Ten months after he first experimented with a weeklong talk show streamed live from a Hollywood studio during the Netflix Is a Joke Festival with Everybody’s In L.A., stand-up comedian John Mulaney returns (with announcer sidekick Richard Kind) for the first of 12 weekly live talk shows. Is it the same as it ever was? Or was Mulaney’s magical chat show a once in a lifetime experience?
Opening Shot: A title card appears onscreen with a quote. “Curtain! Fast music! Lights! Ready for the last finale! Great! The show looks good, the show looks good.” — Florenz Ziegfeld on his death bed
We then cut to a parking lot, watching a man walk toward and into a convertible, before eyeing himself in the rear-view mirror. It’s Mulaney. The clock on his car radio strikes 7:00, which cues the theme music, Wang Chung’s 1985 single, “To Live and Die in L.A.”
The Gist: Introduced to the stage by Kind, Mulaney’s sporting a jacket and no tie with a buttoned-up collar, holding a clipboard as he did last year, and proving it’s live somewhat by delivering the current time and temperature.
“I’m not going to lie. We’ve been working on this episode all day,” he jokes.
Mulaney’s monologue reminds us about his personal life. “I can’t do coke or adderall any more, so I’m making it your problem,” he quips, adding that this show is a result of “the Baby Boomer culture that has made me the unseemly weirdo that I am today.” He notes the slight title change for the show, claiming Netflix focus groups revealed that viewers did not like Los Angeles, and no amount of wildfires could change that. He gets in a self-referential dig about his marriage and parenthood with Olivia Munn, joking that they have two kids now: “One was controversial. one you all seem to be cool with.” And he praises his wife for her recovery from breast cancer and multiple surgeries, talking about how inspirational Munn has been to himself and other women, even if he also makes light of her “sweet wonderful dumbness” that came after all of those surgeries and radiation treatment.
Kind delivers happy birthday shout-outs to celebrities born that day (March 12). There’s a sketch inspired by Rear Window, where the gag finds a man or men in suits wacking people over the head in their apartments with lamps?
And then we get to the actual talk portion of the talk show. Like last year, each episode will try to hew to a theme. The first episode’s theme: Lending people money. Kind reveals that he has lent friends $10,000 three separate times, each time getting repaid (a fourth time, he considered it a gift). The theme also explains the inclusion of Jessica Roy, personal finance columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. Mulaney asks actor Michael Keaton if his friends, family or comedy buddies hit him up for money when Keaton first became famous; Mulaney will later ask Joan Baez and Fred Armisen variations on this same question.
Like last time, Mulaney is inviting viewers to call in live, with a phone number flashing onscreen. He asks each caller about their situation with financial loans and payback, and how it changed their personal relationships.
When Baez sits down, she challenges Mulaney’s assertion that it’s an honor to have her on the show. “Will you say that in 10 minutes?” she retorts, before asking to have a minute of non-silliness to “recognize that our democracy is going up in flames…” “by a bunch of incompetent billionaires.”
Mulaney plugs Armisen’s upcoming album, 100 Sound Effects, by playing a few tracks from it. They are indeed, sound effects, such as “car rental door” “obligatory laugh” and glass bottles thrown angrily into plastic bin by bartender at closing time.
There’s a bit with fake audience members, like last year. This time it’s King Latifah (Tracy Morgan) with two women from his fictional country of, Latifah? The bit is a bit stunted and awkward, but Morgan’s fictional king does ask Mulaney: “What’s Stavvy like?” Which is quite a callback to last year’s debut episode, which included stand-up comedian Stavros Halkias.
Mulaney takes more phone calls, including one that sounds so staged that even Mulaney at one point has to acknowledge the weird way the woman on the phone keeps addressing him by first name.
The episode closes out with two segments. A pre-tape wherein Mulaney interviews a group of actors who’ve all played Willy Loman in “Death of a Salesman,” asking them questions in character. The group includes Anthony LaPaglia, Rob Morrow, Christopher Lloyd, and several other actors ranging in range from seniors to high-schoolers. The finale finds Cypress Hill performing a song and including a shout-out to Keaton as the best Batman.
What Comedy Shows Will It Remind You Of?: Much like last year’s version, this one retains a mix of the early years of Jimmy Kimmel Live! with the spirit of Saturday Night Live, broken up by footage of Los Angeles and its inhabitants talking to the camera as if they were extras in How To With John Wilson.
Sex and Skin: Nope.
Parting Shot: Mulaney stands in the front of the stage to close it out after 56 minutes, saying: “Only 11 more to go, tune in next week, bye bye!” The actual closing shot over the end credits montage leaves us with a scene of a beach volleyball court, empty at sunset.
Sleeper Star: The collection of Willy Loman actors offers multiple candidates, but for me, it was Christopher Lloyd’s line delivery after he showed Mulaney what animal he had drawn that scared his “Loman” that really did it. Then again, if you want to talk about stealing the show, Baez did that not once, but twice or even thrice. First by interrupting Mulaney to address the deadly serious political moment we’re in, then again later by telling stories about the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King telling dirty jokes, and then later offering her own revelations about the time she briefly owned and drove a Tesla.
Our Take: It’s wild to think that for almost all of this current century, our late-night comedian talk-show hosts have found themselves forced into serious duty so many times, delivering us somber monologues about one tragedy after another. Is that even their role? Should we expect Mulaney to do any of that? Or can he be silly, and instead allow or carve out space for his guests to be the bearers of sober news?
Either way, what other late-night talk show or any talk show includes a pussy-eating joke that’s not about that but about his wife using the wrong hand motion in front of strangers in public?
Where else could a random Benihana reference from Mulaney turn into a story and feel really improvised?
In one wide shot, as Keaton and Roy first walked onstage, we caught a glimpse of just how high the ceilings are in this studio. It feels like an enormous space for a talk show. But it’s also large enough of a space for some big ideas, and big swings that are sorely needed in the talk show genre.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Mulaney tells fans who may notice “subtle differences” in the set from 2024 to now to go for a walk and metaphorically touch grass. But thank goodness for any differences he’s bringing to the format! And hey, just think, since it’s live, it might not even be late-night where you’re streaming it. It could be your literal wake-up call!
Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat. He also podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.
Leave a Reply