‘Still Laugh-In’: The 27 Most WTF Moments from Netflix’s Special

I’ve seen a lot on Netflix over the years. I’ve seen a multi-cam sitcom all about pot, a pair of Minions socks destroy multiple relationships, the devil visit a nudist camp, and every episode of the surreal art that is Fuller House, but I’ve never seen anything as wall-to-wall WTF as Still Laugh-In: The Stars Celebrate.

Still Laugh-In is an hourlong celebration of the iconic variety/sketch/anything goes show Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In, which aired during the tumultuous late ’60s and early ’70s. With Laugh-In, creator George Schlatter and hosts Dick Martin and Dan Rowan literally wanted to televise the revolution–just with a lot of body paint, zingers, and musical numbers. It was a show that could only exist back when Goldie Hawn’s bare shoulder with the phrase “illegal entry” painted on it could be seen as button-pushing satire.

And that’s why Still Laugh-In is a befuddling experience! The special is hosted by Neil Patrick Harris and Tiffany Haddish and features a who’s who lineup of stars (Billy Crystal! Michael Douglas! Taye Diggs!). It’s a love fest for a show that was on TV a full decade before any fans Bobby Moynihan, Ron Funches, Tony Hale or Chelsea Handler were even born! It’s a celebration done in the campy style of the original, which works for old school comedians like Jay Leno and Jon Lovitz but feels truly wild coming from a loose cannon like Haddish or a sweet weirdo like Maria Bamford. It’s a bizarre mishmash of tones, where newer comedians go full TV-MA during swinging ’70s set-pieces like the cocktail party or the joke wall. This isn’t your parents’ Laugh-In, but… it actually is your parents’ Laugh-In?

This all sounds like a diss but, lordy, this tonal whiplash is a feature and not a bug. This is what Laugh-In was! If you’ve never watched Laugh-In, head on over to Prime Video and stream five minutes of any episode. It’s like watching a Vine compilation on YouTube of middle school quality skits starring some over-the-top, all-time great performers where 90% of the jokes go over your head because you don’t know what was going on in congress in February 1971.

Still Laugh-In captures that off-the-wall goofiness again, except this time it’s today’s comedy stars getting in on the joke (or sometimes standing outside the joke?). It’s a sock it to me, very interesting, cuckoo Laugh-In world and we all get to live in it again for an hour. Here are the 27 moments from that hour that are next level weird, provided below with zero context (not that context ever helped with Laugh-In!).