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Chicago Tribune
16-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Column: John Mulaney holds Netflix hostage: Week Six
About a year ago, Chicago comedian John Mulaney did a talk show on Netflix that didn't make a whole lot of sense, albeit by design, with great joy. It was a must-see meander of stray ideas, dead spots and rough invention. A year later, Mulaney has brought back that same dillydad with almost the same title — 'John Mulaney Presents: Everybody's in LA' is now 'Everybody's Live with John Mulaney' — but otherwise, it's the same show, with the same possibilities, awkwardness and puzzle: Why would Netflix throw money at this thing? We're six episodes in, with three more to go, and no closer to an answer. And yet that in itself, that willingness to wander off a path of 21st century expectations, on a major streaming network driven by clicks and algorithms, is where freshness lies. Mulaney, you can just tell, wishes he had been working in those languid, mold-breaking days of the 1970s. 'The freedom land of the '70s,' as Lana Del Rey once sang. You can tell because, unlike whatever topical tensions or politics most late-night talk shows derive their purpose, the purpose of 'Everybody's Live' (as with 'Everybody's in LA') appears to be Mulaney's understanding that he can't really justify doing this show at all. Not in 2025. Last year, during its trial run, he started out asking the studio audience: 'Why even do this show? I don't know, but it gives me something to do and structure is key for me.' On the first episode of this new revamp, he explained it as 'my live, jazz-like unpredictable talk show — I can't do coke or Adderall anymore, so now I'm making it your problem.' David Letterman, decades ago, made a running joke out of his deep hatred of the corporate overlords at NBC. Mulaney, in a similar vein, seems to be either forever mocking Netflix for this folly or still trying to sell the premise of the show, even as the network pours in however many millions already committed. I can't quite decide if this makes for the kind of subversive hand-biting that Letterman once dared. I can't even decide yet if this is great TV. But it often feels delightfully, fascinatingly out of step. It plays like a Chicago hustle — it knows it's on borrowed time. Letterman may be the obvious precedent but Mulaney's delivery is less snide than lightly panicked, as if some Netflix thugs have their hands on a switch off-camera, eager to cut to black. Mulaney hides nothing, his unease, his squirm, his annoyance, his deathly smile that seems to tell his writers: 'See, I told you it wouldn't work, and it didn't.' Like Letterman, he tosses little quips to the off-camera producers, revealing just how roughly managed professional entertainment can actually get. During the first new episode, he said: 'We've been working on this show all day. Some crew got here as early as 9 a.m.' On the second episode, after Mulaney hung up on a rambling phone call from a viewer, Nick Kroll, Mulaney's frequent comedy partner, turned to Mulaney earnestly and asked if it's stressful for Mulaney to listen to a caller go on endlessly without any clear direction. Absolutely, Mulaney muttered: 'Because he might be getting somewhere great.' Intentionally or not, what I like about 'Everybody's Live with John Mulaney' is how it forces you to ask a question nearly every creative medium has faced: What is the point of this? Does creativity need a purpose? Can an artist's sensibility be its own attraction? That, in a way, is another description of stand-up comedy, and Mulaney is wise to start each episode with a taste of his day job, then ease the rest into that same ranginess. Still, during an episode last spring, comedian George Wallace said if 'Seinfeld' was a show about nothing, Mulaney's show really is nothing. He wasn't being mean. He was confused. Mulaney looked hurt. He has a vision, even if he doesn't seem certain of it. It resembles an old episode of Dick Cavett's show and it plays like one of those online montages of the 'Saturday Night Live' cast losing focus and cracking up. Rockiness can be its own asset. Yet after the first episode last month, NPR asked: 'What exactly is this show trying to achieve?' After I watched the other night, I surfed across the late-night talk landscape: Jimmy Fallon was watching card tricks, Stephen Colbert was telling Trump jokes, Jimmy Kimmel was listening to actresses promote movies and TV shows. What were those hosts trying to achieve? Mulaney was wondering if Anne Frank would be upset if she knew millions of teenage boys get to read her diary every day. Then he was talking to a funeral home worker. Then he asked a crew member to speak, just because he sounds like Kieran Culkin. The obvious way to read this is as a parody of a talk show, but I don't think so. Letterman, a true believer in Johnny Carson, didn't really parody talk shows either. He was himself, and he was not the kind of person who gets a TV talk show. If Mulaney's taken a cue from Letterman, it's that he's also being himself, and that self is too curious, and too caustic, to sit still, to someone talk about a movie no one will see. Why bother reinventing the talk show when TikTok and YouTube alone — which give you celebrities eating spicy chicken wings, and hosts openly flirting with guests — did that already? The real spiritual inspiration here seems to be public access TV — or rather, the oddly compelling ineptness of a show that only loosely grasps the conventions of television. This also means, as the long talk show couch on the show grows more and more crowded — there are too many guests per show — it's never the dinner party you expect. If there's an organizing principle, Mulaney explained it nicely: 'Netflix has given me a hour to introduce my fans to the baby boomer culture that has made me the unsettled weirdo that I am today.' Last spring, that meant director John Carpenter predicting Mexico will retake California; a video of terrible Los Angeles parkers giving advice to new high school graduates; and mental health professionals diagnosing the mental health issues of comedians. This spring, it's been deft nods to Brian De Palma movies; old Sonic Youth songs; great little video snapshots of Los Angelenos, including a rabbi who would much rather discuss the Gene Hackman thriller 'Crimson Tide' than his job. Why put together a focus group composed of actors who have played Willy Loman in 'Death of a Salesman' — from students to famous names like Christopher Lloyd — and ask them if they carried anything in their suitcases while onstage? Because Mulaney is genuinely curious, and, again, the result is a compelling spectacle. Mulaney asks them to perform, at the same time, the 'Promises were made' speech. It's chaos. 'Thank you, Willies,' Mulaney says when they're done. 'You're all worth more living than dead.' I feel the same way about 'Everybody's Live with John Mulaney.'
