John Mulaney Presents: Everybody’s In L.A. just ain’t working so far

“We’re only doing six episodes, so the show will never hit its groove,” proclaimed John Mulaney at the start of the first episode of Everybody’s In L.A., a live multi-night special that kicked off last Friday on Netflix. The comic didn’t say he’d just flown in, but boy, did his eyes look tired. It was almost like he’d just watched the proceedings that were about to unfold. Airing at 10 PM Eastern, they cued up bedtime better than a fistful of CBD-strychnine hybrid gummies.

In an unflattering brown suit and with ’90s curtain bangs, Mulaney did not look like a man who’d been visited by the angel of peak choices. (His and Ryan Gosling’s recent tonsorial moves indicate that 2024 is to men’s hair what 1980 was to pop music: Nobody knows what the hell they’re supposed to be doing.) It turns out his producers weren’t either. Everybody’s debut was too chaotic by half, simultaneously overproduced and underproduced, stuffed with content but comically arid. The aim may have been Ernie Kovacs, but the effect was closer to Kelly Clarkson.

The setup here is a conventional talk show with a monologue, couch-based interviews, and pre-taped field pieces (a comic playground where it’s easy to imagine Mulaney victorious). History is rife with brilliant deconstructions of those conventions, from Fernwood 2 Night to early Letterman to the new film Late Night With The Devil. We’ve been conditioned to expect laser-precise observation from Mulaney, the man behind “Original Cast Album: Co-Op,” countless SNL highlights from Stefon to “Bodega Bathroom,” and killer standup bits like the CliffsNotes guide to Ice-T’s acting.

Alas, the mid-career Mulaney who showed up for Everybody’s In L.A. seems very mid indeed. His opening bit critiquing a map of L.A. neighborhoods was fine, if about as basic as you can get. Richard Kind (a New Yorker) showing up as the show’s announcer was fine, if pointless. Unfortunately, they were signposts for an episode that almost totally lacked focus and bite.

Pre-taped segments profiled a guy who fishes in a city pond and a workman who changes billboards. A running bit about groups of comics (including Fortune Feimster, George Wallace, Natasha Leggero, and Chelsea Peretti) shopping for an L.A. home together seemed half-baked, like a hot burn on HGTV circa 2010. None of them said anything in particular about L.A. right now. And why wasn’t Mulaney interacting with anyone?

In-studio, if the point was to mine the comic riches of the current Netflix Is A Joke festival, Mulaney settled for a strange skim, giving the dull Stavros Halkias a spot on the couch. (Why not Feimster and Peretti et. al., if everybody’s in town?) A live interview with a coyote rights activist would have been better as a tightly edited field segment. A weirdly fawning Q&A of reality star Ray-J might have been an extended piss-take, but the host’s POV was unclear.

The main guest was Jerry Seinfeld, who was pushing his critically decimated comedy Unfrosted and seemed to be there grudgingly. “It does seem like a guy coming out of rehab would do a show like this,” said Seinfeld, clearly not in a charitable mood. “I have my own world, and I’ll just do that.” To wit: Mulaney took live calls from people reporting their encounters with coyotes, to little comic effect. Will Ferrell popped up for multiple laugh-free cameos as the iconic L.A. producer Lou Adler, while a delivery robot buzzed laps around the couch.

Random chaos doesn’t make for consistent comedy, and episode one of Everybody’s In LA managed to come off both manic and sluggish. (Couldn’t someone have written something inventive for Seinfeld and Mulaney to do together?) The show seemed to be going for Letterman circa 1983, but Letterman’s anarchism worked because it was delivered in carefully calibrated doses within a standard talk framework. It wasn’t the entire show.

Irony requires a baseline in order to land. Unfortunately, part of the problem is Mulaney, who didn’t exactly find his Hamlet as a talk-show host on night one, sometimes fading in conversation with his guests (unlike, say, Seth Meyers, who instantly revealed himself to be a gifted interviewer on Late Night).

And here, we have to address the elephant—or is the coyote?—in the room. Talk shows soar or flail on the persona and sensibilities of their host. Mulaney made his name as a comic whose persona and sensibilities were clearly defined and highly stylized. Then he blew them up completely.

But longtime fans are justified in wondering who this John Mulaney character really is, and whether they still want to keep buying the package. (His often-grim “confessional” 2023 special Baby J was oddly inhibited, obscuring nearly as much as it revealed.) Mulaney himself doesn’t seem entirely sure what his value props are these days. At times, he looks almost palpably uncomfortable in his own skin. You can wonder if he’s having any fun.

Everybody’s In L.A. is an opportunity for a reset and an appealing vision. Maybe that’ll materialize over the next five nights. (The show continues airing live at 10 PM Monday through Friday.) The host would be well-advised to settle down, sharpen his comic focus, and take fewer prisoners, himself included.