Not to be ~dramatic~ about a silly little article about a sketch comedy show, but asking me to choose the "best" I Think You Should Leave sketches is the same exact thing as putting a gun to my head and asking me to choose a favorite child. Debuting back in April 2019, the 15-minutes-a-pop sketch show—created by Tim Robinson, who often stars, along with Zach Kanin—blasted its way into pop culture, an endlessly quotable whirlwind that touched a particularly chaotic nerve immediately. It was a thrill to see I Think You Should Leave hadn't lost an inch of its manic momentum when it returned to Netflix for season 2, which tragically made ranking its best sketches all the more difficult. There are very few "bad" ITYSL sketches, and narrowing them down was mostly a matter of what simply made me laugh and what made me black out and hit my head on the floor.
Below, you'll find the 11 best sketches of I Think You Should Leave season 2, "ranked." Meet me on the other side for sloppy steaks at Truffoni's.
11. The Capital Room (Episode 2)
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. 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. I can't stop having wine. 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. 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.
10. Detective Crashmore (Episode 3)
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. Like, it's just Santa Claus. (Played with admirable sliminess by Biff Wiff.) There's no explanation for why that's extremely funny. 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. 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. 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. He's seen everyone naked.
9. Your Dad and I Are Old Friends (Episode 2)
The biggest difference between the two seasons of I Think You Should Leave is this second chapter feels confident enough to occasionally just let its sketches be as really, really sad as they are funny. Case in point: Bob Odenkirk as a man who turns a casual encounter at a diner into a chance to build a lavish fantasy life for himself—he owns every kind of classic car, including triples of the Barracuda, that's important—then get way too into fleshing out that fantasy, all while low-key revealing a desperate loneliness, a need for human connection, and possibly a deathly ill wife. It is a masterwork by Odenkirk, effortlessly returning to his sketch comedy roots while also displaying the dramatic chops that turned him into an Emmy nominee. The entire thing is genuinely moving, but also I'm going to be telling people I have triples of the Road Runner (as well as the Barracuda) for years to come.
8. I'm Never Going To Say My Lines Faster Than Jamie Taco (Episode 4)
Paul Walter Hauser's guest appearance illustrates the way some of the best I Think You Should Leave sketches are really 3-6 sketches in one, crashing wildly into each other but never losing you. The simple premise—a man (Hauser) who feels so bad about an off-color joke about his wife (Jennifer Marsala) he's launched into a profoundly earnest flashback set to an indie-folk ballad—snowballs into the story of that same man playing a henchman in a local theater production about mobsters (?), an endeavor being railroaded by Jamie Taco (Nicholas Azarian), who says other people's lines so fast they become his lines. ("You gotta' be much quicker than that if you want to have those lines.") All of this rounds back to Hauser being so overcome with love for his spouse he can't bring himself to stay at a buddy's birthday sleepover. There are sleeping bags and everything. He always does this. He never stays the night.
7. Dan Flashes (Episode 2)
And here we have a quintessential Tim Robinson character: A man who refuses, in the face of all social norms, to admit what he's doing might be kind of weird. In this case, it's Mike, spending all of his company-provided per diem not on food, but on the complex-patterned shirts sold at Dan Flashes. If you disagree with the choice you just don't understand Dan Flashes is his exact style. The guys in the ads for the shirts look a lot like him. The shirt he's wearing is $150 out the door and the patterns barely even criss-cross. That's bargain bin. "Dan Flashes" isn't a unique blueprint for an ITYSL sketch, but man is it a funny one—unless you're Doug, in which case you're a fucking skunk—especially when it's elevated to near-cosmic horror levels later in the episode, as men descend on The Shops at the Creek to get lost in those labyrinthian shirt patterns. I'm grateful they don't show the shirt that costs $2000. None of us could handle it.
6. The Carber Hot Dog Vac (Episode 1 & 3)
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. The very first sketch of season 2 is a go-to ITYSL scenario, a workplace environment interrupted by an aggressively awkward agent of mayhem. 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. 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, 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. 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."
5. Adult Ghost Tour (Episode 1)
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. 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. 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. His fellow haunting enthusiasts straight-up applaud as he's kicked off the tour, and then the sketch ends on a shockingly somber note. The character gets into a car with his mother, religious knick-knacks on her dashboard. "Make any friends?" she asks.
