John Mulaney: Baby J

It’s a funny special, but it’s also a brutally honest one.

It’s funny. Mulaney has very much still got it. But what makes this latest hour particularly interesting is how Mulaney has managed to walk the line between being entertaining (it’s a stand-up special, so there have to be jokes) and acknowledging that what we are seeing when we watch John Mulaney on stage is not John Mulaney the person; it’s John Mulaney the character.

Mulaney’s magic act remains using turns of phrase as his sleight of hand. He’s just now a much creepier magician. ... We get two-thirds of the story from Mulaney, but he’s still holding back on us. Whether he’s doing that for his benefit or for ours, we may never know. But he’s still a gifted and often hilarious storyteller. No matter what story he’s selling us.

Baby J is as controlled as Mulaney says he wasn’t during the lowest points of his addiction. Its confession is confident, calculated, creating distance between performer and audience even as it invites us to listen.

One is tempted to say this is his most personal work, but that isn’t quite right. That first shot tips us off to a theme: You can be invisible in front of a crowd. Mulaney’s comedy, however, has become spikier, pricklier, sometimes slower while remaining as funny as ever, like he’s a pitcher who learned to mix up speeds.

A wonderfully candid Netflix stand-up special.

The 80-minute special contains some of his darkest and most compelling material to date. The laughs may come ever-so-slightly fewer and farther between than in his previous work, but Mulaney’s willingness to peel back the curtain on his inner turmoil in a way he’s never done before adds a new depth that, by the end, only makes the special funnier.

“Baby J” is terrific, but it isn’t that [warts-and-all version]. The suit is back (this time a rich maroon). The hair is back. The accent is back. So, for the most part, is the armor. It’s clear this wasn’t always so. The show in its current iteration is extremely funny, but traces remain of a version that dug a little deeper. One senses that Mulaney retreated to safe (and merely funny) pastures.

When it comes to subjects like substance abuse, we’ve been trained to expect raw, unguarded vulnerability, or at least the pretense of it. “Baby J” refuses to flatter those illusions. This is comedy, not memoir, in which a story about Mulaney’s stint in detox is largely a setup for a killer Al Pacino impression. Mulaney doesn’t alter his delivery for this new set of themes, and he often cushions their impact by returning to more familiar ground.

The majority of the special follows the chronology of his intervention to his time at rehab, and while his material is no doubt polished, there is a repetitiveness that comes from the narrative being so centralized. The punchlines of the special as a whole don't necessarily come from a comedic zinger or funny parallel to a given situation, but rather, the outrageous thing Mulaney said or did while under the influence.