gold. The awkward, hypnotic quality of humor was doled out in perfect portioned dollops, straddling the line between wondering, “Am I really laughing at this?” and wanting to scream “Why aren’t you laughing at this?!” to anyone who isn’t. More than that, however, I reveled in my boyfriend’s reaction to Robinson’s antics — every resonant guffaw was a reminder of how profoundly effective this show was, and his happiness alone was enough to let each episode bleed into the next.

Right after “Summer Loving” came a skit featuring a cameo from Fred Armisen, who plays a father hoping to scare his sons into behaving better by showing them a video of him walloping a random kid on the street. However, it quickly becomes apparent that Armisen’s character staged the video through a company called Street Sets, once the “kid” is shown be an elderly stunt double. “F**king Street Sets! I paid $15k for this!” Armisen yells, followed by a clip of him shoving an old man wearing a bowl cut wig into a brick wall.  

“I Think You Should Leave” is a habitual line-crosser, a virtuoso of a series that specializes in dialing up its jokes to unprecedented levels of, well, ridiculous. It’s a cringe-comedy cornucopia, overflowing with whoopee cushions, ghost tours gone wrong, sloppy steaks and Little Buff Boys. Watching alone, the show’s humor may not land — it feels eerily off-kilter, making the viewer white-knuckle their way through the maze of Robinson’s and Kanin’s minds. But I’ve found that viewing it in groups provokes an intensely successful domino effect. A feeding frenzy of laughter nearly always ensues by the time the third or fourth skit rumbles onscreen. 

Interest in “I Think You Should Leave” is not a question of high-brow versus low-brow humor, per se. Though Robinson and Kanin waterlog each skit with wonderfully crusty and classic “immature” comedy — poop jokes, “huge cum shots” and hot dogs abound — they produce salient, albeit silly, sketches about the dissolution of social norms and scenarios, parodying our ricocheting emotions and opinions incredibly well and acting as a sort of provisional panacea for an increasingly fraught society. 

Additionally, “I Think You Should Leave” pushes boundaries for its unwillingness to release “the awkward tension of any jokes; instead, they get escalated until they veer into the surreal,” writes Amanda Wicks for The Atlantic. “More often than not, premises focus on someone’s mounting anxiety — specifically the kind that stems from misunderstanding banal situation . . .” It doesn’t get more relatable than that. 

Tim Robinson in “I Think You Should Leave” (Courtesy of Netflix)I’d like to believe that I’m not put off by crude and ludicrous humor, as someone who grew up with a dad who owned every episode of “Jackass” on video cassette. And though shows steeped in awkwardness and idiocy — a lá “Nathan For You”, “The Rehearsal,” and “Impractical Jokers” — have always triggered my second-hand embarrassment, I still find the cringey, hijinx-stuffed premises funny. But not knee-slapping, doubled over in pain, gonna pee my pants kind of funny. “I Think You Should Leave” is no exception. The show’s third season has run the gauntlet of dippy humor, from an anthropomorphized egg with a butthole, to a TV show host who scrolls on his phone to avoid confrontation with guests, to a woman who hates her boss because he won’t allow her to keep her pet rats at the office. 

When “I Think You Should Leave” was released in April of 2019, it melded seamlessly into the full-bellied feel of the times: buoyant and completely punch-drunk with positivity. But I would not encounter the show until 2021, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic — an era of greasy-haired, ramen noodled, puff-puff pass kind of nights. Though I, and much of the rest of the world, felt like my life was hurtling towards an ether of smudgy uncertainty, I came to find solace in quiet nights punctuated by “I Think You Should Leave’s” wacky sketches. The show was a warm, buttery glow to share with friends at the end of a Zoom-filled winter day in Manhattan, beckoning us with its particolored screen cuts and Robinson’s zany charm. 

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In most episodes, Robinson’s facial muscles are contorted in concentration, his mouth typically tinged red and shiny, flecked in a layer of spittle as his tongue thrashes around with each breathless word, his arms and fingers tight and rigid as he gesticulates wildly, like a frenetic toddler readying to thwack the life out of a beach-balled piñata. He, along with the show, has been a refreshing, mostly unfunny enigma, calling me back time and time again with all the appeal of a pied-piper wearing a plaid button-down and the occasional fedora.

The more I watch “I Think You Should Leave,” the more I get it, which is to say, I don’t get it at all. And that’s the point — it’s not so much about me understanding the humor or finding the jokes funny as it is about the reactions of people who do. Getting to the start of each new season of “I Think You Should Leave” is still a process that requires gentle goading, and I never choose to watch it alone. But that’s an intentional decision because, for me, cringe is a dish best served in the company of others.