John Mulaney: New in Town (2012)

This is the earliest John Mulaney special that’s available on Netflix, while Kid Gorgeous is his third, written six years apart. I can see the reflection of some of Mulaney’s maturity as a comedian, as some of the jokes here are a little rougher compared to Kid Gorgeous. Still very funny, though, with heaps of Mulaney’s hilariously-emphatic delivery. Overall, it’s been nice to watch so many standup specials recently, but I am glad that The Daily Show is returning next week. Let’s just say they’ve missed a lot!

After catching a YouTube clip of Kid Gorgeous’s fantastic “there’s a horse loose in a hospital” bit, I’ve spent the occasional night bouncing from Mulaney clip to Mulaney clip, and several of the excellent routines I’ve found stem from this special. I adore the whole bit about how much harder it is to do things than not do things – his demonstration of the way an adult’s face lights up when they say they didn’t do anything over the weekend is spot-on. There’s also a stupendous bit about the New York Post (“It’s like someone read the news in a better paper and is now texting you what they remember; it doesn’t have to be accurate, it just has to be short,”) in which he lays out their hierarchy of humanity, from “angels” to “pervs.” Some good jokes about Mulaney’s childhood, such as the racist bullying he received from kids who mistakenly thought he was Asian American and likening his youthful flamboyance to being like “an old queen,” as well as a bit about his confusion over why he’d want his girlfriend to meet his parents when things are going well between them.

Plenty of stuff I hadn’t seen before too. There’s a really fun sequence about Law & Order: SVU, and I like Mulaney’s contrasting examples of the ways his parents, both lawyers, used to put him “on trial” as a child. He also has quite a bit of material about being sober/his life before getting sober, which is a little sad in retrospect, given the recent news about him entering rehab. However, recovery is rarely a straight line, so I was able to appreciate this material from a time in Mulaney’s life when he was doing well and hope he’s able to get himself there again. I really love the way he talks about people’s complete inability to fathom what to offer him at parties in lieu of alcohol, and he shares some of the stories he’s heard about himself from when he used to get blackout drunk, though he’s in the dark about whether or not they’re true.

I mentioned some rougher jokes in this special compared to Kid Gorgeous, and it’s not about the construction – the setup, the delivery, the turns of phrase, etc. Rather, it’s to do with the content. There are some jokes, sprinkled in here and there, that feel a little uncomfortable to me. I’ve had the misfortune to see standups who are way more racist/sexist/homophobic/ableist, grossly overt while at the same time aggressively unfunny, but having gotten used to Mulaney as a more thoughtful comedian, I don’t really like these moments. They never really go on very long, and I hesitate to call it full-on punching down, but they’re lazy, easy moments that don’t sit right with me. I’ve had similar thoughts about early specials from Trevor Noah, and in both cases, I greatly appreciate that Noah and Mulaney are comedians who’ve grown more judicious with their humor. Their more recent work ably proves that 1) comedians don’t have to take cheap shots to be funny and 2) their material is often better without it.

Warnings

Language, sexual references, drinking/drug references, some off-color jokes, and thematic elements.