Sunday, June 4, 2023

I think you should leave with Tim Robinson

 Tim Robinson is a comedian from the Midwest, born and raised in Detroit, although he apparently now lives in LA.  Three seasons of his sketch comedy series I think you should leave with Tim Robinson are available on Netflix.  The show is disarmingly weird and, often, very funny.  As in all sketch comedy about two-thirds of the skits misfire, but, even, when the jokes aren't particularly funny, the show is effectively absurdist, fantastically inventive, and disturbing, even creepy.  The show is produced in 16 and a half minute programs, itself a kind of joke, it seems, and individual sketches, usually about three to five minutes long, are punctuated by psychedelic graphics underlined with rhythm and blues songs, a bit like the interludes on the old Rowan and Martin show Laugh In.  Many of the players are SNL alumni (Robinson was a writer on that show) and, now and then, big stars make cameo appearances -- for instance, there's a bit with Bob Odenkirk of Better Call Saul and Jason Schwartzman appears in a party scene in which an aggressive bully forbids him to talk about his kids with all sorts of awful and weird ramifications.  Comedy is very much a matter of personal taste and, frequently, verges on the uncanny.  My wife was terrified by Laurel and Hardy two-reelers when she was a child and has a visceral loathing for those comedians.  Among my earliest memories are recollections of watching the old Ernie Kovacs show with my father -- I still recall with a bit of anxiety the wreathes of cigar smoke in the barren black and white sets, the odd silence (even then we were habituated to laugh tracks) and the Nairobi Trio performing "Solfeggio" with a cigar-chomping gorilla playing drum riffs on the head of another primate wearing a pork pie hat. Robinson's show feels similar to me -- in fact, my wife found it too creepy and "cringy" to watch.  The skits have an eerie disembodied feeling -- they seem to come out of nowhere and end on disconcerting notes; this comedy seems to be happening in Hell.

I don't know any way to provide an impression the show without describing a few skits that I thought were memorably funny.  "Summer Loving" is a parody of a Reality TV show in which 20 bachelors vie for the affection of a single woman.  (Part of the joke is that the woman isn't really all that attractive, although this isn't chivalrous to mention.)  The woman calls two men to account who are going to be booted off the island, as it were.  One unfortunate (and extremely handsome guy) is dismissed because when he went kayaking with the heroine there were "lots of awkward silences."  The other guy, played by Robinson, is told that he is dismissed because instead of courting the woman, or scheming to possess her, he spent all of  his time gliding down the zip-line at the luxury hotel at the pool (we are shown this).  At meals, this suitor spent all of his time talking about the zip-line while stuffing his mouth in a disgusting manner.  During one colloquy with rival bachelors, this guy admits that he really just wants to be alone all of his life.  Confronted with this evidence of his romantic failure, Robinson's character accuses other bachelors of being drug addicts or perverts, darkly implies that something horrible will happen to him if he has to go home, and, finally, when dismissed struts around in a cartoonish way miming curmudgeonly disappointment -- he looks like a distressed caricature farmer in a Warner Brothers' cartoon from about 1950, the exact opposite his personae as a suave, cosmopolitan bachelor.  In another bit, Robinson appears as a bully TV announcer warning cable customers that the streaming service is about to cancel the viewers' favorite show, "Coffin Flop."  "Coffin Flop" involves pallbearers ashamed and amazed when the caskets that they are carrying fall apart, causing the corpse to flop out in front of the grave or on the church steps or sidewalk.  The announcer says that it's not his fault that one out of four corpses turn out to be totally nude and roll around exposed to the prurient view of the onlookers.  The horrible thing about this sketch is that if there were a show called "Coffin Flop" featuring thirty casket failures per episode, I would be the first to watch it.  The setting for most of these sketches is some nondescript hotel ballroom or conference room where some hapless instructor is providing training in corporate teamwork or motivation.  In another sketch, during training of this sort, a loud bang is heard.  Robinson as an employee of the company says that the noise reminded him of a volcano.  Everyone scoffs at this but a pretty girl sitting next to Robinson who complements him on his imagination.  Robinson, who always takes things too far, says that he thinks that the girl's red pen reminds him of a dagger and that a yellow highlighter looks like a "little pimp."  This outrages the other corporate employees and they tell the girl that under no circumstances should they compliment Robinson's character for being imaginative.  He becomes very morose but is comforted by the highlighter who has become a nattily dressed pimp in a yellow suit and, looking out the window, he sees a huge volcano erupting over the suburbs.  Robinson's sketches often set up a premise, complicate it, and, then, provide a sort of subplot, all in four minutes or less.  In one bit, at a party, Robinson forbids another guest from talking about his children.  Each times, the guest errs in this respect, Robinson's character shrieks at him and, then, distracts attention by making some outrageous gesture -- "Look! I'm riding this dog!"  or "Look! the dogs blowing me!"  The odd thing about the skit is that about six other sad sacks at the party imitate Robinson's gags with decreasing success -- in the end, he has a whole entourage of drunks around him pretending to have oral sex with the dog or whatever it was that he did to distract from the other partygoer's conversation,  (At the end of the skit, the partygoer says he felt wonderfully liberated from having to talk about his kids to others due to the bully's intervention.)  A final example will have to suffice to suggest the show's ineffable weirdness -- you will either love this program or hate it.  In a corporation's breakroom, an earnest HR director notes that one of the company's employees got a DWI after a recent party.  Robinson's character says that he doesn't drink and that he will gladly drive to pick up anyone employed by the company who has had too much and give them a ride home.  Cut to one of the company's salary-men coming out of a bar a little inebriated.  Robinson's character comes to his aid and the young man sits in the front seat as his co-worker drives him home.  But, along the way, Robinson begins making weird faces, moving his lips like fish gulping in water.  It turns out that Robinson has pasted a decal of a hat and a cigar on the side of his car window and positions himself so that passers-by will perceive that he is wearing the hat and smoking the cigar.  The notion is that he is the "Driving Crooner" and Robinson plays Big Band songs on the radio to which he lip-synchs while he drives.  The problem is that Robinson is trying to create a "Driving Crooner" franchise and plans to authorize others to drive around with decals positioned so they too can pretend to smoke a cigar and wear a stylish hat whilst crooning Big Band tunes.  (In fact, he wants to monetize the franchise.)  As the skit progresses, the hero grows increasingly enraged and paranoid, claiming that people are trying to strip off  his decals or plan to drive next to him in such a way that the decals on the window are not properly placed to simulate the "Driving Crooner" effect.  At a stoplight, some frat boys confront the "Driving Crooner" and say that they are going knock off his decals and kill him.  I have no idea what this skit is supposed to mean or how it is supposed to be funny and my wife found it appalling -- I thought it was one of the most hilarious things that I have seen in a long time.  To each his own, I suppose.  


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