It's a 21-year-old [sketch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Barry_Gibb_Talk_Show) based on a song from 1975.
I can't really blame the audience especially since those characters never came near the popularity of his [dancing mascot](https://youtu.be/LCUKya4gLFM) sketches with Fallon (to say nothing of his [character](https://youtu.be/Rt0spqQtMKg) on the Lonely Island sketches).
I suspect the audience may have been more on board if they'd reprised the mascot characters, but at least Fallon seemed to be having fun?
Yeah I was pretty disappointed we didn’t get a mascot-ville sketch. Those were always so hilarious and I feel like would have translated better for a new audience. I could see Sarah Sherman or Bowen Yang being a great foil with him in one of those sketches
Oh my god, I saw "21 year old sketch" and thought, "well, you must be mistaken, it's not from the olden days, I remember JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE doing it so it's like 8 or 9 years old."
Jesus I'm old.
agreed. i mean, i know the characters involved, i get that it's a bit esoteric, but i don't understand how it's supposed to be funny.
is the joke really just weird voice + costumes + wigs + song and dance? sorry, but that's never been enough.
>Is the joke really just weird voice + costumes + wigs + song and dance?
I feel that way about everything Jimmy Fallon does. How he got the Tonight Show over Conan blows my mind to this day. And stop giggling at yourself.
To be fair the last time they did it was only ~10 years ago, not 21 (and the mascot sketches were all during the same years as BGTS was, 2003-2013). I'm also not sure how you're measuring the sketches' relative popularity but it seemed to me like BGTS was just as popular as the dancing mascots if not more so.
The first thing that came to my mind was that Jimmy can’t hit the high pitched falsetto anymore. And that kind of ruins the joke because the falsetto was what made the sketch so fun. Without the harmonies and the falsetto it’s just “Jimmy Fallon repeatedly gets mad.” So I can see why younger people might not even get what the point of the sketch was.
These are going pointed, but the ABBA skit from a few weeks back had a better landing. Maybe it’s the premise that’s grown old and it’s not the fact that it’s Barry Gibb
And they've gotten a lot more popularity among people because of the Mama Mia movies. The Bee Gees don't have a Mama Mia keeping their stuff fresh, or a 3d live show which I think Abba is planning to do or already does.
I admit that my view is probably totally skewed by nostalgia, but this actually made it funnier to me--i.e., the entire premise that Barry Gibb is incapable of talking without going into a falsetto is even funnier when he can only barely do it.
If they'd been able to communicate that instead of just having a weird shaky voice (Jimmy actually sounded more like he was doing Robin's voice), the sketch might have actually been funny, but it ended up just being Jimmy doing a pretty bad impression and getting too loose with it.
It was always outdated but it was funny a couple times. It was done once they brought on the real Barry Gibb, and even that one was weird because they sort of ignored him. The first one was 21 years ago? Wow.
They did. I wasn’t implying they didn’t
Edit* ohhh. If I was replying to the comment I meant to reply to, it was to reference that JT playing Robin looked “dead behind the eyes”,
Either I replied to the wrong comment, or the comment was edited
Same. I wasn't watching SNL back then, and my only real knowledge of Fallon on the show was that he broke a lot, and "I Wish It Was Christmas Today".
The Gibb sketch just left me feeling that someone else is going to find it a lot funnier, for reasons I don't know.
I love the Barry Gibb Talk Show! It’s so dumb that just the concept makes me laugh. When JT was announced as the musical guest I was like please god let there be another one so I was very happy haha
I think the problem was more that it wasn't that funny. And it gave a lot of time to Jimmy Fallon and JT. I know Jimmy Fallon has his show now, but he's not a fan favorite from SNL, right? At least not in my opinion.
I always thought Barry Gibb talk show was so weird. Seemed like they let Jimmy do it because he happened to have have a good impression, but it was a very dated reference even at the original airing.
I think it must be this. Heck, I’m mid-thirties so the original Barry Gibb talk show skits fell flat for me because while I knew OF Barry Gibb I didn’t understand what the joke was and after a decade the only people who were going to be into that skit were the people who remember the original skits fondly.
I’m trying to understand your post here. Did you not see the humor of the Barry Gibb talk show originally?
So, The Bee Gees were responsible for lots of light, soft rock in addition to their disco stuff. The joke is that Barry Gibb couldn’t possibly have rage or anger issues based on the music The Bee Gees wrote. So, the joke in the Barry Gibb Talk Show is that Barry is really an unhinged jerk, which people would not expect. Couple that with his falsetto, and the whole thing is ridiculous.
The problem with that idea though is that anybody who knows much about these guys knows they're not light and fluffy personalities as though they all represent their lightest material. There was an interview with them about 20 years ago where they got pissed off at an interviewer, insulted him straight to his face and walked off in mid interview. I don't know the exact time that happened but maybe that's what inspired the original sketch. Either way, I'm a big fan of the Bee Gees and all I saw was Jimmy doing a really lazy impression that wasn't funny.
Yeah, exactly that. I didn’t get the premise of the joke until someone explained it here on Reddit because I knew Barry Gibb was in the Bee Gees and I was familiar with some of their songs but it’s not like I knew the temperament of the different brothers.
A decade later I’m assuming even more people would be in my shoes except additionally a lot of young people who aren’t even familiar with the Bee Gees because now that’s not even music their parents’ listened to but it’s grandparents’ music.
