Saying that a comedy gets funnier every time you watch it is a bit like saying a show doesn’t get good until a few seasons in: it sounds like faint praise even if isn’t intended as such. People are busy, and the prospect of either watching something several times to truly get it or enduring a few just-okay seasons to reach the good parts isn’t especially appealing. Sometimes it really is worth it, though. Your fifth viewing of The Big Lebowski is almost certainly better than the first, and while you’d be perfectly within your rights to bail on The Office’s middling first season you’d also be missing out on all the classic moments that follow.
I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson wastes no time hitting its stride — its opening sketch is a perfect encapsulation of the show’s sensibility, which occupies a sweet spot between cringeworthy and absurd — but it does find new ways to make you laugh with each successive viewing. Given that episodes run just 15 minutes and all three seasons are on Netflix, it’s especially conducive to rewatches. If you’re only willing to spend two minutes being convinced, acquaint yourself with Coffin Flop:
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve watched it; I can barely count the number of times I’ve made someone else watch it, usually when I have guests over and decide to make them a captive audience. The episode of which it’s a part, “They said that to me at a dinner,” is probably the show’s best. All five sketches — the other four being “H.D. Vac Part II,” “Prank Show,” “Little Buff Boys,” and “Ghost Tour” — are, as the kids say, absolute bangers that will leave you in stitches every time.
The archetypal ITYSL sketch begins with someone embarrassing themself in a social setting and, rather than apologizing and/or moving on, doubling down until what would have been fleeting humiliation turns into something far more uncomfortable. (During Robinson’s 2019 appearance on Late Night, host Seth Meyers succinctly described the show as being about “people who will not admit they’re not wrong.”) There are many variations, my favorite of which is when the instigator suddenly finds everyone else on his or her side against someone who’s actually being reasonable. The most memorable of these is “Focus Group,” in which an elderly fellow with a hard-to-place accent (Ruben Rabasa, now something of a micro-celebrity based on his performance) suggests that an upcoming car should include such features as “a great steering wheel that doesn’t whiff out of the window while I driving” as “no space for mother-in-law.” (Other sketches that follow this formula include “Gift Receipt” and “Sitcom Taping.”)
After receiving polite pushback from the Ford employee leading the focus group, he delivers what might as well be I Think You Should Leave’s thesis statement: “I think it’s a good idea, and I stand by.” Though everyone else in the room initially seems bewildered by the man, only one of them — the dreaded Paul, played by series co-creator Zack Kanin — is willing to speak up about it. Paul is right that the nameless man is “not helpful,” which is why it’s so funny that everyone ultimately gangs up on him, rather than Rabasa’s character, when one of the latter’s repeated digs finally lands. Honestly, just watch it:
This kind of humor — endlessly quotable, more enjoyable on successive viewings — brings to mind Alfred Hitchcock’s famous explanation of the difference between surprise and suspense:
Let us suppose that there is a bomb underneath this table between us. Nothing happens, and then all of a sudden, “Boom!” There is an explosion. The public is surprised, but prior to this surprise, it has seen an absolutely ordinary scene, of no special consequence. Now, let us take a suspense situation. The bomb is underneath the table and the public knows it. In these conditions this same innocuous conversation becomes fascinating because the public is participating in the scene. The audience is longing to warn the characters on the screen: “You shouldn’t be talking about such trivial matters. There is a bomb beneath you and it is about to explode!”
Comedy can work this way as well: some things make you laugh because they’re unexpected and others make you laugh because you know they’re coming and the anticipation adds to the humor. They aren’t mutually exclusive, but the latter seems more conducive to passionate fan bases and eventual cult classics. The more you rewatch I Think You Should Leave, the more you’re able to appreciate the granular moments you were either laughing too hard or too bewildered by the permeating strangeness of it all to notice the first time.
Many of those moments involve awkward phrasing thats seems fumbled, even improvised the first time but later gives the impression of having been written that way intentionally. Why, for instance, do the extra words in “You sure about that that’s why?” and “What the hell is that’s going on out there?” make both lines so much funnier than they would be with proper syntax? Probably for the same reason that ending a sketch by declaring that “My life is nothing I thought it should be and everything I was worried it would become because for 50 seconds I thought there was monsters on the world” is so much more profound than saying there were monsters in the world. There are many other examples of this on the show, each of which elevates the line in question from a quick laugh to a moment that fans obsess over.
It’s impossible to say how many people actually watch the show, as Netflix is loath to release such information, but it’s already developed something of a cult following. The “we’re all trying to find the guy who did this” meme has become a ubiquitous reaction to people obliviously complaining about problems they themselves created, and each new season adds to the number of fans who can’t help incorporating ITYSL-isms into their vocabulary. Even Wonder Woman has gotten in on the fun:
There are few situations to which at least one I Think You Should Leave quote doesn’t apply, which is remarkable given that you could watch all three seasons in less than five hours — unless you end up watching it two or three times, that is, which you probably should. Triples makes it safe. Triples is best.