Gulf Weekly
13-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Gulf Weekly
The stand-up's sitting down!
Comedy superstar John Mulaney has launched his live celebrity talk show on Netflix. Everybody's Live with John Mulaney is set to air every Thursday for 12 consecutive weeks. The show promises a spontaneous feel as its host, co-showrunner and executive producer is set to interview celebrities to a live studio audience, in addition to the global audience at home. 'It's a fun feeling to know that hopefully a lot of people are watching, and it's live, globally, with no delays, and you could really damage your career!' John jokingly said. 'It feels like there's more at stake, I love that. It's the best,' he added. The idea for the show began as an experiment. The stand-up comedian had earlier hosted the talk show Everybody's in LA during the Netflix Comedy Festival last year, which had a similar premise and ran for six episodes. The 42 year-old rose to prominence as a writer for the sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live from 2008 to 2013, and returned to host the show six times following his departure. He won two Primetime Emmy Awards for outstanding writing for a variety special for his two comedy specials Kid Gorgeous (2018) and Baby J (2023). John has also done voice acting roles for several animated projects including the character Big Jack Horner in Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (2022).
Yahoo
13-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Everybody's Live with John Mulaney' Turns a One-Off Experiment Into Consistently Delightful Chaos: TV Review
'Everybody's Live with John Mulaney' isn't quite a new show. Instead, the series is the evolution of 'Everybody's in LA,' a pop-up concept — and apparently, trial run — timed to the Netflix Is a Joke festival last year. After producing six episodes in eight days, Mulaney took 10 months to retool the series into something less hyper-regional but no less idiosyncratic. '10 months is the perfect amount of time to forget how to do this show,' Mulaney joked in his monologue. But the next hour made clear the comedian and his collaborators forgot, and in fact changed, very little from that initial sprint. (That Mulaney referred to — and kept referring to — 'Everybody's in LA' as 'this show,' not a separate one, was an accurate preview.) Richard Kind is still the announcer; the hour's centerpiece is still an expanding panel pairing celebrities with non-famous experts in their field; Mulaney still asks callers what kind of car they drive, because while everybody may no longer be in LA, he certainly is. The '70s-inspired set on a Hollywood soundstage proved a metaphor for the transition from one-off experiment to a three-month run of a dozen weekly episodes: mostly the same, with minor tweaks only apparent to a small subset of nerdy aficionados. More from Variety Joan Baez Pauses John Mulaney's Talk Show to Slam 'Incompetent Billionaires' Running America: 'Our Democracy Is Going Up in Flames' John Mulaney's Star-Studded 'SNL50' Musical Sketch Includes Hot Dog Adam Driver, Kate McKinnon's Giuliani and Scarlett Johansson Joking About Colin Jost Steve Martin's 'SNL50' Monologue Sees Martin Short Arrested by ICE, John Mulaney Joking About Hosts' Egos: 'It Amazes Me That Only Two Have Committed Murder' That's great news for fans like myself, having named 'Everybody's in LA' one of the best shows of last year in my annual roundup. It's nonetheless surprising how non-expository Wednesday's technical debut was. The presence of Saymo the delivery robot, for example, went unexplained. Mulaney's four-wheeled friend needed no introduction for those who watched the bug-eyed apparatus develop into a full-fledged character last spring, but neophytes dropping in on a major launch from a worldwide streamer may have been left scratching their heads. Mulaney may have cracked that the name change came after focus groups showed audiences didn't like LA, but nothing else about the show felt focus-grouped or planned with mass appeal in mind. 'Everybody's Live' takes after its five-member panel, in part because the discussion took up the majority of the episode: often odd and offbeat, yet in a way that allows for a transcendent weirdness when the stars align. Without the ability to edit down and tighten a pre-taped segment, the chit-chat between actor Michael Keaton and personal finance columnist Jessica Roy on the night's selected topic — lending money to friends and family — could wander aimlessly. (Keaton sort of flubbed his delivery of a story about Jack Nicholson's '$500 junkie buyout' strategy, although his impression was pretty great.) Yet we were also treated to folk singer Joan Baez narrating the time she crashed her brand-new Tesla into an oak tree, much to the in-studio audience's delight. Part of what made 'Everybody's in LA' so exciting was in how it took the cultural decline of the talk show as an opportunity. Rather than subjecting itself to the endless grind of daily headlines or relying on stars' promotional schedules to book guests, the show would embrace the niche fascination its genre was already trending toward — treating 'talk show' like an aesthetic to be tried on and toyed with, not a set of expectations to be met. 