When a First Date Turns Into a Full-Blown Jungle There are awkward first meetings with the parents — and then there’s this. In one of the most unhinged and brilliantly timed sketches ever performed on The Carol Burnett Show, Tim Conway arrives at his girlfriend’s house to meet her father. The only problem?

That’s how it starts. What happens next is a slow, side-splitting descent into animal chaos, delivered with Conway’s trademark calm confusion and a growing collection of chimp-like twitches.

The Calm Before the Screech

It all begins innocently enough. Carol Burnett, playing the polite and nervous girlfriend Denise, greets Tim Conway’s character, Harold Gibson, who’s already flustered from the get-go. He’s late — and his excuse is one of the most ridiculous setups in sketch-comedy history:

“My dog got sick… and then the vet’s chimp got loose… and bit me.”

He tries to brush it off, insisting the doctor gave him a shot “just in case,” but from the second he says it, you know things are about to go off the rails. Conway plays it with deadpan sincerity — he’s earnest, polite, and slightly clueless — the perfect storm for disaster.

Then, mid-sentence, something slips out.
A sudden “GEE!” bursts from his throat.
He blinks. He shakes his head. “Maybe I’m just having a reaction to that shot,” he mutters. The audience already loses it — because everyone knows Tim Conway doesn’t say he’s turning into something; he becomes it.

Enter the Father (and the Jungle)

Then comes the father — played by the eternally thunderous Harvey Korman.
A man of stern dignity, precise posture, and no patience for foolishness. He’s the exact wrong person to meet while you’re slowly morphing into a monkey.

Denise, ever the optimist, assures Harold everything will be fine. “Daddy’s going to love you,” she promises. And as soon as Korman storms into the room, Harold blurts another “Ooo-eee!” sound, nearly tripping over himself in panic. It’s the kind of physical control Conway was famous for: every twitch, every sound, every instinct is perfectly timed to the audience’s laughter.

“Did you say your name was Gibson… or Gibbon?”
Korman’s line lands like a dart.
The audience howls. Conway freezes, half-human, half-chimp, his lips twitching like he’s fighting the transformation.

From that moment on, the sketch becomes a three-way tug-of-war: Carol trying desperately to keep the meeting civil, Korman trying to maintain his dignity, and Conway trying to suppress the inner primate that keeps breaking through.

The Art of Losing Control — Slowly

Conway’s genius lies in how slowly he lets the madness unfold. At first, it’s just little movements — scratching his head, bouncing on the couch, sniffing the air. Then the animal instincts start winning. He climbs over the back of the sofa mid-conversation, grabs invisible fruit from the air, and hunches his shoulders like a zookeeper’s worst nightmare.

Korman’s father character, meanwhile, refuses to acknowledge the obvious. Instead, he interprets each bizarre action as social awkwardness. “A bit nervous, are you?” he mutters, adjusting his tie as if that will somehow make the situation less insane.

Then comes the priceless exchange about Harold’s job.

“So, what do you do for a living?”
“I’m a CPA.”
“A Certified Public Accountant?”
“No — a Car Parking Attendant.”

The delivery is perfect — Conway stumbles through the line like a man half-human, half-confused primate trying to hold a conversation. Korman’s reaction — an epic combination of disbelief and restrained fury — adds another layer to the comedy. It’s classic Burnett Show chemistry: the chaos of Conway colliding with Korman’s desperate attempt to stay composed.

Climbing Toward Madness

As the sketch escalates, Conway abandons all pretense of humanity. He starts hopping, crouching, making soft monkey noises under his breath. At one point, he actually climbs onto the furniture mid-conversation, scratching and blinking like he’s forgotten what a chair is for. Korman loses his composure completely — the audience can hear him almost breaking — and Carol’s offstage giggles start leaking through the studio.

Still, she tries to hold the scene together. Denise pretends nothing’s wrong, insisting, “Daddy, Harold’s just being silly.”
Korman, clearly regretting all his life choices, mutters, “I refuse to climb a tree to visit my grandchildren.”

The line detonates the audience.

Then Conway grabs the man’s toupee.

Yes — the famous “toupee tug.”
With an animal-like curiosity, he reaches over, pulls, and sniffs at it as if inspecting a mysterious fruit. Korman fights to keep his composure but can barely hold it together. “Give that to me!” he yells, snatching it back. Conway cocks his head, studying him with wide, innocent eyes, before attempting to hand it back upside-down. It’s chaos disguised as courtesy — and it’s peak Tim Conway.

Monkey Business, Fully Evolved

By the final act, the sketch is a total circus. Korman’s shouting for the police, Carol’s trying to calm everyone down, and Conway’s scurrying around the set like a hyperactive toddler. When the cops arrive, the father insists the lunatic who thinks he’s a monkey is right there. But of course, it’s too late — the real chaos has flipped.

Conway’s “symptoms” suddenly vanish, and he’s calm again…
until Carol scratches her head and she lets out a monkey sound.

The audience explodes. The transformation has spread. The curse continues. It’s a perfect, circular ending — silly, surreal, and executed with such commitment that you can’t help but applaud the brilliance.

Why It’s Comic Perfection

The beauty of this sketch isn’t just in the physical comedy — it’s in the rhythm. Conway never hurries a joke. Every beat is earned, every reaction calculated to pull one more gasp of laughter. His movements are deliberate yet unpredictable, like watching a master pianist improvise without missing a note.

Harvey Korman, playing the eternal straight man, holds the whole scene together by trying (and failing) to maintain dignity in the face of sheer lunacy. And Carol Burnett’s grounding warmth — the calm, loving girlfriend — gives the audience something human to cling to as everything around her descends into jungle mayhem.

What makes it timeless is how relatable it still feels. Meeting the parents can feel like turning into an animal — sweaty palms, nervous tics, barely controlled panic. Conway just takes that feeling and turns it up to eleven — until it’s pure farce.

The Curtain Call

By the end, everyone’s laughing — the actors, the audience, probably even the cameramen trying to hold the shot steady. It’s one of those sketches where you can see the performers barely holding back their own giggles, and that only makes it better.

Tim Conway didn’t need elaborate setups or punchlines. He needed one bite, one twitch, one slow spiral into ridiculousness — and suddenly, the room belonged to him.

Some comedians tell jokes. Tim Conway became them.

And in this unforgettable night of monkey business, he didn’t just steal the scene —
he swung off with it. 🐒