James Folta

It’s time to see how Season 3 stacks up to Seasons 1 and 2. How the Darmine Doggy Door stacks up to Calico Cut Pants. How 55 pastas stack up against total tuna cans.

With the third season of I Think You Should Leave now streaming on Netflix, we asked our staff to sit down, have a sloppy steak, and update our ranking of the show, evaluating every sketch with the same intensity with which they would play the Egg Game. It wasn’t easy to do—nearly every sketch in the series deserves praise and has an argument for being the best—but after much deliberation, here is our updated ranking of every sketch in I Think You Should Leave.

79. “Dad Video” (Season 3, Episode 1)

There’s something about a sketch that frontloads the “what-the-fuck”-ery of it all. A father (Fred Armisen) gathers his two sons to watch a video; we find out that they have been acting up and, in a last-ditch effort to straighten his sons out, their father throws on a VHS tape to teach them a lesson. But the tape is a crudely-produced video starring the father, in which he responds to a rude kid on the street by beating him to a pulp on an oddly quiet street. Soon we find out that this idiot father blew $15,000 to try and scare his kids into … not dancing in the kitchen when all of his stuff is on the marble island? Ironic, since it’s the father’s constant blowups about the production values of his trash video that might be why his sons are acting out. I also want to point out that the father and his sons really should’ve bonded over discussing his wack fight video; talk about missed opportunities. —khal

78. “Don Bondarley” (Season 3, Episode 6)

I’ve attended a bachelor party that included a private magic show (shout-out to Jimmy Fingers) and let me tell you, “Don Bondarley” captures the uneasy dynamic of an intimate show by a performer who, perhaps, time has passed by (not you, though, Jimmy Fingers). Alberto Isaac turns in a great performance as the king of dirty songs (incredible falsetto on the last syllables of “Oh, old Bart Dogfuck had a dong a mile long, a dong a mile long had heeeeee”), but this sketch doesn’t have time to descend fully into madness and doesn’t have the bizarre propulsive energy that makes some of ITYSL’s shorter skits resonate. “Don Bondarley” has its moments—and adds to the show’s rich musical canon—but in retrospect, they probably should have just gone to Corset. —Isaac Levy-Rubinett

77. “Ponytail” (Season 3, Episode 2)

Will Forte is only in two episodes of ITYSL. In Season 1, he was the man screaming from the back of the plane in a failed attempt to enact revenge on the baby (now an adult) that kept him from saying anything funny to the guards at Buckingham Palace; in Season 3, he’s the ponytailed man screaming from underneath a car at two women and their ponytailed neighbor. Forte screaming is simply great TV. His delivery of the “it’s not that gross” line in his Season 1 appearance is among the best in the show, as is his “put his hand in dog shit” jab at the neighbor in Season 3.

The rules are simple. Don’t park over the sidewalk. The latter isn’t the minor inconvenience you think it is, either. If you break the rules, men with ponytails that go down just past their butthole will get stuck under your car. You can’t cut them out with scissors (they’re not going to be worse off!), and you won’t be able to cover for them showing up late to their reservation with a Google image search for “disgusting diarrhea in bowl.” The maître d’ has already seen it. —Austin Gayle

76. “Fenton’s Stables and Horse Farm” (Season 1, Episode 6)

A trademark of most Tim Robinson sketches is that where they start and where they end up often have nothing to do with each other. Plotlines morph into unrecognizable tangents, the smallest details are latched onto and beaten into the ground until the dotted line from setup to punch line becomes a twisted thread of confusion and hilarity. But that’s, uh, not the case with this one. It’s just a 90-second sketch about horse dicks. —Cory McConnell

75. “Del Frisco’s Double Eagle” (Season 2, Episode 5)

Credit card roulette is an objectively terrible game. It’s an automatic night ruiner. The credit card gods can always sense the most vulnerable bank account, and in this case, Leslie is smote with a 10-person tab at a fancy restaurant. Like Pavlov’s dog, upon hearing his name, Leslie immediately replies with an all-time hissy fit: “I’m not paying the bill. That’s fucking crazy. It’s too much money. Maybe if I got a bite of everyone’s meal, but I just don’t want to do it.” Hal, the friend who proposed the game, attempts to diffuse the situation by saying he’ll pay the check, but Leslie is just getting started. “FUCK! I SHOULD HAVE LIED! I should have said there was some reason I couldn’t pay and not just said right away I’m not gonna.” Yes, Leslie. You should have lied. —Matt Dollinger

74. “Dave Suit” (Season 2, Episode 6)

As far as ITYSL sketches revolving around bathroom humor go, “Dave Suit” is probably the weakest. It just doesn’t have the specificity and knotty plotting of “The Gift Receipt” or the surrealism of “Calico Cut Pants.” What it does have is Tim Robinson being scolded by his boss for hiring a guy who looks like his coworker to take huge dumps he could then blame on said coworker—a gag that, with all due respect, worked “150 times.” It also has Robinson arguing that Jerry from Tom & Jerry probably sniffed women’s panties (“You weren’t with him 24/7 in the cartoon!”) and interrupting his own scolding to complain about how a guy who lives too far away wants to buy his bike stand. It’s not a peak sketch; it’s still pretty great. —Andrew Gruttadaro

73. “Little Buff Boys” (Season 2, Episodes 1 and 5)

“Little Buff Boys” is Season 2’s spiritual sequel to Season 1’s “Baby of the Year.” For that reason, it lacks some of the original’s absurd shock, but it’s still ridiculous and quotable. Instead of Sam Richardson making three judges pick a perfect baby, he’s making one office manager select who he thinks is the buffest little boy (they’re not actually that ripped—Richardson has just put the boys in “goose suits”). Obviously, the boss has some qualms about evaluating minors in front of all his employees, and the thing falls apart in quick order. No matter, Richardson hosting failed competitions is a clearly rich vein for ITYSL. There must be a third one coming, though the winner will never be Troll Boy. —Richie Bozek

72. “Robert’s Christmas Birthday” (Season 3, Episode 3)

While I can’t argue with “Robert’s Christmas Birthday” landing near the very bottom of this list, I also think there are plenty of small details about it that underline what a deeply weird, deeply specific, deeply brilliant show I Think You Should Leave is. In this short tale about a disgruntled employee who keeps defacing a cardboard cutout of her boss at his birthday party, ITYSL standout Patti Harrison gets to dump countless shots on cardboard Robert’s face, and furiously spray Windex into a cup—that she then immediately dumps on cardboard Robert’s face, to the increasing concern of human Robert. Then the exposition drops: Harrison’s Candy is exacting revenge on Robert because last week he told her she couldn’t bring her rats to work, even though he let Steven bring his dog to work. This opens the door for Harrison to make a face that says “finally you’re starting to make sense” when Robert admits that it’s not up to him to decide which animals are worse—and to deliver lines like, “Dogs are to Steven what rats are to me” and “I take the food, put it on the desk. I knock it in, no one knows I have rats.” Isn’t I Think You Should Leave a treasure? And don’t you think Patti Harrison should’ve been in more sketches in Season 3? —Gruttadaro

71. “Mortal Enemies” (Season 3, Episode 1)

Once in a while on I Think You Should Leave, there are two people who should leave. The first offender of “Mortal Enemies” is Stan (played by Tim Robinson), who takes a hypothetical suggestion during a work seminar that his coworker Rick is his mortal enemy to the absolute extreme—by which I mean he resorts to fake-dumping water on him. But there’s an even worse offender here: Alex, who actually dumps water on Stan. “I got too hyper,” a dejected, reflective Alex correctly deduces, while a soaking wet Stan parachutes in with newfound self-righteousness (and loose hair plugs). Let’s be honest: This isn’t a very strong sketch, and there are maybe a dozen better office-based sketches on this show. But it is quite funny that it makes a singeing noise when Alex’s water touches Stan’s skin. —Gruttadaro

70. “Lifetime Achievement” (Season 1, Episode 4)

An awards ceremony honoring the great Herbie Hancock—the epitome of cool—goes horribly wrong when Tim Robinson’s character, an awkward bespectacled presenter, trips on the stairs, falls off the stage, and proceeds to be furiously mauled by a service dog. Or so he claimed. “I don’t think the dog that bit me should be put down,” he says as he opens his speech honoring Hancock’s body of work. But according to the owner of said dog, literally every audience member in attendance, and the Watermelon Man himself, the dog didn’t bite Robinson—it humped his head. Robinson is in full denial, but there’s video evidence that’s soon linked to the overhead monitor. “You don’t tape people,” Robinson begs. But with the ceremony completely off the rails and #HumpGate in full swing, Robinson’s character lobs one last attempt at getting things back on track with an all-time classic: “That’s why I love Herbie Hancock, he loves to lie.” —Dollinger

69. “New Joe” (Season 1, Episode 3)

New Joe (Fred Willard) is the replacement organist at a funeral service, and he brings his own American Footplayer–esque instrument to the proceedings. To honor the departed, he plays a little ditty that absolutely slaps but is a bit tonally off. Things get even more awkward (and hilarious) when he starts breaking dishes with glee. You’d think a funeral would be one of the easier rooms to read, but New Joe cannot read rooms. (“My condolences,” he keeps saying.) It’s that absurdity that makes “New Joe” a great addition to I Think You Should Leave. —Levy-Rubinett

68. “Christmas Carol” (Season 1, Episode 4)

In this two-minute mash-up of A Christmas Carol and The Terminator (sure, why not?), Baby of the Year/Little Buff Boys host Sam Richardson stars as the Ghost of Christmas Way Future, a power-armor-wearing warrior from the year 3050 who Kool-Aid Mans through Ebenezer Scrooge’s wall to warn him about the dangers of Skeletrex and his Bone Brigade. The time-traveling Ghost doesn’t divulge how the Bonies came to life—is this the origin story for “The Bones Are Their Money”?—but the brief skit is worth it to hear Richardson rant, “He’s 15 feet tall and he has bones the size of tree trunks!,” “Use your Christmas cheer and bash its frickin’ brains out, ya idiot!,” and “Crap dang it, this sucks!” This isn’t Richardson’s best role in the series, but it gives me an excuse to say that if you haven’t watched real-life besties Richardson and Robinson (and other familiar faces from ITYSL) in the dearly departed Detroiters, you should do so immediately. —Ben Lindbergh

67. “Joanie’s Birthday” (Season 2, Episode 5)

Nothing resonates with millennials like a Johnny Carson impersonator. Unfortunately for the attendees of this house party that Carson was hired for—“at a low, low price point”—he can hit. As in, he’s contractually allowed to assault the party’s patrons. “Oh my god, Johnny Carson just fucking hit me,” cries out one partygoer. Tim Robinson’s character, the impersonator’s wrangler, comes breathlessly barging in: “HE CAN! HE CAN! HE CAN!” Little do the people know, hitting is, of course, allowed at this price point, allowing Carson to tee off on unsuspecting attendees like he’s taking his famous monologue swing. “Wild, wild stuff.” —Dollinger

66. “Supermarket Swap” (Season 3, Episode 2)

A sketch that eerily came out the same week that Apple unveiled its new Vision Pro headset, “Supermarket Swap” is a Supermarket Sweep parody in which contestants have to grab items from a virtual grocery store. (The game is hosted by The Bear’s breakout star Ayo Edebiri.) Everything starts off harmlessly enough, but when Robinson’s character wins a round and gets to put on the VR headset, he has an existential crisis—and forgets how to breathe:

While it’s tempting to inject greater meaning into the sketch—an absurdist cautionary tale about how the immersive nature of AI can never fully replicate the human experience—“Supermarket Swap” is mostly a testament to Robinson’s gifts as a physical performer. To watch this man violently flail and convulse his body in a futuristic dental chair is like seeing Roger Federer at Wimbledon: art of the highest order. —Miles Surrey

65. “Mars Restaurant” (Season 2, Episode 5)

Comedy is specificity, and specificity is Tim Heidecker with shoulder-length hair in a deep V-neck giving an increasingly personal and detailed account of his date’s mother drinking vomit, repeatedly, on the Davy and Rascal Show just to buy school supplies for her children, all because a fake alien comic at a novelty space café zeroed in on the wrong table at the wrong time. That it’s shot as if Heidecker’s Gary is having an honest-to-god conversation with an animatronic alien head is a freaking gift. But what unfolds from there is a story of justice. This is the comeuppance that all roast comics deserve: to be dragged out into the light and made to answer for themselves, and then be conned out of another Mars Cocktail™ just because. —Rob Mahoney

64. “Banana Breath” (Season 3, Episode 6)

Just a few things worth noting here:

• Not all heroes wear capes. Cam (Alison Martin) recognized her coworkers suffering in the doldrums of a run-of-the-mill HR training session and broke the torment with comedy gold: “Back away, banana breath. What the hell did you just eat? A banana?” Utter brilliance.
• Then, in an all-time heat check, she quickly pulls up Tees Today™ on her phone, offers shirts to both Mary and Meredith, and ropes Rick into the design process because she sees him for the artist he truly is. What did we do to deserve her?
• You think Barney deserves credit for the project while he was out chowing down bananas at lunch? Come on, banana breath. Get a grip.
• Cam laughed to herself for 27 seconds (I timed it) before the presenter asked if she needed to leave the room.
• Mary is a piece of shit. Everyone wears t-shirts. Just get it big and use it as a night shirt. Imagine lounging around in a big t-shirt and undies. Like it or not, Cam’s putting you down for one, bitch.
• Rick fumbled the bag. He spends all day drawing at his desk and can’t doodle up a computer? It’s just a box with keys! —Gayle

63. “Friend’s Weekend” (Season 2, Episode 4)

There are tiny moments that save this sketch, in which Robinson’s character tries to lighten the mood of a party by doing a Blues Brothers routine, only to make things way worse by freaking out a family dog: Conner O’Malley playing the world’s most aggrieved husband; the banal discussion about why the dog is losing its shit, which ends with O’Malley yelling, “What?! We know what the problem is”; and a second dog coming out of nowhere and nearly running through a glass door. And finally, there’s Robinson’s performance after the routine has clearly bombed: tears smeared on his face, the whole house staring at him, he simply says, “This really is quite a beautiful house.” Annnnnd scene. —Gruttadaro

62. “Jenna’s Bad Day” (Season 3, Episode 4)

Everyone farts. He squoze when he threw his hands down, and he farted. It’s OK. You’re OK. What isn’t OK is fighting the 200 friends you paid for in the pool and splashing water in their mouths. You’re going to have to pay more for that.

Tim Robinson is farting and screaming in an oversized suit as the ringleader of a pay-to-play friend group. It’s perfect. He steals the scene away from former SNL cast member Beck Bennett, making his ITYSL debut as Stuart. But that doesn’t mean I want to be either of those guys. I want to be Mike ’cause he has the best friend group. His friend group has a smooth rhythm, all orchestrated by Mike. —Gayle

61. “Tasty Time Vids” (Season 3, Episode 6)

If only this sketch was a “So you wanna be a content creator?” PSA. It really speaks to many ills of that ecosystem, from the cesspool that comment sections have become, to the glut of bad videos out there, to the prison that is having to create content consistently. The why of Draven’s confusing (and awful) “Frankenstein’s Chick” video series aside, I kind of blame David (and not just because he handed someone his phone to place a lunch order). David was way too quick to big up Draven. Either figure out how to dole out constructive criticism or say you lost your phone in a tornado or something. Positive reinforcement of internet garbage is why this particular brand of short-form content is clogging up every app with the ability to host videos. The Davids of the world need to chill so the Dravens of the world can, I don’t know, throw their phones in a river or actually lose them in a tornado. Whatever keeps Draven off the timeline. —khal

60. “Metal Motto Search” (Season 3, Episode 6)

Danny Green’s Photo Wall of Metal: Metal Motto Search is, like its title, a simple game. Its rules just take a really long time to explain, and there’s so much lore surrounding it that contestants have to watch a cartoon about “what’s happening in Metaloid Maniac’s world.”

All images courtesy of Netflix

OK, you know what: I lied. Metal Motto Search is a horrible game, especially because the guy playing the Metaloid Maniac can’t zoom around the metal board—that he built—fast enough because the suit’s too heavy (and he had a difficult conversation with his daughter that morning). But it seems like Danny Green—played by Sam Richardson—really had a vision, and that he sunk a lot of money into that vision. And if there’s one thing I could watch on a loop, it’s Sam Richardson trying to sell a terrible game show. —Gruttadaro

59. “Bozo” (Season 1, Episode 6)

ITYSL excels at using everyday office settings as setups for absurd social interactions, and “Bozo” is one of the best sketches in that genre. This two-parter revolves around Reggie, who not only isn’t in on the joke but also doesn’t seem to understand jokes. Feeling peer pressure from his younger, YouTube-savvy coworkers who swap viral video recommendations and assure each other that their selections are so funny, Reggie first pretends to have a favorite video that he forgets how to find. Determined not to come up empty-handed in the conference room again, he then creates and uploads his own video, in which a foul-mouthed Bozo the Clown confusingly dubs over footage of himself saying what he was thinking in the scene. It’s a ridiculous solution to a slight problem, but it’s also somewhat relatable: Somewhere in the world, there’s a person in an office who hasn’t seen ITYSL but felt left out when everyone was talking about it and pretended to have a favorite sketch that they couldn’t remember how to type in. —Lindbergh

58. “Parking Lot” (Season 2, Episode 5)

There are few things in life more universal than getting annoyed at a driver who doesn’t know what they’re doing, something “Parking Lot” capitalizes on in an unexpected way. The sketch hinges on a frustrated driver getting blocked while leaving a parking lot, and in an attempt to insult the other person (played by Robinson) by telling him he can’t drive, the driver finds out that, well, he actually can’t. There’s a hilariously infantile quality to the way Robinson reacts to his unfamiliar surroundings, like screaming when he accidentally hits the horn because it scared him. And if nothing else, “Parking Lot” is responsible for one of the most meme-worthy moments of the show’s second season. This is exactly what I say every year trying to file taxes:

—Surrey

57. “Pacific Proposal Park” (Season 3, Episode 4)

What features would you include in a perfect park for marriage proposals? Gardens full of flowers? Romantically lit gazebos? A special, spongy, soft soil that’s perfect for the most perfect kneel of your life? Well, the last one has unintended consequences.

Nothing will ever top Sam Richardson in ITYSL’s “Baby of the Year,” but “Pacific Proposal Park” comes close. Richardson wages war on Toilet Truck, Jerry “The Jet” Jones, Baby Duff, and other professional wrestlers because they’re practicing their slams on his spongy, soft soil meant for proposing knees. He accidentally built the perfect place to practice wrestling, and now he wants Toilet Truck and Baby Duff dead because of it. He also outs King Larry as Scarecrow because he saw him (and his whole red penis) changing in his car. And if King Larry is in fact Scarecrow, you can’t convince me Baby Duff isn’t actually Bart Harley Jarvis. —Gayle

56. “First Date” (Season 3, Episode 3)

Look, the idea that a man would get a haircut for a date that looks like dog ears because of a little barber miscommunication is definitely funny. As is the way this sketch spoofs the overly cheesy male relationships that infect certain rom-coms. (Sample line from Random BFF 1: “Cut to: we’re chatting about this at your bachelor party.”) Or the fact that the actual inspiration for Robinson’s main character’s haircut is a blurry photo of Bryan Cranston throwing out a bucket of popcorn. But this is the moment that really takes this sketch about a guy who’s trying so hard to impress a first date that he accidentally gets dog ears for a haircut to another level:

And by the time you can even react to this twist, the sketch just ends. Cut to: me laughing hysterically as ITYSL’s interstitial music plays. —Gruttadaro

55. “Claire’s” (Season 2, Episode 6)

So many of I Think You Should Leave’s most outstanding bits are underpinned by some kind of profound sadness, but this is the only one that Trojan horses its darkness in a pair of unicorn earrings. You know what’s scarier than getting your ears pierced in the back of a tween accessory store? Seeing the people who cared for you as a baby become babies themselves. Luckily, Claire’s is a place where people young and old can go to find peace—a place where a cool college girl will calm your deepest fears, and even in moments of gastrointestinal distress, help you to live life like no one can hear the splashes. —Mahoney

54. “Gelutol” (Season 3, Episode 4)

Here’s something that’s great: having a full head of hair deep into middle age. Here’s something that’s even better: having a full head of hair while your nemesis stays as bald as a newborn. “Gelutol” is a power trip masquerading as an infomercial—an ad that’s not selling a hair-loss solution, but rather, spite. After spotting a friend at a St. Patrick’s Day party worrying about his thinning mane, Robinson offers him a solution: a pill that’s kept his thick. The catch? Don’t tell the nebbish Bret Shefter the name of the drug. (For added security, make sure you’re saying it wrong.) And Shefter has a full-on meltdown, screaming about fingering as his wife sweats in her green jacket. It’s a masterclass in pettiness on Robinson’s part—one that pays off so well you’ll be trying to figure out how you can enlist as one of his soldiers, whether you need Gelutol or not. —Justin Sayles

53. “Biker Guy” (Season 1, Episode 2)

Biker Guy is one of the most important fictional characters in at least the last decade of television. He has forever changed the way I view everyday methods of transportation. I instinctively say, “That’s a nice motorcycle,” when I see a motorcycle, even though I know nothing about motorcycles. Bicycles now are motorcycles with no motor; standard four-door sedans are two motorcycles with a little house in the middle; I drop to my knees when I see a bus.

