This is one half of a dueling column about Fox’s new comedy Mulaney. See the argument for Mulaney here.
When I heard that a writer from SNL was leaving to do his own sitcom I was really excited, and I was looking forward to seeing his work on a new platform as well as former SNL cast member Nasim Pedrad joining in it. However, when I saw the trailer I was hesitant and now after seeing the pilot I definitely won’t be catching the rest.
John Mulaney is a talented guy, and I know he’s got the chops to write good jokes from his past on Saturday Night Live, but he just doesn’t have the chops for acting.
Mulaney’s performance in the pilot felt forced and inexperienced, and it was awkward watching him get lines across and trying to act angry or have conversations with his fellow cast members. Maybe Mulaney spent almost too much time at SNL because it felt as if he was in a skit the entire time, like he was one of those celebrities who didn’t have enough time to learn his lines and was in fact reading them off cue cards in conveniently placed locations off screen.
And actually, now that I mention it, all of the acting in the pilot seemed forced and very awkward. The odd part about this is that Pedrad has definitely been hysterical in several of her SNL sketches – but in Mulaney she just didn’t click with me. She, too, felt as if she was just in a half hour long SNL skit. Was that the point? I’m not sure, but I hope so because otherwise they have a huge problem on their hands.
Perhaps it’s the jokes that make the actors bad, because no matter who was giving the punchline or making a remark it was all very stale. While some of the jokes did have me laughing (Mulaney’s intro, for instance), I felt like the execution was lackluster and off-putting.
The style of the show doesn’t help either. Very, very inspired by Seinfield, Mulaney looks like it’s actually trying to be a carbon copy of its successor – everything from the way Mulaney does standup before the episode to the weird and quirky neighbors/friends actually gets in the way of Mulaney being an original, funny sitcom. At least Seinfield had characters I liked and wanted to see more of, whereas almost all of these characters in Mulaney felt so stereotypical and boring that I found myself looking for how much longer I had to endure the pilot for.
There’s a drug dealer who no one seems to want anything to do with, so why do they even talk to him, let alone let him into their apartment? Why is Pedrad’s character so two dimensional and obsessed with her ex? I’d have expected Pedrad to play a more independent, strong willed, smart and funny woman rather than this crazy stalker type character in the pilot.
In the end, Mulaney had a lot of potential, and maybe it still has a little bit, but if the pilot is any example of the comedy style the show is going in then it’s all downhill from here.