Photo: PJ Gal-Szabo on Unsplash
Tim Robinson spent four years at Saturday Night Live being quietly moved out of the way. Then he built the most quoted comedy of the last decade out of the material they didn't want. This is the whole run, from Second City to HBO.
The whole career, in one picture
Every credit we could verify, from birth to the projects still coming. Scroll it, or read the full breakdown below.
Detroit, an antenna, and Second City
Robinson was born in Detroit on May 23, 1981. His father worked construction, his mother worked at a Chrysler training center, and his parents divorced when he was young. The family didn't have cable, but the antenna pulled in CBC from across the river, which is how a kid in Michigan ended up raised on The Kids in the Hall. That's the first fingerprint on everything he has made since: sketch comedy with no wink, played completely straight.
In high school his mom took him to a show at Second City in Chicago. He later trained and performed at Second City in Detroit and then Chicago, where he met Sam Richardson. He married Heather Robinson in 2006, and they have two kids. He is a serious Detroit sports fan and an avid skateboarder, which explains more about his comedy than it sounds like it should.
Saturday Night Live, and what went wrong
SNL hired Robinson as a cast member in 2012. It did not go well. He got small roles, his sketches mostly died before air, and after one season he was moved to the writing staff, where he stayed until 2016. He picked up an Emmy nomination for writing there.
He has been gracious about it. He told the BUILD Series in 2019 that SNL gave him confidence, that he struggled badly as a cast member, and that he only felt comfortable once he was writing. Seth Meyers has since said the show mishandled him.
The important part: Robinson has confirmed that a number of sketches that later appeared on I Think You Should Leave started as SNL pitches that never made it to air. The most famous rumored example is the season 1 airplane sketch with Will Forte, the man still furious about a baby who cried on a flight 30 years ago.
An SNL cast member who can't land sketches is a failure. A writer with a drawer full of rejected material is a guy with a series bible.
Before that: two shows nobody saw
Two credits get skipped in most write-ups. In 2011 he filmed a Comedy Central pilot called My Mans, which the network passed on. In 2012 he was cast as a series regular in a CBS sitcom called Friend Me, which never aired at all. He landed at SNL that September.
Detroiters (2017 to 2018)
Robinson left SNL and co-created Detroiters with Sam Richardson for Comedy Central. They play two low-rent Detroit ad men making terrible local commercials, and the show is much sweeter than anything Robinson is known for now. The two characters genuinely love each other. Nobody is humiliated.
Comedy Central canceled it after two seasons. It never found an audience at the time and has been steadily adopted since by people who worked backward from I Think You Should Leave. If you only know Robinson as the screaming man in the hot dog suit, Detroiters is the surprise.
The same stretch brought a guest turn on Fox's Making History as Al Capone and an appearance in Michael Bolton's Big, Sexy Valentine's Day Special.
I Think You Should Leave (2019, 2021, 2023)
Robinson created I Think You Should Leave with Zach Kanin, his longtime writing partner and another SNL alum. Netflix released three seasons, in 2019, 2021, and 2023.
The engine of the show is one idea, run at full speed: somebody makes a mistake, realizes it, and instead of backing out, commits harder. The car in the hot dog costume. The man at the focus group. Dan Flashes shirts with patterns so complicated they cost hundreds of dollars. Baby of the Year. The ghost tour guide who gets asked a question he can't answer. Karl Havoc, who just wants to go home.
The show became a meme engine, which undersells it. The sketches work because Robinson plays humiliation as a matter of life and death, and because he never lets the camera off the guy after the joke has landed. The discomfort is the point.
It won him Emmys for Outstanding Actor in a Short Form Comedy or Drama Series in 2022 and 2023, along with series recognition and Writers Guild awards. Sam Richardson, Conner O'Malley, Will Forte, Patti Harrison, and Kanin himself turn up throughout.
Coffin Flop, specifically
Since this is where a lot of people land: Coffin Flop is a season 2 sketch, a fake ad for a streaming service pitching its hit program. The program is footage of funerals where cheap coffins break open and bodies tumble out. That's it. That's the show within the show.
The pitchman defends it with escalating conviction. It isn't staged. The funeral homes keep buying garbage coffins. Nobody is getting hurt, because everybody involved is already dead. Every objection a reasonable person might raise gets answered with more enthusiasm, which is the Robinson formula in miniature.
It also works because of the craft. The fake footage is shot to look like genuine public-access tape, and that texture sells the bit before a word is spoken.
Friendship (2024)
Robinson's first lead film role is Friendship, written and directed by Andrew DeYoung and released by A24. It premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2024 and reached theaters in 2025.
He plays Craig Waterman, a suburban man with no friends and no instinct for other people. Paul Rudd plays the charming neighbor who makes the mistake of being nice to him. Kate Mara plays Craig's wife.
Critics split. Rolling Stone called it a film pre-designed to become a supercut, admiring the set pieces while finding the space between them uncomfortable, which for a certain audience is a recommendation. One of those set pieces, a meltdown about a spoiled superhero movie, is where our A New Marvel shirt comes from. We wrote about the film here.
The Chair Company (2025)
Then came the swing nobody expected: a serialized conspiracy comedy for HBO. The Chair Company, created again with Kanin, premiered October 12, 2025, and ran eight episodes to a finale on November 30.
Robinson plays William Ronald Trosper, a project manager at a property development firm who suffers an embarrassing accident at work and becomes consumed with exposing the chair company he blames for it. It takes him to parking lots, bars, and acting classes. Lake Bell plays his wife, with Sophia Lillis, Will Price, and Joseph Tudisco as family, and Lou Diamond Phillips recurring. Adam McKay's HyperObject Industries produces, with DeYoung among the directors.
It was HBO's biggest comedy debut in more than five years, opening to 1.4 million viewers across platforms and later averaging 3.3 million, and it held a perfect critics' score on Rotten Tomatoes through the season. HBO renewed it for a second season in November 2025, before season 1 had even finished airing.
The voice work and the deep cuts
Robinson turns up in more places than people realize: Documentary Now!, Comedy Bang! Bang!, Netflix's The Characters, Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, and The Unauthorized Bash Brothers Experience. On the voice side he played Ugly Sonic in Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers, voiced an episode of Big City Greens, and has voice credits in the game High on Life 2 and the upcoming Angry Birds Movie 3.
What's next
Season 2 of The Chair Company is coming, and reports have pointed to production in 2026. A fourth season of I Think You Should Leave has been reported as in development, with Robinson and Kanin said to have written new material, though Netflix hasn't announced anything. Robinson himself has only said the show isn't over.
Where to start
- Never seen any of it: I Think You Should Leave, season 1, episode 1. You'll know within five minutes.
- Loved that, want more: Detroiters. Same guy, warmer show.
- Want the long version: The Chair Company, which stretches one bit across eight episodes without it collapsing.
- Want it in a theater: Friendship.
And if you want the shirt that only one person in the grocery store will understand, that's what we're here for.
Sources: Wikipedia, Hour Detroit, Collider, Deadline, Variety, Rolling Stone, The Independent, FilmAffinity, BUILD Series. School and graduation dates are not public, so they are not included.