There’s such a thing as influence, and “Biker Guy” has it. —Bozek

52. “Children’s Choir” (Season 3, Episode 4)

Perhaps it’s fitting that “Children’s Choir” doesn’t play by I Think You Should Leave’s typical rules. For one, Robinson plays the straight man, ceding the most outrageous behavior to his “shirt brother” Shane, played by Biff Wiff. And secondly, while this sketch doesn’t achieve the series’ usual hilarity—to me, anyway—it does access a distinct emotional register. Most ITYSL sketches portray a character who doubles down in an awkward social situation to the point of extreme discomfort to everyone around them; “Children’s Choir,” by contrast, ends with both characters embracing their inner selves and finding a new sense of freedom and satisfaction. Maybe it was just the Turnstile soundtrack, but the ending of this sketch is surprisingly uplifting. Am I going nuts in here?! —Levy-Rubinett

51. “Party House” (Season 1, Episode 6)

Let’s take a moment to shout out some of the I Think You Should Leave behind-the-scenes staff. In a series defined by the over-the-top performances of its actors, the most over-the-top performance in this sketch comes from the set designers. They built a house that is—as its owner (Kate Berlant) boasts—“all Garfield.” The sketch remains funny as characters try to stage an intervention for their friend in an environment that hampers any serious conversations, but the show already won when the lights flip on to reveal a house that’s filled with Odie chairs. (They recline!) —Rodger Sherman

50. “Wilson’s Toupees” (Season 1, Episode 2)

The most memorable part of “Wilson’s Toupees” is when a gorilla emerges out of nowhere to snatch someone’s toupee. The funniest part is the concept of a direct-to-consumer subscription service that sends 500 “little wigs”—each slightly more bald than the last—to men who are ready to ditch the toupee and embrace their baldness but need a gradual progression so their coworkers don’t say, “Was that a toupee, you piece of shit?” That’s comedic gold; we didn’t really need the gorillas. —Levy-Rubinett

49. “Wife Joke” (Season 2, Episode 4)

A poker night with the boys hits all the clichés, as everyone takes turns making fun of their nagging wives over some beers. But after an offhand comment about how being married to his wife makes him want to drink more, Scott (a committed Paul Walter Hauser) immediately regrets what he said. The sketch then spirals into an unexpectedly earnest flashback about Scott’s wife supporting him when he gets cast as a mobster in a local theater production and all his lines keep getting stolen by an asshole named Jamie Taco (Jamie talks, like, super fast). With how many I Think You Should Leave sketches culminate in chaos and/or despair, there’s something genuinely sweet about Scott going full Wife Guy at poker night, which also happens to be a sleepover party for middle-aged men. Dudes rock—except for Jamie Taco, whose name I’ll never forget—but they should also say nicer things about their wives. —Surrey

48. “Tammy Craps” (Season 2, Episode 6)

When I watched Julia Butters in Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood I knew she’d be a star. What I didn’t know is that the next time I saw her she’d be pitching a mildly toxic doll who lies about pooping and huffing Macanudo cigars in a Season 2 sketch on I Think You Should Leave. You see, the problem with the Tammy Craps doll is that there was an upset factory worker who was farting in all the heads. That led to the company using a deodorizing low-grade poison, which solved one problem…

… but it turns out that that low-grade poison is an extremely high-grade poison for anyone under 60 pounds. In that case, “holding a Tammy Craps doll is like smoking five Macanudo cigars a day,” a wildly committed Julia Butters says to another girl. (That girl goes on to put rocks in her pockets to fake her weight and get a Tammy Craps doll, and then she … dies?)

Before I wrote this all out, I thought “Tammy Craps” was a pretty good, medium-funny sketch. Now I’m convinced it’s the weirdest thing this show has ever done. —Gruttadaro

47. “Babysitter” (Season 1, Episode 5)

“Let’s say the babysitter was late” has to be the best, most used excuse of all time. I can’t speak from experience because I don’t have children, but whether it’s true in the moment or not, it feels like a situation that has legitimately happened at one point to all parents. And who are you to question those using the excuse? If somebody says their babysitter was late, then the babysitter was late. Leave it at that, everybody move on.

This sketch expands upon what might happen if either party didn’t just leave it at that. If, say, the excuse-maker got a little too elaborate and explained that the babysitter was late because she was in a hit-and-run that killed some people who the cops say are “just kind of, like, nothing.” And then some guy named Barry asked too many goddamn questions. Lies and questions build and build before somebody needs to get embarrassed. From the outside it’s hilarious, but I would hate to be caught in the mess of it like Barry. —Bozek

46. “Bloody Eyeball” (Season 3, Episode 5)

Low-key, this is one of the more depressing sketches in the series. Everyone feels like they see the world differently, right? Every day, people are experiencing this one planet in many different ways, and in this sketch, Randall is no different. He really isn’t the problem here—he just sees the world differently. Way differently: a quick rumble in the office is a massive volcano; those highlighters are little pimps. The problem? No one seems to want to understand how Randall sees things—in fact there’s seemingly an edict not to encourage him. Who knows what’s going on with Randall? The fact that no one wants to find out is what bothers me the most. —khal

45. “Barley Tonight” (Season 3, Episode 1)

It’s certainly enough to appreciate the many ways Tim Robinson contorts his body in “Barley Tonight” as he plays a talk show host who stubbornly retreats to his phone anytime he’s close to losing a debate …

But what elevates the sketch is the kernel of truth buried within it. “If I ever feel weird at all, I’m just looking at it,” Barley says, explaining the deep connection he feels with his phone. And I know that line rings true to anyone (all of you, don’t lie) who’s ever gotten to a party before their friends or found themselves alone at a restaurant when their partner goes to the bathroom and immediately pulled out their phone to pass the time and ward off any feelings of awkwardness. Barley shouldn’t be ignoring his guests—unless, maybe, his mom really has been taken hostage—but at the same time, you can see where he’s coming from. —Gruttadaro

44. “Pink Bag” (Season 1, Episode 2)

Whoopie cushions are not funny—I feel like we can all agree on this. What’s the joke, even? That someone farted but it doesn’t even smell? That no one’s puking from the stench of the fart? And what comes after that: Cake batter down someone’s pants? Brown pudding in their shoes to make them think they’re mighty sick? They go to the ER and not only miss their family photo but use hospital resources that someone with more pressing needs could use? And then that person dies? Wow. You got her, Jane. You really got her. —Gruttadaro

43. “Choking” (Season 1, Episode 5)

I Think You Should Leave’s best sketches feature characters taking things way too far. “Choking” takes that approach to a hilarious end point when Robinson’s character refuses to acknowledge that he’s choking to death because his favorite musician-actor-designer, Caleb Went, is sitting at the table and he doesn’t want to seem weird—which, as he speaks in a pained honk and gives a toast with veins bulging from his forehead, he obviously doesn’t. Just look at this desperation…

… that ends in complete resignation:

—Levy-Rubinett

42. “Big Wave” (Season 2, Episode 6)

Working remotely for a year and a half, this sketch is my most recent point of reference to what a workplace environment should resemble. I can’t wait to get back.

After their boss leaves the conference room, members of this work team start surfing, dancing, spinning chairs to create whirlpools, and cracking open multiple cans of seltzer water to spray ocean mist. Tim Robinson’s character, Russell, isn’t in on the fun at first, until he literally flips the table to create a “big wave!” as only Tim Robinson can. This is followed by a variety of laughable exclamations in the midst of the chaos, like “Napkins, napkins!,” “I need a wet paper towel!,” and “Fucking psycho!” It is yet another ITYSL story about a man who does not fit in, trying disastrously hard to do so.

Also, if you know me and are reading this, take note: Please don’t ever gift me chode jeans. —Bozek

41. “Both Ways” (Season 1, Episode 1)

“Both Ways” is the very first sketch in the series, and as such, it’s responsible for establishing the template of a typical ITYSL scenario: Someone makes a minor faux pas in a mundane social situation and, rather than acknowledge the error, doubles (or quadruples) down on pretending that it wasn’t one. As he exits a cordial coffee-shop job interview, Robinson pulls on a door that only opens outward, then tries to play off the slightly embarrassing mistake by insisting that he was there yesterday and that the door “does both.” At that point, he has to commit to the cover story by yanking the door off its hinges until it’s so splintered that it does go both ways. While performing this feat of strength and stupidity, Robinson maintains eye contact and keeps up a plastered-on smile, even as his forehead vein throbs with the effort and drool slides down his chin. He’s probably not going to get the job, but you have to applaud his persistence. —Lindbergh

40. “Sitcom Taping” (Season 3, Episode 2)

One of my favorite recurring bits in I Think You Should Leave is when a character successfully rallies everyone else to their side regardless of how absurd the situation starts out. (For instance, the other members of the instant-classic “Focus Group” sketch following Ruben Rabasa’s lead in making fun of Paul.) In “Sitcom Taping,” Robinson plays a man who’s part of a live studio audience for a popular sitcom, during which a producer tells him and his viewing peers that, “Millions of people are going to hear your voice.”

Naturally, this inspires Robinson’s character to lace his personal grievances into the laugh track, complaining about a watch exploding on a date and a rented limo that had a separate group lurking behind a makeshift divider. “Sitcom Taping” becomes oddly poignant once the studio audience and the sitcom crew sympathize with Robinson’s ordeal, and by the time we get a flashback sequence of everything that happened to him, the sketch reaches a new level of delightful WTF-ery. Seeing Robinson’s watch explode in Zack Snyder-esque slow-motion—a bunch of springs landing in his date’s soup and hair—is one of the funniest things I’ve seen all year. —Surrey

39. “River Mountain High/TC Tuggers” (Season 1, Episode 2)

Here are two immaculate parodies smashed into one: first, a perfect riff on a CW teen show that includes this splendid tidbit of dialogue:

But then the principal (Robinson) shows up wearing an interesting shirt, one with a little knob on the front so your shirt doesn’t get messed up when you pull on it, and that brings us to the second immaculate parody: of a commercial for said shirt, geared specifically toward middle-aged men.

The song used in the ad sounds exactly like the song Home Depot uses for its ads; it’s just wonderful. Also? TC Tuggers solves a problem that every man on earth has encountered at one time or another. That’s what takes this from bizarre banter and pitch-perfect recreations to absolute brilliance. —Gruttadaro

38. “The Capital Room” (Season 2, Episode 2)

I Think You Should Leave takes place in its own parallel universe, where the bones are their money and coffin flops abound. It’s therefore jarring to get a pop culture parody as precise as “Capital Room,” a transparent riff on Shark Tank. But while “Capital Room” may not fit seamlessly into I Think You Should Leave’s particular gestalt, it’s a remarkable showcase for Patti Harrison, the recurring guest star who seems to get the show’s whole stupid, grotesque, profane deal. Harrison’s fellow sharks—sorry, “moguls”—made their fortunes in fashion and sunglasses. She sued the city after getting sewn into the pants of the Charlie Brown float at the Thanksgiving Day parade. It’s a perfectly nonsensical choice that Harrison elevates with her deeply strange delivery. Just listen to the way she says “popcorn.” —Alison Herman

37. “Photo Booth” (Season 3, Episode 5)

“Three seconds to think of something silly? That’s fucking insane! That’s not enough time!”

Truer words have never been spoken.

“Do something silly” is the second or third call to action in every single group photo situation, yet it’s a shock to the system every single time. Prop or no prop? Three… Do I just stick my tongue out like I do every single fucking time? Two… Cross-eyed again? One…

Tim Meadows as the man fighting against this photo booth mandate—to the point of puking—doesn’t miss once in his ITYSL debut. His delivery of every line is astounding. He’s the centerpiece of the random-tangent Twister game Robinson plays so well, and he does it almost better. Right foot? Barney and his little, tiny cloth hairs. Left foot? The Pelling Ball and 15 business deals. Right hand? In the shape of an “L” on your forehead while doing a Fortnite dance. —Gayle

36. “Crashmore—Trailer” (Season 2, Episode 3)

Explaining why this sketch is funny doesn’t require nuanced analysis. It’s a trailer for a fake movie starring the titular aging, horrifically violent detective with a long white beard. Think: Dirty Harry if he were a hermit. He shoots up bad guys at close range and says things like “Eat fuckin’ bullets you fuckers!” Oh, and also: He’s played by Santa Claus, who during a press junket interview refers to the film as “a cosmic gumbo.” —Alan Siegel

35. “New Printer” (Season 1, Episode 5)

Repetitiveness is the death of good comedy, as approval-seeking office worker Tracy (Patti Harrison) discovers. After her boss gets mild chuckles with a Christmas joke, Tracy deploys “hundreds of on-par, if not better” jokes, only to find that the Christmas humor had already run dry. Luckily, there’s no repetition with Harrison, who treats every line as an opportunity to be a different sort of weirdo. She pinballs between personas, transforming from a naive kid awaiting presents to a bullying coworker (“DID I STUTTER, MEGAN?” she scowls, before emphatically retelling a tired Santa joke) to an elf with a vaguely Scottish accent. Every delivery is unexpected. With replacement-level line reads, this skit would have been forgettable; with Harrison on fire, it’a a keeper. Thank Santa and his reindeer for bringing Harrison’s performance to us early. —Sherman

34. “Ghost Tour” (Season 2, Episode 1)

Robinson specializes in playing maladjusted men. What’s impressive is that he somehow makes each one unique. Like this guy. When a late-night ghost-tour guide tells his guests that they can say whatever they want, Robinson’s character immediately blurts out “jizz.” Then, to the group’s chagrin, he proceeds to ask questions like “Any of these fuckers ever fall out of the ceiling and just have like a big messy shit? Or have a dingleberry?” The group eventually bands together to toss out the foul-mouthed dude (who argues, quite compellingly, that he isn’t actually breaking any rules). But the turn comes at the very end, when his elderly mother picks him up and asks if he’s made any new friends. For a brief moment, we sympathize with someone whose only way of connecting with people is by talking about ghost excrement. —Siegel

33. “Baby of the Year” (Season 1, Episode 1)

“Baby of the Year” is probably best remembered for Bart Harley Jarvis, the bad boy of the annual competition who is so unlikable that audience members shout expletives at an infant dressed like a little biker. (Side note: FUCK YOU, HARLEY JARVIS!) But this god-tier sketch soars for all the delirious details that get thrown into the mix: the fact that the competition takes three months and has been going on for 112 years; the infants’ health being assessed by a guy named Dr. Skull; an “In Memoriam” segment for previous winners that includes cause of death; and Sam Richardson as the host who, upon learning that one of the baby’s parents gave the mystery judge oral, deadpans, “Aw man, that’s a bummer, might fuck this whole thing up.” It’s only fitting that “Baby of the Year” is just the third sketch in the series’ run. What better litmus test to find out whether you can get on the show’s wavelength than with one of its most chaotic sketches right off the bat? —Surrey

32. “Chunky” (Season 1, Episode 6)

Honestly, Dan Vega? This one’s on you. You created Dan Vega’s Mega Money Quiz; you brought Chunky into this game-show world. You identified his role in the ecosystem as a character who “eats your points, and”—emphasis mine—gets “very mad.”

Chunky could’ve just eaten the points, Dan Vega! He did not need to get mad at the contestants. Maybe if you had provided him with a more positive and healthier framework for how to exist in the game, he wouldn’t be absolutely wrecking Andy Samberg’s shit every time he comes out from behind the curtain and seeking your approval in the process, only to be met with louder and louder scorn:

You know that scene in Mallrats where Stan Lee tells Brodie about creating Marvel characters that “reflected my own heartbreak and my own regrets”? This is that, but with Dan Vega creating Chunky as a vessel for his inability to process and defang his unfettered rage. I don’t think Chunky’s the one who really has to figure out what he does. You have all summer to think of it, Dan Vega. Good luck. —Dan Devine

31. “Traffic” (Season 1, Episode 4)

Even among the many weirdos in this show’s universe, Conner O’Malley’s character here stands out. After spotting a “Honk If You’re Horny” bumper sticker on Robinson’s car, he lays on his SUV’s horn—“That’s me!”—then follows Robinson around for days, honking nonstop. O’Malley spends the sketch doing what he does best: grunting, groaning, and yelling until Robinson finally asks him what his deal is. “I thought that you worked for like a service or a company that helped out guys that are so horny that their stomachs hurt!” O’Malley says. “’Cause that’s what I am!” What takes this sketch to another level is when, in a hysterically strange bonding moment, Robinson helps him alleviate his pain. With his stash of porn. Because it turns out he is like a service that helps out guys who are so horny that their stomachs hurt. —Siegel

30. “Baby Shower” (Season 1, Episode 6)

The protagonist of this sketch attempted and failed to make a mob movie, and now he’s stuck with 50 Stanzo-brand fedoras, 1,000 plastic meatballs that may or may not look like little pieces of shit, and 50 black slicked-back-hair wigs, all of which he’s trying to unload in a baby-shower planning meeting as part of the gift bags. He’s visibly upset that the rest of the group prefers items like candles or individual bottles of champagne, so one of the planners generously offers to buy a few fedoras. The highlight of the sketch comes when he tries to leverage that modicum of sympathy to get a bulk order. The way he says “It’s gotta be quality on my end, otherwise no fuckin’ deal” kind of makes me want to watch his mob movie. —Levy-Rubinett

29. “Calico Cut Pants” (Season 2, Episode 4)

Tim Robinson is unmatched in his ability to pinpoint everyday nuisances that most everyone experiences but is too embarrassed to talk about. Season 1 had TC Tuggers to solve the issue of bunched-up shirts getting ruined by men pulling on them; Season 2 has Calico Cut Pants (dot com), a website that provides an excuse to men who dribble urine on their pants by giving the appearance that such pee dots are actually intentional design choices. You can’t buy the pants, but it looks like you can, and that’s all one really needs, wouldn’t you agree?

