He’s extremely unfunny floating.
He is pretty unfunny even when not floating.
Is that the “normal” view?
From the MST3K’s Prehistory section of the Satellite News’s look at MSTory:
“Back in Los Angeles, he was in constant demand, working at several different comedy clubs. In the process, he would meet and become friends–or enemies–with some of the biggest names in the stand up comedy world. Jerry Seinfeld would become one of the former, Gallagher reportedly became one of the latter (the story goes that Joel came offstage one night and found the mustachioed prop comic digging through Joel’s props without permission–Joel never forgave the intrusion).”
That would explain a lot of why the show went hard on Gallagher…
… such as the Funny or Not Funny Floating host segment from Rocketship X-M that @FlyingSquid and @Vader are referring to.
Joel: “Finally, Gallagher. Funny or not funny floating?”
Crow: “Not funny.”
Joel: “Extremely unfunny.”
And then, if my memory serves correctly, you had the gang freaking out in the negative over “Melon Crazy” in Gamera Vs. Guiron.
I mentioned my odd pseudo-Gallagher experience previously:
The funny thing is that Gallagher’s more recent turn into edgelord racist and sexist jokes makes the show’s hatred for him all the more fitting (Patton Oswalt has even commented that there’s probably a whole James Ellroy novel in what the hell happened to him to cause such a drastic personality shift).
Seeing him on the Tonight Show around 1978 or so, I was a bit surprised that Gallagher’s comedy showed a conservative slant, so the later turn into the abovementioned tendencies is less puzzling to me.
More notably, that appearance was on one where Chevy Chase was also a guest. Gallagher spent a lot of his time really ragging on Chevy. I knew even then what an insufferable wiseass Chevy could be, but this felt like some kind of vendetta or something. Seems like Gallagher well earned his rep (well outside of MST3K even) over the years.
In college the student council booked Gallagher, and a few of us asked if it was actually Gallagher Too. They swore up and down that it was the original.
It was not.
You wondered, which means, in other words, that YOU SAID MAYBEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
That IS a good thing to ponder…
The watermelon-smashing at least seems like the kind of thing which should’ve impressed me when I was a kid and his shows were on our new cable channel. (Probably Showtime.) I guess I could never overcome Mom and Dad’s injunction against wasting food.