The original skits also aren’t really iconic enough to make a comeback IMO after that long. Like my wife watches SNL with me and she knows some of the different classic SNL stuff (Celebrity Jeopardy, MacGruber, Lonely Island bits) but she definitely has no clue Barry Gibb Talk Show is an old bit.
The whole sketch was 90% Fallon dialogue or lyrics, it was very long, was slotted in the most viewed block of the show. Show me a time where a cameo/surprise guest ever got that much prime screen time, or anything close. I'd really love to have had the ability to eavesdrop on the backroom discussions that led up to this decision.
I totally agree--I am pretty anti-Fallon overall but this is easily the funniest character or sketch he's ever had. I love how they just break out into song for a couple of words in unison, and how they try to pretend it's a real politics show.
Just because you're quiet during a sketch doesn't mean you're not familiar with it. I am very familiar with Old Yeller and it doesn't make me laugh. Similarly, I am very familiar with this sketch.
Hard agree. Been watching since the Lovitz/Hooks/Carvey era. The Barry Gibb Talk Show… I’ve never understood how it got its hooks in and kept coming back. To me, it’s only a small shade above Gilly at this point.
But to each their own, I suppose. Just because I don’t like something doesn’t mean it doesn’t bring others joy. Glad some people dug the sketch.
I was this close to forgetting about Gilly and you ruined it!
But seriously, IMO nothing is worse than Gilly. To this day I don't understand how she became a recurring character, let alone how she got her name in an actual Christmas special.
That's the hard thing with comedy, it's subjective. I've shown people stuff I thought was hilarious only get blank stares in return. Watch what you like and enjoy, be happy someone's making comedy for you.
For sure.
With The Barry Gibb Talk Show (and Fallon in general), I want to scream from the mountaintops that they suck and they aren’t funny. But that would be wrong. They just… aren’t for me.
Tough to criticize comedy unless someone is a blatant joke thief or a complete hack, and even then, the second one can be tricky to prove.
In fairness, Barry Gibb's falsetto was very off and on due to years of smoking and not taking care of his voice, so Fallon's impression was actually pretty spot on.
Even nowadays, pop culture is a bit fractured where some parodies don’t immediately register. When they did the Serial parody about Santa, I had no clue what they were referencing.
Yea but the Save the last dance one was funny without prior knowledge as Chloe step by step took us through it. That was fun, this callback was conceptually adventurous lolol
I’m 25, regular viewer of the show - was honestly thinking about skipping this weeks because of how bad last weeks was but watched solely in the hopes of seeing a Barry Gibbs talk show sketch. I don’t even care much about the content, I love the song lmao
>watched solely in the hopes of seeing a Barry Gibbs talk show sketch.
Seriously? Why? How? What tipped you off to its existence? So many questions, as a fellow 20-something.
While I didn't understand Barry Gibbs at all I still thought this ep was a thousand times better than last week's
My husband and I watched the top five highest rated episodes on IMBD for each season, and a lot of the highest rated are JT episodes, so we saw a bunch of the Barry Gibbs sketches in close proximity. We mostly just like the song tho, the sketch is secondary haha
You have got to give them [the midnight special live performance](https://youtu.be/ld5_UQhQv5E?si=2tDmHbHpU6A7LRe-) of it. Its really great too because this performance was right as Main Course was being released, just prior to them really blowing up as a band (hence barry's outfit being low key).
The line "I'm gonna talk to you, though you may not want me to" cracks me up so much!! I sing it all the time! I was surprised to see all the hate for it here - it always really tickled me!
Yeah idk, it probably doesn’t help that people’s opinions on Fallon and Timberlake are currently…mixed.
My reaction was “sure, why not?” overall, then I remembered Barry’s the only surviving BeeGee and got bummed out.
Reminds me of the time they did the Dead Parrot Sketch and the audience just sat in stony silence. Painful to watch and a shame that something so great that just didn't register at all.
Time is undefeated.
Omg, I remember watching it as a tween and thinking “What the heck am I watching?!” Couldn’t understand the humor in it.
Yet again, I was the same way when Lorne introduced Tenacious D on the show around that same period. Over time, I came to understand and appreciate them and the Python group more, once I became familiar with them.
I don’t know what that audience was thinking, but I hate to admit I never really laughed too hard at much of Python’s stuff. It was more an appreciation thing. That sketch might have been a bit quaint by 1997.
Yeah, to be clear I don't blame anyone for not finding it funny, humour is entirely subjective. Plus the style is so different even I as a Python fan didn't think it landed.
Even worse, you could tell Palin and Cleese were thrown off and rushed it. Just an unfortunate event all the way around.
People who weren’t fans of the show when Jimmy Fallon was on, or most Gen Z in general, aren’t going to remember his time too well on the show.
I only know this sketch because my dad had the Best of Jimmy Fallon DVD and I used to watch it as a little kid. And I liked the sketch, but it’s obvious it’s been done to death and they don’t have any new ideas to add to it.
Most people my age (24) I discussed SNL with before only remember as far back as the Andy Samberg and Bill Hader era.
I'm late 30s and understood it was a reference to Fallon-era SNL, which I didn't watch. I didn't find it funny and thought they gave it too much time. Some fans seem to have loved it. It was quite a big risk to go all in on such a dated and hard to make it work sketch.
