Make no mistake: Everybody’s Live with John Mulaney is still offbeat and often delightfully befuddling. But over the last two weeks, whether intentionally or not, it seems to have hit a certain stride that one imagines would make it a bit more scrutable to the average Netflix viewer.
It doesn’t hurt that Mulaney’s guest list for Episode 5 included a trio of recognizable faces in Bill Hader, Chelsea Peretti, and Jackass‘ Johnny Knoxville (who Mulaney states in all sincerity should be next in line for a Kennedy Center honor for his contributions to American comedy). And if the series’ conceit of tossing out an extremely loose organizing theme for the episode (this week it was “getting fired”) is as seemingly unrelated to the guests as ever, at least Mulaney finally explains of Everybody’s Live‘s topics, “It’s just whatever I want.”
And, okay, the opening disclaimer explaining that sidekick Richard Kind got bonked on the head by a copy of Love Gun and now thinks he’s KISS frontman/professional dirtbag Gene Simmons was a little weird. But audiences can handle a silly bit, so why not have Kind appear throughout the show in a long black wig and leather pants and spouting pseudo-profundities and assorted lewdness apparently culled from Simmons autobiography?
Unsuspecting Netflix viewers certainly could take comfort in Mulaney’s opening stand-up bit, another killer true life tale of the former SNL writer’s memorable time writing copy for a Paul Rudd-led Madden video game commercial after his 2014 sitcom pilot wasn’t picked up. Like last week’s edge-of-your-seat hilarious extended anecdote about maybe being unsuccessfully scammed by the perhaps not-manager of Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, this week’s show opener saw Mulaney sharing another story from his life as wry Hollywood spy.
Explaining how he wound up getting life advice from NFL legend and accused murderer Ray Lewis on set, Mulaney showed how Lewis’ pep talk gave the comic the gumption to demand his agents pitch Mulaney to other networks. Sure, the resulting sitcom was, as Mulaney put it, “a total f*cking unmitigated disaster,” but that only makes the story of Lewis’ Gladiator-themed halftime speech funnier in retrospect.
The call-in portion of the show was as offhand and underplayed as usual, with lively stories about a principal canning a pre-K teacher for drunkenly smoking during naptime and another about a Disneyland employee’s trip to “Mickey court,” which had the panel on the edge of their seats. And as ever, the celebrity sit-down part of the show was so laid back that its signature lack of effortful bits and zingers feels like Mulaney deliberately deflecting viewers’ late-night talk show expectations. (Hader did break out a foul-mouthed Mickey Mouse impression to imagine how that Disney jail encounter went, however.)
The first real bit of deliberate audience alienation came when Mulaney, pointing out this week’s ringside celebrity, ceded his show to one Chesterton Romero Cheadle, a gaunt elderly Black man in shades who, through impenetrable “jive” slang, claims to be the inspiration for corn snack mascot Chester Cheetah.
Those in the know will have recognized the man under the shades as none other than Broadway legend André De Shields, but his elaborately choreographed musical number, “That’s How You Cartoon a Cat,” with its lyrics about taking a corn chip delivery driver hostage and threatening to “blow his f*cking brains out,” is where this week’s show fully crossed over into conceptual comedy territory.
André De Shields as Chesterton Cheadle, the cat who inspired Chester Cheetah. This post is real. #EverybodysLive pic.twitter.com/Q0NKv5udOd
— Netflix (@netflix) April 10, 2025
Same goes for Mulaney’s filmed interview with Bubbles Jackson, the late Michael Jackson’s now-aged pet chimpanzee (who was played by someone wearing a hairy suit and a genuinely unnerving and immobile chimp mask).
Responding to Mulaney’s increasingly smug gotcha questions via a series of electronic keyboards, Bubbles robotic voice succeeded mightily in conveying the impression of the chimp as self-impressed, dangerously edgy fading celeb. The creeping closeups of his eerily still visage invariably called up creepy echoes of the chilling opening to a certain movie helmed by guest Peretti’s spouse, which I can only assume was intentional. It was a bewildering escalation of a deeply silly premise that only got more and more fascinatingly strange as it went on.
Mulaney continued his episodes-spanning joke that he’s determined to line up 24 men of one inch-incremental heights into “a perfect diagonal” by the end of the season with another “Know Your H” public service announcement. This time a doctor promises to measure height-ignorant men over Zoom by visually sizing them up inside an oversized t-shirt, a straight-faced goof in service of an even more deadpan extended premise.
If Mulaney ever does line up those 24 dudes as repeatedly promised, it’ll betray the offhand absurdity of it all, as Mulaney ups the ante by doing a remote with one Jimmy Au, a Los Angeles tailor to the short and famous. Under framed photos of clients like Michael Chiklis (5’7″) and Seth Green (5’4″), the diminutive Au responds to flamenco music leaking through the ceiling from the upstairs restaurant by teaching an obliging Mulaney some dance steps. As happens with these slice of life Los Angeles interludes, the lack of point or jokes is the point. And the joke.
Episode five even sort of tied the night’s topic to the opening bit, as this week’s designated expert, HR rep/designated firer Catie Maillard, coached Mulaney through a role-playing exercise in which he fires the stone-faced and inappropriate Simmons/Kind. And while this Simmons’ constant and accurate sleaziness certainly warrants a pink slip, it was non-comic Maillard who was the only guest who seems to be going out of her way to be funny.
The episode ended with another eclectic musical performance enlivened by Mulaney’s obvious enthusiasm—and an unspoken suggestion why it was on the show.
Singer-songwriter Bartees Strong has a new album coming out, but the under-the-radar critical darling played his Fleetwood Mac-sounding single “Sober,” which Mulaney referred to as his favorite song off of Strong’s Horror without further elaboration. As Strange sang the typically oblique lyric, “I live life on two planes, and most days, they’re both delayed/Missing all your phone calls, I just wanna go away,” we might speculate on John Mulaney’s affinity for the number, but he’s not going to say any more.
Next week’s episode will see the first season of Everybody’s Live hit its halfway mark with another comics-heavy panel that’s set to include Hannibal Buress, Leanne Morgan, Nikki Glaser, and David Letterman.
Everybody’s Live with John Mulaney streams live on Netflix Wednesdays at 10 PM ET/7 PM PT.
