After a 12-episode season where the highs were dizzying and the lows seemed mostly intentional, Everybody’s Live with John Mulaney concluded with a jam-packed final outing that raised everything to equally heady altitude.
The format, such as it is, remained the same, but nearly everything soared with the confidence of a host and writers room looking to go out with a bang. (Or, you know, a three-on-one championship intergenerational bout, but we’ll get there.)
Mulaney, for his part, seemed excited to get there, with even the opening credits ditching the customary Wang Chung for an on-the-nose hype-up anthem entitled “Late Night Champ” from Jon Sandler. (Sandler is not related to tonight’s first guest, although choosing a season finale theme song based on such a tenuous connection does feel right up Everybody’s Live‘s alley.)
In his teen-centric monologue, a sympathetic Mulaney defended the current generation (a group of whom stacked the studio audience for the occasion) from the complaints of old 42-year-olds like him. After all, the 11-year-old Mulaney would have loved having an internet group dedicated to lonely grade school Sinatra fans. He also played up the trash talk for his young opponents, even getting trusty side man Richard Kind in on the act to boast about his own time as a young neighborhood terror named “The Ballbreaker.”
Some weeks, the show’s announced theme gets shortchanged, serving more as Mulaney and guests’ riffing-off point. Not so tonight, as “What Is on the Mind of Teens?” certainly held everyone’s attention, regardless of whether they were about to physically fight three such youths at the end of the show.
Guests Adam Sandler (dressed down and effusively friendly as ever), Mulaney’s Big Mouth colleague Joe Mande, and a chain smoking Sean Penn all vibed extensively over their very different childhood experiences. Sandler and Mulaney bonded over hating gym and homework, Mande shared about his travails with anxiety-spawned IBS, while Penn explained how lobbing molotov cocktails at the vans of rich surfers who came to his beach haunt was just what Malibu kids got up to in the ’70’s.
And here I have to recognize Mulaney’s expert for the night, a very confident 16-year-old named Zephyrine who chimed in regularly, even in the face of the infamously grizzled Oscar winner asking her questions in his signature mumbled gruffness. Introduced as the babysitter of one of the writers, the young woman was easily as composed as this season’s various dinosaur and cruise ship experts. She even added some insight into one teen caller’s worshipful tale of a big-balling classmate named Little Pickle, whose exploits left the adult males of the panel speechless.
On the subject of Penn and his legendary lack of any discernible sense of humor, this appearance was frankly riveting. Sure he’s got some good stories (those surfing wars, auteurishly taking over Super-8 directing duties from his late brother Chris and childhood neighbor Charlie Sheen), but for obvious fan Mulaney to wrangle the pugnacious Penn through all the silliness was a master class in light-touch navigation. Penn seemed surprised at the laughter greeting his anecdotes, not knowing that Mulaney’s team was putting up chyrons like “Method Acting as a Chimney,” and crediting his turn in The Angry Birds Movie. Will there be a reckoning? Stay tuned.
(Mulaney wasn’t at SNL any more by the time Joe Kelly wrote “The Sean Penn Celebrity Roast” sketch for the show, but I’m pretty sure he was operating from the same comic principle tonight.)
Of the three off-the-couch pieces tonight, two were smashes. (The premise that Mulaney’s judgmental Jamaican nanny Hyacinth greeted her “nanny on the street” interview subjects’ confusion with calls for them to find Jesus was both uninspired and a little condescending.)
In another, the kids in the audience got a hard lesson in consequences, courtesy of a guesting Henry Winkler, current SNL writer (and guy who should be promoted to next year’s cast) Carl Tart and a hoary old drunk driving script. Or at least they would have if Winkler and Tart didn’t go all Sean Penn Method and create elaborate, off-book backstories for their rich teen and arriving police officer, respectively.
With a smoldering car and a bloody, dead prom date, Winkler’s desperate call to his congressman dad and Tart’s eager acceptance of the Ray Donovan-style bribe to frame the dead girl see the actors waving away Mulaney’s exasperation. “Oh, now we’re breaking the fourth wall?,” Winkler sneers, defiantly choosing artistic integrity over feel-bad teachable moments. “Rich kids get away with stuff,” is all a thwarted Mulaney can ultimately impart to his teen audience, which is probably a lot more relevant anyway.
