This week, we’re starting with our first Pete. Not Peter, but Pete. (For the record: all Peter variants will be welcome in this newsletter! Pete, Pedro, Pierre, Piotr, Boutros, you name it. Also for the record: I had no idea “Boutros” was the Arabic equivalent of the name until JUST NOW. Apologies to the former secretary-general of the UN.)
We’re also starting with our first namesake who probably isn’t known to most people: Pete Hickok. Pete’s a production designer for stage, television, and print; he worked on this Canadian A&W commercial, as well as a horror short called Demon Footsuckers From Hell that I very much need to see based purely on its name, and a bunch of other stuff. He also happened to be assistant propmaster for the second season of the sketch comedy show I Think You Should Leave, which premiered on Netflix yesterday.
And that, friends, is how Pete Hickok became the twistiest backdoor approach in the life of this young newsletter.
If this is the first time you’ve heard of ITYSL, I can’t imagine it’ll be the last. The series is the brainchild of Tim Robinson, who appeared as a Saturday Night Live cast member for a single season in 2012 before retreating into the relative safety of writing. The sketches he popped up in on SNL were consistently what you’d expect to see in the infamous 12:50 last-of-the-night slot—oddball premises, odderball dialogue, basically the closest thing to dada Lorne Michaels seemed able to stand. You can find most of them online, but the one that stuck with me then was a fake ad for youth-pandering t-shirts, where Robinson and Kevin Hart’s “extreme teen” schtick takes an existential turn. That pivot from inanity to darkness would go on to become a hallmark of Robinson’s work.
After SNL, Robinson and his writing partner Zach Kanin went on to create Detroiters, a fantastically mistreated two-season show for Comedy Central about best friends (played by Robinson and his real-life best friend and fellow Detroit native, actor Sam Richardson) who run an ad agency in their hometown. Then came an episode of Netflix’s sketch anthology The Characters, which, if you were Owen Wilson with a mustache, you’d call the nexus event that led to ITYSL. In the course of 27 minutes, Robinson and team delivered six polished gems, each of which showed new aspects of his now-honed sensibility. Profanity and pathos, irony and sincerity, patchy mustaches and single sideburns—they all showed up, and ultimately helped Robinson and Kanin land Netflix’s first single-creator sketch series.
When ITYSL premiered in 2019, though, I watched it all wrong.
That’s not quite right. It’s more like the way I watched it was all wrong for the show that it was. At the time, I was put off by what I saw as a juvenile reliance on “mud pie” jokes. After watching all six episodes, I thought that despite its funny moments, it was more like an R-rated version of SNL: more filler than killer. But then I watched it again. And again. And again. Each time, I looked forward to different throwaway jokes, different line readings. Each time, a new sketch would grab me in a way it never had, demanding my attention. Why had I judged it so harshly the first time around, only to fall in love with it over the course of untold dozens of rewatchings? The answer, I think, can be found in the movie Anchorman.
[Extremely Sophia on Golden Girls voice:] Picture it: Cobble Hill Theatre, 2004. After seeing the Will Ferrell ensemble comedy, my wife (then my girlfriend) and I walked out totally, utterly underwhelmed—only for the movie to become a family classic. You could say the same thing about another Will Ferrell movie, Step Brothers. Honestly, the only comedy that I love to the point of knowing every line and loved on very first viewing is probably Friday. (Chappelle’s Show falls into that category too, but has the added distinction of aging more poorly than you might imagine. Maybe don’t go back is all I’m saying.)
The key with Anchorman, as with the first time I watched I Think You Should Leave, is that I thought of it as A Thing. In Anchorman’s case, a movie; in ITYSL’s, a series. They’re Things, sure, but they’re not singular Things so much as they are collections of setpieces. Some will land, some won’t. Hopefully, the ratio works in your favor. But to judge setpiece-driven comedy using narratological standards sets both of you up for failure.
I’ve written about ITYSL recently for Wired, on the show’s two-year anniversary in April, so I’m not gonna belabor those points here; suffice it to say that the show’s genius lies in weaponizing our own worst tendencies. As I wrote then, “I Think You Should Leave isn’t just a distillation of our personal insecurities, it’s a condemnation of facade. It’s an antidote, in other words, to the internet itself.” The show’s brand-new second season—and I say this in the most complimentary way possible—is more of the same.
Robinson is obsessed with rules, as my wife pointed out when we first watched the new episodes. More to the point, he’s obsessed with people who are obsessed with rules, people who hide behind protocol to defend the utter indefensibility of their behavior. “You can’t change the rules just ’cause you don’t like how I’m doing it,” one tearful man protests after being reprimanded for disrupting a tour with contrivedly pornographic questions. There are sketches where you might miss the dialogue because you’re overwhelmed by the reoccurring sight gags; there are others that wield tone and inflection as their primary weapon; some nod subtly toward the tropes of Season One, while others feel like they birthed wholly new from someone’s troubled skull. They go dark a lot, but always in a way that somehow feels warmhearted.
Since getting access to the episodes a few weeks ago, I’ve watched all of them at least three times; I’ve watched many of them some multiple of that. This is the way of I Think You Should Leave; it’s so bite-sized that you find yourself going back for fifths, just to hear the “Dangerous Nights” song or listen to what’s so magical about Dan Flashes shirts or just watch Tim’s quiet meltdown on a prank show.
If you’ve been reading this as a newcomer, you might think: no, thanks. I get it! No hard feelings. This isn’t Succession or Atlanta or Russian Doll, something that manages to be both transcendent and not off-putting. But if you’re a person who thinks oh, I’ve gotta try this, then you’re right! That said, probably don’t start with the sketch I linked to in the previous paragraph. And more crucially, don’t put too much stock in your first impression.
One Thing I Can’t Get Enough Of This Week
🍿 Frank’s Red Hot Goldfish Crackers
As much as I love snack food, I usually run the other way when brands start stretching into Contrived New Flavor territory. Caramel Coconut Oreos? Keep ’em. Lay’s Wavy Mango Salsa chips? I fear for all of us. Turkey Dinner candy corn? Someone at Brachs needs to be on a terror watch list. All that said, I just came back from a run and housed a significant portion of a bag of these, and all is forgiven. (A quick fact-check reveals that the correct name is actually Goldfish® Frank’s RedHot® Crackers, just in case I wasn’t shilling hard enough for a giant conglomerate.) Frank’s was one of the first hot sauces I fell for, despite being about as hot as a photo of a jalapeño, and its innocuous zest paired with Pepperidge Farms’ patented approximation of cheddar is a goddamn perfect combination, especially for a washed Gen Xer who rarely lets himself dive headfirst into a vat of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. Do I really need to link to these? They’re in stores. Get them. Eat them. Let me know how you like them. Also, let me know if this newsletter should just be about snacks.
And Another Thing
So this is fun: Somehow, the Ezra Jack Keats Foundation found last week’s newsletter, and seemed to enjoy it. Who says nice things can’t happen on Twitter?
Do you like Bunuel movies, Peter? I haven't watched ITYSL but your line about condemning the facade made me think of Bunuel's fascination with how thin the veneer is between our base, perverted self and our supposedly civilized self.