Continuing the Mulaney spree and breaking up Twin Peaks: The Return a bit with some levity. The Comeback Kid reflects how much of a leap Mulaney made between this and Kid Gorgeous. He’s not quite unstoppable here, but my god he is good. Quack quack.
Alasdair has been getting into the Ellis and John archive, and was keen to watch this. I’d never seen the finished thing, filmed or live, but I saw a quite late preview at ARG at the time (on the same weekend as Sara Pascoe’s own “other side of the story” show), so was curious to see how it held up. I’m not as fully enamoured of it as I maybe was at the time - a tad too much shouting in lieu of punchline, a touch of whininess - but it’s a strong example of the “raw” genre. I remember doing an amount of “spelling bee”-ing it at the time, and couldn’t resist doing the same here. But that’s just me.
Almost the platonic ideal of an American stand-up special. Mulaney is relentless out of the gate, and even having seen it enough in the past that plenty of the phrasing and tone have entered my subconscious lexicon, I’m still gasping for breath at times. So incredibly self-assured without being cocky. This is the peril of the American comedian rather than Mulaney himself, but the just ending on a random joke because you’ve hit the hour mark will never not baffle me. Have some structure!
Still playing
Still playing