Phish Fans Were Way Too High for John Mulaney’s ‘Seinfeld’ Parody

Had John Mulaney not wrapped up Wednesday’s show by outlining his plan to fight three 14-year-old boys, the weirdest part of the most recent episode of Everybody’s Live likely would have been the Phish-Seinfeld mash-up that nobody saw coming.

This week’s Body Double-inspired telescope bit revealed an oddly dilapidated replica of the Seinfeld apartment, which, to everyone’s surprise, was occupied by of the band Phish, all wearing costumes and janky makeup that made them resemble the disfigured corpses of the sitcom’s four lead characters. Although, as Mulaney randomly pointed out, guitarist Trey Anastasio was not wearing a wig. “Phish is acting like Seinfeld, that’s fascinating!” sidekick Richard Kind exclaimed. 

Things got even creepier when the the show began incoherently jump cutting between various takes of the Seinfeld parody, and dubbing in inexplicable existential musings like “I’m not ever going to heaven,” all set to the sounds of haunting canned laughter and repetitive bass licks. 

Seemingly no demographic was more taken aback by Mulaney’s sketch than Phish fans. Over on the Phish subreddit, several followers of the band, who have been known to enjoy the odd psychedelic from time to time, itted that they were pretty freaked out. 

“I really hope some Phish fan out there knew nothing about this, is tripping acid and scrolling Reddit and just clicked on this blind and watched the whole thing,” one person wrote beneath a post sharing the video. 

“Lol that’s exactly how it went for me,” someone responded. 

“My acid flashbacks are having acid flashbacks,” another Redditor joked. 

“I’m high and I legit can’t tell if this is fake or AI or what in the fuck I just watched,” an especially confused fan stated.

Some people seemed genuinely unnerved by the clip. “The last 25 seconds or so really felt like reality was starting to slip away and I had to kind of take a minute to calm down,” a Phish-loving confessed. 

Another correctly pointed out that the segment felt less like the classic NBC sitcom, and more like David Lynch’s uncanny webseries Rabbits.

At least one Phish fan found that drugs had, not unlike with Phish concerts, actually improved the sketch. “It made perfect sense while high, but watching this sober is a fever dream,” they claimed. 

Adding to the “it was all a dream” vibe was the discovery of a photo of Phish with the real Jerry Seinfeld, from back when they were all on The Late Show with David Letterman together.

The connections between the band and the show run even deeper, too: The Phish song “Suzy Greenberg” shares its name with a Seinfeld producer, and one observant Phishhead somehow noticed that there’s a barely visible listing for a Phish concert on a flyer pinned to Jerry’s fridge in an episode. 

If Jerry and the gang ever headed to Jones Beach and got into jam bands, it must have happened off-screen.