![]() ![]() It's always funny, but what happens when they go home at the end of the day? It casts such a surprisingly melancholy shadow over the show it's easy to forget this sketch also contains the sentence "do any of these fuckers ever blast out of the wall and have like a huge cumshot?" It feels like we're seeing the 60 seconds after the end of every I Think You Should Leave sketch, which are so often built around characters who cause chaos because they cannot comprehend normal human interaction. The character gets into a car with his mother, religious knick-knacks on her dashboard. His fellow haunting enthusiasts straight-up applaud as he's kicked off the tour, and then the sketch ends on a shockingly somber note. More than that, he cannot comprehend why no one wants to hear about horse cocks from beyond the grave, because he was told this was the adult tour and he's just trying to fit in with the vibe. The conceit is classic ITYSL social interruption, as a man on a haunted house tour (Robinson) takes the post-10PM "Adult Tour" label as a sign to ask, repeatedly, about these little ghost fuckers and their donkey dicks. This sketch is fascinating, not only because of the record amount of times it mentions spectral cumshots, but in the way it offers a rare glimpse into the show's madcap creative process. Putting Tim Robinson in front of a white screen and just letting him riff like a machine gun is a pretty can't-miss plan, and this is one the show's best examples, up there with season 1's nearly-untouchable "Has This Ever Happened to You?" There hasn't been many moments in the past few days where I'm not thinking about the little thigh pats he does after saying "once this invention's big enough I'm going to buy my old company and make the dress code be a big wet diaper." Pat, fired for "poor performance"-it's really because nobody could look at him without dying laughing-has devoted his life to a high-powered hot dog vacuum. It's a perfectly chaotic reintroduction back into the world of this show, but it's the episode three follow-up that brings it back around to one of ITYSL's favorite themes: The guy who learns the absolute most incorrect lesson from any scenario. Pat (Robinson) believes so strongly in not skipping lunch- and he's right to say it-he ends up getting a hotdog caught in his throat during a boardroom meeting, leading to all-out bedlam and vomiting. The very first sketch of season 2 is a go-to ITYSL scenario, a workplace environment interrupted by an aggressively awkward agent of mayhem. This is kind of a cheat because it's spread across two episodes, but the tragic tale behind the Carber Hot Dog Vac is simply too good not to include. ![]() It nails very recognizable pieces of every junket-the faux-cheery banter, the star threatening to walk, the canned answers about "cosmic gumbo"-with the added layer of, and I cannot stress this enough, the star of the film is actual folk figure Santa Claus. The follow-up bit set at the Detective Crashmore junket is also a perfect encapsulation of I Think You Should Leave's blend of the deeply relatable and painfully surreal. If the ideal punchline is born from the unexpected, the words "starring Santa Claus as Detective Crashmore" should be taught in every comedy class in the world. (Played with admirable sliminess by Biff Wiff.) There's no explanation for why that's extremely funny. We haven't yet invented words to describe the visceral reaction I had to the end of episode 3's only-slightly-funny action movie trailer parody, the reveal that hard-drinking, foul-mouthed renegade Detective Crashmore was being played by Santa Claus. There's absolutely no discernable reason for the character to ask " could it be you?" in the voice she does, but the fact it works is just the secret sauce of this show. Harrison is amazing here as the fourth judge of a Shark Tank-style reality show who made her fortune not through entrepreneurial savviness, but accidentally getting sewed into the Charlie Brown balloon at a parade and winning the resulting lawsuit. Patti Harrison yelling " I can't stop having wine" is arguably season 2's version of that exact scenario, Harrison's trademark aggressively confident awkwardness becoming shorthand for what the human race has had to endure for the past, I don't know, several years. Based on the fact the "we're just trying to find the guy who did this" image still pops up on the timeline multiple times daily, a good way to judge an I Think You Should Leave sketch's staying power is in how easily a single image can be screenshotted and used as an absurd punchline that speaks to the human condition. ![]()
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