Phish Got Hooked Into a Pretty, Pretty Funny ‘Seinfeld’ Bit on ‘Everybody’s Live With John Mulaney

In case you haven’t been paying attention over the past few months, comedian John Mulaney is in the midst of one of the most bizarre late night comedy experiments since Conan O’Brien blew up the zone more than three decades ago with Late Night with Conan O’Brien.

The “wait, what?” meter hit a new high mark on Wednesday night (April 30) when Mulaney went over to his telescope for one of his usual neighborhood check-ins on his live Netflix series Everybody’s Live With John Mulaney. Whereas in past episodes his peek-in revealed murder most foul, this time the results were more mind-blowing then brain-smashing.

“It’s time to look through the old telescope!” Mulaney said mid-monologue on the episode whose theme was “Can Major Surgery Be Fun?” As he zeroed in, Mulaney focused on an apartment that looked just like the one from Seinfeld. Weird, but not nearly as weird as sidekick comedian Richard King pretending to be cranky KISS bassist Gene Simmons for a whole episode a few weeks ago.

“Same couch, layout, there’s even a clunky landline,” Mulaney said. “Wait, is that Trey [Anastasio] from Phish? And that’s Mike Gordon from Phish.” Indeed, it was Anastasio dressed as Jerry Seinfeld and bassist Mike Gordon in a George Costanza wig. “Yeah, that’s definitely Trey! And, oh my God, it’s [drummer Jon] Fishman dressed as Elaine,” he added as Fishman walked through the iconic door in a long curly hair wig, flowery dress and lipstick.

“Oh, next you’re gonna tell me [keyboardist] Page [McConnell] is Kramer!” Kind shouted as McConnell burst through the door in a towering Kramer wig and signature striped bowling shirt. “Page is Kramer. What?” Mulaney exclaimed. “It’s all the guys from Phish wearing wigs, but Trey is not.” Kind implored his boss to “put it all together” and figure out what was going on.

“It’s Seinfeld, but it’s Phish,” Mulaney said, perplexed, as the sitcom’s bass-plucking theme song bubbled up along with the instantly recognizable red and yellow show logo, except this time it read “Phish.” After Kind wondered if it was too late to change that night’s theme, Mulaney dismissed the idea with a brusque, “Yeah, it is too late. Plus, we just saw it,” though in an extended video of the bit we actually see the band members acting out a perfectly on-brand Seinfeld bit about credit history as well as flubbing lines and entrances in a series of hilarious outtakes.

Why did they write this bit? As with so many gags on Mulaney’s show, comedy logic is not the point. But as the dedicated crew at Jambase noted, the appearance by the iconic jam band came 30 years after Phish made their late night TV debut on the Late Show With David Letterman in December 1994 alongside, you guessed it, Jerry Seinfeld.

Last month, Mulaney hosted Letterman — one of his absurdist late night heroes — on an episode focused on the lack of information men have about their height as part of a series-long gag about the phantom problem. A week later he invited on another comedy inspiration, O’Brien, to debate “Are Dinosaurs Put Together Correctly?” for an episode that explicitly paid homage to Conan’s legendarily bizarre late night antics.

Watch Phish as Seinfeld below.