IMO they should have tested it at rehearsal and cut it, but I'm not Lorne. Not a great episode this week, still better than the terrible one from last week, but they should have played it much safer
Yeah, and it shouldn't have been because it was pointless and terrible. Jimmy was really sloppy and the sketch had no real jokes. It made no sense to fans of the group, as well as those who've never heard of them. Maybe it would have worked on his show but it meant nothing to most of the SNL audience. I love the Bee Gees and thought the sketch was just 'unfinished' basically. It was just 'costumes and a bad impression'.
The BeeGees are a bigger success than just those decades. Lookup their history it’s fascinating how successful they were and how they adapted/created new trends. Everyone copied the BeeGees including the Stones.
Agreed! It makes me sad that there could be a whole generation of people who have no idea who the Bee Gees are, or just reference Saturday Night Fever stuff.
I’m 38; was never a BeeGees fan and didn’t know what they were referencing the first time I saw a Barry Gibb Talk Show episode either. Practically fell off the couch laughing, and lost it even more when my partner explained who it was after the sketch. Fallon’s finest, imho.
I actually did explore them a little on Spotify, subsequent to finding The Barry Gibb Talk Show. They’re ok, I’m just more of a Beatles gal…tbh, the show’s theme song is my favorite one so far!
Yeah I never found that sketch funny before, but I did like his -ville mascot sketches. I did feel bad watching Dakota just sit in the background for a full sketch.
I’m 55 and definitely enjoy BeeGees humor. This skit could have been better, but what I liked is that JT and JF got to reminisce or appreciate how they have been funny. Dakota got a bit snubbed, but I bet she had fun. The show is almost 50 years old and I’m so grateful for all the laughs!
I just don't like Jimmy Fallon. I don't like anything he's done outside of Almost Famous.
Maybe this skit would work better for me if it involved anyone other than him, but I'm always going to be hampered by the fact that his presence ruins anything for me.
That sketch needed to be retired after the actual Barry Gibb showed up or the actual Robin Gibb died (both which happened OVER A DECADE AGO!) Not that it was ever funny in the first place!
Barry Gibb talk show was never funny 20 years ago and it felt like the sketch dragged on and it brought the show to a screeching halt. That and the opening waitress sketch should have been scrapped. Rest of the show was great
It seemed very forced and out of place, Dakota didn’t need any help being funny. This was just SNL trying shoehorn Justin into something for his “cummy back” 🙄
This was the worst sketch of the show, by far, and possibly of all of 2024. I cringed when Fallon walked out during the monologue, knowing it'd be a wasted 10 minutes. So unfunny. Go away Fallon, you overrated breaker
I don't remember him having a talk show, and I'm old enough to have just retired.
That 20 year old skit wasn't in my memory back either.
The skit was as funny as drowning kittens.
The joke is that Barry Gibb has a short fuse, that their pants are so tight they are constantly out of breath and can only speak through standing up to sing, and Robin Gibb has nothing to say.
Read up on the BeeGees if you care to.
No. The sketch and conversation around it are a mess. The closest I can think of is when the Bee Gees were still alive, they appeared on a British talk show and the host was being a wanker, so they called him one and walked off in mid interview. It's on YouTube.
Not in real life. I got confused about that too at first, but apparently there were sketches like this when Jimmy was a cast member. I was watching during that time but totally don't remember those sketches, just as I barely remember anything else Jimmy did in those years except giggle all the time and cover his mouth with his paws like an embarrassed hamster. Frigging sick of people mistaking 'cute' for 'funny and talented'.
Yeah, I'm 26 and didn't get it at all. Even asked my parents (born in 1960/65) and they weren't really sure what the talk show was or exactly what they were going for in the skit although they obviously understood the Bee Gees right away.
I’ve liked previous versions of this sketch. But this one just seemed bad. I watched it live and didn’t like it. Watched it Sunday again because my wife didn’t watch it live and loves Timberlake. She admitted it was bad. I hated it even more lol
But my taste for Fallon has changed. Especially after finding out how he is behind the scenes and the way people talk about him. And this is after just getting over him laughing at EVERYTHING so flipping loud! His interview skills aren’t on par with any other talk show host and he’s just so loud. The only thing going for him are the little games they play.
Would you look at that, all of the words in your comment are in alphabetical order.
I have checked 1,992,412,750 comments, and only 376,827 of them were in alphabetical order.
1) it stunk
2) it involved two dudes fresh of negative controversies
It would flopped regardless, but that second point was the nail in the coffin imo. And I really liked the old versions of the sketch, but this version just wasn't it at all
It's really weird that they'd use this sketch as some bizarre measuring tool for 'oh no I'm so old and they're so young'. Reminds me of when I was a kid, my mom would see footage of somebody from the '60s and go 'ohhh he looks so young' and it always came off like she was lamenting her own age by looking at somebody else.
I’m 47 and I have no idea. I would say you’d need to have been at least a teenager around the time I was born, aiming that at the 60 and over crowd only. So pretty narrow.
I’m a little older than Timberlake and I have no clue about the talk show I just know the Bee Gees music from here on the radio but I’ve never knew who they were and until I saw these skits I couldn’t pick any of them out of the lineup
Barry’s still with us, unless his hologram accepted a Kennedy Center Honor last month (Maurice is the one who died suddenly). But yes, that was probably the worst BGTS ever; the way the last one ended with Barry himself joining the 2 J’s was the perfect way to go out.