But what elevates this sketch—the longest of any in the series, and my favorite one in Season 2—is the increasing weirdness of the man (Robinson) prodding his coworker (Mike O’Brien) to donate to Calico Cut Pants so that it can stay online. First we find out that his wife is eating batteries—“She says she’s not eating them, then we go to the doctor and the doctor says, ‘Yeah, we found a battery in there’”—and then it begins to seem like he might be the devil? Or at least a demon who has a legion of pee-dribbling minions? The scenes where Robinson violently yells “HOLD THAT DOOR!” to people who are so far away from him are just the cherry on top. —Gruttadaro

28. “H.D. Vac Part II” and “H.D. Vac Commercial” (Season 2, Episodes 1 & 3)

One day I hope to love something half as much as Tim Robinson loves hot-dog-related bits. In this two-parter, Robinson plays an office worker whose boss calls a meeting right before he’s about to eat his hot dog lunch. (“I don’t know if you’re allowed to do that.”) Naturally, the only reasonable solution is to try and stealthily inhale the hot dog in the meeting through a shirt sleeve, which goes horribly wrong when Robinson nearly chokes to death. While the ensuing chaos to Robinson’s near-death experience is the sketch’s selling point, the best sight gag might come before the fateful meeting—look how absurdly long the hot dog actually is:

The second half of the hot dog saga sees that same character peddling a hyperspecific hot dog vacuum—or HD Vac, which just looks like a regular vacuum—in a commercial where he’s railing against cancel culture. It’s emblematic of so many I Think You Should Leave characters taking the wrong lessons from their failures, but if we’re being honest, I gotta side with the hot dog fanatic on this one: You can’t just expect someone to skip lunch. —Surrey

27. “Driver’s Ed” (Season 2, Episode 6)

We’ve all been there. You’re sitting in traffic and there’s a lady in front of you with a minivan full of dirty, stinkin’ tables. Obviously, she’s distracted. Maybe Eddie Munster threw them in a mud puddle. Maybe Freddy Krueger was somehow involved. Or maybe they were soiled after being rented to local comic-cons and horror-cons. Either way, this woman’s job is clearly tables. (“These tables are how I buy my house. They are how I keep my house hot.”) Maybe you still don’t get it. (“DO YOU UNDERSTAND THE TABLES ARE MY CORN?”) At this point, you’ve lost all composure inside your car. Rage has boiled over. Composure has been lost. The tables are filthy and the driver in front of you is dragging ass. So what do you do? You take it out on the tables. You floor it, plowing into the minivan, as you scream into the heavens: “THIS IS THE MADDEST I’VE EVER BEEN!” Also, it’s Driver’s Ed 101. —Dollinger

26. “Silent Show” (Season 3, Episode 3)

In “Silent Show,” Robinson is Richard Brecky, an old-school pantomime performer who can tell 73 (!) wholesome stories entirely through gestures and expressions. If Brecky ever breaks during a performance, he will give money back to the audience, one dollar at a time. Alas, that fateful policy becomes the poor guy’s undoing: Instead of fellow Charlie Chaplin admirers attending the shows, Brecky is bombarded by drunken frat bros yelling at him until he loses his cool and has to repay tons of money. The fact that Brecky’s shows are selling out adds a tragic dimension to the sketch: The more successful he is, the more abuse he receives. (“WE’RE GONNA GO NUTS IN THERE!” a dude in a sleeveless flannel tells an exasperated Brecky before one of the performances.) Not gonna lie: While I’d be down to check out a Richard Brecky silent show, I can’t promise I wouldn’t also be tempted to shout “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!” when he starts using an imaginary mop. —Surrey

25. “Diner Wink” (Season 2, Episode 2)

There’s a reason your parents told you not to talk to strangers: Sometimes they just don’t shut up. Tim Robinson’s character is sitting in a diner booth across from his daughter when he tells an innocent lie—“When it’s too cold outside, all the ice cream stores close”—before looking to a stranger (Bob Odenkirk) in the next booth in hopes he’ll back him up. Odenkirk’s character not only backs him up but proceeds to up the ante time after time with increasingly absurd, trivial lies. He starts by claiming the two men are old friends. Then the same age. Then he raves about his car collection (“If I don’t have triples, then the other stuff’s not true”). Then he brings up his (very imaginary) wife. “Tell her about my wife,” Odenkirk begs Robinson. By now, the jig is up and the daughter is fully aware that not only is the ice cream store likely open but both her dad and this man are complete lunatics. Not that that stops the descent: “[My wife] was a model around the world. She was on posters. Yeah, I used to have a poster of her in my garage. Then I met her, can you believe it? And she asked me to marry her, and I didn’t even want to, but she’s beautiful, but she’s dying. She’s sick. She’s hanging in there. It’s hard. She’s gonna get better. And I’m rich. And I don’t live in a hotel.” —Dollinger

24. “ABX Heart Monitor” (Season 3, Episode 3)

You know the feeling of when you really want something, and you finally get it, but it’s not all it’s cracked up to be? Tim Heidecker feels none of that in “ABX Heart Monitor.” He plays a doctor obsessed with getting into the clubs where his cardiac patient (Robinson) has earned favored-son status. He’s so obsessed that he tracks Robinson’s heart rate throughout the night with the ABX monitor. (It’s one of the only times you’d rather someone thought you were jackin’ off instead of at the club.) What Heidecker wants most of all is a visit to Club Haunted House so he can find the trapdoor he read about online. So you’d expect a little bit of a letdown when he finally gets in (without his wife). But instead, he’s wowed by the chains and the mystery of it all, tipping over candelabras and slamming chaise lounges to the ground. The trapdoor may not be real, but the vibes are immaculate. And so is this sketch, the best team-up of the two Tims in ITYSL canon. —Sayles

23. “Nachos” (Season 1, Episode 4)

There are three things that many of Robinson’s best characters struggle with: pent-up anger, venting said rage, and accepting responsibility for their misguided actions. When the man in this sketch gets annoyed that the date he’s sharing nachos with is eating all the “fully loaded” ones, he doesn’t politely ask her to leave him some. Instead, he clandestinely convinces their confused waiter to approach the table and tell her that such a practice is against the restaurant’s rules.

She naturally figures it all out. Yet even after getting called out, Robinson repeatedly feigns ignorance—ruining the date but causing the audience to laugh at his ridiculous petulance. —Siegel

22. “Talk About My Kids” (Season 3, Episode 5)

“Do me a favor: Next time I’m talking about my kids, please stop me.”

This is not a thing you should say in front of a Tim Robinson character. Because they will do you that favor. They will ride a beautiful dog in the middle of the party so that you stop. They will make it look like that same beautiful dog is blowing him so that you stop. They will make up a dance routine that a weird amount of middle-aged men take to immediately—so that you stop. They will become the most popular guy at the party, someone whom others follow around just waiting to see what wild thing he does next, so that you stop.

But when the night’s all over, you’ll realize that you’ve had a great time. You’ve gotten deeper with people than you ever have before. Just don’t spend too much time investigating why this person was so eager to make you stop talking about your kids, because then you’ll find out that his son shot Godzilla the gorilla because he was “such a big fan of him, he wanted to own his life or something.” —Gruttadaro

21. “Dan Flashes” (Season 2, Episode 2)

The I Think You Should Leave fashion collection is ever-expanding. If you’re looking for the perfect top to go in between your Calico Cut Pants and your Stanzo Fedora, head to Dan Flashes, a very aggressive store that sells expensive and hideous bowling shirts, priced based on how complicated the patterns are. (Unfortunately, Dan Flashes shirts don’t have little tugging knobs to keep you from wrecking your shirt by pulling on it.) If you think too hard about it, this skit is a biting critique of American consumerism—when Tim Robinson’s character Mike sees dozens of identical-looking men physically fighting over unnecessarily pricey shirts, he becomes obsessed with purchasing the most expensive ones and starts skipping meals to finance them. But you shouldn’t think too hard about it. That’s something Doug would do. —Sherman

20. “Designated Driver” (Season 3, Episode 1)

Ted Lasso famously originated from an ad spot in 2013, when Jason Sudeikis first played the titular character in an NBC short meant to drum up American interest in the English Premier League. Can we get a similar glow-up for the Driving Crooner, the cigar-smoking, fedora-wearing star of ITYSL’s “Designated Driver” sketch? I will immediately subscribe to whichever streaming service green-lights a heartwarming half-hour comedy about aspiring entrepreneur Andrew Topecchio that gradually morphs into a prestige dramedy in which Topecchio battles frat boys determined to kill him, underground dog-walking networks conspiring to steal his decals, and the crushing realities of late capitalism as he just tries his damndest to make money off the vision he was put on this earth to see through. —Levy-Rubinett

19. “Grambles Lorelai Lounge” (Season 2, Episode 3)

One of the joys of watching ITYSL is deciphering how it will twist a seemingly normal situation into something totally absurd. Take, for example, this sketch, during which a business school professor has dinner with his former students. Their small talk is completely innocuous until Bob McDuff Wilson’s wise teacher starts fixating on a protégé’s burger. A minute in, he’s fully devolved into a devilish little kid who “jokingly” covets then steals the food, eats it, and then threatens to blackmail his frustrated pupils if they tell anyone about what he did.

A lesser show might’ve made the gentle old soul the butt of the joke, but that’d be too predictable for Robinson and Co. They’re happy to give unassuming characters like Professor Yurabay the last bite. —Siegel

18. “Has This Ever Happened to You?” (Season 1, Episode 1)

Here’s the lifetime leaderboard of Lawyers Whose Ads I’ve Seen the Most: Peter Francis Geraci’s in third. No. 2? Cellino and Barnes. But the new leader is Mitch Bryant, the Robinson character whose commercial comes on right after the opening credits of the premiere episode. Bryant is seeking clients who have been terrorized by the Turbo Team, two burly men who will come to your house to fix a termite problem, but instead yell at you for your lack of Turbo Team membership and replace your real toilet with a joke toilet that can only suck down farts. As Robinson describes the Turbo Team’s transgressions, he gets angrier and angrier until he can barely breathe. I couldn’t pick which is funnier—the Turbo Team’s escalation or Robinson’s. —Sherman

17. “Game Night” (Season 1, Episode 3)

One of the sketches where the person who should leave is not Tim Robinson, “Game Night” stars Tim Heidecker as Howie, the new boyfriend introduced to a friend group through what ought to be an innocent icebreaker: game night. But Howie, to use a technical term, sucks—insulting the host’s “meat and potatoes” record collection, demanding ice-cold gazpacho, and worst of all, submitting impossible-to-guess celebrities like Tiny “Boop Squig” Shorterly and Roy Donk. Tim Robinson characters tend to be fundamentally well-meaning, simply failing to understand why the rest of the world doesn’t get where they’re coming from. Howie is just an asshole, and a kind we all recognize: the insufferable music snob. Why can’t jazz guys just be chill for once?! —Herman

16. “The Man” (Season 1, Episode 2)

In a departure from his typical roles, Robinson plays the understated straight man here, ceding the part of “over-the-top, socially unacceptable outcast” to a fellow Saturday Night Live veteran, Will Forte. Like Robinson, Forte was a little too weird and a little too loud to reach his full potential within the constraints of SNL. He’s flourished outside of that system, and he shows off his whole range in this single sketch, flitting from friendly to menacing to pathetic as he tries to exact revenge on Robinson’s character for crying on a transatlantic flight when he was a baby, which so exhausted Forte’s character that he couldn’t fulfill his dream of making the guards at Buckingham Palace laugh. By Season 1 standards, this is a fairly long and elaborate sketch. But Forte, who fits the ITYSL ethos as well as any guest star in the series, lands the plane perfectly, even though he’s prevented from sitting where he wants. —Lindbergh

15. “Drive Thru” (Season 3, Episode 3)

I love when horror movies start with a prolonged sunny, playful opening—the tension between the film we are watching and the one we know we’re getting creates a building discomfort and anticipation that’s unique to the genre. Robinson manages something similar throughout I Think You Should Leave. By now, viewers are familiar with the show’s outlandish brand of comedy, and Robinson plays on audience expectations to great effect. Some of the series’ most fun moments come during the limbo before the sketch has veered off course—we know shenanigans will ensue, but we don’t know what, exactly, or how.

In “Drive Thru,” Robinson accesses genuine charm as his character pays for the customer behind him in a drive-through line. At this point, after two-plus seasons of ITYSL, Robinson has primed his audience to expect absurdity to the utmost degree. Even so, nothing could have prepared me for what happens next: His character slams on the gas pedal and whips his car back around to the mouth of the drive-through line to take advantage of the pay-it-forward chain he started, shouting at another patron who arrives at the same time to “let me go first! I’m doing something!” His order, breathlessly shouted, has unsurprisingly become one of the series’ most quotable and enduring memes. “Drive Thru” is an instant ITYSL classic—the kind of sketch I could watch 55 times and laugh during each one. —Levy-Rubinett

14. “Laser Spine Specialists” (Season 1, Episode 3)

It seems like one of those medical ads you see on TV all the time, until Tim Robinson shows up and escalates in the most unexpected ways. First, Laser Spine Specialists have given his character the renewed strength to fight his wife’s new husband, Danny Crouse. Then he testifies to being able to lift his adult son over his head (“And there ain’t shit he can do about it”). Finally, in a truly sublime turn, the advertisement basically stops altogether and turns into a pastiche of a man confronting a sleazy record producer (Robbie Star from Superstar Tracks Records) who’s bilked him out of thousands of dollars.

The final turn of genius here comes when the Laser Spine Specialists logo creeps back into the bottom-right corner of the screen, a subtle reminder that oh yeah, that’s how this whole thing started. —Gruttadaro

13. “Prank Show” (Season 2, Episode 1)

Maybe I was just riding the high of starting the second season when I watched this for the first time. But here’s what happened: After the hot dog sketch segued into “Corncob TV,” I started laughing uncontrollably. When the latter stopped, I was gasping for air and crying with laughter; the muscles in my face hurt. Then this sketch started. By the time Robinson, laden with unrealistic-looking prosthetics, froze in a food court and yelled “I’m so hot!” and “We did way too much!” I was crying so hard my eyes were burning. To recap: “Karl Havoc” is so funny (and also so sad?) it made my eyes burn. What’s that do for the greater good? Actually, a lot. —Lindbergh

12. “Gift Receipt” (Season 1, Episode 1)

“The Gift Receipt” starts small, with a simple and relatable feeling of insecurity: Lev (Robinson) realizes that the decorative wreath he bought for his friend Jacob (played by the delightful Steven Yeun, conferring Oscar-nominee grace and leading-man gravitas on this batshit absurdity) might not be a very good birthday gift. That insecurity leads to the crossing of a societal line: A self-conscious Lev demands the gift receipt back, as proof that Jacob was telling the truth when he said he liked the gift. That doesn’t assuage the insecurity, though; Lev persists, and heightens, and there’s the bit.

That’s just the tree, though. What makes the sketch sing is all the garland and ornaments that Robinson hangs on it: Adding a little-boy poop joke, then mutating that by turning poop into “mud pies,” which later becomes “such a sloppy mud pie”; the notion that the unit of measure of toilet paper is the “slice”; a grown man screaming, “NO, I eat paper all the time!” followed by a seemingly sane character suggesting a resolution that, in the interest of scientific rigor, demands the ingestion of additional paper. The complete devastation of a friend group; the horrified shriek humans can only emit when they’ve seen a dead body. All this chaos, springing from that small kernel of self-doubt; all this laughter, coaxed out through an unyielding commitment to both throwing sliders with diction—fuckin’ “mud pies,” man—and exploring just how much Robinson can yell. (Answer: a lot.)

There’s a reason this one closes the first episode of the series, I think: In construction and emphasis, it feels something like I Think You Should Leave’s mission statement, delivered loudly and unapologetically ... at a time when any normal person in your life would be seriously apologetic. —Devine

11. “Eggman Game” (Season 3, Episode 2)

It’s hard to put into words why a sketch about a guy playing a nonsensical computer game in which you feed eggs to a larger egg is so damn funny. It’s just the way that Robinson’s main character, Marcus, is so focused on winning this game—which, again, has zero logic—to the point of ignoring his coworkers.

And how that obsession devolves into something much weirder when Marcus’s coworkers walk over to his desk and see an egglike character pulling its pants down to reveal pubic hair—all while Marcus, deeply interested, reiterates that he’s never made it this far in the game.

And then that development leads one coworker to tell Marcus, “This is very serious—you can’t look at porn in the office.” Which leads to one of the funniest kickers in ITYSL history: Robinson, somewhat flubbing the line, proclaiming, “We should be able to look at a little porn at work.”

Like I said, it’s not really funny on paper. But when you watch it, you know you’re looking at a top-tier I Think You Should Leave sketch. —Gruttadaro

10. “Instagram” (Season 1, Episode 1)

One incredibly difficult thing I Think You Should Leave manages to pull off is instituting its own vocabulary, which then infiltrates our larger lexicon. Mud pies; sloppy steaks; Turbo Time; 50 black, slicked-back-hair wigs. “Instagram” is the sketch that’s all vocabulary. As Vanessa Bayer’s character tries to grasp her friends’ concept of being a little self-deprecating on social media, she unleashes a litany of gross terms and phrases that you’d never hear anywhere else but on this TV show. You know what? I’m just gonna list out all the best ones:

• “Slopping down some pig shit with these fat fucks, and I’m the fattest of them all.”
• “Load my frickin’ lard carcass into the mud. No coffin, please!”
• “Gulping down some pig dicks with these bags of meat.”
• “Sunday funday with these pig dicks.”
• “Hope nobody gulps us.”
• “Slurping down fish piss with these wet chodes.”
• “Total tuna cans.”
• “They’re mad because I won Best Hog at the hog-shit-snarfing contest. But I’m not mad ’cause we’re all loads of beef, sitting on the side of a highway, getting our butts sucked by flies.”

I just … it’s so beautiful. It’s so strangely eloquent. It’s enough to make you cry. Bae. —Gruttadaro

9. “Qualstarr Trial” (Season 2, Episode 3)

What begins as a couple of coworkers on trial for insider trading soon pivots into a merciless roast of one guy’s questionable fashion sense. As the prosecutor reads through one of the workers’ text messages, the conversation lingers on Brian (Robinson), who shows up to their office with a stupid hat. The icing on the cake comes back in the courtroom, when Brian comes into focus, still wearing that fuckin’ hat:

It’s somehow as awful as advertised, a fedora with safari flaps in the back. As Brian gets more uncomfortable in the courtroom, the texting transcript piles on the fedora-related indignities. By the time Brian gets angry in a meeting because he was asked to take the hat off (which he then tried to roll down his arm like Fred Astaire), I was guilty of secondhand embarrassment. —Surrey

8. “Which Hand” (Season 1, Episode 3)

Credit the quality of this sketch—in which a wife lashes out at her husband because he allowed himself to be humiliated during a magician’s routine—to the line readings. Every choice is spot on, from Robinson going full normcore with “If I didn’t have to drive, I would’ve probably taken them up on that bourbon flight—that’s so cool” to literally everything Cecily Strong says (one highlight: “I’m glad you had fun, while everyone else had to watch an adult man jerk your little-boy dick off”). Watching Strong’s dissatisfied wife go up against Robinson’s beta husband will never not be funny. And it’s all underpinned by one undeniable axiom: Magicians do suck. —Gruttadaro

7. “Baby Cries” (Season 2, Episode 2)

Do babies cry spontaneously, or is it because they know that you used to be a piece of shit? That’s the question driving Robinson’s character in this sketch, after he attends a baby shower and the infant in question starts bawling when he tries to hold it. “I’m worried that the baby thinks people can’t change,” he tells the mother, a quote that’s permanently lodged into my broken brain. Robinson then goes into the details of his past life as a self-professed piece of shit: sporting slicked-back hair, rolling with his Dangerous Nights crew, and ordering sloppy steaks at Truffoni’s. It’s the deranged fixation on sloppy steaks—as in, pouring a glass of water on a sizzling slab of meat in defiance of the restaurant owner—that draws you in, especially when we’re whisked into a flashback of just what a night of sloppy steaks at Truffoni’s with the Dangerous Nights crew actually looks like. That the flashback is soundtracked by Ezra Koenig solidifies this sketch as an instant classic. All that’s left to do now is try a sloppy steak yourself. —Surrey

6. “Corncob TV” (Season 2, Episode 1)

Most reality-television parodies are as boringly manufactured as the shows that inspire them. But in typical ITYSL fashion, this one cranks up the shock knob to dangerously explosive levels and, well, smashes through the genre’s staleness. Coffin Flop is exactly what it sounds like: “Just hours and hours of footage of real people falling out of coffins at funerals,” says Robinson, a Corncob TV exec who looks and sounds like the kind of guy who’d watch a lot of Corncob TV. “There’s no explanation.”

And really, there doesn’t need to be. That’s the beauty of the bit: It skewers the vulgarity of bad reality TV while also kind of making the case for it. After all, who can look away from the sight of body after body busting out of shit wood and hitting pavement? —Siegel

5. “Summer Loving” (Season 3, Episode 1)

It was only a matter of time before I Think You Should Leave spoofed reality dating shows, and “Summer Loving” doesn’t disappoint. While the other contestants on the program are trying to win the affections of an attractive bachelorette, Robinson’s Ronnie has made it abundantly clear that he’s only interested in using the house’s awesome pool zip line. Ronnie’s enthusiasm is so intense that he keeps getting into fights with Mike from 360Zipline. (“He’s too rough with the rope,” Mike explains.) A montage of Robinson on the zip line is as glorious as it sounds:

I suspect that “Summer Loving” exists only because Robinson personally wanted to use that zip line countless times, and, well, who can blame him? —Surrey

4. “Darmine Doggy Door” (Season 3, Episode 2)

What’s the scariest thing you can think of? A pig in a Richard Nixon mask? Your wife getting flipped by a swing dancer eight times? Or another day of existential dread at your dead-end job? “Darmine Doggy Door” finds Tim Robinson’s pitchman confronting all three. After a property-line dispute causes his neighbor to unleash an unholy beast into his home, a sleep-deprived Robinson comes face-to-face with his fate. But staring down what he believes to be his certain death, his first instinct is neither fight nor flight. Rather, it’s acceptance: If he dies, he doesn’t have to show up at the office tomorrow. And getting eaten by this monster is better than getting eaten alive by the corporate machine. “That was the most consequential day of my life,” Robinson says, “because now I know I don’t like my work.” Sure, in the end, there aren’t monsters “on the world,” but the feelings this creature stirred in him were both terrifying and clarifying. And as for me, this much I know: For two minutes and 11 seconds, I thought this was the funniest thing I’d ever seen. —Sayles

3. “The Day That Robert Palins Murdered Me” (Season 1, Episode 5)

When a record company exec tells the auditioning band he’s looking for something new and original—a direct parody of Walk the Line—frontman Billy (Rhys Coiro) shoots his shot with “The Day That Robert Palins Murdered Me.” Billy’s country crooning piques the exec’s interest, but then his oblivious bassist (Robinson) jumps in with his own lyrics—which to his credit are original. He shrieks about skeletons coming up from the ground to pull people’s hair (up, not out), with lines such as “The worms are their money / the bones are their dollars,” as well as my personal favorite, “They’ve never seen so much food as this / Underground there’s half as much food as this.” It’s utter nonsense, and it’s utterly delightful. —Levy-Rubinett

2. “Focus Group” (Season 1, Episode 3)

Quiet, subtle moments aren’t I Think You Should Leave’s strong suit. When I think about “Focus Group” now, though, several million viewings later, what I keep coming back to is the way it primes the pump.

