Mild spoilers for “John Mulaney: From Scratch” below.
(First of all, my mom told me I should write this. She thinks that I won’t do anything if she’s the one to suggest it, which is maybe sometimes true. As John Mulaney suggests in From Scratch, we’re all always unpacking our childhood or reenacting it.)
John Mulaney was very funny before he went to rehab, and he is very funny after rehab, in much the same way that he was before. He was always upfront about being a bit of a ne’er do well, but in previous specials those stories were memories from the distant past. This time around, bits about bad behavior are much more recent. This gives the material a bit of an edge that didn’t exist before, an idea that we’re now seeing the “real” Mulaney, even as he winks at his onstage “persona.”
There’s a lot of common ground to be found when relating experiences of addiction and rehab; Mulaney even polled the crowd as to who else had spent time in inpatient facilities (at our show, he shared a dialogue with a woman who was put in a disciplinary facility as a teen). But most of his stories about his recent rehab stint didn’t attempt to share that common ground at all. Instead, he focused on his “star-studded” intervention (where he had a fresh haircut courtesy of SNL connections) and how no one at his rehab facility recognized him. Even a mostly unrelated bit – a very funny hypothetical -- included advising someone to “Google me.” Much of the act is told from the perspective of his past self, a guy in the throes of addiction who thinks he’s the coolest person in the room, rather than his current self, sober and grateful to have left that guy behind.
The most vulnerable, raw moment of the hour is when Mulaney admits that when he’s alone, he’s “with the person that tried to kill me.” But besides a sincere thank you to the audience in the finale, that confession is the only true emotional moment of the set. It calls to mind this year’s other comedy phenomenon Inside, by Bo Burnham (who Mulaney identifies as a rival for young fans’ devotion). Whereas Inside put Burnham’s fragile emotional wellbeing front and center with little context, From Scratch delivers the facts of Mulaney’s “crazy year” with few of the feelings behind it.
The show becomes progressively less personal from that poignant moment. Many “canceled” male comedians have staged their comebacks by doubling down, as if to say: “If you thought THAT was bad, here’s what I REALLY think.” Mulaney has his mild version of that in the latter half of his act; what he “really” thinks is very funny, and not terribly offensive (he doesn’t appreciate having to say “believe science” after a childhood grudge against the subject). The material got big laughs, but it felt jarring and almost aimless after the revealing portion about his rehab stay.
I can only imagine how difficult it is to relive that period of his life for the entertainment of a new crowd of strangers, night after night, for weeks at a time. Certainly, my blog post is not the place to solve the age-old debate about how much an artist owes his audience. He doesn’t necessarily owe us any material about his addiction; he didn’t have to come back at all if he didn’t want to (or maybe he did, if jokes about his finances can be taken at face value).
But he did come back, and he did share a lot. Yet I walked away from the show with more of an understanding of Mulaney the celebrity rather than Mulaney the man. Perhaps it was easier to focus on those unrelatable aspects of his story, rather than the parts that were really painful, humiliating, upsetting, and universal. I can’t help but feel that it’s a loss, when addiction has touched so many lives, that one of our most brilliant comic minds didn’t dig a little deeper on the subject.
Mulaney proved himself prescient by claiming the moniker The Comeback Kid: whatever reputational hit he suffered over the past year, the string of sold-out shows (and the overwhelming standing ovation at our show in Philadelphia) proves that audiences will welcome him back with open arms. From Scratch doesn’t have to be the final word on the subject, either. If we’re lucky, we have many more creative endeavors from Mulaney to look forward to, and maybe some of them will further unpack his personal near-catastrophe. Or maybe not. It’s his choice.