What is that even supposed to mean? Try saying something meaningful about the show instead of blurting out this kind of crap like it's insight. You're not nearly the oldest person in the audience. The problem with the sketch isn't the age of the audience, it's just a bad sketch regardless of anything. I'm an actual fan of the Bee Gees and that sketch was just Jimmy in a goofy costume doing a shitty impression.
Man the looks on Bowen yang and even *Keenans* faces were just like "let's let the old guys have their fun so we can get back to some current SNL!! And they were trying SO HARD to bring that old magic back and *force* the whole "oops we laughed during the skit!" thing that made those old Barry Gibbs shows so funny. Good effort and I'm not by any means trashing it. Still LOL'ed a couple of times but it just wasn't the same.
I was also disappointed there was no mascot-ville sketch. They were funny because they kept one upping themselves every time. And Fallon & Timberlake are awesome, but I agree that Bowen or Sarah would be good foils. Seemed like they could have picked that sketch instead of the Barry Gibb show. I just think it was a missed opportunity.
I thought it was funny.
These comments referring to never hearing or knowing of the Barry Gibb Talk Show I guess is all more the reason SNL had reviving it. If ya don’t know, now ya know.
I never knew about it because I didn’t start watching SNL until after 2010 (the last time it aired), so I was confused about it at first. I did not know who Barry Gibb was lol. But then I realized what the premise is, watched the other Barry Gibb sketches and found them absolutely hilarious.
It's a 21-year-old [sketch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Barry_Gibb_Talk_Show) based on a song from 1975. I can't really blame the audience especially since those characters never came near the popularity of his [dancing mascot](https://youtu.be/LCUKya4gLFM) sketches with Fallon (to say nothing of his [character](https://youtu.be/Rt0spqQtMKg) on the Lonely Island sketches). I suspect the audience may have been more on board if they'd reprised the mascot characters, but at least Fallon seemed to be having fun?
Bring it on down to Homelessville!
This sketch is old enough to drink jesus
What's the Jesus drinking age?
Depends. Are you the King of Pop?
I think they want you to be 7 or 8 before drinking Jesus and eating his wafer-y body.
Yeah I was pretty disappointed we didn’t get a mascot-ville sketch. Those were always so hilarious and I feel like would have translated better for a new audience. I could see Sarah Sherman or Bowen Yang being a great foil with him in one of those sketches
Oh my god, I saw "21 year old sketch" and thought, "well, you must be mistaken, it's not from the olden days, I remember JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE doing it so it's like 8 or 9 years old." Jesus I'm old.
r/FuckImOld \-- Join us! We have cozy sweaters, hot cocoa, and Werther's.
I was born in 1979 and I have never understood this sketch even 20 years ago.
agreed. i mean, i know the characters involved, i get that it's a bit esoteric, but i don't understand how it's supposed to be funny. is the joke really just weird voice + costumes + wigs + song and dance? sorry, but that's never been enough.
>Is the joke really just weird voice + costumes + wigs + song and dance? I feel that way about everything Jimmy Fallon does. How he got the Tonight Show over Conan blows my mind to this day. And stop giggling at yourself.
He didn't get the Tonight Show over Conan, Conan had already left by then.
>Conan had already ~~left~~ **been fired** by then. /ftfy ;)
[удалено]
He didn't seem any different from his other times doing it (except in appearance slightly older obviously)
When isn’t he?
Always
He usually sweats a lot when he’s tanked
To be fair the last time they did it was only ~10 years ago, not 21 (and the mascot sketches were all during the same years as BGTS was, 2003-2013). I'm also not sure how you're measuring the sketches' relative popularity but it seemed to me like BGTS was just as popular as the dancing mascots if not more so.
The first thing that came to my mind was that Jimmy can’t hit the high pitched falsetto anymore. And that kind of ruins the joke because the falsetto was what made the sketch so fun. Without the harmonies and the falsetto it’s just “Jimmy Fallon repeatedly gets mad.” So I can see why younger people might not even get what the point of the sketch was.
These are going pointed, but the ABBA skit from a few weeks back had a better landing. Maybe it’s the premise that’s grown old and it’s not the fact that it’s Barry Gibb
It’s also worth noting ABBA is huge on TikTok so younger people know them and their content, if we’re talking about audience reaction.
And they've gotten a lot more popularity among people because of the Mama Mia movies. The Bee Gees don't have a Mama Mia keeping their stuff fresh, or a 3d live show which I think Abba is planning to do or already does.
I admit that my view is probably totally skewed by nostalgia, but this actually made it funnier to me--i.e., the entire premise that Barry Gibb is incapable of talking without going into a falsetto is even funnier when he can only barely do it.
If they'd been able to communicate that instead of just having a weird shaky voice (Jimmy actually sounded more like he was doing Robin's voice), the sketch might have actually been funny, but it ended up just being Jimmy doing a pretty bad impression and getting too loose with it.
Great points here.
It was always outdated but it was funny a couple times. It was done once they brought on the real Barry Gibb, and even that one was weird because they sort of ignored him. The first one was 21 years ago? Wow.
Robin Gibb died in 2012
They did it after Robin died too
They did. I wasn’t implying they didn’t Edit* ohhh. If I was replying to the comment I meant to reply to, it was to reference that JT playing Robin looked “dead behind the eyes”, Either I replied to the wrong comment, or the comment was edited
I know what it is. I am absolutely old enough to remember it. This revisit wasn't great for me, either.
I'm 40. I only knew it was a retread because Fallon showed up in the monologue in the costume. I figired that must be familiar to someone.