Robinson introduces the premise: Ford is soliciting ideas from the public for a new car model. And then, on the second cut introducing us to the members of the focus group, about 10 seconds in, there he is:

Bam. Center of the frame, crystal clear, a magnet drawing your eye: Ruben Rabasa, an actor with nearly a half century of credits, but one you feel positive you’ve never seen before, because just look at this dude. If you’d seen him before, you’d remember it.

The shot lingers on Rabasa for a beat, giving you a second to really drink in his presence as he looks across the table. At that moment, you don’t know that he’s looking at Paul, played by Kanin, who will soon become his nemesis in “wanting to do good at something that just doesn’t matter”—precisely the sort of making-molehills-into-mountains thematic bull’s-eye that this show so frequently aims for and hits. You don’t know yet that Rabasa’s mere seconds away from unleashing an avalanche of memeable moments like arguing for the necessity of sturdily constructed steering wheels in cars deliberately made too small, all delivered in an utterly infectious accent that’s equally powerful when raised to yell “STINKY!” and lowered to hiss “Who’s the most popular now, Paul?” You could not possibly anticipate the dab, or the bottle flip.

All you know, right then, is that you’ve never seen anything quite like this guy, and you’re already laughing, even if you don’t exactly get why. In other words: It’s the perfect standard-bearer for a sketch show blissfully and brilliantly unlike any other. “We’re looking at the monitor while you’re shooting, and it’s like having Brad Pitt,” ITYSL executive producer Akiva Schaffer told Vulture in 2019. “Every shot is already the funniest sketch I’ve ever seen.” —Devine

1. “Brooks Brothers” (Season 1, Episode 5)

There are many memeable bits in ITYSL—see directly above and below—but none so broadly applicable and so satisfying to reference as the one about the driver of a hot dog car who tries to gaslight the patrons of an upscale clothing store (and sort of succeeds). On paper, there’s no way this sketch should work so well. But Robinson sells it so hard, and the visual gags are so good, that it’s one of the most memorable moments in a season stuffed with them. The surprise reveals of Robinson in his costume—yelling “Yeah, whoever did this just confess, we promise we won’t be mad”—and innocent bystander/series co-creator Zach Kanin in his hot-dog-adjacent attire are topped only by the sketch’s signature line, “We’re all trying to find the guy who did this.” In real life, the grifters are less likely to drive Wienermobiles, but their schemes are sometimes just as transparent—and just as liable to work anyway. —Lindbergh

Happy Sci-Fi Dolphin Saturday! Hajime Sorayama is known for his hyperdetailed, airbrushed chrome biomechanoid robots, so it’s no surprise that he got around to metal dolphins with this 1983 illustration. Thanks to @afrocosmist for this one

The branding and visual identity of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense influenced the aesthetics of Black power in what is arguably one of the organization’s lasting legacies. Posters from the late 1960s into the 1970s show members crowned with an afro, armed with weapons, and posed with their fists raised, gestures and iconography that became in popular imagination stand-ins for the values they espoused. On view through September 10 at New York City’s Poster House, Black Power to Black People: Branding the Black Panther Party explores the bold graphics and printed materials that galvanized the public, disseminated radical ideas, and proposed a vision of revolutionary freedom.

A five-part exhibition, Black Power to Black People moves chronologically and thematically from the organization’s founding by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale in Oakland, California, on October 15, 1966, through its dissolution in the ’80s. Artists including Emory Douglas, Dorothy Hayes, Danny Lyon, and others are featured tackling topics such as police brutality, political campaigns, and gender roles. A maquette of “No More Riots Two’s and Three’s” (c. 1970) by the party’s minister of culture Emory Douglas shows the design process for creating one of many images wheat-pasted throughout Black communities.

Curator Es-pranza Humphrey contextualizes that the Panther’s powerful pro-Black imagery emerged during a period when racist stereotypes portrayed in 19th and 20th-century minstrel shows influenced perceptions of Black identity. “All New This Season” (c. 1945) and a poster to the right featuring Newton from 1967 are foils for each other, portraying the roles of Black men in their communities. Unlike the Sambo-like character on the left, Newton sits with a straightened posture and solemn expression showing the seriousness of the BPP’s agenda. 

Humphrey told Hyperallergic that the militant aesthetic was a conscientious decision by the organization’s leadership to inspire and mobilize Black people.

“This sets up why Black Power is important; black ownership over the Black identity is going to propel the movement forward,” Humphrey told Hyperallergic. 

Understanding what the Panthers are up against, Humphrey transitions to the Panther image. The organization’s logo originated from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee’s (SNCC) Atlanta branch, which organized the all-Black, independent political party Lowndes County Freedom Organization (LCFO), also known as the Black Panther Party, in 1965. SNCC members Ruth Howard and Dorothy Zellner created the LCFO logo, and Lisa Lyons later revised it and designed the version the Oakland-based Black Panther Party for Self-Defense used. 

The SNCC Legacy Project recounts that Howard settled on the Panther as an image of Black power and self-determination. “I came up with a dove,” Howard said. “Nobody thought that worked, and someone said I should look at the Clark College emblem … That’s where the Panther came from.”

The logo’s story is one of many ways Humphrey highlights women’s impact on the organization. Other images Humphrey features include newspaper front pages portraying Kathleen Cleaver and Angela Davis; the poster “Revolutionary Mother and Child” (1968) by Emory Douglas; and clippings about Afeni Shakur, who famously represented herself in the Panther 21 trial and was the first to be acquitted of conspiring to bomb police stations and murder officers. A handout in the gallery shares the contributions of 11 influential women in the organization, including Shakur, former leader Elaine Brown, and Rosemari Mealy, whom Humphrey interviewed for the exhibition. 

“[Mealy] would put on these puppet shows for children to introduce them to the vocabulary of the Black Panther Party,” said Humphrey. 

The exhibition concludes with the vision and sounds of freedom. Humphrey tackles the opposition the Panthers faced and how the organization succeeded, at times, despite seemingly insurmountable odds. The Haitian Revolution, represented by a poster for William DuBois’s 1938 play Haiti: A Drama of the Black Napoleon, frames the final two sections providing a historical model of a successful Black Revolution. Here, violent imagery of Seale in the electric chair and Seale again bound during the Chicago Eight trial show the Panthers communicating their unjust treatment by the United States justice system. Songs from Elaine Brown’s album Seize the Time play on a loop in the gallery, auditorily presenting the Panther’s revolutionary vision of Black power for all Black people. 

“I want Black people to come in here and understand that this is a safe space to embrace Black Power and what it can look like today,” Humphrey said.

With ‘Atlanta’ ending its four-season run on the highest of notes, Brian Tyree Henry, Stephen Glover, and others from the team behind the series reflect on what ‘Atlanta’ was

Despite a geographical return to its namesake for its farewell, Atlanta had little interest in nostalgia. The official poster for its fourth and final season, which concluded last week, featured the cast with peaches covering their eyes and a teaser included references to defining moments from the show’s past: an invisible car, a piano and an ostrich egg, an alligator—even Zan, the irksome influencer. Characters such as Uncle Willie (Katt Williams) and Tracy (Khris Davis) returned for cameos during Season 4, as did Raleigh (Isiah Whitlock Jr.) and Gloria Marks (Myra Lucretia Taylor). Those gorgeous aerial shots of the city were back, as well. For viewers put off by Season 3’s divisive trip to Europe, the homecoming represented a comforting, surface-level return to form—assuming they stuck around to see whether Atlanta stuck the landing. But comfort was always an enemy to Atlanta, which reinvented itself each season.

In Season 2, subtitled Robbin’ Season, a darker tone was introduced as Atlanta reckoned with the myriad things life stole from people, be it time, love, dignity, or opportunity. New setting aside, Season 3 sidelined the main cast during four stand-alone episodes that explored how whiteness plagues both white and Black people. Season 4 brought Earnest “Earn” Marks (Donald Glover), Alfred “Paper Boi” Miles (Brian Tyree Henry), Vanessa “Van” Keefer (Zazie Beetz), and Darius Epps (Lakeith Stanfield) back to Atlanta following Alfred’s European tour, but showed that they could never go “home again” in lieu of success and all the perplexing baggage accompanying it. The season premiere, titled “The Most Atlanta,” found Darius being pursued by an allusion to Target Jennifer after trying to return an air fryer amid random looting. (The episode-long chase fuses horror with The Fugitive, “I don’t care” and all.) Earn and Van ventured to Atlantic Station, only to realize that it was a limbo where time stood still, past romantic partners were trapped, and Deborah Cox’s “Nobody’s Supposed to Be Here” played on loop. Meanwhile, Alfred’s existential dilemma grew more intense after learning that one of his favorite rappers, an MF DOOM analog named Blue Blood (who was voiced by DOOM fan Earl Sweatshirt), had died months prior despite the news just going public. Clues embedded in Blue Blood’s lyrics guided Alfred to a humble memorial service for the rapper, forcing him to finally confront his mortality, legacy, and unanswered questions about what he actually wants out of life. This set the tone for Atlanta’s conclusion: Nothing could ever be the same—nor was it supposed to be.

“Twin Peaks with rappers” was how creator Donald Glover jokingly characterized Atlanta ahead of its premiere, but that always felt like a sexy tagline to entice critics. By the time Season 1’s “B.A.N.” broke out into a news segment about “transracial” identity in between a series of strikingly realistic TV commercials, it was clear that Atlanta’s purview was far wider than two cousins navigating a nefarious industry. Atlanta’s eccentricities may have seemed inexplicable in a vacuum, but they made perfect sense within the context of the show’s fever-dream atmosphere. There was a method to the madness, even during “What the fuck?!” moments like Season 2’s cold open. Atlanta proved that it could be anything (a look at the vexing aspects of nightlife, Southern gothic horror, or a detailed mockumentary about the creation of A Goofy Movie) from week-to-week in its effort to deglamorize fame. For Season 3, the writers dared to alter its composition on the heels of 16 Emmy nominations and a four-year absence. “It was a reminder to people of how punk the show and our creative sensibilities are,” says writer and executive producer Stephen Glover.

For Atlanta’s writers and producers, the goal was less about making “the best show of all time” than making the show they wanted to make, even at the expense of the audience’s satisfaction. To that end, they succeeded. No matter the format, Atlanta was a creative ethos, an attitude, and a worldview about the disorienting nature of success.

In a 2018 interview with The New York Times, director and executive producer Hiro Murai explained that the seemingly impractical was Atlanta’s North Star. “We’re always looking for what we call ‘dream logic,’ something that feels right, but doesn’t necessarily have a logical throughline,” he said. A MARTA bus and a Nutella sandwich were the gateway to Atlanta’s dreamlike aura. As Earn reflected on his dire financial situation in the pilot, a stranger who would later be identified as spiritual adviser Ahmad White (Emmett Hunter) sat next to him and offered encouragement via a snack. “Resistance is a symptom of the way things are, not the way things necessarily should be,” he told Earn before commanding him to bite the sandwich—a metaphor for taking command of his life. After a sharp camera pan and blaring police siren, White exited the bus offscreen and disappeared into the woods, which would become a disconcerting but illuminating transitional setting in subsequent seasons. This was an early indicator that everything was on the table in Atlanta, which excelled at mixing humor and unease, often in the same scene.

In the opening moments of Season 2’s “Sportin’ Waves,” Alfred, who was still selling drugs for supplementary income, was robbed at gunpoint by his apologetic plug amid small talk. In Season 4’s “Crank Dat Killer,” paranoia about a serial killer hunting people who posted videos of themselves doing Soulja Boy’s “Crank That” dance erupted into open-carry chaos at the Greenbriar Mall. While Alfred was running for his life, Earn and Darius tried to purchase rare sneakers from a man who promised to give them away for free if they kissed while he played K-Ci & JoJo’s “All My Life” inside of his van. When Earn finally acquiesced, the man was killed by a stray bullet. Atlanta perfected an atmosphere where, at any given moment, it felt like something hilarious could happen or someone could die. “I think all of that is part of the story and ethos of what Atlanta is supposed to be,” says writer and producer Janine Nabers. “It’s supposed to make you uncomfortable because it’s an uncomfortable place.” Atlanta took that feeling abroad in Season 3 as its dream logic became nightmare logic. In “New Jazz,” Alfred’s deepest fears about the state of his career manifested as a hallucination brought on by a Nepalese space cake in Amsterdam.

Oddball flair wasn’t all Atlanta had to offer. “Can we get away with this?” was always the show’s guiding principle, but that rule-breaking spirit evolved through the years. The final season featured episodes Atlanta couldn’t have pulled off during its earlier days, either because of a lack of cachet or capability. “Snipe Hunt,” for example, was surprisingly touching. Now wealthy and assertive, Earn took Van and Lottie (Austin Elle Fisher) on a family camping trip for the latter’s sixth birthday. Van assumed the expensive ordeal was just a way to sway her into following him to Los Angeles. There’s some truth to that, but Earn was finally able to express his love for her and his desire for them to be a family. Lottie, who’d been hot and cold the entire trip, noticed the change in her parents’ interactions and smiled in the final shot. From Murai’s intuitive direction to the Sade songs bookending the episode, it was quiet, subtle, and beautiful. And where it also felt like a spiritual successor to “Helen,” which slammed the door closed on Earn and Van’s undefined relationship for the time being, “The Goof Who Sat by the Door” felt like an evolution of “B.A.N.”

The episode, which was presented as a Black American Network (B.A.N.) documentary, told the fictional tale of Thomas Washington (Eric Berryman), a nerdy animator from East Atlanta who became Disney’s first Black CEO thanks to a mistake by the board of directors. Aware that his time in the C-suite was likely limited, Washington set out to make a wide-reaching film about Black pride and liberation: A Goofy Movie. Taking cues from arguments that the 1995 film is a Black pop culture artifact, the episode (which takes its title from Sam Greenlee’s novel The Spook Who Sat by the Door and its film adaptation about the first Black CIA agent) was equally absurd and impressive. It incorporated illustrations, archival footage, original Disney footage, and appearances from the likes of The New York Times’ Jenna Wortham, comedian Sinbad, and singer Brian McKnight to confront Disney’s racist history and explore the plight of Black creatives before culminating in Washington’s tragic demise. Like “Teddy Perkins,” it was audacious by way of pure spectacle, but it relied on detail instead of shock value. It was a straight-faced presentation of something unserious. Still, both episodes wrestled with how the pressure many Black artists feel can become such a burden that it ultimately destroys them. Both were also examples of Atlanta’s cynical outlook on success. “I think you guys are just feeling our catharsis,” says writer and producer Taofik Kolade.

Atlanta positioned fame as something to be wary of once Alfred made a name for himself after shooting someone. His Paper Boi alter ego was an albatross, regularly placing him in taxing, awkward, or flat-out bizarre situations. Whether he was touring the world or back in Atlanta struggling to enjoy his wealth while draped in Louis Vuitton, success never brought Alfred joy or peace of mind. Atlanta was a collision of harsh realities and surrealism. It used the latter to emphasize the abject ridiculousness of fame. “I always think about the scene in Season 1 in the second episode when the guy shows up with the Batman mask on and asks, ‘Does Paper Boi live here?’ and then he just runs off,” Stephen Glover says. “That’s what being famous is like.”

Alfred, thanks to Henry’s A1 verbal and nonverbal communication of exasperation, was the perfect mirror. “It took me a long time to realize that this is the only show that is putting that perspective on blast,” Henry told me earlier this year. “Taking these absurd stories that we deal with and the absurdity of living in this country and elsewhere, and putting it under this microscope for us to really go, ‘Oh man, did you see that? Did that shit really happen?’” As Alfred is reminded when he sees a crowd of fans in blackface ahead of a show in Amsterdam, fame is uniquely bewildering for Black people no matter the location. Despite the privileges, it can feel like the world is taunting you. Living in a fishbowl, particularly when you’re in public, is the tradeoff for success. It can make your life easier; it can also feel like the world is playing in your face. “There’s never a moment that I’m in it that I don’t go, ‘This is the weirdest thing that I have ever been a part of,’” Henry, whose career took off as Atlanta did, said.

It’s also dangerous. Atlanta made sure to show that Alfred was no safer as a millionaire than he was as a low-level drug dealer. Random encounters with so-called fans put his life in jeopardy. In “Crank Dat Killer,” the person shooting at him was just someone he had beef with in high school. Even after taking Soulja Boy’s advice and buying a “safe farm,” he was nearly killed by a tractor and a feral hog in the penultimate episode. The title, “Andrew Wyeth. Alfred’s World.,” was inspired by Wyeth’s renowned 1948 painting Christina’s World. Murai re-created the image as Alfred tried to crawl to safety after the tractor crushed his foot. Safety was in view, but still out of reach. For Black people, money isn’t guaranteed insulation from danger. The overarching idea was that nowhere is safe, be it the lush Georgia countryside or the city of Atlanta. But Alfred survived the ordeal and came out the other side bleeding from the mouth and forever changed, similar to how he emerged from the forest at the end of Season 2’s “Woods.” “I think the moment of calm that Alfred reaches at the end of the episode is just him understanding that the bullshit is always going to come, but he can deal with it,” says Kolade, who wrote “Andrew Wyeth. Alfred’s World.”

Naturally, Atlanta’s slant on fame was the product of its writers’ perspectives and experiences. As the show’s creator and biggest star, Donald Glover’s were foundational. Even as Atlanta became his crowning achievement and gave him new validation within Black culture (while his position within it remained fraught), he grew increasingly jaded and skeptical of the spotlight. “You walk into the party and realize you are the party,” he told The New Yorker in 2018. It’s a weight the infamously sensitive elder Glover didn’t want to shoulder, but understood that he had to due to his growing profile. “He told me that after he booked Star Wars, he probably wouldn’t be able to go to the grocery store anymore,” Kolade explains. “Seeing how people treat celebrity is a strange, strange thing to be a part of,” Stephen Glover says of being around his brother. “I think it is a very surreal experience.” This all informed the self-referential Atlanta’s approach.

Still, Atlanta was not without flaws. The show never quite figured out what to do with Van and critics drew a straight line between that shortcoming and Donald Glover’s complicated history with Black women. “Sometimes it happens that you write this TV show and a character that is not necessarily the main focus is so brilliant and wonderful, and you just want more of that character,” Nabers said. In addition, Atlanta was wobbly when it got on its high horse, as it often did during Season 3. The overall success of that season hinged on whether viewers found its commentary on “the curse of whiteness” to be incisive. The bigger issue with Season 3 wasn’t that the main cast mostly didn’t appear in four of the 10 episodes, but that the bar was higher when they were absent and those episodes didn’t always clear it. And the writers did care about the critiques, it just never impacted the creative process. “Something we would always express amongst ourselves is that there’s an Atlanta episode for everybody, but also that same person should have one episode that they hate,” says writer and producer Jamal Olori. Love Atlanta or hate it, there was never a dull moment.

The series finale, “It Was All a Dream,” closed the show in the most Atlanta way imaginable. Convinced he’s in the middle of a lucid dream, Darius rescued Earn, Alfred, and Van from the menacing master chef at Atlanta’s first Black-owned sushi fusion restaurant. They peeled off in a pink Maserati that Darius said he stole and, miraculously, there was Popeyes for everyone. The final scene offered a last supper of sorts and one more couch moment for the road before Darius stared into a TV screen, waiting for the image of thick Judge Judy to let him know whether he was still asleep in a sensory deprivation tank. It doesn’t matter whether it was a dream or not, but in true Atlanta fashion, the reality would be unbelievable. True to form, Atlanta went out as it began, thrived, and erred—completely on its own terms.

Julian Kimble has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Undefeated, GQ, Billboard, Pitchfork, The Fader, SB Nation, and many more.

Celebrated British writer Hilary Mantel, best known for her Thomas Cromwell trilogy—Wolf Hall, Bring Up the Bodies, and The Mirror and the Light—for which she won not one but two Booker Prizes, died from a stroke on Thursday at the age of 70, The New York Times reports.

“She had so many great novels ahead of her,” Mantel’s agent Bill Hamilton told the Times. “It’s just an enormous loss to literature.” That is certainly true—it’s hard to think of many other writers so widely celebrated, read, and beloved, whose works have become genre-defining classics in a little more than a decade. Now is a very good time to revisit the great books she has left behind her, and if you’re so inclined:

Read Hilary Mantel on how writers learn to trust themselves.

Read Hilary Mantel’s 1988 review of RoboCop.

Read a profile of Hilary Mantel by Elizabeth Renzetti.

By some accounts, the history of animation stretches back to the turn of the twentieth century. Since that time, animators have brought an astounding variety of visions to artistic life. But looked at another way, this enterprise — which has so far culminated in feature-film spectacles by studios like Pixar and Ghibli — actually has it roots deep in antiquity. In order to find the first work of animation, broadly conceived, one must go to Shahr-e Sukhteh, Iran’s famous “Burnt City.” Now a UNESCO World Heritage site, it dates back more than five millennia, about four of which it spent under a layer of ash and dust, which preserved a great many artifacts of interest within.

