Three episodes in (or nine if you count its six-episode predecessor last spring), Everybody’s Live With John Mulaney continues to defy easy description. At this point it might best be described as a late-night talk show about making a late-night talk show.
Mulaney, the peerless practitioner of comedy that’s also anti-comedy, presides over a deliberately loose approximation of the talk show form while tacitly nodding to the absurdity of him hosting one. John Mulaney, with his old school show biz patter and natty suits, might as well be a satirical version of a 1970’s-era host, even as he’s earnestly asking call-in questioners about their experiences with an episode’s supposed organizing topic.
It’s a talk show format whose put-on nature never winks. It’s Mulaney making his own version of the hoariest show business trope there is. And so here’s an appropriately loose rundown of the show’s third episode—and how Mulaney’s show both is, and is not, what it purports to be.
Tonight’s Topic
This week’s topic was funeral planning. Perhaps because, as Mulaney explained at the top of the show, he recently put together his own end-of-life plans.
Do Mulaney and his panel (Pete Davidson, Luenell, Henry Winkler, and deferential actual expert mortician Raymond Perez-Plascencia) offer any particular insight into our shared and inevitable destiny? Mulaney’s trusty sidekick Richard Kind does share an anecdote where Golden Girls‘ star Rue McClanahan’s ashes were unexpectedly dispersed into a flower garden during a Norman Lear table read, but otherwise, not really. (“You were throwing Blanche’s ashes on rose,” said Mulaney at his ad-libbiest.)
Poor Perez-Plascencia got even less to say than most of Mulaney’s celebrity guests, most memorably opining that you really don’t want a goth funeral director. Returning guests and John Mulaney’s “best friends in the world” Davidson and Luenell spar over Pete’s improbable romantic history, while Winkler is his signature elder nice guy self, admitting to the visiting funeral pro that he did literally no research when portraying a morgue attendant in 1982’s Night Shift. (Perez-Plascencia presumably deals with fewer wacky sex workers in his daily professional life.)
Everybody’s Live gathers undeniably funny people—and they’re routinely not that funny. The show’s vibe is so laid-back and willfully punchline-averse that you wind up wondering if Mulaney coaches his guests not to be “on” or if his diffident host persona just discourages that sort of striving behavior. And look, I love a conceptual comedy bit, even extended for an entire hour. But I can also understand those who find Everybody’s Live a puzzling—even dull—watch.
The Callers
Props to Mulaney’s call screeners, who have to scour on-air aspirants while the live TV stopwatch is ticking. This week we got a former funeral planner gob-smacking the panel with their story of a dying woman withholding her inheritance until her middle-aged son “comes to his senses,” another explaining how she followed a client’s wishes and flushed his ashes, a widow sharing how her late husband’s remains were turned into shotgun shells, and an Australian comedian explaining why “comedy funerals” are a bad idea.
Oh, and sometimes a hospital will just toss an extra foot into the cremation bag. Ew.
The Audience Bits
Mulaney holds fast to the concept of addressing plant audience members for a joke. Here he upbraids one “abuelita” for knitting, and fields an inexplicable (at the moment) irate woman’s complaint that he refuses to line up men from 5 to 7 feet “in a perfect diagonal line” as part of the show.
More often than not, the joke is that there’s no payoff to the joke—the knitter is never mentioned again, while the height gag pays off only obliquely in a pair of public service announcements as the show progresses. (There was also, as there has been since the season started, a shot of the show’s resident courtroom sketch artist, which has yet to be explained.)
Everybody’s Live is often dinged for this sort of offhand joke. Which is part of the joke. Mulaney is so unconcerned with going for laughs on Everybody’s Live that it’s like he’s deliberately trying expectant viewers’ patience. For someone as comedy savvy as Mulaney, it’s obviously deliberate, even if his intentional alienation risks actual alienation.
The Music
What’s a sort-of real talk show without a musical guest. Tonight saw Mulaney welcoming Philly punk band Mannequin Pussy. Sort of like The Larry Sanders Show booking Butthole Surfers (except that Mulaney is totally on board), the incongruity of the deliberately provocative act getting a prominent Everybody’s Live showcase is another genre subversion. Their name alone would likely make them unwelcome on a traditional talk shows, while Mulaney happily touts the TV debut of Mannequin Pussy’s soft-then-loud brand of bracing f-you indie punk by suggesting that Barack and Michelle Obama are fans.
The Kims (Gordon and Deal) had more of a showcase last week. But it’s fun to watch Mulaney use Netflix’s platform to shine a spotlight on weird bands (see the sexy nun backup singers) he obviously just likes.
The Sketches
The whole men of different heights gag plays out to indifferent effect with a series of filmed bits where Joe Manganiello (6’5″) and MSNBC’s Willie Geist (a surprising 6’4″) do “the more you know”-style testimonials about a service letting guys know just how tall they are. Mulaney sowed the seeds by admitting he was a half-inch taller than he thought, with the ensuing straight-faced pieces escalating the barely-there concept. Again, Mulaney is so committed to the bit that that commitment itself becomes the joke.
Richard Kind continues to pop as Everybody’s Live‘s wild card. He and Mulaney have honed their faux-prickly relationship to mock generations of first- and second-banana tension, with Kind here forcing Mulaney to play his disturbingly intimate card-based party game and doing a blooper-filled living will. (Apparently he has beef with Griffin Dunne and the Coen Brothers.) Like his supposed boss, show biz lifer Kind knows how to poke around the periphery of Hollywood for some weird laughs.
There’s also a bit about a show production assistant named Kevin who sounds just like Kieran Culkin. Tasked with reciting recent Oscar winner Culkin’s acceptance speech, the guy does kind of sound like the actor, but it’s Mulaney’s insistence that everybody (panel, audience, and himself) don blindfolds to get the full effect that draws out the absurdity.
L.A. Plays Itself
There’s a ruddy ginger fellow who extols his workout and suspicious rejuvenation regimen while complaining that his celebrity brother gets all the glory. Smart is money has it that he’s Doug Pitt, Brad Pitt’s younger brother, but the show never names him.
Everybody’s Confused
Confusion, one suspects, is Mulaney’s main goal with Everybody’s Live. The show continues to be a purposefully deflated balloon of a live late night talk show, Mulaney’s prankish unwillingness to puff up the format with expected comedy clichés and celebrity hot air an often maddening subversion of expectations. If Everybody’s Live were a traditional talk show, it would be a limp and limping failure. With John Mulaney’s sensibilities at the helm, it’s a testament to just how far a very funny guy can stretch audience goodwill.
Episode 4 of Everybody’s Live with John Mulaney streams live on Netflix Wednesday, April 2, at 10 PM ET/7 PM PT.
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