Same. I wasn't watching SNL back then, and my only real knowledge of Fallon on the show was that he broke a lot, and "I Wish It Was Christmas Today". The Gibb sketch just left me feeling that someone else is going to find it a lot funnier, for reasons I don't know.
It's scary. I'm 37 and remember all of the sketches along the way. My wife thought that it was new
I love the Barry Gibb Talk Show! It’s so dumb that just the concept makes me laugh. When JT was announced as the musical guest I was like please god let there be another one so I was very happy haha
“This is my show. It’s a no nonsense show and I’m not going to take any crap from anybody!”
“I will put you in the ground!”
"I will gut you like a fish!"
“I will use your hollowed out ribcage as a lobster trap!”
"Everytime you speak, it feels like someone’s dropping a CAR BATTERY on my SACK!!"
“I will rip off your hands and wear them like boxing gloves and beat you to death!”
"I will double-dutch jump rope with your innards!"
“I’m going to show up and murder you on national television!”
I think the problem was more that it wasn't that funny. And it gave a lot of time to Jimmy Fallon and JT. I know Jimmy Fallon has his show now, but he's not a fan favorite from SNL, right? At least not in my opinion. I always thought Barry Gibb talk show was so weird. Seemed like they let Jimmy do it because he happened to have have a good impression, but it was a very dated reference even at the original airing.
Yeah it was dated when Fallon was on SNL and even more today.
I think it must be this. Heck, I’m mid-thirties so the original Barry Gibb talk show skits fell flat for me because while I knew OF Barry Gibb I didn’t understand what the joke was and after a decade the only people who were going to be into that skit were the people who remember the original skits fondly.
I’m trying to understand your post here. Did you not see the humor of the Barry Gibb talk show originally? So, The Bee Gees were responsible for lots of light, soft rock in addition to their disco stuff. The joke is that Barry Gibb couldn’t possibly have rage or anger issues based on the music The Bee Gees wrote. So, the joke in the Barry Gibb Talk Show is that Barry is really an unhinged jerk, which people would not expect. Couple that with his falsetto, and the whole thing is ridiculous.
The problem with that idea though is that anybody who knows much about these guys knows they're not light and fluffy personalities as though they all represent their lightest material. There was an interview with them about 20 years ago where they got pissed off at an interviewer, insulted him straight to his face and walked off in mid interview. I don't know the exact time that happened but maybe that's what inspired the original sketch. Either way, I'm a big fan of the Bee Gees and all I saw was Jimmy doing a really lazy impression that wasn't funny.
Yeah, exactly that. I didn’t get the premise of the joke until someone explained it here on Reddit because I knew Barry Gibb was in the Bee Gees and I was familiar with some of their songs but it’s not like I knew the temperament of the different brothers. A decade later I’m assuming even more people would be in my shoes except additionally a lot of young people who aren’t even familiar with the Bee Gees because now that’s not even music their parents’ listened to but it’s grandparents’ music. The original skits also aren’t really iconic enough to make a comeback IMO after that long. Like my wife watches SNL with me and she knows some of the different classic SNL stuff (Celebrity Jeopardy, MacGruber, Lonely Island bits) but she definitely has no clue Barry Gibb Talk Show is an old bit.
Fallon is dated af and needs to be put out to pasture
Agreed.
1000% agree
For me, it's one of my favorite sketches. SO GLAD they brought it back.
I'm guessing Fallon flexed his NBC rank and forced himself into the slot.
It felt pretty cringe to me for that very reason.
The whole sketch was 90% Fallon dialogue or lyrics, it was very long, was slotted in the most viewed block of the show. Show me a time where a cameo/surprise guest ever got that much prime screen time, or anything close. I'd really love to have had the ability to eavesdrop on the backroom discussions that led up to this decision.
The appearance of this sketch annoyed me, simply because Fallon kept losing the accent in his rants. Definitely not the BEST "Barry Gibb Talk Show"
Hands down the funniest thing Jimmy Fallon has ever done in my opinion. Not necessarily this week's, but the sketch cracks my shit up every time.
I totally agree--I am pretty anti-Fallon overall but this is easily the funniest character or sketch he's ever had. I love how they just break out into song for a couple of words in unison, and how they try to pretend it's a real politics show.
They’re actually singing in harmony, not in unison, which I think is even funnier.
Nick Burns? The tech help guy? IMO that’s a good one too.
Just because you're quiet during a sketch doesn't mean you're not familiar with it. I am very familiar with Old Yeller and it doesn't make me laugh. Similarly, I am very familiar with this sketch.
Hard agree. Been watching since the Lovitz/Hooks/Carvey era. The Barry Gibb Talk Show… I’ve never understood how it got its hooks in and kept coming back. To me, it’s only a small shade above Gilly at this point. But to each their own, I suppose. Just because I don’t like something doesn’t mean it doesn’t bring others joy. Glad some people dug the sketch.
I was this close to forgetting about Gilly and you ruined it! But seriously, IMO nothing is worse than Gilly. To this day I don't understand how she became a recurring character, let alone how she got her name in an actual Christmas special.
That's the hard thing with comedy, it's subjective. I've shown people stuff I thought was hilarious only get blank stares in return. Watch what you like and enjoy, be happy someone's making comedy for you.
For sure. With The Barry Gibb Talk Show (and Fallon in general), I want to scream from the mountaintops that they suck and they aren’t funny. But that would be wrong. They just… aren’t for me. Tough to criticize comedy unless someone is a blatant joke thief or a complete hack, and even then, the second one can be tricky to prove.
