The Official TMHB Top Ten I Think You Should Leave Sketch List
An impossible task; I still did it.
I’ve been a fan of sketch comedy since In Living Color was on the air. I didn’t know much about Saturday Night Live until after the hip and irreverent prime-time offering from Keenan Ivory Wayans was off the air after five glorious seasons, but I gravitated towards that, both through reruns of the Farley-Spade-Sandler salad days on Comedy Central and the newer episodes featuring Will Ferrell, Molly Shannon, and the last gasp of Norm MacDonald in the late ‘90s. The short-lived Dana Carvey Show was a huge hit with me in my teen years as well, even if I suspect it won’t age well. Kids in the Hall, The State, and a few others held real estate in my mind in the ‘90s.
However, SNL got beat, and few other shows could capture the stranglehold that In Living Color had on adolescent TH’s brain. Sketch comedy seemed like it was something I’d outgrown, at least until Tim Robinson bottled the zeitgeist of the dipshit weirdo humor I’d grown to love on social media into 15-minute shows sliced into three-to-six sketches to fit the time. I Think You Should Leave may in aggregate be shorter than a Scorsese film, but it is jam-packed with side-busting laughs that has irreparably changed my brain for the better.
A few people have tried ranking the sketches, and given that this is a content mill, and lists are prime content, I figured I’d throw my hat in the ring too. I’m not going to rank all of them, but I will give you my top ten as well as a few honorable mentions. Without further ado, here are my top ten sketches from I Think You Should Leave, the show that has left me with a looming serotonin shortage as I reach old age.
10. “Capital Room” - Patti Harrison is a trans icon. Did you know that? I didn’t until like a month ago. ANYWAY, she fucking kills it in any sketch she’s in, but this is her piece de resistance, where she segues seamlessly from yelling about how she earned her fortune to how much she just cannot stop drinking wine. A lot of performances, from Robinson or otherwise, are outstanding on this show because the actor just knows how to yell at the right pitch and tenor. Harrison kills it as the pushy fourth member of the panel just shouting into the void.
9. “Traffic” - This one, featuring another regular guest star in Connor O’Malley, is almost the platonic ideal of an ITYSL sketch. It starts out in one direction and just veers all over the place, taking the most circuitous route possible to get to a wholly unexpected payoff, which is this beaut of a song:
8. “Pacific Proposal Park” - Featuring Robinson’s Detroiters co-star Sam Richardson as the proprietor of the park where he wants couples to get engaged, this season three sketch doesn’t just have my heart because it has wrestlers in it, including the co-star of the critically acclaimed short film, Tito, Joseph Ruud…
…but because the premise of it does not go exactly where you think it should go. Also, I love physically violent comedy. Plus, Richardson doxxing two of the wrestlers, saying “I hope they die” is comedic platinum, but don’t try that in real life, buster.
7. “Brooks Brothers” - You know the visual, the one at the top of this list. Robinson stands in the middle of a menswear store, mouth agape, pointing fingers at people while wearing a hot dog suit, captioned “we are all trying to find out who did this.” Almost everyone’s entree into the series is this sketch, whether they know it or not. But as with the one clocking in at number one, the entire length of it provides so, so, SO much more than the gifs and screengrabs ever could.
6. “Darmine Doggy Door” - “For 50 seconds, there was monsters in the world.” Profound quote or shitpost? Robinson might have surpassed @dril on that one:
Anyway, I love that they probably blew 2/3 of the season’s budget on the gross little gremlin that Robinson’s spokesperson character thought he saw that was really just a pig in a Richard Nixon mask. But it was well, well, WELL worth it.
5. “Baby Cries” - Once again, the more emphatic portion of what makes the show click isn’t writing but delivery. “I’m worried that the baby doesn’t think I can change.” Delivered with 100 percent complete earnestness. The flashback to the revelry from when he WAS a piece of shit showcases the rowdiness and goofball nature to a tee. Season 2 was hit after hit after hit, and this is only the third best sketch from that one.
4. “Calico Cut Pants” - If landing in a spot 10,000 miles away from the initial premise is one hallmark of the show, beating a dead horse until it’s seemingly turned into horse dust but never losing the plot and finishing right at the crescendo. “YOU GOTTA GIVE!” especially featuring wrestler Brody “Mike The Rock Davis” King, is the basis of the thing, and it’s such an intoxicating hook, but don’t sleep on the subtext that Robinson’s character here has a wife whose addiction to eating lithium batteries is driving him insane.
3. “Baby Shower” - This might seem like an oddball pick, but this sketch was where the show hooked me. “FIFTY STANZO FEDORAS!” It was absolute perfection in comedic delivery. It was pained and strained and just loud enough that it elicited a gigantic belly laugh.
2. “Drive-Thru” - If not for #1, this might be the perfect sketch on the show - warm beginning, skidding tires, the strained begging of “I’M TRYING TO DO SOMETHING!!!” the perfectly-respirated order trying to take advantage of a pay-it-forward, the confrontation from the car in front of him (once again, another wrestler, this time Aron Stevens), and skidding off by jumping over the concrete curb. It was a fuckin’ masterpiece.
1. “Corncob TV” - Again, I had seen the gifs and screenshots beforehand. It just goes to show that spoiler culture is overblown, man. They didn’t ruin me. You can’t gif someone’s tone of voice. You can’t screenshot timing. Everything about this sketch from “THEY’RE SAYING COFFIN FLOP ISN’T A REAL SHOW” to completion is just a fucking riot, and it’s also on the same episode as two other all-timer sketches in “Ghost Tour” and “Prank Show.” This might be a safe pick, but I’m telling you, there are few times in my life I laughed harder than when I first saw this sketch.
Honorable Mention - “Has This Ever Happened to You?” (Turbo Team), “Ghost Tour” (has a ghost ever come out of the wall with a big fat cumshot?), “Crashmore - Junket,” “Tasty Time Videos” (“they’re saying I paid them in fast food… because I did”), “Designated Driver” (The Driving Crooner)