Shahr-e Sukhteh was first excavated in 1967. About a decade later, an Italian archaeological team unearthed the pottery vessel bearing designs now considered the earliest example of animation. “The artifact bears five images depicting a wild goat jumping up to eat the leaves of a tree,” says the web site of the Circle of Ancient Iranian Studies. “Several years later, Iranian archaeologist Dr. Mansur Sadjadi, who became later appointed as the new director of the archaeological team working at the Burnt City discovered that the pictures formed a related series.” The animal depicted is a member of Capra aegagrus, “also known as ‘Persian desert Ibex’, and since it is an indigenous animal to the region, it would naturally appear in the iconography of the Burnt City.”

Image by Emesik, via Wikimedia Commons

This amusingly decorated goblet, now on display at the National Museum of Iran, is hardly the only find that reflects the surprising development of the early civilization that produced it. “The world’s first known artificial eyeball, with two holes in both sides and a golden thread to hold it in place, has been unearthed from the skeleton of a woman’s body in Shahr-e Sukhteh,” says Mehr News. Excavations have also turned up “the oldest signs of brain surgery,” as well as evidence that “the people of Shahr-e Sukhteh played backgammon,” or at least some kind of table game involving dice. But only the Burnt City’s pioneering work of flip-book-style art “means that the world’s oldest cartoon character is a goat.” Historians of animation, update your files accordingly.

Related content:

Watch Art on Ancient Greek Vases Come to Life with 21st-Century Animation

The Early Days of Animation Preserved in UCLA’s Video Archive

Early Japanese Animations: The Origins of Anime (1917-1931)

700 Years of Persian Manuscripts Now Digitized and Available Online

Was a 32,000-Year-Old Cave Painting the Earliest Form of Cinema?

Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His projects include the Substack newsletter Books on Cities, the book The Stateless City: a Walk through 21st-Century Los Angeles and the video series The City in Cinema. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Facebook.

The first subway train, as we know such things today, entered service in 1890. Its path is now part of the Northern line of the London Underground, itself the first urban metro system. The success of the Tube, as it’s commonly known, didn’t come right away; the whole thing was on the brink of failure, in fact, before creations like 1914’s Wonderground Map of London Town aided its public understanding and bolstered its public image.

At the time, Britain still commanded a great empire with London as its capital; the Wonderground Map placed the London Underground in the context of the city, making legible the still fairly novel concept of an underground train system with copious whimsical detail.

Nor was the Roman Empire anything to sneeze at, even during the fourth and fifth centuries after its decline had set in. Though it came up with some still-impressive inventions, including long-lasting concrete and monumental aqueducts, the technology to build and operate a subway system still lay some way off.

But that didn’t stop Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, a general, architect, and friend of emperor Augustus, from commissioning a map of the empire that read more or less like Massimo Vignelli’s 1972 map of the New York subway. That ambitious work of cartography, historians now believe, inspired the Tabula Peutingeriana, which survives today as the only large world map from antiquity. The video above from Youtuber Jeremy Shuback approaches the Tabula Peutingeriana as “the first transit map,” despite its dating from the thirteenth century, and even then probably being a copy of a fourth- or fifth-century original.

While the Roman Empire didn’t have electric trains and payment cards, they did, of course, have transit: the word descends from the Latin transire, “go across.” Many a Roman had to go across, if not the whole empire, then at least large stretches of it. In theory, they would have found a map like Tabula useful, with its simplification of geography in order to emphasize city-to-city connections. But that wasn’t its primary purpose: as Shuback puts it, this oversized map of all lands dominated by the Romans was “made to brag.” Whoever owned it surely wanted to imply that they possessed not just a map, but the world itself.

Related content:

A Wonderful Archive of Historic Transit Maps: Expressive Art Meets Precise Graphic Design

Download 67,000 Historic Maps (in High Resolution) from the Wonderful David Rumsey Map Collection

The Roman Roads of Britain Visualized as a Subway Map

“The Wonderground Map of London Town,” the Iconic 1914 Map That Saved the World’s First Subway System

Animated GIFs Show How Subway Maps of Berlin, New York, Tokyo & London Compare to the Real Geography of Those Great Cities

Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His projects include the Substack newsletter Books on Cities, the book The Stateless City: a Walk through 21st-Century Los Angeles and the video series The City in Cinema. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall, on Facebook, or on Instagram.

This fall, historian Timothy Snyder is teaching a course at Yale University called The Making of Modern Ukraine. And he’s generously making the lectures available on YouTube–so that you can follow along too. The first lecture appears above. Subsequent lectures will be available on Yale’s YouTube Channel. And you can find the syllabus here. Key questions covered by the course include:

What brought about the Ukrainian nation?  Ukraine must have existed as a society and polity on 23 February 2022, else Ukrainians would not have collectively resisted Russian invasion the next day.  Why has the existence of Ukraine occasioned such controversy?  In what ways are Polish, Russian, and Jewish self-understanding dependent upon experiences in Ukraine?  Just how and when did a modern Ukrainian nation emerge?  Just how for that matter does any modern nation emerge?  And why some nations and not others?  What is the balance between structure and agency in history?  Can nations be chosen, and does it matter?  Can the choices of individuals influence the rise of much larger social organizations?  If so, how?  Ukraine was the country most touched by Soviet and Nazi terror: what can we learn about those systems, then, from Ukraine?  Is the post-colonial, multilingual Ukrainian nation a holdover from the past, or does it hold some promise for the future?

The Making of Modern Ukraine will be added to our collection of Free Online History Courses, a subset of our meta collection: 1,700 Free Online Courses from Top Universities

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The crew also discusses Jordan Peele’s latest movie ‘Nope,’ and debate whether they would survive a horror movie

Dave, Joanna, and Neil argue their respective picks for the worst character decision in a horror movie on the latest episode of Trial by Content. This week’s debate is inspired by the release of Jordan Peele’s Nope.

The list of pretrial dismissals this week doubles as a handy survival guide to stay alive in horror movies.

Some highlights include: always keep running (Helen Shivers, played by Sarah Michelle Gellar in I Know What You Did Last Summer), only use human doors (Tatum, played by Rose McGowan in Scream), and, of course, NEVER go back inside (Kristen McKay, played by Liv Tyler in The Strangers). Seems easy enough, right?

Also, the Category Crown goes to Randy (Jamie Kennedy) from Scream, who at least knows some of the rules. The Category Clown goes to anyone and everyone who chooses to trust a clown—this one’s for you, Georgie.

The listeners once again came out victorious in last week’s debate for Best Summer Movie Year Ever, setting a new Trial by Content record by becoming the first competitor to win the total poll three weeks in a row.

The listeners right now, after pulling off the elusive three-peat (probably):

Joanna took home second place, which means that she goes first.

Joanna: Millburn, the biologist, touching the Hammerpede in Prometheus

Before revealing her pick, she decides to set the scene a little bit.

“I’m here to talk to you about the controversial installment in the Alien franchise: Prometheus,” she says. “Most of us here on the podcast actually kind of like it. A lot of people hated it, but we like a lot of it.”

After briefly giving Prometheus its flowers, she quickly begins to ridicule one of its characters for touching what she hilariously refers to as the “penis monster.”

“The previous Alien movies involved space truckers or space mercenaries—this crew has five scientists on it. One of them, the biologist, played by Rafe Spall—Millburn is the name of the character—sees a penis-looking creature come up from the ground and says, ‘Oh, I should touch that,’” Joanna says, mockingly. “Even as the guy smoking weed next to him says, ‘Don’t do that, man,’ he continues to go forward. Then, it hisses and it opens—now it looks like a vagina—and it is hissing and darting at him and he still decides to touch it.”

Neil: Mayor Larry Vaughn not closing the beach in Jaws

Neil, the self-proclaimed “Listener Assist King,” takes a far more political approach.

“It’s time for me to tell you about my pick, which is Mayor Larry Vaughn’s decision to not close the beach. It’s not just a single decision. It is a concerted effort with multiple steps,” Neil says. “In his quest to choose the town’s economy over public safety: he threatens his own police chief, he gets the local press to bury the story, he reopens the beach after 24 hours, he rejects the knowledge of the expert, and then he directly encourages people to go into the water where a giant shark awaits.”

He reminds both the hosts and the listeners that Vaughn actually returns in Jaws 2 and continues to put the townspeople in danger.

“And friends,” he says, “to make matters worse, this same character comes back in the sequel and does the exact same thing.”

Neil concludes by blaming the entire Jaws fiasco on the mayor’s short-sighted decision to keep the beach open.

“Beaches will be open for the weekend and all those shark deaths will be on Larry Vaughn,” he says. “All but one death in the movie is directly credited to this one mayor who just can’t keep his city safe.”

Dave: Addison putting both hands in the Razor Box in Saw II

Dave not only takes aim at the terrible character decision, but also at the shaky decisions made by the people behind the camera.

“My pick is a movie filled with bad decisions from both characters and the filmmakers: It’s Saw II,” he says.

He then describes the life-or-death situation Addison (Emmanuelle Vaugier) finds herself in.

“Strangers are trapped in what appears to be a booby-trapped house that is leaking poisonous gas that will kill them in three hours. Their only hope is to free antidotes from death traps hidden throughout the house,” he explains. “Which brings me to Addison, who enters a room with a glass box hanging from the ceiling and a very obvious key lock that unlocks the top of the box.”

Dave then makes it very clear how foolish her thought process was.

“Before she fully notices, though, she pulls on the syringe for the antidote and pulls the syringe apart, spilling the antidote in the box, making it useless,” he says. “Then, instead of using her spare hand to free her trapped hand, she makes the dumbest decision in horror movie history: She puts her other hand in the second razor hole, trapping her to bleed to death.”

Be sure to check out the podcast below for more from Dave, Joanna, and Neil, including their full opening statements, cross examinations, listener submissions, and closing arguments!

Don’t forget to vote for what you think is the worst character decision in a horror movie after you’ve listened to the episode! You can vote below, on The Ringer’s Twitter feed, and in the Spotify app, where you’ll find Trial by Content. The winner will be announced next week!

This excerpt was lightly edited for clarity.

Hosts: Dave Gonzales, Joanna Robinson, and Neil Miller
Associate Producer: Carlos Chiriboga
Additional Production Supervision: Arjuna Ramgopal
Theme song and other music credits: Devon Renaldo
Blog post: Kai Grady

Subscribe: Spotify

As fans of the Ice Age franchise can tell you, there are few things more endearing than a woolly mammoth. Champions of the prehistoric proto-elephants have a new mascot this month, as a miner in the Klondike gold fields unearthed the remarkably preserved remains of a baby woolly mammoth from the permafrost. Located in the ancestral land of the Trʼondëk Hwëchʼin in Canada’s Yukon territory, the mammoth calf has been named Nun cho ga, meaning “big baby animal” in the Hän language, and represents a rallying point for many who are thrilled by the discovery.

“The Yukon has a world-renowned fossil record of ice age animals, but mummified remains with skin and hair are rarely unearthed,” said a press release. “Nun cho ga is the most complete mummified mammoth found in North America.”

Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in Chief Roberta Joseph was likewise affirmative about the event. “This is as a remarkable recovery for our First Nation, and we look forward to collaborating with the Yukon government on the next steps in the process for moving forward with these remains in a way that honours our traditions, culture, and laws,” she said.

“We are thankful for the Elders who have been guiding us so far and the name they provided,” Joseph continued. “We are committed to respectfully handling Nun cho ga as she has chosen now to reveal herself to all of us.”

Initial examination of the mammoth suggests she is female and similar in size to a 42,000-year-old infant mummy woolly mammoth, “Lyuba,” discovered in Siberia in 2007. Based on markers from the recovery site, geologists from the Yukon Geological Survey and University of Calgary believe that the calf died and was frozen in permafrost during the Ice Age, and is thus more than 30,000 years old. The outstanding preservation of the specimen includes much of her skin and hair intact, as well as pieces of grass in her stomach. This last finding could mean that the infant was grazing, and perhaps became trapped in mud, accounting for the completeness of her preservation.

“She has a trunk. She has a tail. She has tiny little ears. She has the little prehensile end of the trunk where she could use it to grab grass,” researcher Grant Zazula, a paleontologist for the Yukon territory, told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

“As an ice age paleontologist, it has been one of my life long dreams to come face to face with a real woolly mammoth,” Zazula remarked in a press statement. “That dream came true today. Nun cho ga is beautiful and one of the most incredible mummified ice age animals ever discovered in the world. I am excited to get to know her more.”

Nun cho ga is the best-preserved mummified woolly mammoth found in North America — and it seems as though everyone who has encountered her has been awestruck by the creature.

“It’s amazing,” said Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in Elder Peggy Kormendy. “It took my breath away when they removed the tarp. We must all treat it with respect. When that happens, it is going to be powerful and we will heal.”

With the upcoming release of ‘Jurassic World: Dominion,’ The Ringer’s foremost paleontologists sat down to rank the raptors, rexes, and more that reign over our collective pop culture

Ahead of the release of Jurassic World: Dominion, join us as we pay homage to the franchise and the beasts who dominate it. Welcome to Dinosaur Day!

When the latest installment of the Jurassic Park franchise arrives on Friday, audiences will finally see what happens when dinosaurs roam freely across the globe. (While a Tyrannosaurus rex went on a rampage through San Diego in The Lost World: Jurassic Park so that Steven Spielberg could scratch his Godzilla itch, its reign of terror was cut short.) I’ll go out on a limb and say this is not going to go well for the humans of Jurassic World Dominion, but as a lifelong dino lover, this movie might as well be the Super Bowl.

Of course, Dominion is hardly the first time dinosaurs have taken center stage in pop culture. People have obsessed over dinosaurs for decades, imagining them as everything from ravenous monsters and sports team mascots to prehistoric pals and video game characters. But which pop culture dinosaur is the apex predator of our hearts? That’s what The Ringer’s resident dino lovers—myself and Megan Schuster—set to find out. For anyone familiar with this website’s arbitrary pop culture rankings, this isn’t uncharted territory for the two of us: We’ve ranked bugs, popes, babies, sharks, and so on. During this most recent ranking process, we made blogging history with the first-ever tie for the top spot, resulting in a spirited debate over which dino figure deserves the crown.

Which pop culture dinosaur comes out on top? Read on to find out. —Miles Surrey

25. Dinobots, Transformers: Age of Extinction

Surrey: We don’t need to spend too much time dunking on a Michael Bay Transformers movie. Age of Extinction is the fourth entry in the franchise, so you know exactly what you’re going to get at this point: explosions, shameless product placement, robots fighting each other in an orgy of CGI scrap metal, and even more explosions. The biggest selling point of Age of Extinction was supposed to be the Dinobots: transformers that are, well, robot dinosaurs. Dinobots sound awesome, but guess what? They show up only at the end of the film and barely get to do anything. I’m sorry, but if you’re going to make the dumbest blockbuster on the planet, I demand at least an hour of Optimus Prime riding a robot T. rex into battle.

24. Rex, Woog, Elsa, and Dweeb, We’re Back! A Dinosaur’s Story

Megan Schuster: This film should be a cuddly, adorable tale about four dino buds who romp around New York City. And there is potential here. The voice cast is loaded: John Goodman, Walter Cronkite, Jay Leno, Julia Child, Martin Short, and more. Plus the animation is cute. But it has just a 38 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes (and got a one-star review from Roger Ebert) for a reason: The story line is weirdly complicated. Seriously, just look at the first paragraph from the plot section of the movie’s Wikipedia page:

A scientist, Captain Neweyes, wants children of the present day to see real dinosaurs from the Mesozoic era. He invents ‘Brain Grain’ cereal to anthropomorphize them and increase their intelligence, and hires the alien Vorb to go back in time to capture dinosaurs, give them the cereal and send them to the present day. The dinosaurs Neweyes has collected include Rex, a blue Triceratops named Woog, a purple Pteranodon named Elsa, and a green Parasaurolophus named Dweeb. Neweyes welcomes them aboard his ship, explains his plan to take them to Dr. Julia Bleeb, who will guide them to the Museum of Natural History, and warns them to avoid Professor Screweyes, his nefarious twin brother who causes mischief after having lost his left eye several years ago.

Normal stuff, right?

23. Rex Raptor, Yu-Gi-Oh!

Surrey: As his name suggests, Rex Raptor is a duelist whose deck is composed of dinosaur monsters to stomp and chomp opponents. But while Rex is meant to be one of the top duelists in the world, my guy doesn’t win a single on-screen showdown in Yu-Gi-Oh! Hell, Rex is the first person who loses to Joey Wheeler when the character doesn’t even have a firm grasp of the game yet. And for someone who supposedly loves dinosaurs, it’s telling that his best card—the Red-Eyes Black Dragon, which ultimately comes into Joey’s possession—is a fucking dragon. (Work on your branding, Rex!) At the end of the day, Rex is more comic relief than worthy adversary, and with all those notable L’s, his reputation as a talented duelist is long extinct.

(Side note: I could’ve written an entire novella about Yu-Gi-Oh! dueling dynamics, but I’ll spare everyone the trouble until we launch Shadow Realm Week at The Ringer.)

22. Dino-mutants, Dinoshark and Dinocroc

Schuster: If I’m honest, I’m a bit disappointed we don’t have Dinoshark and Dinocroc higher on this list. First off, those are A-plus names for these genetic monstrosities: Why get inventive when the perfect titles are staring you right in the face? Second, perhaps the only shark combination cooler than Dinoshark is Sharknado, and we had that ranked way higher on our 2019 list of movie sharks.

That said, what are sharks and crocodiles if not dinosaurs? And if that’s true, then aren’t the words “dinoshark” and “dinocroc” just repetitive? I appreciate what the creators of these films were going for, but when the fear factors of these creatures all come from the same place, combining two just feels unnecessary.

Surrey: We have to deduct points because you could just slap “dino” in front of any animal and make it sound way gnarlier, which feels like cheating. That said: I would pay good money to watch a Dinocroc go up against a Dinohippo™.

21. Grumpy, Land of the Lost

Surrey: How was the 2009 remake of Land of the Lost? Here’s what the former Universal Pictures studio head, Ron Meyer, said about the movie at the Savannah Film Festival in 2012: “Land of the Lost was just crap. I mean, there was no excuse for it. The best intentions all went wrong.” The original creators of the Land of the Lost television series from the ’70s, Sid & Marty Krofft, went even further by calling it one of the worst films ever made. Now, not a lot of the blame falls on Grumpy, the movie’s ferocious T. rex who eventually befriends Will Ferrell’s paleontologist Rick Marshall after [deep breath] swallowing him and pooping him out. (Grumpy was happy that Rick cleared up an intestinal blockage—OK, yeah, this is a really terrible movie.) But it also doesn’t help that poor Grumpy’s CGI is quite awful.

And to think Land of the Lost came out more than 16 years after the original Jurassic Park, which boasts special effects that still hold up to this day. Land of the Lost already feels fossilized, and everyone—especially the people responsible for making it—wants to make sure the film stays buried in the minds of moviegoers.

20. Aladar, Dinosaur

Surrey: On the subject of crappy CGI, look at the main character from Disney’s animated feature Dinosaur, an iguanodon named Aladar. But before you do, it’s worth stressing that this movie was released this century and cost more than $100 million to make.

No offense to Aladar, but I’m kind of rooting for the asteroid.

Schuster: Why … why does he have a human face? Dinosaurs shouldn’t have human faces?

19. Dinosaurs, Fantasia

Schuster: Dinosaurs appear in the 1940 Disney film during the fourth segment, titled “The Rite of Spring,” and are shown being created after the Big Bang, interacting with one another, and then getting wiped out when food and water becomes too scarce for their survival. It’s beautifully depicted, and of course, the music is lovely—an Igor Stravinsky ballet tells the story just as much as the animation. Walt Disney also put in an effort to make this telling as realistic as possible, to the extent that “Rite of Spring” was screened for science classes in the decades after its release.

All in all, though, dinosaur depictions have evolved quite a bit in the 82 years since Fantasia’s release, and that’s why this entry isn’t higher.

18. Tyrannosaurus and Vastatosaurus Rex, King Kong

Surrey: From the original 1933 film to Peter Jackson’s 2005 remake featuring the Vastatosaurus rex—basically a bigger, nastier version of the OG that evolved on Skull Island—the T. rex has been a recurring adversary for King Kong. Their face-offs are always epic, but the problem for the T. rex (or V. rex) is that Kong is always going to be on the winning end; these are his movies, after all. In a showdown between a prehistoric creature and a fictional giant ape, the outcome also feels somewhat plausible: Kong can just repeatedly punch a T. rex in the face because it has only shrimpy arms to defend itself.

Conversely, in any scenario of pure dino-on-dino action, you can’t help but root for the T. rex. (I couldn’t have been the only person who lost their mind when Rexy emerged at the end of Jurassic World to take on the Indominus Rex?) But on Skull Island, there’s a reason that Kong is King.

