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The Hoya

Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Television Review: ‘Mulaney’

FOX New comedy sitcom “Mulaney” seemed to be poised for success but ended up disappointing with poor timing and forced humor.
FOX
New comedy sitcom “Mulaney” seemed to be poised for success but ended up disappointing with poor timing and forced humor.

★★☆☆☆

Even though at first glance “Mulaney” seems to be a new comedy with a lot of potential, it falls flat.

“Mulaney” is not like other sitcoms stylistically  and while the attempt at a new sitcom scripting style is admirable, it unfortunately cripples the overall result. The show, created by and starring John Mulaney (COL ’04), begins with and jumps to scenes of Mulaney doing stand-up comedy throughout the show. Even though Mulaney is a funny stand-up comedian, the choppiness with which the scenes are inserted is jarring and takes away from the viewer’s ability to absorb the show.

The best way to describe “Mulaney” is as an attempt to be a new, young “Seinfeld.” Just like “Seinfeld,” “Mulaney” features a young comedian living in New York City with his comedic friends. The show also intentionally follows the “Seinfield” co-creator Larry David’s rule of “no hugging, no learning” in an attempt at pure farce. However, this proves to be problematic for “Mulaney” because none of the characters are compelling nor do their plotlines keep the viewer interested.

For instance, the main storylines of the first episode include Jane, played by Nasim Pedrad from “Saturday Night Live,” doing crazy things to her ex-boyfriend and Mulaney dealing with his crazy boss. The events of the plot themselves are so superficial they are more likely to be seen on Nickelodeon. The lack of compelling plotlines would not be such a big deal if the show was such good farce that it was comparable to Seinfeld, but as of now the writing and acting are not even close to the standard necessary to make the show worth watching.

As far as writing goes, Mulaney seems to be set up for a comedic home run; he was a longtime writer on “SNL” and has former cast members Pedrad and Martin Short at his disposal. However, Mulaney tries too hard to put too many jokes in the script. While he does have some clever wordplay and some smart humor woven into the dialogues, the script is just too choppy and unnatural. The script has so many jokes fit into such a short amount of dialogue that the acting is forced and unbelievable.

Pedrad and Mulaney struggle to have honest acting performances while delivering incredibly unnatural dialogue. They both look like they are still acting on “SNL” in a sketch comedy situation, rather than adapting to a more organic sitcom mentality. The show definitely lacks a human element in its acting and feels more like every character is constantly trying to do stand-up comedy independent of plotlines or interactions.

Structurally, the show jumps from scene to scene and plotline to plotline abruptly without much rhyme or reason. It even adds a seemingly useless scene that lasts less than 30 seconds just to set up a mediocre situational comedy moment a few seconds later. The constant cuts would be okay if the quick scene jumping was done for comedic juxtaposition, but instead, the viewer is just left with short superficial scenes jam-packed with jokes. The show does not pace itself or flow like most shows, and viewers will certainly have to get used to the unique style if they want to continue watching (assuming it is not cancelled within the next few episodes).

But more surprising is that even though John Mulaney is a brilliant comedy writer who has been writing sketch comedy for years, the show even struggles with the fundamentals of sketch comedy. Instead of starting out with something grounded in reality and heightening comedy to the absurd for comedic effect, many scenes tend to be packed with random jokes (some of which are admittedly clever) without any regard for the pacing of the comedy.

The poorly paced humor is best demonstrated by Short’s character, Lou Cannon. Short is once again playing a crazy guy, but the craziness is not grounded in anything. The insanity of Lou Cannon never builds from a base background — it is just random intermittent craziness. One moment he is yelling nonsense and in another he is firing a money cannon. Instead of heightening comedic beats for laughs, every single thing Lou Cannon does classifies as absurd behavior. He seems more like a crazy person from a kid’s show rather than the product of an intelligent and sophisticated comedian like Mulaney.

John Mulaney is undoubtedly a clever writer, and he is definitely surrounded by funny people on the show, but the farce falls flat. It appears that “Mulaney” is more than likely to squander the potential of what seems to be a funny cast and a potentially funny premise.

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