In another bit, Mulaney introduced some deeply unimpressed teens to Teen Town, his own cardboard teaching tool in which dubious life lessons are doled out alongside contemptuous asides about the would-be students’ skepticism (one inquisitive lad is bum-rushed off the set by security) and the fact that a cardboard miniature Saymo appears poised to leap off one of Teen Town’s skyscrapers. (“Don’t give him any attention, he does this all the time,” Mulaney sneers.)
It’s a grandly silly extended bit, complete with Kind’s equally dismissive malt shop owner ultimately getting beaten senseless by some thugs he owes money to. (“No, no, no—this is not part of the sketch. This is real sh*t right now,” a terrified Mulaney tells the kids as he hands over his wallet.) It’s a sketch untroubled with holding anybody’s hand as to premise or themes, although nobody’s going to come out of either of these two supposed educational playlets thinking particularly well of scolding adulthood.
The same sort of conceptual obliqueness extended to tonight’s musical performance, with Sleater-Kinney (Carrie Brownstein and Mulaney’s BFF Fred Armisen sitting in on drums) doing a spirited performance of Kim Wilde’s 1981 pop anthem “Kids in America.”
With the band’s graffiti-slathered cardboard set suggesting they were coming to Everybody’s Live straight from Teen Town, the band ripped through the song with an earnestness only slightly undercut when a gaggle of high school-costumed extras straight out of Nickelodeon casting rushed out to dance in seeming worshipful abandon.
Does the spectacle of some 50-something rockers beloved of the show’s 40-something host belting out a 44-year-old pop-rock paean to youthful rebellion come off like a put-on to the very real teens watching from the Everybody’s Live audience? More than likely, although the episode’s through line is more about mocking the old squares than the kids of America.
And then it was the moment the world’s been waiting for. With a happy Sandler scatting out a bombastic, WWE-style entrance theme to go along with their swagger, Mulaney’s three challengers (Adarsh, Ben, and Jacob) emerged, their heads topped with what looked like old school leather football headgear and their 14-year-old selves clad in replicas of Mulaney’s customary suit and tie. For those assuming this would all pay off with a deflating joke, joke’s on you, as Mulaney and his foes all took off their shoes (and identical jewelry), underwent a responsible pat-down from a no-nonsense ref, and took to their corners.
Sure, the ref’s rules prohibited hitting, kicking, or biting (Mulaney likewise was warned from following Penn’s seemingly dead serious advice to go for the eyes), but when the bell rang, it was most assuredly on. And while Mulaney licked his chops upon learning that he’d only have to make one of his opponents tap out to win the whole enchilada (eyeing the slightest of the lads as he did so), the ensuing grapple looked as real as any awkward uncle getting in over his head with the horseplay, as the kids ultimately got him off his feet where the host summarily tapped.
The comic roots of all this hoopla and hype are manifold, from Andy Kaufman’s turn as inter-gender wrestling heel to Letterman’s safety and dignity-endangering stunts, to the recently unearthed clip of the late George Wendt leg-‘rassling John Goodman to kick off Conan O’Brien’s inaugural late-night show. Toss in a little self-deprecating Mulaney schtick and you’ve got a potently funny, surprisingly compelling piece of future late-night lore.
Mulaney even threw in a bit of monologue foreshadowing for the night’s final surprise, a long-delayed performance of “The Crossroads” from Bone Thugs-N-Harmony. Presented earlier as another failing on his ineffectual, old-ass part to come through with big promises, Mulaney could only fist-bump all involved once the 90’s harmony rappers presented a championship belt to the victors, crowning this delightfully daft and ambitiously weird season on the perfect sweet-and-silly note of deliberately offbeat triumph.
There’s been no official word yet on whether Mulaney and crew will return with another season of Everybody’s Live, but here’s hoping.
The artist’s name is Jon Sandler, not Joe Sandler.
Early a.m. typo. Apologies and thanks.