17. Reptar, Rugrats

Schuster: Reptar is a fun obsession of the Rugrats babies, a Godzilla-like creature who features prominently on cereal boxes, as a mascot at public events, and even in on-ice productions. If you recall, a malfunctioning robot version of the creature is the reason Tommy Pickles and Co. go to EuroReptarland in Rugrats in Paris: The Movie and Chuckie Finster gets a new stepmother (and stepsister). Reptar isn’t technically a “character,” but all shows and movies need touchstones to build their own cultures and ecosystems, and Reptar is a major part of that for Rugrats.

16. Dino Nuggets

Schuster: All right, I’ll say it: Dino nuggets aren’t any better than regular chicken nuggets, and all chicken nuggets are inferior to chicken tenders. Dino nuggets are fun for kids—a good way to learn about the Mesozoic Era and get some protein—but outside of that, they don’t offer much functional, or nutritional, value.

Surrey: This is such a disheartening take, Megan: Everyone knows that food tastes better when you put them into cool shapes. I’ll take dino nuggets over boring, regular-ass nuggets any day of the week.

15. Dilophosaurus, Jurassic Park

Schuster: The dilophosaurus plays a few big roles in Jurassic Park. Its initial absence from its enclosure is one of the early bummer points for Dr. Grant (Sam Neill), Dr. Sattler (Laura Dern), and Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) on their initial tour of the park, and it single-handedly stops Wayne Knight’s Dennis Nedry from getting to the boat during the tropical storm and delivering stolen dino-DNA to an outside corporation.

But when your main power and effectiveness comes from acid-vomiting onto your prey, there’s only so high you can climb on a list like this.

14. Gwangi, The Valley of Gwangi

Schuster: The Valley of Gwangi wasn’t especially well-received at the time of its release. Interest in these types of monster-fronted movies was dropping off in 1969, and Warner Bros., the film’s production company, released it without much publicity. But while it wasn’t a huge commercial success, Gwangi was one of the later films put out by famed animator-special effects creator Ray Harryhausen and it has been an important touchstone in other media since. Steven Spielberg replicated the shot of Gwangi popping out from behind a hill and capturing a fleeing bipedal dino in Jurassic Park. And the film has been referenced or partially shown in Friends, Whose Line Is It Anyway?, and other productions.

13. Arlo, The Good Dinosaur

Schuster: Poor Arlo is probably most often thought of as the face of one of Pixar’s biggest flops. He’s not even the most famous apatosaurus ever depicted on-screen—that honor belongs to Littlefoot of The Land Before Time (more on him later). There’s nothing wrong with the story—it’s a sweet tale of a timid dinosaur who’s outshone by his two siblings and struggles to find his place in the world after his father’s death. But even the best reviews of the movie largely deem it to be average, which isn’t enough when compared to some of Pixar’s greatest successes.

12. The Great Valley Gang, The Land Before Time

Surrey: While Littlefoot has his own spot in our dino rankings, we love The Land Before Time so much that we also wanted to highlight his best friends in the Great Valley: Cera the triceratops, Ducky the saurolophus, Petrie the pteranodon, and Spike the stegosaurus. All the characters have their charming quirks—Petrie is extremely neurotic, which is a great survival instinct—but there’s nobody more relatable than Spike. Spike almost never talks, always goes with the flow, and is completely obsessed with eating. Not everything about being a child dinosaur is smooth sailing—the characters constantly find themselves in the crosshairs of dangerous carnivores—but Spike has his priorities figured out and I respect the hell out of him for it. (They are my priorities too.)

Schuster: Ducky, despite her annoying quirks (and there are many), will always have a special place in my heart. I mean, she just wants to make friends!

11. Dino, The Flintstones

Schuster: What can I say about Dino other than: good dog. Dino is the lovable pet dinosaur of the Flintstone family, best known for knocking Fred down and licking his face, and playing happily with Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm. He’s a bit of an idiot, but he tries his best, cosplaying as a bodyguard, a rooster when he barks, and even a lumberjack. Overall, Dino is a very good boy who, like many of the best dogs out there, will never understand that he is not lap-sized.

10. The Toronto Raptors

Surrey: As a Washington Wizards fan, I look at the Toronto Raptors with envy. They’ve got an über-talented head coach responsible for their first championship in 2019, a front office that knows what it’s doing, and an intriguing roster that includes an undrafted All-Star and another All-Star who almost became a Catholic priest. The Raptors are also the only Canadian franchise in the NBA, which is a fun way of discovering who’s unvaccinated on opposing teams. And if that’s not enough, the Raptors had one of the coolest NBA stars of our lifetime, Vince Carter, whose performance in the 2000 dunk contest is an all-timer.

Am I somewhat overhyping the Raptors because I’m annoyed at the Wizards and don’t expect them to have any modicum of success in the years that I’m alive on this Earth? Possibly, but as far as cheering on other teams when your own is routinely knocked out of the playoffs early or absent from them altogether—trust me, I have plenty of experience in this department—the Raptors are easy to admire and root for. And to address the elephant (dinosaur?) in the room: Yes, they have an awesome mascot.

9. The Sinclairs, Dinosaurs

Schuster: I’m not going to lie, watching the Sinclairs at this point in my life is slightly nightmare-inducing. Sure, they’re harmless, a simple blue-collar dinosaur family who has your typical dinosaur family adventures. But they’re also anthropomorphic, and they aired at a time (the early 1990s) when that kind of thing took on a … frightening look. Just watch these clips of Baby Sinclair, voiced by Kevin Clash:

This family made the top 10 based on nostalgia and the pleasant feelings Miles and I had toward Dinosaurs from when we were young. But I gotta say now, the only anthropomorphic baby I find scarier than Baby Sinclair is the Pelicans’ King Cake Baby mascot.

Surrey: I just took off the nostalgia goggles, and now I can’t stop screaming.

8. Indominus Rex, Jurassic World

Schuster: As Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) explains to Mr. Masrani, Jurassic World’s primary investor, dinosaur theme parks can’t rest on their laurels. They need more—teeth, size, fear. And so do dinosaur movies. So Jurassic World invented the Indominus Rex, a 50-foot-long beast that can camouflage itself, become invisible to body-heat sensors, and outsmart even the most veteran animal caretakers. And oh yeah, did I mention it can communicate with raptors?

The Indominus is basically the culmination of Ian Malcolm’s Jurassic Park quote about genetic modification and recreation: “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.” And while these scientists absolutely should not have, what they did create is one of the most fearsome movie dinosaurs ever.

7. Rex, Toy Story

Surrey: Like his flesh-and-blood counterparts, you’d expect a toy T. rex to be intimidating, striking fear into the (plastic?) hearts of his peers. But the beauty of Rex (voiced by beloved character actor Wallace Shawn) in Toy Story is that his dino-looks couldn’t be more deceiving. Rex is the franchise’s embodiment of anxiety: He worries over everything and is more frightened of change than my cat on moving day. As a child, Rex wasn’t my favorite character in the Toy Story ensemble; now, his neuroses are both hilarious and frighteningly familiar.

I don’t know about you, Megan, but when Rex says “I don’t like confrontations!” in the first Toy Story, I feel that.

Schuster: Rex is absolutely one of those Pixar characters who was actually created for adults. Relating to him feels like a final frontier in the crossover from being a child to being old. (Sorry, did I get too deep just there?)

6. Yoshi

Surrey: The Pippen to Mario’s MJ, Yoshi is the ultimate video game sidekick, and I can’t get enough of him. I’m convinced that having Yoshi behind the wheel in Mario Kart allows me to go faster; I wholeheartedly believe he’s got the meanest serve in Mario Tennis and could easily defeat that human pile of garbage masquerading as a professional athlete named John Isner; the fact that I struggle playing with him in Super Smash Bros. makes me only more determined to figure it out. (For whatever reason, I’m terrifyingly good as Mr. Game & Watch and nobody else?) Even the unintelligible noises Yoshi makes when he’s happy is pure serotonin.

It’s Yoshi’s world, we’re all just living in it.

5. T. Rex, Jurassic Park

Surrey: Celebrating the T. rex in Jurassic Park is really a testament to Steven Spielberg and his penchant for staging iconic sequences: the cup of water rippling as the dinosaur approaches the fence, the slimy lawyer getting yanked off the toilet, Jeff Goldblum watching the creature chase after a Jeep through the passenger’s side mirror. Combined with an impressive blend of practical and special effects, the T. rex in Jurassic Park transcends the screen: It feels like it’s really there, stomping through the theater or your living room. By the time the T. rex snatches a velociraptor in its jaws at the end of the movie as the Jurassic Park banner floats in front of it, a lifelong obsession was born.

4. Velociraptors, Jurassic Park (and Jurassic World)

Surrey: As terrifying as the T. rex was in Jurassic Park, the characters could theoretically escape its humongous jaws on account of the dinosaur’s poor eyesight. (While experts believe the T. rex probably had great vision, let’s just go by the franchise’s rules, even if they aren’t scientifically accurate.) Because of this deficiency, there is objectively no dinosaur more dangerous to encounter than the velociraptor, which the Jurassic Park franchise has spent decades underlining as one of Mother Nature’s greatest predators.

For one, raptors hunt in packs—you’re never dealing with one of them. They are also extremely intelligent, whether they’re sneaking up on the park’s game warden (“Clever girl”) or opening kitchen doors. In short, raptors were the ultimate dino-villains of the Jurassic Park trilogy, which has made their image rehabilitation in the Jurassic World movies all the more fascinating. Thanks to the bond between Chris Pratt’s Owen and the raptor named Blue, viewers have been shown a more nuanced side to the dinosaur—now they seem akin to a much-less-cuddly wolf pack. But whether you’re terrified of them or secretly want to ride alongside them on a motorcycle, there’s no denying raptors are the MVPs of the franchise.

3. Barney, Barney & Friends

Schuster: As someone who could hum the Barney theme song before she could talk, let me assure you that no personal bias went into his position on this list. (OK, maybe just a little.)

Barney was, and still is, an institution. The show Barney & Friends was on the air for 18 years, and while it was canceled in 2010, episodes are still being shown on YouTube. Its retail sales at some points were more than $100 million a year. Daniel Kaluuya, of Get Out and Judas and the Black Messiah fame, is even producing a live-action Barney movie for Mattel. “Barney taught us, ‘I love you, you love me. Won’t you say you love me too?’” Kaluuya told EW in 2020. “That’s one of the first songs I remember, and what happens when that isn’t true? I thought that was really heartbreaking.”

Yes, the reputation of Barney the dinosaur and the show has had its ups and downs through the years: The show’s parent corporation was sued multiple times in the 1990s for reneging on a concert series, infringing on the copyright of the “I Love You” song, and more. Plus, one of the actors who played Barney went on to run a tantric sex business after his role on the show (not exactly wholesome family entertainment).

But if we just take Barney for Barney, and what he meant and continues to mean for countless children, there’s no question he should be near the top of this list.

1A. Godzilla, Godzilla

Schuster: Miles and I went different directions for our no. 1 choices, and we decided to present them both as 1A and 1B because of the different dinosaur tropes they represent. Throughout television and film history, dinosaurs have typically been presented in one of two ways: as cute, cuddly creatures you’d want as a pet or friend, or vicious man-eaters who live to hunt humans above all else.

In Littlefoot, we have perhaps the platonic ideal of the former, a darling apatosaurus who has a great group of friends, a lovely temperament, and a sob-inducing backstory. And in Godzilla, we have the exact opposite.

You probably don’t need me to explain much about who Godzilla is, or his legacy: The fearsome monster, who first appeared in 1954, has been portrayed in more than 30 movies, countless comic books and video games, and undoubtedly in many children’s nightmares. The radioactive sea beast even went so far as to fight King Kong in 2021’s Godzilla vs. Kong. Godzilla has set the standard for virtually every movie monster that has come since—in terms of fear factor and the recognition you can generate from uttering those three little syllables. And nearly 70 years later, he’s still inspiring filmmakers to try their hand at adding to his legacy.

1B. Littlefoot, The Land Before Time

Surrey: Megan, everything you’ve said about Godzilla is spot-on. It’s practically tradition for King Kong to beat the crap out of a T. rex in his own movie, but when he got completely washed by Godzilla last year in Godzilla vs. Kong, nobody batted an eye—that’s how formidable this mutant nuclear lizard has been for decades. But we’re not just here to crown the most badass pop culture dinosaur: we’re here to pick the best one, period.

I could make a longer case for Littlefoot, and how his perilous journey to the Great Valley channeled all the fear and courage of having to find your way home in an unforgiving world. Or I could just share the scene where Littlefoot’s mom died and dare you to make this dinosaur settle for second place. The choice is yours.

Schuster: A truly devastating parental cartoon death, second maybe only to Mufasa in The Lion King. I’m too sad to argue now, let’s just hug and say we’re all winners here.

Focusing on a screen, whether it’s your work screen or your post-work FUN SCREEN(!), can feel like it’s draining the life force right out of you and making it impossible to focus on anything longer than 280 characters (and to be honest, some of those long Tweets are a stretch, too).

But a new tool, a font called “Bionic Reading,” claims to help readers—particular those with attention issues—focus on an absorb text. The font renders “the most concise parts of words” in bold, which the font’s creators claim will “guide the eye over the text” and help the brain remember “previously learned words more quickly.”

Does it work? Who knows! I felt like I could read the Bionic text slightly more quickly, but as for retention, I honestly have no idea. Here, try it for yourself:

You can convert text to the Bionic font for free, but the font (or… method?) itself is under copyright, so don’t expect it to sweep the internet any time soon (unless, you know, some website decides to just bold the first few letters of words). Still, anything that increases accessibility and gets people reading more deeply seems pretty cool.

[h/t Upworthy]

The largest cave drawings in North America were discovered in Alabama — five mud glyphs depicting three anthropomorphic figures and two rattlesnakes, the largest of which is nearly 11 feet tall. Because the cave is too shallow and dark for the drawings to be seen in their entirety, University of Tennessee professor and archaeologist Jan Simek and photographers Stephen Alvarez and Alan Cressler used a process known as 3D photogrammetry to discover and then digitally render the drawings. Their findings were published on May 4 in the journal Antiquity.

“They are so large that the makers had to create the images without being able to see them in their entirety,” the paper’s authors write. “Thus, the makers worked from their imaginations, rather than from an unimpeded visual perspective.”

The so-called 19th Unnamed Cave in Alabama, its location kept vague to ensure the drawings’ safety, contains more than three miles of underground passageways. Simek and Cressler, among other researchers, first discovered drawings there back in 1998. Radiocarbon dating showed that they were from the same period as those recently identified.

The discoveries date to around 133-433 CE (the Early and Middle Woodland prehistoric periods), when the region’s inhabitants were transitioning from a nomadic foraging society to a sedentary agricultural one. In the recent discovery, the team also found eight ceramic sherds in the cave that correlated to the same time period. They did not find bones or stone fragments, however, leading the team to conclude that the cave was infrequently used.

The first drawing was discovered deep inside of the cave, beyond the reach of sunlight. The cave is also so shallow that even when lying on the floor, the drawings cannot be seen in their entirety. To recreate the complete drawings, Simek, Alvarez, and Cressler used photogrammetry, which involves taking thousands of overlapping images of the drawings and then compiling them into a 3D rendering. These drawings are similar in scale to the expansive Horseshoe Canyon drawings in Utah, but unlike the artists who created those open-air works, the authors of the drawings in the Unnamed 19th Cave would not have been able to see the full drawing they were working on while they were creating it.

The figures do not relate to any known oral histories of the Southeast Native American people of the region, and without other archaeological evidence, the team does not know what exactly they represent, or what religion they came from.

They do, however, know that the diamondback rattlesnake (a drawing of which is over seven feet tall) was sacred to the Indigenous people of present-day Alabama.

They also know that caves were seen as passageways to the underworld, and that the figures “probably represent spirits of the underworld, their power and importance expressed in their shape, size and context,” according to the study.

Archaeologists have also discovered large mounds from the same period throughout the Southeastern United States. Some are burial mounds thought to have been used by ancient Native American in religious ceremonies, although the specifics of these rituals are unknown. Expansive ancient Native American cities have been found throughout the Southeastern and Midwestern United States; their size, complexity, and significance to Native American cultures were downplayed by White settlers and they are often left out of the American historical narrative.

Using digital scans at other sites may open up our knowledge about these ancient Native American civilizations.

“These images are different than most of the ancient art so far observed in the American Southeast and suggest that our understanding of that art may be based on incomplete data,” said Simek in a press release about the 19th Unnamed Cave findings.

The study of Islamic calligraphy is “almost inexhaustible,” begins German-born Harvard professor Annemarie Schimmel’s Calligraphy and Islamic Culture, “given the various types of Arabic script and the extension of Islamic culture” throughout the Arabian Peninsula, Persia, Africa, and the Ottoman Empire. The first calligraphic script, called Ḥijāzī, allegedly originated in the Hijaz region, birthplace of the Prophet Muhammad himself. Another version called Kūfī, “one of the earliest extant Islamic scripts,” developed and flourished in the “Abbasid Baghdad,” Anchi Hoh writes for the Library of Congress, “a major center of culture and learning during the classical Islamic age.”

Despite the long and venerable history of calligraphy around the Islamic world, there is good reason for the saying that the Qur’an was “revealed in Mecca, recited in Egypt, and written in Istanbul.” The Ottomans refined Arabic calligraphy to its highest degree, bringing the art into a “golden age… unknown since the Abbasid era,” Hoh writes.

“Ottoman calligraphers adopted [master Abbasid calligrapher] Ibn Muqlah’s six styles and elevated them to new peaks of beauty and elegance.” One of the peaks of this refinement can be seen here in these delicately preserved dead leaves covered with golden Arabic script.

This particular application of the art is, needless to say, “difficult and delicate work,” say the notes on one such leaf in Singapore’s Asian Civilisation Museum:

The leaf has to be dried, and the tissue has to be removed slowly so as to leave the skeletal membrane. The stencil of the composition is placed behind the leaf and the gold ink with gum Arabic is applied over it. This art of producing calligraphy of a dried leaf, is one that was practised most widely in Ottoman Turkey during the 19th century. During this period, Ottoman calligraphers were interested in producing compositions which took the shape of fruits, animals and even inanimate objects like ships and houses.

The examples here come from a Twitter thread by Bayt Al Fann, an artist collective “exploring art & culture inspired by Islamic tradition.” There you can find many more elaborate examples and translations and descriptions of the calligraphic script — generally verses from the Qur’an, Hadith prayers, and poetry. Learn much more about Islamic calligraphy in Schimmel’s book; in her Metropolitan Museum of Art bulletin “Islamic Calligraphy” with Barbara Rivolta (free here); and in Hoh’s three-part Library of Congress series here. And find out how Turkish calligraphers like Nick Merdenyan and Saliha Aktaş have reinvented the art in the 21st century….

via MetaFilter

Related Content:

Learn Calligraphy from Lloyd Reynolds, the Teacher of Steve Jobs’ Own Famously Inspiring Calligraphy Teacher

The Model Book of Calligraphy (1561–1596): A Stunningly Detailed Illuminated Manuscript Created over Three Decades

Free: Download Thousands of Ottoman-Era Photographs That Have Been Digitized and Put Online

Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness

YouTube chef Brad Leone continues to serve up recipes that risk food poisoning, but that’s not our problem!

Foodies and devoted followers of online drama may recall the implosion of Bon Appétit in 2020 following revelations of a toxic, racist, inequitable culture within the culinary brand, and the slew of high-profile resignations by executives and hosts of the popular Test Kitchen series on YouTube. The scandal blew so wide that it led to a spinoff reckoning for Reply All, a podcast that attempted to cover the story, and inspired a TV show now in development at HBO Max.   

But through all this tumult, one of the chefs, Brad Leone, stayed the course, and continued to produce the cooking show he’s had since 2016. It’s Alive with Brad is an exploration of how to incorporate food cultures like bacteria and yeast in the kitchen, often to achieve fermentation, Leone’s specialty. Despite the complexity of these processes, Leone affects a goofy, himboish manner — the very quality that made him a Bon Appétit standout back when their content was more stuffy and formal — and makes you feel that he’s just trying out some new ideas, man.

Well. That casual adventurism has led to a couple of what we’ll euphemistically call “incidents.”

Last year, Bon Appétit was compelled to delete a video in which Leone showed viewers how to preserve mussels and lobsters in jars by heating them in a pan of water. The online canning community — did you ever doubt such a thing existed? — pointed out that his method ran afoul of FDA guidelines and, if followed as shown in the edited clip, might lead to botulism poisoning, which requires immediate emergency care and can be fatal. This month, Leone is once more in (figurative) hot water for sharing a technique to make “beef pastrami with the use of celery juice and sauerkraut juice as our curing agents instead of pink curing salt.” 

Critics including restaurant industry watchdog Joe Rosenthal presented evidence that Leone had failed to account for, and even downplayed, various food safety concerns, ultimately failing to cure the meat, again putting anyone who tried the recipe at risk for severe poisoning. Bon Appétit slapped a disclaimer on the YouTube video, while the Instagram post drew harsh comments.    