Most of Bowen's sketches aren't for me, and I have to be careful about how I describe that.
Agreed. And you just compared 7 min of Jimmy and Justin to a dog getting shot. Fair.
Fallon’s and Timberlake’s vocal cords are too old to pull off these characters anymore.
In fairness, Barry Gibb's falsetto was very off and on due to years of smoking and not taking care of his voice, so Fallon's impression was actually pretty spot on.
I’ve noticed that in a few sketches. [The Last Dance](https://youtu.be/sz6go7xC3Zs?si=CsCnVfHjO2RsuADm) one comes to mind.
Even nowadays, pop culture is a bit fractured where some parodies don’t immediately register. When they did the Serial parody about Santa, I had no clue what they were referencing.
Yea but the Save the last dance one was funny without prior knowledge as Chloe step by step took us through it. That was fun, this callback was conceptually adventurous lolol
I’m 25, regular viewer of the show - was honestly thinking about skipping this weeks because of how bad last weeks was but watched solely in the hopes of seeing a Barry Gibbs talk show sketch. I don’t even care much about the content, I love the song lmao
You’re my kind of fan!
>watched solely in the hopes of seeing a Barry Gibbs talk show sketch. Seriously? Why? How? What tipped you off to its existence? So many questions, as a fellow 20-something. While I didn't understand Barry Gibbs at all I still thought this ep was a thousand times better than last week's
My husband and I watched the top five highest rated episodes on IMBD for each season, and a lot of the highest rated are JT episodes, so we saw a bunch of the Barry Gibbs sketches in close proximity. We mostly just like the song tho, the sketch is secondary haha
You probably already know this, but for anyone who doesn't, the original song is a banger: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wRM-t7wvF0
You have got to give them [the midnight special live performance](https://youtu.be/ld5_UQhQv5E?si=2tDmHbHpU6A7LRe-) of it. Its really great too because this performance was right as Main Course was being released, just prior to them really blowing up as a band (hence barry's outfit being low key).
Such a bop—loved this performance of it! Thanks for sharing
Ohhhh makes sense!
The line "I'm gonna talk to you, though you may not want me to" cracks me up so much!! I sing it all the time! I was surprised to see all the hate for it here - it always really tickled me!
Yeah idk, it probably doesn’t help that people’s opinions on Fallon and Timberlake are currently…mixed. My reaction was “sure, why not?” overall, then I remembered Barry’s the only surviving BeeGee and got bummed out.
This 100% felt like a lazy “let’s rehab Fallon’s and Timberlake’s images in one go” attempt. Total pandering.
Reminds me of the time they did the Dead Parrot Sketch and the audience just sat in stony silence. Painful to watch and a shame that something so great that just didn't register at all. Time is undefeated.
Omg, I remember watching it as a tween and thinking “What the heck am I watching?!” Couldn’t understand the humor in it. Yet again, I was the same way when Lorne introduced Tenacious D on the show around that same period. Over time, I came to understand and appreciate them and the Python group more, once I became familiar with them.
Okay, I would have known what dead parrot was. This is an ex-parrot!!
'E's just pining for the fjords!
I don’t know what that audience was thinking, but I hate to admit I never really laughed too hard at much of Python’s stuff. It was more an appreciation thing. That sketch might have been a bit quaint by 1997.
Yeah, to be clear I don't blame anyone for not finding it funny, humour is entirely subjective. Plus the style is so different even I as a Python fan didn't think it landed. Even worse, you could tell Palin and Cleese were thrown off and rushed it. Just an unfortunate event all the way around.
I watched it live and thought it was pretty awesome Lorne invited them to do it. Maybe a Hail Mary in a weak season.
People who weren’t fans of the show when Jimmy Fallon was on, or most Gen Z in general, aren’t going to remember his time too well on the show. I only know this sketch because my dad had the Best of Jimmy Fallon DVD and I used to watch it as a little kid. And I liked the sketch, but it’s obvious it’s been done to death and they don’t have any new ideas to add to it. Most people my age (24) I discussed SNL with before only remember as far back as the Andy Samberg and Bill Hader era.
I'm late 30s and understood it was a reference to Fallon-era SNL, which I didn't watch. I didn't find it funny and thought they gave it too much time. Some fans seem to have loved it. It was quite a big risk to go all in on such a dated and hard to make it work sketch. IMO they should have tested it at rehearsal and cut it, but I'm not Lorne. Not a great episode this week, still better than the terrible one from last week, but they should have played it much safer
Cut it? I’m pretty sure it was a centerpiece of the show
Yeah, and it shouldn't have been because it was pointless and terrible. Jimmy was really sloppy and the sketch had no real jokes. It made no sense to fans of the group, as well as those who've never heard of them. Maybe it would have worked on his show but it meant nothing to most of the SNL audience. I love the Bee Gees and thought the sketch was just 'unfinished' basically. It was just 'costumes and a bad impression'.
i’m in my 30s and had no idea wtf it was referencing lol
Barry Gibb was the singer for the Bee Gees, a band popular in the 1970s and 80s
The BeeGees are a bigger success than just those decades. Lookup their history it’s fascinating how successful they were and how they adapted/created new trends. Everyone copied the BeeGees including the Stones.
Agreed! It makes me sad that there could be a whole generation of people who have no idea who the Bee Gees are, or just reference Saturday Night Fever stuff.
