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Los Angeles is not the first city fans would associate with comedian John Mulaney. That would be Chicago, his hometown and the backdrop to innumerable childhood anecdotes in his stand-up act, or New York, where he broke out as a writer on "Saturday Night Live" and shot a special at Radio City Music Hall. But L.A. is where Mulaney now lives; it's also currently home to the second iteration of Netflix Is a Joke, a massive, weeklong comedy festival organized by the streaming service as a show of genre dominance. (Netflix stand-up head Robbie Praw used to run programming at Montreal's vaunted Just for Laughs event and has essentially created a West Coast version.) And so we have "John Mulaney Presents: Everybody's in LA," a weeklong special event combining studio segments, pre-taped sketches and man-on-the-street interviews into a sort of pop-up talk show.
"We're only doing six episodes, so this show will never hit its groove," Mulaney warned during the opening monologue, delivered from his temporary home base at Sunset Gower Studios. True to his word, the broadcast — the latest of Netflix's recent experiments with live programming — had some visible hiccups, including sound issues and a palpable rush through the final stretch to wrap the show around the hour mark. But the awkwardness only added to the charm of an inherently contradictory undertaking: a hyper-local show about a sprawling patchwork of neighborhoods that's also a global event with major superstars, an oxymoron neatly captured by wildlife advocate Tony Tucci sharing a couch with Jerry Seinfeld.
Mulaney bills L.A. as "a city that confuses and fascinates me." The very outsider's perspective that makes the show's premise somewhat counterintuitive also provides the needed distance for a sharp observational vantage point. Along with the obligatory jokes about improv and the general state of downtown, there's a sense of lovingly attentive detail in a "House Hunters" parody starring a pack of comedians scoping out a potential hype house in Van Nuys, plus a transplant's fascination in the episode's uniting theme of coyotes, featuring viewer-submitted anecdotes solicited via call-in line. If the woman microdosing on her daily hike through Griffith Park didn't exist, Mulaney's writers would have had to make her up.
Much of Los Angeles lore fits with longtime Mulaney motifs like true crime. (On '80s serial killers like the Night Stalker: "They had cool names and cool branding, but that doesn't mean what they did was right.") "Everybody's in LA" itself is in line with the performer's embrace of somewhat unfashionable, or just off-kilter, formats. Mulaney's last project before the pandemic was "The Sack Lunch Bunch," a children's sketch special that marked a delightfully unexpected left turn after a string of well-received stand-up hours. His high-profile divorce and experience with substance abuse necessitated a semi-confessional turn with last year's "Baby J," but with "Everybody's in LA," Mulaney is back on more comfortable ground: a throwback vehicle for exploring highly personal hobby horses, casting himself as a self-effacing but still smoothly composed master of ceremonies. After earning rave reviews for his appearance at the Governors Awards, there was widespread speculation Mulaney might take on the Oscars. "Everybody's in LA" continues to prove the comic is qualified for a bigger, perhaps longer-lasting job — and also that a smaller stage is a better venue for his quirks.
With its wood paneling, warm earth tones, and ample houseplants, the studio for "Everybody's in LA" is a '70s-inspired nod to the likes of Johnny Carson and Dick Cavett. Character actor Richard Kind, himself a visiting dignitary from New York, assumes the traditional role of sidekick, objecting that the dystopian delivery robot Mulaney has brought onstage is stealing the jobs of hardworking candy couriers like his own father. At a time when classical talk is increasingly endangered — rest in power, "The Late Late Show"; long live "After Midnight" — it's equally endearing and disoriented to see the medium's past resurrected as a novelty. Yet segments spotlighting real-life eccentrics like a Hollywood billboard worker or a man fishing in Echo Park Lake felt distinctly contemporary, channeling the curious, humanist style of "How to With John Wilson."
It's Mulaney who weaves this grab bag together. Interviewing Jerry Seinfeld about his Netflix-produced Pop Tarts movie on a Netflix-produced talk show could have a whiff of corporate-mandated synergy, but the exchange is animated by the appearance of Will Ferrell in character as hard-partying record producer Lou Adler. ("You've brought your amazing rehab zaniness to this show," Seinfeld marveled.) Meanwhile, no one could mistake musician and entrepreneur Ray J for an obligatory inclusion, especially as Mulaney valiantly steered through such sensitive subjects as his ongoing divorce. Like ending the episode on a musical performance, the interview could feel a bit destabilizing. But the show is so rooted in a specific vision that the next five editions are an easy sell. Everybody may be in L.A., but not just anybody could pull these people and topics together.
The first episode of "John Mulaney Presents: Everybody's in LA" is now streaming on Netflix, with remaining episodes airing live May 6-10 at 7pm PT.
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