Even when it’s accessible, Everybody’s Live With John Mulaney is delightfully weird.
Episode 8 represented a tonal turnaround from the last-minute scramble of Episode 7 in that everybody showed up (glad to hear that Rita Moreno’s feeling better), the expert guest (anesthesiologist Dr. Emily Methangkool) was happy to answer some fairly in-depth medical questions, and even the filmed pieces were more adorable-weird than cringe-weird.
That’s not to say anybody on this end is slighting Everybody’s Live‘s capacity for stellar cringe comedy. Mulaney has always operated from such a deceptively off-center place in his writing for SNL and elsewhere that his practiced stand-up persona acts as a stealth delivery system. And his two Netflix series so far (three if you count The Sack Lunch Bunch, which I emphatically do) have indulged the comic’s glinting chaos spirit to a degree that’s made even Netflix execs blanch.
But this was just delightful, go-down-easy silliness all around tonight. Sure, there were a few absurdist touches. Having the four members of Phish reenact Seinfeld through Mulaney’s in-studio telescope was random stuff. Apart from the semi-guilty love Mulaney has for the venerable jam-rockers making this yet another example of him simply booking people he digs, the conceit gradually spiraled into the sort of out-there deadpan strangeland Everybody’s Live occasionally lives in.
Why is the meticulous recreation of Jerry’s apartment so filthy? Why does Mike Gordon’s George Costanza bald cap have oddly Klingon forehead ridges? Once the bit recurs, the simple (if random) gag spirals into something like existential comic lunacy, the editing accelerating until the Sein-Phish-ians frantic mugging winds up floating away into the negative zone.
Still, the explanation of invaluable side man Richard Kind’s ratty sweatshirt being a gag about former Patriots head coach and septuagenarian Bill Belichick’s recent dust-up over the controlling interview interruptions of his much, much, much younger current girlfriend is comfortingly silly. Even though the intermittent sight of frequent Everybody’s Live hand Fran Gillespie’s Giersten unimpressedly texting away is one of those little-remarked jokes that peoples the show so amusingly.
Same goes for the one filmed bit about Mulaney going on rounds with the apparent Everybody’s Live studio lot security guard, where Mulaney’s chirpy, too-serious approach to the gig devolves into a series of silly corner-peeping shots. (Speaking of series, I would watch this show, Netflix.)
The night’s topic was surgery, seemingly prompted by Mulaney’s own looming decision about whether or not to have his bulldog-style hip dysplasia corrected. And unlike last week’s half-realized and unfocused schtick about dinosaur fossil accuracy, the guests all came ready to play around in the barely-relevant topical sandbox. Molly Shannon was a veritable font of weirdly specific surgery hypotheticals, with the game Dr. Emily obviously impressed that Shannon knows what vecuronium is. (Shannon also explains how she derives comfort from dining out for soup in hospital cafeterias, which is just Molly Shannon enough a conceit for me to believe.)
Ronny Chieng was also an easygoing treat, his own tale of childhood medical malpractice (doctors had to sedate him while they re-broke his improperly set broken arm) allowing him to demonstrate the “superpower” of on-set ambidextrous writing. And third guest Marc Maron chimed in with his own harrowingly funny tales of childhood doctoral neglect, the fact that his came from his surgeon father only reinforcing the iconic comic’s signature thematic gripes. (At least Chieng’s bad doctor wasn’t his own dad, with Maron’s crotchety reminiscences about his father running over his foot and taking him to see in-hospital hip surgery filmstrips one-upping the youthful comedy trauma.)
Maybe it’s that Mulaney had a stake in this week’s topic that kept things more or less on the rails, the guests getting more involved and engaged than usual for the series. Even the hit-or-miss live call-in segment breezed by, the lone caller’s eye-opening claim that her ovarian cyst may have been her hairy twin leaving just enough of a quick-hit “whaaaat?” before the panel got back to business.
None of this is to say that Everybody’s Live shouldn’t indulge in whatever deliberately alienating bits of comedic absurdity Mulaney and his writers are into. I’ve been a staunch supporter of Mulaney’s clear unconcern with pleasing either his streaming masters or even us, his audience, in favor of chasing down premises that tickle him—and sometimes only him. A mid-show bit about a brashly profane mohel (writer Langston Kerman) showing off the many new penis-stylings available to circumcision-wary parents is—and I mean this as a compliment—akin to an old Conan bit. There’s an escalating silliness to the illustrated foreskin-coiffures like The Gerald From Hey Arnold! and sci-fi-tinged Predator (but not sexual), but the whole thing was more defiantly goofy than Everybody’s Live offputting.
One of the chief pleasures of Everybody’s Live is the obvious feeling that the whole Netflix deal is allowing John Mulaney to hang out with cool people he admires. Nowhere was that more evident tonight than Mulaney inviting eventual musical guests John Cale and Maggie Rogers for a mid-show sit-down on his comfy couch. As ever, Mulaney felt the need to apologize for getting sincere with one of his heroes, his anecdote about how The Velvet Underground’s “The Black Angel’s Death Song” “blew [his] wiring out” once more demonstrating the benefits of getting a major streaming service to fund your weird little talk show.
(Here, if you will all indulge, I’ll say that the mohel’s reference to a foreskin style called The Basquiat reminds me that John Cale’s cover of the far-too-covered “Hallelujah”—played to devastating effect in 1996’s Basquiat—is the definitive version of the Leonard Cohen original. And no, I will not be fielding objections.)
Cale, for his part, was amiably unprepared to tackle the whole surgery topic, the 83-year-old icon’s Welsh-flavored musings emerging with signature statesmanlike deference. With his odd couple-paired duet partner Rogers sharing her own easygoing medical horror stories (the phrase “tooth pieces in my mouth” is… yikes) to go with his own unhurried talk of breaking a tooth on some nuts, there’s no sense that Mulaney was hoping for comic gold here. It’s more that he just wanted to hang out with two musicians whose work means things to him, and it’s all the more charming.
Maybe “charming” is the new element here. It’s not that John Mulaney himself isn’t a charming and hilarious guy—having essentially a new 10-minute Mulaney monologue live every week is a gift none of us should overlook. It’s that this episode, above all others so far, carried itself with such an effortless vibe that you can feel like you’re at a particularly fun Mulaney-hosted dinner party. Riffs, bits, fascinating people, all enjoying the moment without concern for ratings, audience, or traditional late-night talk show prepared schtick. Even the show-ending performance of Cale’s typically avant garde rocker “Shark-Shark” (from last year’ POPtical Illusion) felt like Cale and Rogers happily hijacking the party for an after-dinner singalong.
Oh, and Mulaney is going to fight three 14-year-old boys on the Everybody’s Live season finale. Stemming apparently from some writer’s room debate, the supposedly very real contest will cap off that episode’s “teen night” topic. “Is this legal?,” Mulaney muses. “We think so.” Regardless, I can guarantee this contest will be a whole lot more legitimatley entertaining than Netflix’s last foray into the farcical fight game.
Four more episodes to go til the show’s May 28th season finale.
I stopped watching a few episodes ago. Mulaney is high on his own supply. A sloppy show with a charmless host.