John Mulaney: Baby J (2023)

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Today, it often seems like stand-up comedy is only quantified by how quotable it is. You watch a 60-minute set waiting for the funniest bits so you and your friends can repeat them to each other ad nauseam over the next few months – maybe even years. I’m not sure exactly when the artform devolved into this. It was sometime between Eddie Murphy’s Delirious and Dane Cook’s Harmful If Swallowed. Or was it Kevin Hart’s Seriously Funny?

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Although we can recall stories and segments from Bill Cosby’s I Started Out as a Child or George Carlin’s Class Clown (though I’ll bet you can tell me the “seven dirty words you can never say on television”), what we remember most from these iconic sets are the ideas that were conveyed and how enthralled we were by masterful storytelling.

In his latest stand-up special, Baby J, John Mulaney hearkens back to decades long ago when we would spin a comedy album, not necessarily so we could memorize jokes, but because we were captivated with the subject matter.

In the first decade of his career, Mulaney had fallen perfectly into the modern-day landscape that was laid out for him. His first big special, 2012’s New In Town, had funny bits you’ve probably heard whether or not you actually watched the film. Mulaney, who had previously risen to prominence as a writer on Saturday Night Live, talked in a nasally voice, with a very proper, if not polite, cadence, and had an incredibly safe, non-threatening appearance. He played off this educated-yet-innocent persona for two more specials, which were objectively inferior to New In Town. By then, he was way too well-known for us to believe he was really that cordial.

In his 2018 special, Kid Gorgeous – his last before taking a five-year break from televised specials – he discussed how, when he met Mick Jagger, the rock star wasn’t a very nice guy. Mulaney extrapolates that the more famous you get, the less nice you are. Of course, John Mulaney is and never will be as famous as Mick Jagger, but something can definitely change about a person when they reach a certain level of notoriety. In Baby J, the comedian adds that “likability is a prison.” He couldn’t be more accurate.

There was always something off about those two previous specials, where the comedian felt like he was trying to preserve an image, or at least a character. It turns out, Mulaney was neither safe nor innocent. In 2020, his friends held a surprise intervention which ended up with Mulaney in rehab for a years-long narcotics addiction.

In his latest stand-up special, Baby J, the comedian tells the entire story, tracing us through the lowlights of his addiction, his time in rehab, breaking up with his dealer, robbing himself of his own money (literally), his star-studded intervention, and even some of his first experiences with drugs and alcohol as a teenager.

Throughout his set, Mulaney manages the tightrope of flippancy while still maintaining responsibility for his actions. He’s never winking to other addicts about how “great” it was to do drugs. Rather, he satirizes himself, showing the audience how much stand-up-worthy material came out of his own stupidity, all while finding the humor that hindsight and recovery can afford a person.

No longer is the comedian tethered to his nice-guy pretense or any pressure to come up with quotable bits. Instead, he delivers one of the finest stand-up specials in decades simply by telling magnificent stories. And at 80 minutes, it breezes by. Like the best comedians do, he runs a thread through his entire set. He’s never delivering jokes but telling a seamless tale with perfect unobtrusive transitions. And it feels completely effortless.

Baby J is still very much a product of John Mulaney. It showcases his proprietary thought process and specific angular worldview. The comic has always known how to ramp up a set, even during his worst outings. Here, during his final moments, he reads and acts out excerpts from an interview he did with GQ that he doesn’t even remember doing – it took place just three days prior to his intervention.

Hearing Mulaney tell his entire story, it feels as though he’s possessed by the spirit of Lenny Bruce. You never get the sense that he’s doing that typical stand-up trope where he makes up stories or exaggerates them for the sake of making them better. Perhaps he does embellish a bit, but every single word that comes out of his mouth feels like he’s saying them for the very first time.

Vulnerable, ballsy, even groundbreaking, Baby J is a masterpiece of monology, reaching historic proportions as one of the few times a comedian has gotten this personal – and without making it awkward. The special makes us remember the classic days of stand-up that felt so long gone, where a masterful storyteller can just stand in front of a mic and we hang on to their every word, anticipating what will happen next, and being surprised and rewarded every time.