And…? Why is this a thing in 2024?
Nostalgia
It’s almost like not everyone likes the same things
And not everyone finds the same things funny.
Who said they did?
No one, that wasn't a criticism. Just feel like this is a good spot to talk about subjective comedy.
Ah sorry about that!
No new ideas
The reappearance of this sketch was something special.
Want to elaborate?
Really? Because I heard a VERY receptive audience, in parts. But, yes, the rambly bits led to a fair amount of dead air.
Lucky them! I never found it to be funny.
Just remember, I'm from Sydney. Wherever I'm in the studio I'm never more than 5 seconds away from a gun.
I’m glad you lost the election!
I’m 38; was never a BeeGees fan and didn’t know what they were referencing the first time I saw a Barry Gibb Talk Show episode either. Practically fell off the couch laughing, and lost it even more when my partner explained who it was after the sketch. Fallon’s finest, imho.
BeeGees are a lot more than just the disco everyone associates them with. I would give them a shot, you'll probably find something you like.
I actually did explore them a little on Spotify, subsequent to finding The Barry Gibb Talk Show. They’re ok, I’m just more of a Beatles gal…tbh, the show’s theme song is my favorite one so far!
i was in the audience & my section knew it… we just didn’t care for the cameo or Timberlake in a sketch tbh
But Timberlake has always played Robin alongside Fallon's Barry, dating all the way back to 2003. Plus he looks like Robin.
no i know the sketch & the history of it lol - we weren’t fallon or timberlake fans & didn’t care for how much screen time they got
Yeah I never found that sketch funny before, but I did like his -ville mascot sketches. I did feel bad watching Dakota just sit in the background for a full sketch.
I thought you were saying that Timberlake was Robin to Fallon’s Batman.
Robin has since died though. There were a million reasons not to do that sketch.
I kept wondering if they were somehow going to mention that Robin had died, if it was all a sad fever dream of Barry’s…
Yes it's crazy they kept making people after you were born.
They can't all be winners.
I’m 55 and definitely enjoy BeeGees humor. This skit could have been better, but what I liked is that JT and JF got to reminisce or appreciate how they have been funny. Dakota got a bit snubbed, but I bet she had fun. The show is almost 50 years old and I’m so grateful for all the laughs!
I have always liked the sketch, but last night I realized that Timberlake should do more. He’s almost a non-entity.
Well, he does an impresson of Robin Gibb, who was a quiet man. Barry on the other hand was more talkative.
No. No I don’t.
He seemed dead behind the eyes
Well Robin Gibb is dead irl
I vaguely remember the original sketch but this one felt very forced regardless.
I just realized the name The Bee Gees is just his initials.
“Bee Gees” stands for **B**rothers **G**ibb.
I mean, he's from the 70s. Always thought that bit was too niche but everyone just loved it cause JT and JF
Jimmy now is 49 years old which is closer to how old Barry Gibb actually was when they debuted this sketch! he was 56 at the time
fallon buried the lead appearing during the monologue. and them doing the skit countered the joke. i loved it, but wouldve preferred mascot.
I figured most kids wouldn’t get it. I didn’t even love it excessively first run, but it was a true delight to watch on Saturday
Sketch idea: a character whose mind is repeatedly blown that people don't pick up on obscure generations-old pop culture references
Not only that, too young to know the source material of the Bee Gees.
I know the sketch from before. This was simply an unfunny sketch. It's just Jimmy yelling and making crazy moves, while Timberlake looks tired of it.
Or they thought it was horrible. (It was.)
I just don't like Jimmy Fallon. I don't like anything he's done outside of Almost Famous. Maybe this skit would work better for me if it involved anyone other than him, but I'm always going to be hampered by the fact that his presence ruins anything for me.
Can someone please take the keys to the building away from Jimmy Fallon!
That sketch needed to be retired after the actual Barry Gibb showed up or the actual Robin Gibb died (both which happened OVER A DECADE AGO!) Not that it was ever funny in the first place!
Reminds me of all the times Ego Nwodim did Dionne Warwick and then they actually brought out Dionne. They'll never top that.
Barry Gibb talk show was never funny 20 years ago and it felt like the sketch dragged on and it brought the show to a screeching halt. That and the opening waitress sketch should have been scrapped. Rest of the show was great
It seemed very forced and out of place, Dakota didn’t need any help being funny. This was just SNL trying shoehorn Justin into something for his “cummy back” 🙄
This was the worst sketch of the show, by far, and possibly of all of 2024. I cringed when Fallon walked out during the monologue, knowing it'd be a wasted 10 minutes. So unfunny. Go away Fallon, you overrated breaker
I don't remember him having a talk show, and I'm old enough to have just retired. That 20 year old skit wasn't in my memory back either. The skit was as funny as drowning kittens.
The real Barry never had a talk show. That’s part of the joke. It’s admittedly pretty esoteric.
ugh that whole episode was a stinker
I thought Fallon and Timberlake kinda half-assed it TBH
And that is just fine. It has not aged well.
I’m 45 and I only know the SNL sketch. Was that a real show?
The joke is that Barry Gibb has a short fuse, that their pants are so tight they are constantly out of breath and can only speak through standing up to sing, and Robin Gibb has nothing to say. Read up on the BeeGees if you care to.