"Not really," Robinson replies. 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. 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?"
4. Sloppy Steaks (Episode 2)
This isn't the best sketch of season 2, but it does feature one of the best lines across the entire show: "I'm worried that the baby thinks people can't change." Robinson plays a man who is convinced his friend's new baby cries in his arms because he used to be a piece of shit. And, make no mistake, he did used to be a piece of shit. Slicked back hair. White bathing suit. Sloppy steaks—that's a big rare cut of meat with water dumped all over it—at Truffoni's. What the sketch ultimately posits is that maybe...he's right, and the baby, in that moment, is wrong, and that even if you once literally lived in a glass house and would die for New Year's Eve, you do deserve the chance to become less of a piece of shit, the type of person who pushes instead of slicks their hair back. The distorted fever dream flashback that ends the episode is a wonderful mini-movie all its own, a look at an evening out with the Dangerous Night's Crew—pieces of shit, all of them—that ends with an unexplainable look into this man's future, at the baby who will one day come to believe he's not that much of a piece of shit anymore. Beautiful. Simply beautiful.
3. Give (Episode 4)
Something I didn't expect from I Think You Should Leave season 2 is the best thriller film of the year, but here we are. Every episode runs an even five sketches long except episode 4, largely devoted to this sprawling, ten-minute opus that begins with a small pee stain, spirals into an unhinged web of conspiracy, and then possibly descends into the depths of Hell itself. Featuring performances from SNL writer/performer Michael Patrick O'Brien, season 1 standout Connor O'Malley, and L.A. indie wrestler Brody King, this absolute barnburner starts with Greg (Robinson) saving a coworker, Jeff (O'Brien) from an embarrassing post-bathroom incident, convincing the office those little spots have "nothing to do with piss," but are, in fact, in-demand and specially designed clothing from calicocutpants.com. But once Jeff is in, there's no way out. Calicocutpants.com is just like PBS; you have to "give" to keep the lights on. Everyone gives. Your teachers, your neighbors, your own family, they probably give. Greg gives, because Calicocutpants.com was vital during his wife's many, many hospital trips. (Robinson's delivery of "she just keeps eating batteries" is the hardest I've laughed in possibly years.) The more Jeff refuses to give, the more this story expands in damn David Fincher-like fashion, filled with small, enigmatic touches, like Greg continuing to scream at people to hold doors open. It's incredible, top to bottom. I strongly (some would say compulsively) feel like I owe this sketch money.
2. Karl Havok (Episode 1)
The sheer power of the tonal shifts within this sketch is some of the most breathtaking comedy I've experienced in years. Holy shit, man, Karl Havok. I am struggling to even type these words through fits of manic laughter. The familiar beats of a Practical Jokers-esque hidden-camera prank show completely rupture as host Carmine Laguzio (Robinson) realizes he's wearing too much prosthetics to move. To even function. The objectively funny image of the David Cronenberg-ass monstrosity Robinson has become juxtaposed with his character losing to will to live is just...it's too much. It's indescribably funny. I'm willing to bet money that "I don't want to be around anymore" becomes the defining line of the year. Actual tears, in my eyes, just from writing this paragraph.
1. Corncob TV (Episode 1)
The monsters at Spectrum are threatening to drop Corncob TV, there's a slight chance it's because of the network's biggest hit, Coffin Flops, and the result is a sketch so funny I had to pause Netflix and walk around to avoid calling an ambulance. What do you want me to say? It's a minute-and-a-half of Tim Robinson bellowing about his rights to show over 400 naked dead bodies on basic cable television intercut with footage upon footage of "body after body busting out of shit wood and hitting pavement." It is the ITYSL brand of humor boiled down to its purest essence, especially in the way I think it's the funniest 90 seconds ever filmed but also am not totally sure I could recommend it to anyone I know. That's the ITYSL sweet spot. The indecipherable je ne sais quoi. The only two questions left to ask is 1) Whether you believe a body plummeting out the bottom of a coffin still has a soul, and 2) What you are willing to do to #SaveCoffinFlops.