'Everybody's Live' maintains this spirit of chaos and curiosity, with all the risks that come with it. Despite a more regular schedule than its predecessor, the show is in no danger of becoming Netflix's answer to 'Late Night' or 'The Tonight Show.' Broadening the focus from Los Angeles and its many contradictions to more general prompts has its growing pains. I didn't feel the same infectious enthusiasm from Mulaney for financial etiquette as, say, the O.J. Simpson case. On the other hand, it would be difficult to shoehorn a Willy Loman focus group into a Southern California-themed broadcast. That sketch, coming just before the episode's closing performance by Cypress Hill, was the hour's peak, containing all the promise of petty obsessions afforded airtime in a chorus of besuited actors shouting a monologue as one. 'Everybody's Live' will continue to have hiccups as it eases into its new schedule, because hiccups are built into the blueprint of a show that solicits live callers and has the host react in real time. (I have some follow-up questions about the Redondo Beach trainer's high-tech workout.) For all Mulaney's self-deprecation, though, there's still a confidence to picking right back up where he left off almost a year ago. Nothing else on TV vibrates at the same frequency as 'Everybody's Live,' née 'Everybody's in LA.' It's on us to attune ourselves. Best of Variety The Best Albums of the Decade
Yahoo
12-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
How to watch ‘Everybody's Live with John Mulaney' tonight
We independently evaluate the products we review. When you buy via links on our site, we may receive compensation. Read more about how we vet products and deals. The Comeback Kid, AKA Baby J., AKA John Mulaney is back with a brand new Netflix project: a live late night show. Seemingly crash tested last May with Everybody's in LA, the new show, Everybody's Live with John Mulaney premieres tonight at 10 p.m. ET, 7 p.m. PT, live on Netflix. 'We will be live globally with no delay,' Mulaney promised to the press during the show's announcement at Next on Netflix. 'We will never be relevant. We will never be your source for news. We will always be reckless. Netflix will always provide us with data that we will ignore.' The show will bring back beloved elements from Everybody's in LA, including announcer Richard Kind and the unreliable robot Saymo. The late night show will also continue to take live calls on-air. Tonight's episode will feature Michael Keaton, Joan Baez and Fred Armisen as guests, along with personal finance columnist Jessica Roy and musical guest Cypress Hill. Are you ready to watch Everybody's Live with John Mulaney? Everybody's Live with John Mulaney premieres tonight, Mar. 12 on Netflix at 10 p.m. ET / 7 p.m. PT. As the name suggests, Everybody's Live with John Mulaney will stream live on Netflix. While the streamer isn't necessarily known for live events, they tested the waters specifically with Mulaney back in May 2025, with Everybody's in LA, a unique six-episode series that premiered live on Netflix during the Netflix is a Joke festival in Los Angeles, California. The new late night Netflix show will feature special guests, live call-in segments, announcer Richard Kind, snack delivery robot Saymo and so much more. John Mulaney's new late night show will air every Wednesday for 12 consecutive weeks.
Yahoo
05-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
There's an appropriately-ridiculous trailer for John Mulaney's live Netflix talk show
We knew John Mulaney was getting his own live Netflix talk show after the success of last year's Everybody's in LA, but now we have more details. Mulaney dropped a trailer for the show and reconfirmed a March 12 air date. The trailer absolutely captures the anarchic spirit of last year's specials, which is fitting for a guy who has said he 'never wanted to host a talk show.' The whole thing is basically a drone shot of Mulaney in a darkened parking lot, as he complains about filming the promo. Finally, he declares that 'Everybody's Live is on Wednesdays live,' then puts on a pair of sunglasses. He's also calling Everybody's Live with John Mulaney 'the first ever celebrity sit-down talk show.' There's probably one question on the minds of anyone who watched Everybody's in LA. Will co-host Richard Kind be returning? He sure will, along with everyone's favorite delivery robot Saymo. Everybody's Live with John Mulaney will run for 12 weeks, airing on Wednesdays. It's already been picked up for a second season, which will presumably air later in 2025 or early next year. As for Netflix, it's been steadily building out its livestreaming infrastructure. It aired that Mike Tyson/Jake Paul fight last year, along with Mulaney's previous show. It has also aired live coverage of golf matches, awards ceremonies and will stream its own Tudum event.