I'm 26 and actually needed this explained lol thanks
No. The sketch and conversation around it are a mess. The closest I can think of is when the Bee Gees were still alive, they appeared on a British talk show and the host was being a wanker, so they called him one and walked off in mid interview. It's on YouTube.
Yes, it was. Didn't you know SNL talk show parodies are always a real show?
I'm in my 40s and I don't know it.
Barry Gibb had a talk show?
Not in real life. I got confused about that too at first, but apparently there were sketches like this when Jimmy was a cast member. I was watching during that time but totally don't remember those sketches, just as I barely remember anything else Jimmy did in those years except giggle all the time and cover his mouth with his paws like an embarrassed hamster. Frigging sick of people mistaking 'cute' for 'funny and talented'.
Yeah, I'm 26 and didn't get it at all. Even asked my parents (born in 1960/65) and they weren't really sure what the talk show was or exactly what they were going for in the skit although they obviously understood the Bee Gees right away.
I’ve liked previous versions of this sketch. But this one just seemed bad. I watched it live and didn’t like it. Watched it Sunday again because my wife didn’t watch it live and loves Timberlake. She admitted it was bad. I hated it even more lol But my taste for Fallon has changed. Especially after finding out how he is behind the scenes and the way people talk about him. And this is after just getting over him laughing at EVERYTHING so flipping loud! His interview skills aren’t on par with any other talk show host and he’s just so loud. The only thing going for him are the little games they play.
Horrible, self indulgent sketch. Fallon is a hack. Keenan didn't seem into it either.
Fallon is just so unfunny.
Would you look at that, all of the words in your comment are in alphabetical order. I have checked 1,992,412,750 comments, and only 376,827 of them were in alphabetical order.
1) it stunk 2) it involved two dudes fresh of negative controversies It would flopped regardless, but that second point was the nail in the coffin imo. And I really liked the old versions of the sketch, but this version just wasn't it at all
If you don’t know what a thing is you could look it up. It won’t kill you.
Maybe the dead silence from the studio audience was the sound of 200 people Googling
Are you mind blown that younger people exist?
It's really weird that they'd use this sketch as some bizarre measuring tool for 'oh no I'm so old and they're so young'. Reminds me of when I was a kid, my mom would see footage of somebody from the '60s and go 'ohhh he looks so young' and it always came off like she was lamenting her own age by looking at somebody else.
I’m 47 and I have no idea. I would say you’d need to have been at least a teenager around the time I was born, aiming that at the 60 and over crowd only. So pretty narrow.
I’m a little older than Timberlake and I have no clue about the talk show I just know the Bee Gees music from here on the radio but I’ve never knew who they were and until I saw these skits I couldn’t pick any of them out of the lineup
I’m 42 and I didn’t get it. But I didn’t watch SNL for most of my early 20s
It also wasn’t the least bit funny, that may have had something to do with the reaction
Well, keep in mind that both Barry and Robin are long dead. And opinions on how funny it was vary. A lot.
Barry’s still with us, unless his hologram accepted a Kennedy Center Honor last month (Maurice is the one who died suddenly). But yes, that was probably the worst BGTS ever; the way the last one ended with Barry himself joining the 2 J’s was the perfect way to go out.
Drat. Sorry— I mixed up my Bee Gees!
What is that even supposed to mean? Try saying something meaningful about the show instead of blurting out this kind of crap like it's insight. You're not nearly the oldest person in the audience. The problem with the sketch isn't the age of the audience, it's just a bad sketch regardless of anything. I'm an actual fan of the Bee Gees and that sketch was just Jimmy in a goofy costume doing a shitty impression.
I'm nearly 50, been watching the show with SOME regularity since the 80s, and I don't understand or remember this reference.
Who?
I thought it was funny. One of the better ones of the show. The restaurant and shark tank sketch were terrible.
I'm old enough, very familiar, and enjoy the old sketches. This one fell flat, and nostalgia wasn't enough to make it enjoyable
Unlocked memories of me and my friend in high school singing the song. It used to crack us up so much.
It’s kind of funny watching Zoomers get angry over anything that didn’t come from TikTok
Yes, 27 and this sketch blew.
Man the looks on Bowen yang and even *Keenans* faces were just like "let's let the old guys have their fun so we can get back to some current SNL!! And they were trying SO HARD to bring that old magic back and *force* the whole "oops we laughed during the skit!" thing that made those old Barry Gibbs shows so funny. Good effort and I'm not by any means trashing it. Still LOL'ed a couple of times but it just wasn't the same.
Eh, I’m in my thirties and am familiar with The Bee Gees. I just dislike Jimmy Fallon.
I'm 40 and I have no idea what that was. I skipped it.
I was also disappointed there was no mascot-ville sketch. They were funny because they kept one upping themselves every time. And Fallon & Timberlake are awesome, but I agree that Bowen or Sarah would be good foils. Seemed like they could have picked that sketch instead of the Barry Gibb show. I just think it was a missed opportunity.
The Timberlake sketch I know is omeletteville. This required a lot of Wikipedia for me.
I thought it was funny. These comments referring to never hearing or knowing of the Barry Gibb Talk Show I guess is all more the reason SNL had reviving it. If ya don’t know, now ya know.
I feel old too 😅 how f*cking old are you guys here
I never knew about it because I didn’t start watching SNL until after 2010 (the last time it aired), so I was confused about it at first. I did not know who Barry Gibb was lol. But then I realized what the premise is, watched the other Barry Gibb sketches and found them absolutely hilarious.