TV review: ‘John Mulaney: The Comeback Kid’

| TV Editor

Where: Netflix

John Mulaney is back and better than ever. With the release of his new Netflix comedy special, “John Mulaney: The Comeback Kid,” Mulaney reminds us all why we fell in love with him after seeing his previous special, “New In Town,” in 2012.

His well-crafted jokes are worded perfectly and woven together to form a cadence that is specific to Mulaney himself. Some of the material feels familiar—if you’ve been keeping up with Mulaney, you may have seen some of this material when he came to campus for Social Programming Board’s comedy show last spring—but by no means does that mean his material is stale, just well-crafted.

When he arrived on the comedy scene, he was often compared to Jerry Seinfeld, and when he got a multi-camera TV show, “Mulaney,” on Fox where he combined his stand up with scripted television, he was likened to Seinfeld even more. At this point in Mulaney’s career, however, it becomes more difficult to compare Mulaney to anyone else. The style and structure of “The Comeback Kid” feels specific to him, and not just because most of his material revolves around his own childhood, marriage and life.

The special is full of well-timed punch lines and stories that reach their comedic climax through carefully constructed characterization. Perhaps the strongest segments of the special come when Mulaney tells us stories from his past and details the escapades of people around him, from going to church with his parents to reflecting on his marriage. His characterization of other people in his life, from his dad to a former boss and even to Bill Clinton, is specific and hilarious. He gives us just the right amount of information about these characters so that we are set up perfectly for the punch lines.

Mulaney uses just the right amount of exaggeration to highlight the absurdity of certain situations, like in his segment about real estate agents. When describing shows on HGTV, he gives us the premise of the show and adds that the couple looking for a house have “three children and nine on the way and a max budget of seven dollars.” Here the comedy comes from his blatant exaggeration, but later in the special he loads his description of characters in order to add credibility to his story in one of my favorite segments.

During this segment, he references his time working as a temp at a web company in New York City and loads the front of the joke with a depiction of the company’s CEO, who “wore linen suits. He had suspenders. He had a bowtie. He had a hat. He had a cane with an ivory handle,” Mulaney says, “I’m giving you more description than you need ‘cause I need you to believe me. This was a real person I knew in the 21st century.” Credibility is important for Mulaney, whose stories can be absurd and always seem to conflict with his onstage persona.

The Netflix description of “The Comeback Kid” reads, “The jacket stays on, but the troublemaker comes out in a night of unexpected and offbeat comedy.” While I do not necessarily agree with the description of his comedy as “offbeat,” this description gets to the heart of why Mulaney’s material can be so hilarious: It’s unexpected.

John Mulaney is a tall, thin, 33-year-old white man who acknowledges in “New In Town,” “I don’t look like someone who used to do anything. I look like I was just sitting in a room in a chair eating saltines for like 28 years.”

When he launches into material about a woman on the street telling him to “eat ass, suck a d— and do drugs” or when he peppers his comedy with swear words to hit home a bit about his French bulldog Petunia acting like an old French woman, he deviates from what we anticipate from the man on stage. This technique, however, only seems to make us love him more.

Mulaney’s closing bit is about meeting Bill Clinton at the age of 10. The title of the special refers to Clinton, yet it is impossible to separate Mulaney’s return to touring from the former president’s nickname.

He comes across as even more confident in his comedy than ever before. He calls out a person in the audience for texting and then segues right into a bit about Cirque Du Soleil and how he hates how they call people out of the audience. He sounds out of breath during bits where the story is building, but is perfectly controlled in his deadpan tag lines.

Even his pacing on the stage seems to match the rhythm of his stories. It’s obvious that everything in this special has been planned, yet it never feels overworked. “John Mulaney: The Comeback Kid” highlights Mulaney’s strengths and talents as a writer and comedian.

Even though he never left, I am so glad he’s back.

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