'Now Everybody Loves Me Too Much'
'Now Everybody Loves Me Too Much'
Is Tim Robinson trying to send us a message about struggling with popularity? Maybe not. But also maybe.
Often, writing about art like music, movies or television comes with over-analyzing. Writers dig for narratives that might not exist. Hidden meanings that the original artist never considered manifest to the journalist, and they pursue that because they get paid to say, “Hey, what if this actually means this, and the artist is thinking about this, and this is all a lot deeper than we think?”
Sometimes a song is just a song on surface level, though.
In modern television, there are few shows as surface level as “I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson,” the Netflix sketch comedy show that became the most memed, celebrated, obsessed over TV show in modern memory that isn’t on HBO and centered around a power struggle.
It’s pretty much the easiest watch on TV, as long as you’re into that kind of thing. “That thing” being surreal, awkward situations often involving a lot of screaming. It’s, to me, the funniest thing in the world.
But there was one skit in the new season that made me think a little bit harder and sort of put on my college essay hat, meaning ascribe meaning to it that might not be there.
Jason Schwartzman plays a guy at what seems to be a work party, and he can’t stop talking about his kids in conversation. After yet again bringing them up in an effort to be relatable, but coming off as a little stiff and awkward, he tells the group to stop him if he does it again. Robinson, this time making his “Tim Character” a guy who takes things incredibly seriously past the point of normal human levels (i.e. the basis of the show), interrupts every mention of Schwartzman’s characters kids with some insane stunt like pretending to ride a dog in the living room or starting a choreographed dance routine. Each silly stunt is met with overwhelming support from the room, and other guys start directly copying what he does.
Over the course of the night, Schwartzman’s character starts loosening up and remembering that he has an identity independent of just his kids and fatherhood, and Tim’s new disciples grill him about what weird stuff they’re going to do next. The Tim Character becomes increasingly frustrated at not just having to keep thinking of silly stuff worth his time and the crowd’s attention, but also the swarm of sycophant copycats.
So, here’s where I’ll posit my essay thesis: There is a possibility, a slim possibility, that this skit is the first time that Robinson has really started turning the mirror on the viewer and going deeper than just “Look at this silly and outrageous situation, look at these silly character names, look at this complicated shirt.” A fair few of the show’s hooks come from the premise of taking a joke or situation far beyond its natural course, or trying to hammer home a joke that never landed in the first place, but this one was about what happens when a joke takes off unexpectedly and starts a sensation.
Just like the show, which I’m sure most people assumed would be another Netflix original killed by the algorithm before earning a few “This was so good, why did it have to die” articles, just like how Comedy Central ended Robinson’s other TV show, “Detroiters.” (Which was so good. Why did it have to die?)
If we’re going to really get into this, I think you could argue that the skit is even a spiritual successor to two other skits.
The first was the skit from the house party where Tim’s stomach is fucked by eating a receipt handled by Steven Yeun’s character’s filthy hands. As the party filters out, disgusted by Yeun’s perceived lack of hygiene, Tim turns around and says that “Everybody’s going to party at my house” as a result.
Most people learned of Robinson from his short stint on Saturday Night Live. Cast members have said in other articles that Robinson regularly crushed at pitch meetings at SNL, but the brand of comedy Robinson brought to ITYSL never quite made it to air on SNL. One could argue that Tim finally has the last laugh as SNL is the least relevant it’s ever been, and his goofy skits are at the highest tier of popularity. Tim tells Yeun’s character, which we could argue as a stand-in for Lorne Michaels or Colin Jost or whomever, that everybody is now “going to party at his house.” And then Tim’s character dies. But that’s not important to this argument.
The other was the “Karl Havoc” skit, where Tim’s character is the host of sort of a Punk’d/Jackass hybrid, and puts on a prosthetic costume so overwhelming that he starts questioning the validity of these stunts and the value of it all, before declaring “I don’t even want to be around anymore.”
Now, having seen the Schwartzman skit, you could draw a line between Karl Havoc and the Tim Character, both questioning what the point of all of this is, and wondering how things got so out of hand.
At one point, he gets in Schwartzman’s character’s face and even says “What the hell, man? I keep having to do wild stuff to stop you from talking about your kids! Now you made me too popular here! Now everybody loves me too much! Now guys keep coming up to me saying ‘What’s the next wild thing we’re gonna do?’”
In that moment, it’s possible that the line between the Tim Character and Tim blur, and the guy’s real emotions come through the insane character.
The most fitting thing, I think, is that this season also includes an original song by the band Turnstile. Turnstile grew from the Baltimore hardcore scene before sanding down the edges of their music and becoming a band with more broad appeal – to the point where they are on just about every festival flier and are currently opening for Blink 182.
There’s a kinship between the two (aside from the fact that Robinson and the guys in Turnstile are friends in real life). Both were known in their own little circles, but then somehow hit the jackpot to become the most successful and ever-present people in the wider world of comedy and rock music, respectively.
This is all the pop culture writer version of Nic Cage looking for treasure maps on dollar bills and Jim Carrey adding things up to make 23. But, I think there’s a valid argument that for the first time, I Think You Should Leave is doing more than just making you laugh with silly catchphrases and situations.
There’s that idea that you have your whole life to write your first album, and then two years to write the next, or whatever. Robinson had plenty of ideas that never worked at SNL for the first season of ITYSL, and to be honest probably did not predict a sketch comedy show on Netflix in this day and age to become so popular. The stakes for him are high, as everyone is waiting with bated breath for the next season, expecting Robinson and co. to top themselves. And that’s an insane ask! It would be normal for someone like Robinson, who is a human being, to feel that pressure, and to incorporate that into his art just a little bit, even when it’s ostensibly supposed to be stupid comedy.
Maybe Robinson is grappling with being in a place he never thought he’d be, or ever wanted to be, and is using the very vehicle that got him to that place to process it.
Robinson steers the skit back to the absurd by tying in a story of his son murdering a gorilla, but by this point, the “damage” is done, and we might’ve gotten a glimpse Robinson’s real emotions in an unlikely place.
Maybe not, though. Maybe I’m breaking the cardinal rule of a show like I Think You Should Leave by getting all heady about it. Maybe this is all just bullshit. I didn’t pitch this one around to actual editors for a reason. The beauty of college essays is that you don’t necessarily have to be right. You just have to fill five to eight pages double spaced and cite source material to back up your argument.
Today’s Snakes and Sparklers musical guest is Chris Farren.