Please Don’t Go: I Think You Should Leave

I Think You Should Leave (By Tim Robinson, et al) (Netflix, 2019)

The Varnished Culture has long been a fan of the Theatre of Embarrassment. I Think You Should Leave, created and driven by newcomer Robinson, adds demented anger and Kafkaesque punishment to embarrassment, and it’s the funniest thing in years.

A collection of sketches involve a central character who is the carnal embodiment of the current zeitgeist, in terms of obsessive egotism, transferred anger, rampant obscurantism, excessive fussiness and florid querulousness. We cannot wait for a commissioned but Covid-delayed second series.

Our favourites:

1. The job applicant, meeting at a café, refuses to accept that you exit by pushing rather than pulling the door (he just failed the interview) [below top right];
2. The old-timer on the plane, waiting since 1982 to exact his revenge on a fellow passenger [main image];
3. The man in the hot dog costume, having driven his weiner-mobile through a shop window, avoids censure by observing how we don’t take the time to interact with our fellow man anymore…”we’re so – buried in our phones…”
4. The Ford focus group [below top left] demonstrates that there MAY BE some wrong answers, after all;
5. Dan Vega’s Mega Money Quiz [below, bottom left] is a format badly needing work.  In particular, “Chunky” has to figure out what he does;
6. After laser spine surgery, folks can spin their wives again, play with their dogs again…or get their “money back from Robbie Star at Superstar Tracks Records…” (“Moon River rock; Moon River roll…”);
7. [Below, bottom right] A birthday party gift-giving bizarrely rebounds on the host in an appalling manner…