The 5 Best Sketches From I Think You Should Leave

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In this article:

• Tim Robsinson’s I Think You Should Leave is beloved for its unique brand of awkward, uncomfortable humor.
• Vanessa Bayer thinks using the term “wet chodes” in an Instagram caption is cute.
• Sloppy steaks, an invention of the Dangerous Nights crew, are sweeping the nation.
• You’re very “meat and potatoes” if you don’t listen to Roy Donk or Paul Bufano (of the Colgate Comedy Hour, of course).

Ever since I Think You Should Leave with Tom Robinson first appeared on Netflix in April of 2019, the show has garnered a massive following for its incredibly uncomfortable and awkward brand of humor.

Tim Robinson and his co-producers have a very special way of scrambling your brain with nonsensical sketches that you can’t help but laugh at. Robinson himself stars in many of the sketches, most of which involve someone doing something shameful and then trying to blame their wrongdoings on someone around them in ridiculous ways.

The whole show is mind-numbing, eccentric, strange, and absolutely hilarious. If you only have 15 minutes to spend on Netflix, an episode of I Think You Should Leave is the best way to go. 

Tim Robinson, a Detroit native, got his start in stand-up comedy with Second City Detroit. He then got his big break when he was cast as a regular featured performer on Saturday Night Live where he would meet some of the other geniuses behind I Think You Should Leave, including co-producer Zach Kanin and Lonely Island members Andy Samberg, Jorma Taccone, and Akiva Schaffer.

Each bringing their own unique brand of comedy to the show and enlisting the help of some other Saturday Night Live cast members as guest stars, the I Think You Should Leave team was able to bring a refreshing new perspective to the oversaturated world of sketch comedy shows. 

If you’ve never seen ITYSL before, get on it. And, if you’re wondering which episode or which sketches will give you the best introduction to Tim Robinson and the team’s particular brand of comedy, I’ve got you. These are the five best sketches from the show.

“Instagram” (Season 1, Episode 1)

Even though it’s one of the very first sketches in the very first episode of ITYSL, I don’t think that any sketch in either of the two seasons has yet to top the “Instagram” skit. And that’s thanks to an incredible guest performance from Saturday Night Live star Vanessa Bayer.

The skit starts out with three women at lunch discussing what to caption their Instagram posts. It then devolves into Vanessa Bayer’s character spewing off potty-mouthed slews of hog-related profanity. It’s absolutely amazing and, if you don’t laugh at it, you need to take yourself less seriously. 

One of my favorite parts about this sketch is the fact that Vanessa Bayer usually plays fairly mild roles in Saturday Night Live skits. However, on her debut on ITYSL, she unloads the vilest collections of words imaginable.

“Slurping down fish piss with these two wet chodes. Total tuna cans. Put a bullet in their fucking brains and leave their wet bodies on the side of the road. Boo caught me sleeping!”

“Sitting here with two bonafide pieces of hog shit. They’re mad ’cause I won best hog at the hog shit snarfing contest, but I’m not mad because we’re all loads of beef sitting on the side of a highway getting our butts sucked by flies.” Unreal. 

“Sloppy Steaks” (Season 2, Episode 2)

A hallmark of Tim Robinson’s skits is that they often take a completely unexpected and often unrelated turn. Such is the case with the “Sloppy Steaks” skit from the second season.

This sketch begins with a baby shower that’s ruined when the baby starts crying after being held by Tim Robinson’s character. Obviously, it’s not crying because it’s a baby. It’s crying because it knows that Robinson’s character used to be a huge piece of shit. Obviously.

“I’m worried that the baby thinks people can’t change,” Robinson’s character says to the baby’s mother. 

The skit really kicks things up a notch when it changes into a flashback to the days when Robinson’s character used to run with the Dangerous Nights crew, slick his hair back, and go for sloppy steaks at Truffoni’s.

What is a sloppy steak, you ask? Well, it involves ordering a steak and a glass of water and then pouring that water all over the steak. And the boys over at Truffoni’s absolutely hate when you do it. It’s revolutionary.

Surely, after this skit came out, steakhouses all across the world have most likely been terrorized by fans of the show trying to recreate this sketch. 

“The Gift Receipt” (Season 1, Episode 1)

This other gem from the very first episode of I Think You Should Leave reaffirms my belief that the first episode will forever be the best episode. This one starts out similarly to many of the other skits, with a very relatable situation that goes completely off the rails.

Everything at this birthday party is going according to plan until Lev (Tim Robinson) gets the idea that Jacob (Steven Yeun), the birthday boy, might not like his gift. Naturally, Lev demands that Jacob let him swallow the gift receipt to prove that Jacob actually likes the gift. 

Things take a strange turn when Lev claims to become extremely ill, saying that it was because Jacob didn’t sufficiently wipe after dropping a “mud pie” and then touched the gift receipt before Lev ate it.

The attendees of the party then decide to conduct an experiment to determine whether Lev feels sick because he ate paper or because the paper was covered in mud pie. The argument ends with everyone taking Lev’s side and abandoning Jacob on his own birthday.

In the words of Lev, “Shouldn’t have had such a sloppy mud pie.” Side note: shout out to Steven Yeun, who was recently nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor for Minari, for taking part in this wonderful piece of toilet humor. 

“Game Night” (Season 1, Episode 3)

If you’ve ever seen Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!, you know that Tim Heidecker is one of the best to ever do it in awkward sketch comedy. And Heidecker certainly delivers in the “Game Night” sketch of I Think You Should Leave’s third-ever episode.

The concept here is simple: Heidecker’s character goes to a game night with his girlfriend’s friends, all of which are considerably younger than him and don’t share his love of obscure jazz musicians.

He then proceeds to offend the host by insulting her “meat and potatoes” record collection and complaining that room-temperature gazpacho burned his mouth.

The group continues to play a celebrity-guessing game and most of the youngsters submit well-known celebrities like Lady Gaga or Jake Gyllenhall. Howie, on the other hand, goes for underground jazz legends from the Cokgate Comedy Hour such as Roy Donk, Paul Bufano (Paul Bufano!), and Tiny “Boop Squig” Shorterly (dude was off the map). 

“Ghost Tour” (Season 2, Episode 1)

Once again, Tim Robinson proves that he’s the master of grotesque humor in the “Ghost Tour” sketch from the first episode of the second season. Essentially, Robinson’s character attends a ghost tour for adults in which the tour guide gives them permission to curse if they want to.

Naturally, Robinson’s character takes this entirely too far and unleashes a flurry of profanity that is completely uncomfortable and out of line. However, once the tour guide confronts him and asks him to stop, he gets overly emotional, only to bombard the tour group with profanity once more. 

If you don’t like hearing the words “jizz,” “shit,” or “dingleberry,” this probably isn’t the skit for you. However, if you have an incredibly immature sense of humor (like I do), you’ll find this skit absolutely hilarious and probably end up quoting it to your friends for weeks. Just make sure no one is listening nearby.