No illnesses have been definitively attributed to Leone’s recommendations — unless you count the commenter who claimed to have suffered “mind boggling diarrhea” after preparing brisket as he did. Still, it’s not ideal to have anyone with a mainstream platform selling the public on hazardous cooking hacks. Or is it? The fact is, if you’ve stuck with Bon Appétit through the various cycles of their disgrace, and you’re actively defending Leone from the experts warning against copying his mistakes (as many fans are!), you probably deserve a day or two of hot diarrhea. 

One way or another, you’ve got to learn your lesson. This fancy-pants magazine with the rich galoot trying to convince everyone that they need “fermented popcorn seasoning” and should make ribs sous vide style… is not your friend. You need to come back to planet Earth.

One of the many unfortunate things about, say, COVID-19 misinformation is that it harms even the people who don’t buy it, since the unmasked and unvaccinated help to spread the virus. Where it comes to Brad Leone’s disastrous kitchen practices, the pool of victims is basically limited to the sycophantic admirers foolish enough to imitate him, and they’re the subscribers who had no problem continuing to support Bon Appétit after it was exposed for paying BIPOC employees substantially less than white staffers. If the brand wants to punish what’s left of their previously gigantic audience, with that demographic’s willing cooperation, I’m sure not going to stop them. Knock yourselves out, everyone! You’re all doing valuable, amazing work. 

They should call it Bad Appétit, am I right folks? Hahaha. Anyway, I’m off to take a normal shit.

As much joy as internet memes have given you over the years, you may have struggled to explain them to those unfamiliar with the concept. But if you’ve found it a tall order to articulate the power of found images crudely overlaid with text to, say, your parents, imagine attempting to do the same to an ancestor from the fourteenth century. Introducing memes to a medieval person, the best strategy would presumably be to begin not with sardonic Willy Wonka, the guy distracted by another girl, or The Most Interesting Man in the World, but memes with familiar medieval imagery. Thanks to KB, the national library of the Netherlands, you can now make some of you own with ease.

“On www.medievalmemes.org visitors can use images taken from the Dutch national library’s medieval collection and turn them into memes,” says Medievalists.net. “When using the meme generator, people actively create new contexts for these historic images by adding current captions. The available images are accompanied by explanatory videos, providing viewers with background information and showing them that, much like today, people in the Middle Ages used images to comment on their surroundings and current affairs.” You might repurpose these lively pieces of medieval art for such twenty-first-century topics as clubbing, online shopping, or the COVID-19 pandemic.

At the top of this post appears an image from 1327, originally created for a book of miracles King Charles IV ordered for his queen. As KB explains, it offers “a warning of what can happen if you don’t learn your prayers properly.” Below that is “a sort of Mediaeval cartoon” from 1183 about the techniques involved in properly slaughtering a pig. And just above, we see what happened when “the Kenite Jael lured the leader of the army, Sisera, into her tent. Sisera had been violently oppressing the Kenites for 20 years. While he slept, she whacked a tent peg straight through his head.” Though created for a picture Bible 592 years ago, this picture surely has potential for transposition into commentary on the very different perils of life in the twenty-twenties. But when you deploy it as a meme, you can do so in the knowledge that even your medieval forebears would have known that feel.

via Medievalist.net

Related content:

Why Butt Trumpets & Other Bizarre Images Appeared in Illuminated Medieval Manuscripts

Killer Rabbits in Medieval Manuscripts: Why So Many Drawings in the Margins Depict Bunnies Going Bad

Why Knights Fought Snails in Illuminated Medieval Manuscripts

800 Illuminated Medieval Manuscripts Are Now Online: Browse & Download Them Courtesy of the British Library and Bibliothèque Nationale de France

160,000 Pages of Glorious Medieval Manuscripts Digitized: Visit the Bibliotheca Philadelphiensis

The Aberdeen Bestiary, One of the Great Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts, Now Digitized in High Resolution & Made Available Online

Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His projects include the Substack newsletter Books on Cities, the book The Stateless City: a Walk through 21st-Century Los Angeles and the video series The City in Cinema. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Facebook.

As Oscar Isaac’s “British” accent joins the likes of Amanda Seyfried’s Elizabeth Holmes and Julia Garner’s Anna Delvey, it’s become necessary to codify and categorize the dialect work of so many actors over the past 20-plus years

There are plenty of reasons for the current onslaught of scammer shows and Silicon Valley biopics. First of all, there were a whole slew of juicy scams exposed around 2018—the sordid true-life tales were then turned into TV specials, then documentaries, and through the physics of the Hollywood Time Continuum, arrived on our streaming platforms as scripted prestige dramas within mere months of one another in 2022. There is an entire podcast genre predicated on the fact that people love to learn about crime, and when it can’t be murder, corporate fraud is a close second.

Are those good reasons to put out this much thematically overlapping content all at once? Perhaps we’ll know in about a year when the last Elizabeth Holmes project has been ushered through, the Tiger King ashes have lost their final glowing embers, and WeWork has dumped out its last carafe of fruit water. But there’s still one obvious but lesser discussed reason that all of these based-on-true-events series keep coming out: our Hollywood actors love nothing more than to take a big ol’ honking swing at the juicy dialect of a real-life villain. Do you remember where you were the first time you heard the voice of Elizabeth Holmes? Do you remember the first time you tried out the “First they think you’re crazy, then they fight you” accent yourself? Now imagine you’re Amanda Seyfried, and someone is saying they’ll pay you a bunch of money to do the exact same thing, and you can wear a wig that looks like a disemboweled broom while doing it …

This week, a new big accent swing hits the market, but its IP is neither scammer nor tech bro adjacent. Because really, no genre is safe from accent work. In Moon Knight, Oscar Isaac attempts an English accent, and it is—well, what’s the auditory version of a sight to behold? A sound to be-heard? In Isaac’s honor, and for our own TV-watching sanity, I think it’s high time we provide a little vocal context to the many, many new accents, dialects, idiolects, and cacophony of sounds we’ve been asked to take in over the past few months.

There are a few rules for the 21st Century Accent Matrix:

• Only accents from the 21st century apply. Yes, Nicolas Cage sounded like he swallowed a whole corn cob and got haunted by the ghost of the Mississippi River in 1997’s Con Air, and yes, James Van Der Beek not wohnting YOUR laff missed the cutoff by a mere year—but for my own sanity, these are the rules. We’ll watch Jon Voight in Anaconda on our own time.
• This is by no means an exhaustive matrix of all Hollywood accents, merely the best specific examples with which to provide context for Oscar Isaac exclaiming, “bloody ’ell!” every 10 seconds while walking around his own home.
• This isn’t even an exhaustive list of all the accents debuted this year. The present-day dialects we’re homing in on are: Amanda Seyfried in The Dropout, Jared Leto in WeCrashed, Julia Garner in Inventing Anna, Lady Gaga in House of Gucci, and Oscar Isaac in Moon Knight. Our apologies to all other House of Gucci work and Florence Pugh’s Russian. We will also never be discussing Jacob Elordi’s native Australian accent.
• To be clear, everyone speaks with an accent; there is no baseline voice we consider unaccented. Therefore, the only big accent swings not considered are actors working in the dialects of their birthplace. Which basically means: no Afflecks doing a flawless Boston on the list. Sorry fellas. Let’s get started!

The Blueprints: Seamless and Accurate

Meryl Streep in The Iron Lady

She doesn’t have 21 Oscar nominations for nothin’! Flawless accents are just one of the many tricks Meryl Streep can pull out of her back pocket when necessary: she was Irish in Dancing at Lughnasa, Danish in Out of Africa, a New Yorker in Doubt, Polish in Sophie’s Choice, Italian in The Bridges of Madison County, Irish again in Ironweed, Julia Child in Julie & Julia, and she actually had to convincingly exclaim, “The dingo’s got my baby!” in A Cry in the Dark. All that practice came together to make perfect in The Iron Lady, when Streep not only nailed the specific idiolect of Margaret Thatcher, but changed everything about her own tone, resonance, pitch, and oral posture to seamlessly embody another character. Long live the queen of accents.

Winston Duke in Black Panther

The experience of watching Winston Duke play Lord M’Baku on screen in Black Panther for the first time was a powerful one. Had a man ever looked better? Sounded better? Sat on a throne like this? Was he supposed to be the bad guy? It didn’t feel bad watching him. The Trinbagonian actor trained at Yale, where they’re notoriously good at studying, which might explain why his Igbo-inspired Nigerian accent for the Jabari tribe leader M’Baku—intentionally differentiated from the South African–inspired Wakandan accents—was lauded Twitter-wide as the perfect example of studied precision and instinctual embodiment of a character.

Idris Elba in The Wire

There is an entire swath of people who don’t know Idris Elba is British (and they may never know unless the right people make the right decisions and he becomes James Bond). Which is wild because Idris Elba’s real British accent is so British it almost sounds fake. (You can tell Elba is British just from the way he eats a chicken wing.) But this is the power of Elba’s American accent in The Wire. If one is pushed to pick nits—which one is in an accent matrix—Elba’s American accent doesn’t always hit the Baltimore-specific vowel sounds, and sometimes, if Stringer Bell gets angry enough, it sounds like he’s yelling for his afternoon tea. But other than that, this is a convincing knockout.

Renée Zellweger in Bridget Jones’s Diary

Renée Zellweger, no matter how proficient the accent—and her English accent has been cited by many a dialect expert as being proficient—simply has the presence of someone who has been to, or at least heard of, Six Flags; who knows what a two-point conversion is; who was once briefly wed to Kenny “She Thinks My Tractor’s Sexy” Chesney. Zelleweger has a distinct enough American voice that the experience of hearing her excellent English accent in Bridget Jones’s Diary is ever so slightly marked by thinking, “Wow, she’s doing a great English accent,” as opposed to thinking nothing at all beyond, “OK, when is this bird gonna snog Colin Firth?”

Jeremy Renner in The Town

Would I call Jeremy Renner a dynamic dialect actor? I would not! Does the signature Bostonian line “Whose cah we gonna take?” float to the surface of my mind on a weekly basis? Yes, it does! Not an “r” in sight! James Coughlin in The Town was Renner’s role to play, and he played it.

Jodie Comer in Killing Eve

For a true feat—a master class—in accents, look no further than Jodie Comer in Killing Eve (also available for master classes in crumbling-Parisian-apartment-chic and pulling off tulle). For Comer, playing the assassin Villanelle means putting on as many different accents as she does outfits, and she alternates between them with just as much ease, often speaking in different languages, and with never so much as a hint of her own strong Liverpool accent. Sure, some voices in the dossier are better than others, but when you start to question, always remember that Comer isn’t just doing, say, an American accent when she takes on an American identity: She’s a British actress playing a Russian character doing an American accent that she may or may not be making just annoying enough to intentionally get herself caught. Hey, mercenaries have layers too!

Ruth Negga in Loving

Like Elba, there’s probably a large group of people who have never heard Ruth Negga, an Ethiopian Irish actress raised mostly in Ireland, speak in her native brogue (those who have likely heard her as the Emerald Herald in the video game Dark Souls II). That’s because Negga is so consistently, so convincingly committed to an American Southern accent in all her biggest roles. My personal favorite is her violent, twangy Texan in the violent, twangy Preacher—but certainly the most remarkable is her Oscar-nominated performance in Loving, which sees Negga turn that twang into a delicate Virginia drawl. As played by Negga, Mildred Loving’s softness is her power, and so it can only leave us wanting more of this raw vocal performance.

Amanda Seyfried in The Dropout

Here’s the thing about Elizabeth Holmes—her voice is wild. And there are plenty of first-person accounts that say she intentionally deepened her tone as the Theranos years went on. Seyfried wisely goes the route of close impression (deepening her own voice, matching Holmes’s oral posture while avoiding some her wonkier tone choices) as opposed to pure imitation, which could make her sound as distracting as Holmes’s real (fake) voice. The show also wisely gives Seyfried a montage in which she practices Holmes’s iconic baritone … and then dials it back three notches for her actual performance, as in, Hey look at what we’re NOT making you listen to!

The Daniel Day-Lewis: Daniel Day-Lewis in … Everything

In looking at Daniel Day-Lewis’s perfectly curated body of work, one might start to wonder whether he intentionally takes on accents for which most people have no point of reference. Do you think you know what Abraham Lincoln sounds like? Well, you don’t because there are no existing recordings of his voice—you’re probably just thinking about Daniel Day-Lewis, who used descriptions of Lincoln’s voice and his immense talent to create the accent he used in Lincoln. Same goes for Gangs of New York and There Will Be Blood: historical accents that have been passed down to us through story but eradicated in real life, giving a great actor an opportunity to build a voice around a character, and not the other way around.

The Big Honkin’ Swings: Accurate and Distracting

Natalie Portman in Jackie

The premiere example of a completely accurate accent that you spend the entire film thinking, “Wow, that’s quite an accent!” is Natalie Portman’s Oscar-nominated performance in Jackie. Because in real life, Jackie Kennedy sounded like an elegant ghost who had never so much as heard of the letter “r.” Her speaking voice is a complex combination of every intonation along the Eastern Seaboard, and yet, Natalie Portman is doing a pristine imitation of the wispy, WASPy, wealthy sound. Unfortunately, that can make it difficult to focus on almost anything else except the wispy, WASPy, wealthy voice coming out of Natalie Portman’s mouth.

Philip Seymour Hoffman in Capote

Let’s get one thing straight: Philip Seymour Hoffman is doing a near-perfect Truman Capote, for which he won the Oscar in 2006. It is uncanny how much Hoffman sounds like Capote without ever swinging into caricature, especially when you consider how deep Hoffman’s natural voice was. But similar to Portman, this is simply a nutty combination of vocal variants to have to meld together in one performance; the better job the actor does, the wilder it is for the audience to hear. Still, Hoffman is acting with every muscle, every inch, every vocal cord inside him, and the result is much more than just an impression—even if you never quite get over the voice.

Jared Leto in WeCrashed

No one loves an accent more than Jared Leto, and few actors are better at it (you can find a list of those who are explained above). When Leto exclaims, “et-zaccly” in Adam Neumann’s Israeli accent, you could be listening to Neumann himself delivering one of his many impassioned speeches. What’s missing, then, is a bit of that well-documented passion. In comparison to Hoffman, who is pulling off an emotionally resonant performance as well as a vocally accurate one, Leto continues to turn in perfect mimicry … which can make it a little harder to forget that what you’re watching is Jared Leto doing his very good Adam Neumann impression.

Kate Winslet in Mare of Easttown

Boston used to be the American city to fear when it came to actors perfecting its accent—that is, until a little lady named Mare Sheehan came on the scene, making the sultry sounds of Delaware County, Pennsylvania (a.k.a. Delco), as commonly known as a Wawa hoagie. Did Kate Winslet nail the Delco accent by the terms of a Delco resident? No—because no one ever will, and you may get a milk jug through your window for asking. Did she nail it by a casual viewer’s terms? Yes. Winslet is making all kinds of bonkers vowel sounds that’ll make you furrow your brow and think, “Do people really sound like that?,” google it, and find out yes, millions of people do! Winslet is a master of accents in general, but Mare was special because, as Winslet said, this is one of two dialects in her 30-year career that made her really have to work for it.

Julia Garner in Inventing Anna

In Inventing Anna, Julia Garner sounds almost identical to the real Anna Delvey—and, this time, that is not a good thing. As a reminder, Anna Delvey (née, Sorokin) was a Russian woman attempting to sound like a German heiress, which makes Julia Garner an American woman attempting to sound like a Russian woman attempting to sound like a German heiress. By most first-person accounts, the experience of listening to Anna speak was a wild one, and the same goes for the process of listening to Julia play Anna in a sound-for-sound remake. What I wouldn’t have given for Garner to just play this character as though Delvey were actually doing a decent German accent—hell, I would have watched her play it in her Ruth Langmore voice. Anything but this!

“I duh naht hov time fuh dis! I duh naht haf time fuh YEW!”

Emma Watson in … anything

This is where I tell you that Emma Watson’s American accents really aren’t that bad—they’re really not! They’re simply inconsistent … consistently inconsistent, one might say. There is one diphthong that especially ails her, and I’m confident you can conjure which one it is if you just imagine little Hermione Granger exclaiming, “No, you caaaaan’t” on a life-size chessboard. Whether Watson is playing a Little Woman, or a Pretty Wild valley girl, or a Perky Wallflower, there will be some flat American a’s that she slips up on each and every time. But we’re just going to love her through it, because surely we wouldn’t trade that British accent for anything.

The Lady Gaga: Lady Gaga in House of Gucci

You will never forget that Lady Gaga is Lady Gaga. She does not melt into a role. But she will own a role, command a role; she will, at times, sound vaguely Russian while playing the hell out of an Italian role. And that will be fine because most people don’t know precisely what Patrizia Reggiani sounded like …

I mean, they probably know she didn’t sound occasionally Russian, but Lady Gaga’s performance in House of Gucci lands precisely at the nexus of accurate and artistic and seamless and distracting because, as Gaga told us over and over, she lived in this performance. As she has well informed the public, she called on her education at the Circle in the Square Theatre School, her method acting training at the Lee Strasberg Institute, and used the sense memory methods of Stanislavski for this performance. And the result is an accent that is neither perfectly accurate nor a wild artistic swing—neither a seamless melting into the role, nor a jolting vocal mess. It is simply … Gaga playing Patritzia.

The Character Studies: Artistic and Seamless

Heath Ledger in Brokeback Mountain

Heath Ledger isn’t so much giving a vocal performance in Brokeback Mountain as perhaps the vocal performance of the last 20 years. And it’s not about the accuracy of the Wyoming-Montana border dialect at all—though that’s also pretty solid when Ennis is speaking loud enough to hear it. It’s about the hard line that Ledger permanently holds in his mouth: the literal repression of Ennis’s own voice, even while he’s speaking. It is an artistic creation all Ledger’s own, and what do we love more from our best actors than making a big ol’ choice?

Will Smith in Ali

Muhammed Ali is a big task to take on. Not only is his voice so familiar, not only is his accent so singular, but if an actor finds himself in position to perform it, then he is also most likely having to do quite a bit of physical work beyond the voice. With all of that taken into account, Will Smith does an admirable job of portraying Ali, but he leans so far on the lyricality of Ali’s voice that the Will Smith of it all never quite disappears. But I tell you what: Listening to Will Smith as Muhammad Ali chanting, “THE CHAMP IS HERE!” will always be a good time.

Penélope Cruz in The Assassination of Gianni Versace

Visually, the logic behind casting Penélope Cruz to play Donatella Versace is a no-brainer. Vocally … it’s a bit more of an uphill climb. As if performing a notoriously singular accent not in your native language isn’t hard enough, Cruz also had Maya Rudolph’s iconic SNL Donatella impression to contend with. Not an enviable challenge. But when you hear Cruz’s Donatella, you ultimately don’t hear Cruz at all—she completely transforms, not exactly into Donatella, but into a variant of Donatella that captures both her signature husky gurgle while also, yes, sounding mildly Spanish. It’s not entirely accurate, but just like fashion, accent work is art, darling.

Nicole Kidman in … anything

You’ve gotta hand it to Nicole Kidman—the woman has been a Hollywood actress for 30 years and she is holding on to that Australian accent tighter than Reese Witherspoon to the TV rights of a bestselling novel. The thing is: No, Kidman can’t do accents for shit, but the performance never suffers. There’s no obvious answer for who keeps demanding that Kidman do an American accent—and hey, sometimes a Russian vampire accent—but until some wise director lets her go back to her native Australian, we just have to allow the acting to work overtime for every “no” that turns into “naur” during an emotionally climactic moment.

Daniel Craig in Knives Out

Yeah, I said it! The Benoit Blanc performance is a little bit seamless. Obviously, the Foghorn Leghorn dialect Daniel Craig has adopted isn’t accurate to any corner of the American South, but I dare call this performance camp. And Knives Out is just the kind of big, ensemble whodunit that can handle such a thing. Is there an obvious reason for Craig adopting this accent? No. Craig claimed it set him apart as an outsider, but we all know what was going on: James Bond wanted to take a swing! Pure artistry, baby, and it makes a movie in which Ana de Armas downs (and upchucks) a big ol’ bowl of beans all the more pleasantly weird.

Jesse Eisenberg in The Social Network

As far as impressions go, Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg is the prime example of an actor saying, “What if we just … didn’t?” And that artistic choice worked out. Maybe there’s someone out there who could’ve done a great Zuckerberg impression, but Eisenberg said, “It’s not me.” Instead, the quick-talking, deadpan, and, let’s face it, smug idiolect Eisenberg uses evokes the kind of tech-obsessed, human-avoidant Silicon Valley type the movie wants us to understand Zuckerberg to be—without actually impersonating his real sound. Linguists call it “enregisterment,” and Eisenberg enregisters the hell out of this vocal performance.

