John Mulaney Made Late Night Sexy

The best bits from JOHN MULANEY PRESENTS: EVERYBODY'S IN LA

On Wednesdays, I’ll send out posts on something I noticed, watched, or read that brought me joy. It’s hard to find a name for this that isn’t cheesy…Wednesday Wonders? Little Joys?…Oy. Audience participation is welcome to rename.

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John Mulaney’s post-rehab freedom has made him incredibly sexy.

This has nothing to do with the new hair or his colored suits. Though he looks great.

It’s more about how well he has adapted his audience to navigate his new reputation after his rehabilitation for drug and alcohol addiction. He’s no longer the polished protégée of a bygone, romanticized suit-and-tie stand-up. Now, he’s embraced the quirky, multi-format oddball he has always wanted to be.

Let me back up. What about this is sexy?

My external-validation, acts-of-service coded brain has recently redefined “sexy” to mean “unexpectedly and efficiently pleasant.” A water machine that creates running water for the cats to lick up? Sexy. Letterboxd lists? Sexy! A list of great American novels where you can click which ones you’ve already read? Super sexy.

John Mulaney’s off-the-hinges live Netflix experiment, Everybody’s In L.A., is the sexiest—specifically because it isn’t anything you can expect. There are live callers ranging from a fake Bob Dylan to L.A.’s mayor Karen Bass, conversational missteps around O.J. and ghosts, a cake served and eaten with bare hands, and an electronic robot who startles guests and delivers ginger ale. It’s a mild chaos interrupted by pre-taped sketches.

It’s nothing you could script, and it made me laugh out loud, alone, in someone else’s living room while babysitting.

Sexy!!

Netflix’s Los Angeles-sprawling festival “Netflix Is A Joke” featured 400 comedians in May. Notably, the streaming platform used this festival to attempt bringing their live-streamed tech into households with The Roast of Tom Brady, Katt Williams’s special Woke Foke, and Mulaney’s nontraditional talk show Everybody’s In L.A.

In a Vulture interview, Netflix’s Vice President of Standup & Comedy Formats Robbie Praw explained how the variety of the live roast, comedy special, and sketch/talk show formats reflect the range of an audience’s comedy preferences:

The thing that we’ve learned most about stand-up over the 10 years we’ve been doing specials now is how different people’s tastes are. I think it’s something that in music we seem to understand a little bit more — that reggae is different from hip-hop or classical or whatever. And I think that this is a little bit of recognition that different folks like different stand-up specials. Certainly some folks will love all three of these things and some folks will find one of these three things to be their favorite thing. So I mean, sure, we will have some learnings. But this is really about how the tastes of our audiences are varied.

This strategy works for a platform that hosts standup specials from both Hannah Gadsby and Ricky Gervais who have, politely put, opposing stances on punching down on queer people. (This first-rights-adjacent inclusivity has also garnered backlash as Netflix employees walked out in protest of Dave Chappelle’s The Closer in 2021.)

But the idea is interesting. You may love Tim Robinson’s eccentric sketch show I Think You Should Leave, or gravitate toward Mae Martin’s existential special SAP, or be weirded out by Natalie Palamides’s experimental character special Nate: A One Man Show.

Whatever comedy is your flavorite, Netflix has it in its app and has cultivated that diversity for years. It makes Netflix the place viewers turn to watch or try new specials, and it attracts the big names like Chappelle. Or, of course, John Mulaney.

Now housed on Netflix, Mulaney’s triology of clean-kid specials—New In Town, Comeback Kid, and Kid Gorgeous—launched him from behind-the-scenes SNL writer to household name. (For the true fans, they will also appreciate Netflix’s The Sack Lunch Bunch, an absurdist Mulaney take on a Mr. Rogers show with the title referring to its ensemble of child actors.)

As much as we all say “the pandemic was crazy,” Mulaney is one of those people who just let it all hit the fan. He got out of rehab. Toured his new special about rehab. Hosted SNL again. Grew his hair out. Got divorced. Partnered up with actress Olivia Munn. And they had a son. All post-pandemic.

With Baby J, his 2023 special about his celebrity-laden intervention, he debuted a new type of Mulaney. As he calls out at the top of the special to a fifth grader in the audience, his reputation is “a little different now.”

But now? He has a new flair.

On The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Mulaney confessed, “I have, for some reason, set up various obstacles, in my own way, that have left me sometimes pretty rawed up, pretty disoriented and pretty unhappy, but I am at my core a happy person. And it’s OK for me to protect that by living the life I want to live. I am very lucky. I have a very good life, and I don’t want to be the reason that that gets complicated.”

Though he still feels as familiar as a comedian with relatable material and hyper-specific cultural references, he’s lighter and weirder now. And that’s sexy.

It’s like…did you ever have a summer friend who came back from architecture school with a weed habit, and one day he invites you and your friends to “the shack” in the old garage that he redesigned with dusty books and repurposed furniture from his parents’ house, and he somehow makes the gasoline-specked space into somewhere you want to be? Is that relatable?

The episode theme was “helicopters” and incidentally, sunglasses. (Credit: Yahoo)

Because that cozy, ‘70s garage is exactly what Mulaney creates. Tenured comedians like Jerry Seinfeld and Jon Stewart sit next to experts on coyotes and palm trees and the next generation of comedians like Stavros Halkias, Pete Davidson, and Mae Martin. Everyone interrupts each other, cracks open canned beverages, and laughs at each other like you actually aren’t watching live TV. It’s more like watching a fly-on-the-wall camera of a green room hangout on a mid-century modern couch.

We all know that the daily late night show, in a world with phones geared to celebrity interviews and weird humor, add to the pile of miscellaneous content. This can feel exhausting. How does the late-night show evolve to become must-watch TV, or at least something that feels entertaining, not draining?

Mulaney’s late night limited series make it a treat. Watching this live experiment in a episodic binge is like leftover lasagna. Great hot. Just as good rewarmed at a later date.

Incredibly sexy.

The Best Bits of EVERYBODY’S IN LA

1. Jon Stewart walks across the stage to show Mae Martin a picture of a Keeblar Elf on his phone. Jon Stewart, a modern genius of breaking complicated politics down for the average citizen, can’t describe what a Keeblar Elf, and also can’t let it go that Mae Martin doesn’t know what they are. Pulling up pictures on their phones as conversational props: comedians, they’re just like us!

   

   (Credit: LateNighter)