John Mulaney’s Baby J takes parasocial relationships to rehab

John Mulaney knows exactly who his fans are. Hence one of the funniest bits in it Baby Jhis new Netflix special, comes when he’s in an environment where people do not know who he is. Mulaney, who thought he would be chill about this, suddenly discovers he is rather to no avail, even going so far as to conspicuously show newspaper articles about him so they could put together that he’s kind of a big deal.

Soon after, he shares an anecdote about a friend, Lenny, asking him what he does for a living, and when he tells Lenny he’s a comedian, Lenny is shocked that Mulaney can make a living that way.

“Yes, ask your daughter,” Mulaney replies with feigned irritability. “Or your son if he doesn’t like sports.”

This all happened in rehab as well.

Just like Chris Rock’s Selective outrage, Baby J, Mulaney’s new Netflix comedy special, arrives after a particularly tumultuous series of events for the artist. Unfortunately for Mulaney, his public trials were arguably a bit worse than getting spanked by Will Smith. During a nine-month whirlwind through the end of 2020 and into 2021, Mulaney became a minor tabloid sensation when he checked into rehab, got divorced, started seeing actor Olivia Munn, and had a child.

The reason his issues became tabloid fodder is simple for those who have followed Mulaney’s comedy for a number of years. John Mulaney has built a career making jokes under a comedic personality that is decided not a divorced woman with a drug problem. With a twinkling confessional style, for years Mulaney delivered jokes about his hopelessly straightforward demeanour, dressed in smart suits as he bon mots about being the comedy’s main Wife Guy, who also happened to look like three toddlers in a waistcoat, manic rattling. expertly crafted stories about what it’s like to be in your thirties and look like Brooks Brothers Peter Pan.

Baby J is partly about Mulaney’s suddenly public struggles with addiction, the result of two years of workshop material about his time in rehab and the intervention that got him there. As much as he emphasizes his “now a different vibe,” the special is vintage Mulaney: casually rehearsed, self-deprecating, sharp things that use the aloofness of sobriety to laugh at the darkness of addiction. You get the sense that it’s part of Mulaney’s healing process, a comedic personality rebuilt: still the same person, kind of. Like many sober people, Mulaney acknowledges on stage that the person who tried to harm him is still there every day. He accepted that and continued to tell jokes anyway.

But Baby J also does a different kind of rehabilitation.

Mulaney’s aw-shucks adult toddler schtick wasn’t just a creation of his stand-up. Celebrity is a collaboration between artist and audience – Mulaney’s comedy suggested a persona, and the popular reception reinforced it. In this, Mulaney’s recognisability became a trap. The version of John Mulaney that existed onstage was a non-threatening, fearful Irish Catholic liberal arts master, a collection of traits that has a lot of overlap in the media industry, yes, but also resonated with a very particular kind of (white) fan. As Mulaney tells Lenny in rehab: Daughters and sons who don’t like sports.

This is why his stint in rehab and divorce came with a stream of essays about parasocial relationshipsbecause a man who was arguably too successful in his relatability caused a cognitive rift in the fandom he cultivated.

Reviews of Baby J remark how the comedian’s polished demeanor undermines the fragility of the material. Viewers in the know will notice what Mulaney not talk about: His divorce, new partner and child. Old Mulaney probably would have – drug addiction wasn’t the reason he exaggerated; he opens the set with an extended diatribe about how much he always loved attention. Leaving his life as it is is perhaps the biggest indication of how the new Mulaney differs from the pre-rehabilitation phase of his career: It’s a Mulaney who may have found a newfound interest in boundaries.

John Mulaney knows his audience. Maybe he’s decided it’s time to share a little less with them.