The Shenanigans: Distracting and Artistic

Oscar Isaac in Moon Knight

Oscar Isaac is a great actor. Pretty much every person on this matrix who is an actor … is a great actor. Which makes it, honestly, so funny how bananas Oscar Isaac’s accent choice is in Moon Knight. I have heard tale from a handful of Brits that this is a non-London, non-posh accent so full of idiosyncrasies that it’s more accurate than most English accents on film—so accurate, in fact, that coming out of Oscar Isaac, it circles right back around to absurdity. That seems like a generous take! My take is that Isaac sounds like a cartoon pig putting on a little play with his friends when he’s supposed to sound like a superpowered mercenary with dissociative identity disorder. So, all told, that’s a little distracting, but again: so funny coming out of Oscar Isaac that it makes me come all the way back around to loving it again. Much like a shark, Oscar Isaac’s accent must stay in constant motion or the MCU will die.

Jennifer Lawrence in Red Sparrow

When an actor is nominated for an Oscar in their first feature film performance, it’s easy to start thinking that the now-A-lister has become an old pro before they’ve even gotten their Malcolm Gladwell 10,000 hours in. For example, Red Sparrow premiered eight years after Winter’s Bone, but Jennifer Lawrence still hadn’t ever “done a foreign accent before,” and, well, her Russian definitely comes off like it’s still in beta. That really distracted from the [checks notes] “ballerina turned spy with a special skill for seduction” plotline.

Cuba Gooding Jr. in The People vs. OJ Simpson

We call this the inverse Eisenberg. Cuba Gooding Jr. also didn’t attempt to adopt any sort of accent when playing O.J. Simpson in The People vs. O.J. Simpson, but he also didn’t attempt to evoke any sort of O.J. characterization. Of course, you don’t blame a baby when it touches a hot stove, and you don’t blame an actor when they accept a juicy role they’ve been offered. You’ve got to blame the person who cast Cuba’s soft, scratchy, pitchy voice in the role of O.J. Simpson’s deep, steady, resonant one, ultimately dooming him to fail.

Gerard Butler in P.S. I Love You

Gerard Butler has never been a master of accents, but he’s also never apologized for how badly he’s bungled one … until P.S. I Love You. Years after the movie came out, Butler said in an interview that he thought the Irish accent would be simple enough, but after hearing himself, he knew he had to offer a heartfelt apology “to the nation of Ireland for completely abusing their accent.” If anything, Butler, a Scotsman, and his inability to so much as hint at a decent Irish accent in P.S. I Love You proves that the United Kingdom is no monolith, and we mustn’t expect a perfect exchange of dialects between its actors. We mustn’t even expect a passable leprechaun caricature. You’ll get ’em next time, Gerry.

Sienna Miller in the trailer for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof for the National Theater

Sienna Miller can do an American accent—I’ve heard it! It’s decent in Alfie, and really quite good in American Sniper. Miller has frequently tried on a nondescript American accent; she even did a Delco variant in the grossly under-watched American Woman. So, what then, can explain what Sienna Miller is doing in the National Theater Collection’s production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof?

It can only be explained as the biggest possible swing—and the greatest possible miss by a professional actor this century. The artistic commitment to an accent is there; the only thing missing is any sound you’ve ever heard in the American South not coming directly out of a muffler.

Jesy Nelson attempting a Jamaican accent in a You Generation promotion

Now, in the non-professional-actor category, there is no accent swing and a miss more iconic, more memed, and more absolutely inexplicable than what was accomplished by Jesy Nelson of British girl group Little Mix. Tragically, Jesy departed Little Mix in 2020, but not before leaving her most lasting legacy upon the group six years earlier.

When asked to impersonate a Jamaican accent during a game on Simon Cowell’s now-defunct online video-sharing competition platform, You Generation, Jesy reacted with a word—née, a sound—that can be described only as “Balegdah.” And it has, indeed, been described as such over and over again, taking up permanent residence in the bottom right-hand corner of this all-important matrix—at least until the 22nd century dawns. Maybe by then someone will have attempted the Delco again. Maybe it’ll be Jesy Nelson herself.

Tokyo’s Nakagin Capsule Tower, designed by 20th-century Metabolic Architecture proponent Kisho Kurokawa and completed in the early 1970s, will be disassembled and demolished this month. The first example in the world of capsule architecture — in which constituent units of the building can be removed and reinstalled — it is perhaps Kurokawa’s most famous building.

The decision caps over a decade of discussions on the building’s slated dismantlement, which Kurokawa opposed before he died in 2007 and which has spurred valiant preservation efforts such as ex-resident Masato Abe’s campaign to raise sufficient funds to purchase all its capsules, “Save Nakagin Tower.”

But the deteriorating condition of individual capsules and the failure to update them with newer ones, as was Kurokawa’s original intention, left the building practically uninhabitable. The asbestos insulation is reportedly dysfunctional, leaving the building overheated during the summer and chilly in the winter. Neither hot water nor cooking stoves are available in the capsules, and their circular washing machine-esque windows cannot be opened. A net covers the structure to prevent people on the street from being struck unawares by pieces falling off it.

In 2007, the building’s owners’ association voted to sell the building to a property developer who intended to replace it with a more modern one. But when that developer filed for bankruptcy, the building’s fate once again hung in the balance, until it was finally sold in 2021 to a group of real estate firms incorporated under the name “Capsule Tower Building.” A spokesperson for the group told CNN that the building’s last residents moved out last month, with demolition scheduled to begin on April 12.

The capsules, 140 in total, were proportioned with the ratio of a tatami mat in mind, an instance of Kurokawa’s attempt to marry Japanese traditionalism and futurism in his design. He liked to call this meeting of the ancient and the modern “antagonistic coexistence.” The capsules were meant to be used for a host of purposes — mini-offices, ateliers, hotels, homes, meeting rooms, or holiday cabins — and at just ten square meters in size, they were aimed to serve the modern traveling bachelor who might have found himself needing accommodations in the Ginza neighborhood of Tokyo. Each capsule came with built-in furniture, much of which would strike a contemporary renter or buyer as fantastically retro, including a bedside control console, a stereo tape deck, and calculators. Bathrooms are the size of airplane lavatories. Originally fashioned from shipping containers, the capsules appear more like control rooms than living environments today.

“My intention is to change the structure of the architectural industry, of mass production,” Kurokawa declared in the late 20th century. With each capsule fabricated in Osaka, transported to Tokyo, and jiggled into place by a crane, capsule architecture envisioned not only a new aesthetic ideal but also a transformation of the construction process. The Nakagin Capsule Tower was not the only example of his capsule architecture in practice; he was also behind the Takara Pavilion for the Osaka World Expo in 1970, a capsule hotel in Osaka that remains open, and a summer retreat he built for himself, both which had movable parts connected by a central spine. 

“The Capsule Tower is not only gorgeous architecture; like all great buildings, it is the crystallization of a far-reaching cultural ideal. Its existence also stands as a powerful reminder of paths not taken, of the possibility of worlds shaped by different sets of values,” Nicolai Ouroussoff, architecture critic for the New York Times, wrote in 2009.

Once representing a utopian post-Fordist vision for the future in which humanity was on track to achieve infinite movement and a symbiosis between work and life, Nakagin Tower now represents a failed dream. Its failure may, on the other hand, be cause for celebration: Its idealization of single life, erasure of feminized labor, and dream of a flat world devoid of place can alternatively be considered dystopian. Fortunately, many of the capsules themselves will not be destroyed; according to Japan Today, they will be donated to museums and “accommodation facilities.”

Chapter IX:
Interloper in the Keep of the King

Gerf felt a heavy weight on his shoulders.

Perhaps it was just the dwarven wool cloak he wore. Or perhaps it was his responsibility as a sergeant in the King’s Guard, about to lead troops into the Wilds. Gerf gently fingered the scars on his face, earned in the Seventh Elven War. Soon there would be an Eighth.

Gerf surveyed his spare room. His soldier’s kit lay against the wall, next to the dœr: a covering for the wall’s dœr-hole, made of about ten wooden slabs bound with metal bands. Such objects were common, and not just a king’s luxury. They were well-known, even to a Ranger like Gerf.

Opposite was a window facing the desolate canals where the low-born farmed shrimp and marsh grasses. The window was similar to the exit hole he had just examined, but it wasn’t for leaving out of, like a dœr: it was for looking out of.

Suddenly, a dragon fire message slid into his room from under those wood slabs, which stopped a bit before they reached the floor, covering almost all of the hole. That wall’s hole could be made bigger if the wooden piece were to be moved sideways, or more precisely, swivel-sideways.

“That’s a dœr,” Gerf thought, about the wooden-slabbed hole covering.

But before he could open the message, the rectangle in the wall, which was about as tall as he was, started moving in its unique pivoting way, and moving fast. Someone on the other side had pushed hard on the rectangular dœr, and it hit the stone wall but did not fall down.

A grenade skittered over Gerf’s feet and exploded, temporarily blinding him and filling his nose with the odious stench of… evening-tide mushroom?

As if reading his thoughts, a voice cut through the smoke like a Pandrossian iron cutlass slices through sea dragon flesh, which is to say, it cut very easily.

“If I might offer some advice, Sergeant Gerf of the King’s Guard: don’t breathe too deeply.”

The voice was high-pitched and seemed to come from every part of the room at once: in front of him, behind him, from the room beyond, unobstructed because that wooden plate-like object known as a dœr had been moved. Now, the wall was like a bag that had been opened on both sides, essentially a tube, so there was a temporary but intentional hole, and the sound was coming through that hole/tube.

“Who goes there,” hissed Gerf, drawing his Ranger’s blade.

“Don’t play coy, Sergeant Gerf, son of Gorf. From your time on our prison ships, you should know an elven voice when you hear one.”

Through the smoke emerged a trim and proud figure: A wood elf, wearing a Minotaur-skin hat cocked at a jaunty angle.

Gerf clenched the hilt of his blade, like someone might grip the round metal protrusion often found attached to the wall openers he was just thinking about.

“Surprised to see me south of the wall, I see,” said the elf. “There are more ways to bypass a wall, my friend, than just through dœrs, like bigger windows but where the middle part of the window rests almost on the ground, and you can move that part out of the way so your whole body and also other objects can go through.”

“Yes, I know them,” spat Gerf, “one of the many common luxuries of our land, but not one that I expect an outsider like you would truly appreciate.”

Gerf rapped his blade against the floor and lunged at the elf. But his body refused—it moved as if stuck in thickened Cyclops milk, that is, very slowly.

The elf grinned fiendishly.

“Evening-tide mushroom can swivel-sideways-pivot a wooden hole rectangle in the mind, like a dœr, that thing we were talking about just now. Now sleepiness can get into your consciousness, similar to how I came into this room.”

Gerf collapsed, his sword clattering uselessly against the stone. The elf’s trick had opened a dœr in the metaphorical wall dividing sleep and awake, sending Gerf tumbling through a walking-through spot in his mind.

Gerf’s last, pleading thought was the hope that tomorrow he would have his revenge on this elf, and that he could once more taste that new delicacy he’d come to love: baked dough of flour and water, known simply as bræd.

Before the word processor, before White-Out, before Post It Notes, there were straight pins. Or, at least that’s what Jane Austen used to make edits in one of her rare manuscripts. In 2011, Oxford’s Bodleian Library acquired the manuscript of Austen’s abandoned novel, The Watsons. In announcing the acquisition, the Bodleian wrote:

The Watsons is Jane Austen’s first extant draft of a novel in process of development and one of the earliest examples of an English novel to survive in its formative state. Only seven manuscripts of fiction by Austen are known to survive. The Watsons manuscript is extensively revised and corrected throughout, with crossings out and interlinear additions.

Janeausten.ac.uk (the web site where Austen’s manuscripts have been digitized) takes a deeper dive into the curious quality of The Watsons manuscript, noting:

The manuscript is written and corrected throughout in brown iron-gall ink. The pages are filled in a neat, even hand with signs of concurrent writing, erasure, and revision, interrupted by occasional passages of heavy interlinear correction…. The manuscript is without chapter divisions, though not without informal division by wider spacing and ruled lines. The full pages suggest that Jane Austen did not anticipate a protracted process of redrafting. With no calculated blank spaces and no obvious way of incorporating large revision or expansion she had to find other strategies – the three patches, small pieces of paper, each of which was filled closely and neatly with the new material, attached with straight pins to the precise spot where erased material was to be covered or where an insertion was required to expand the text.

According to Christopher Fletcher, Keeper of Special Collections at the Bodleian Library, this prickly method of editing wasn’t exactly new. Archivists at the library can trace pins being used as editing tools back to 1617.

You can find The Watsons online here:

• The Watsons, Morgan Library & Museum, New York The Watsons (1) Text Facsimile
• The Watsons, Bodleian Library, Oxford The Watsons (2) Text Facsimile

Note: An earlier version of this post appeared on our site in August, 2014.

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The Cuban American artist Carmen Herrera, celebrated for her transfixing geometric compositions that structure and define space, died this Saturday, February 12 at the age of 106 in her New York City apartment. Her death was confirmed by Lisson Gallery, which has represented the artist since 2010.

Much has been said of Herrera’s overdue ascent to art world acclaim: She had her first major museum survey at the age of 83, at El Museo del Barrio in East Harlem in 1998, and sold her first painting only six years later. In 2016, when the Whitney Museum of American Art mounted a solo exhibition of her work, Lines of Sight, she was already a centenarian.

Galleries and museums may have been late to discover it, but Herrera’s brilliance was evident much earlier. Born in 1915 Havana, where her art education began, she would spend the next four decades between Cuba, France, and the United States, taking in the 20th-century mushrooming of abstraction from the Bauhaus to Color Field painting while developing a style all her own. After earning a secondary degree from the Marymount College in Paris, Herrera spent a year studying architecture at the Universidad de La Habana, but quit in 1939 as military dictator Fulgencio Batista rose to power on the island. She then married the American professor Jesse Loewenthal and moved to Manhattan, where she earned a scholarship to the Art Students League. Between 1948 and 1954, the couple settled in Paris.

It was in those years, while living on the Left Bank of postwar Montparnasse and exhibiting with the likes of Josef Albers at the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles, that Herrera’s work shed all traces of figuration in favor of pure abstraction. Her early explorations of geometry, line, and form precipitated an idiosyncratic visual language of vibrantly hued, barely touching shapes, often in just two colors and deeply sensual in their simplicity.

Upon her return to New York in 1954 and in the years that followed, her paintings became increasingly sharp, crisp, and intense, sometimes occupying several panels or shaped canvases. “I had to forget about trimmings and go to the core of things,” she said in an interview in 2010.

The use of masking tape allowed her to achieve the clean, precise lines she sought. Among her most renowned bodies of work is the Blanco y Verde series (“White and Green”), produced between 1959 and 1971. In these compositions, emerald triangular forms are arranged sparsely on a ground of creamy titanium white, or vice versa, evoking strangely elegant pinwheels.

Beginning in the 1960s, inspired by her brief but impactful architectural training, Herrera also produced sketches for a group of large sculptures. But most of these striking, monochromatic pieces, known as Estructuras, were only realized during the last two decades, when institutions like the Public Art Fund undertook their fabrication.

Herrera’s gender and ethnicity certainly constituted barriers to wider recognition, and throughout most of her career, she had brushes with fame but remained in a paradoxical limbo. She was welcomed in the circle of Abstract Expressionists, for instance, becoming close friends with painter Barnett Newman, and yet a New York avant-garde dealer refused to give her a show because she was a woman. And while Herrera was included in some exhibitions of Latin American art, she did not fit neatly into that category, either: When the Museum of Modern Art organized its 1944 Modern Cuban Painters exhibition, featuring works by many of Herrera’s friends and colleagues on the island, she was excluded.

“I don’t want to be a Latin American painter or a woman painter,” she once protested. “I’m a painter.”

Once dealers and curators finally took notice, however, her rise to stardom was meteoric. Herrera’s Whitney survey traveled to the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen (K20) in Düsseldorthe and the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio. Her works were acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, among others. Furthermore, she was honored by the Royal Academy in London and New York’s National Academy of Design. Herrera has left an imprint beyond these rarefied spheres, too: In 2020, for instance, middle and high schools students in East Harlem painted a 17-by-54 foot mural based on her 1987 canvas “Diagonal”. 

Though bound to a wheelchair and hindered by worsening arthritis in the final years of her life, Herrera continued to create art every day, enlisting the help of a studio assistant who would diligently lay down strips of tape on canvas. Why? She had one simple answer: “It makes me feel good.”

Starlink headed home

Everyone makes a big fuss about Baby Yoda. Sure, he’s cute with those fennec fox ears, wrinkly baby face, and innocent determination to eat another species out of existence, but years of Yodamania have made us forget just how charming the grown up alien truly is.

Read more...

One particularly dire period in the history of the United States is tied to a remarkably bountiful chapter in the nation’s artistic legacy. As part of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), the infrastructure and employment initiative deployed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt at the height of the Great Depression of the 1930s, tens of thousands of artists were commissioned to create public works. Names once associated with the Federal Art Project, the program’s visual arts branch, have come to define the American modernist canon: Jacob Lawrence, known for transformative narrative masterpieces of Black American life and history, received early training at a workshop in Harlem funded by the WPA; Abstract Expressionist Lee Krasner, who made murals under the New Deal initiative from 1935 to 1943, called it “a lifesaver.”

Still, the WPA had its skeptics and detractors, many of them conservative politicians who criticized the projects as costly handouts; one Republican representative described the arts arm specifically as a “hotbed of Communists.” In the face of these attacks, American artist and labor activist William Gropper came to the program’s defense with his incisive political cartoons, a group of which are going under the hammer at Swann Galleries this week as part of its “Artists of the WPA” auction.

Baptized “the workingman’s protector” for his works of social realism and unflinching commitment to the proletariat, Gropper was inspired by the Ashcan School, a movement focused on depictions of everyday New York City. His cartoons appeared in both mainstream and leftist publications such as the Morning Freiheit, according to Christine von der Linn, director of the Illustration Art Department at Swann.

“Freiheit was Manhattan’s leading Yiddish Communist paper at the time,” von der Linn told Hyperallergic. “His devotion to it, and similar activist publications to which he contributed, like The New Masses, was so strong that he often went unpaid for his work.”

One of the drawings in the sale shows Uncle Sam being hammered on the head by anti-Dealers. In another, a critic of the program hoists a bloated sack of cash while proclaiming, “Economize! Cut the WPA!” A third cartoon, titled “Wage Standard,” features the same dandy Mr. Moneybags figure, this time towering over the WPA’s beneficiaries and about to swing an ax.

In Gropper’s satire, opponents of the New Deal are depicted furiously frowning, donning a top hat and suit often adorned with a dollar sign, exuding the very wealth and privilege from which their selfishness derives. The images are apposite to the current moment, a time of intense pushback on public spending largely voiced by conservative policymakers. 

“Attacks against the WPA’s mismanagement and cost was often satirized in daily cartoons. Gropper was a fierce lifelong advocate of social justice and responded to the call,” von der Linn said. “What I admire about these works is that they epitomize his biting caricatures of politicians and industry moguls against noble workers and causes in direct, blunt imagery.” 

The sale, taking place online this Thursday, January 27, features more than 400 works by artists whose works under the New Deal planted the seeds for a new American visual lexicon, including Thomas Hart Benson, Dorothea Lange, and Grant Wood.

“As the programs of the New Deal ebbed and the war effort became the main tides of change, the United States was finally lifted out of the depression era and was well on its way to becoming a world power,” Harold Porcher, Swann’s Director of Post-War and Modern Art and the sale’s organizer, told Hyperallergic. “The New Deal, and multiple artists’ work programs that came out of it, ushered in an era of progress.”

Eight new half-hour episodes of Poetry in America will begin airing on public television stations nationwide (check local listings) and on the World Channel starting in January 2022 and continuing through the spring.

The series will also be available to stream on pbs.org, poetryinamerica.org, Amazon, and iTunes. The episodes focus on unforgettable American poems, which guests read and discuss with series creator Elisa New. Poetry in America encourages people from all walks of life to have conversations about poems. Episodes are designed for viewers to experience each poem in an immersive way by hearing, reading, and interpreting it alongside archival materials, vibrant animation, and footage shot at the locations it evokes.

Episode #301 (airing January 21) explores Walt Whitman’s “The Wound-Dresser,” set in the battlefield infirmaries and operating theaters of 1860s Washington, D.C. Actor David Strathairn, playwright Tony Kushner, composer Matthew Aucoin, opera star Davóne Tines, physician-writers Rafael Campo and Abraham Verghese, and historian Drew Faust join Elisa New to discuss how the trauma of the Civil War shaped American history.

___________________________________

Support for Poetry in America is provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities, Dalio Philanthropies, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Poetry Foundation, Deborah Hayes Stone and Max Stone. Season 3 is distributed to PBS stations nationwide by PBS Plus, with Seasons 1 & 2 distributed nationally by American Public Television.