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It’s rare to find stand-up comedy that you can comfortably watch with your mother. Actually, let me rephrase that. It’s rare to find good stand-up comedy that you can comfortably watch with your mother. There are plenty of joke-tellers out there that make their sets palatable for parents, but very few of them are genuinely funny. Enter John Mulaney, former Saturday Night Live writer, George St. Geegland, and all-around hilarious person. With his boyish charm on display in past specials like New In Town and The Comeback Kid, Mulaney has established himself as one of our funniest, most intelligent comics, and his latest, Kid Gorgeous at Radio City, is further proof that he only gets better with age (not grosser, as he might lead you to believe). If his ability to serve up laugh after laugh isn’t enough, Mulaney also makes Mom-friendly comedy – and that’s no easy feat.
I don’t mean to say that my mother is some kind of joke prude; she can totally hang with the best of ’em. Will Ferrell yelling “We’re going streaking!” in Old School leaves her in stitches. Arrested Development‘s stair car hop-ons have been known to literally take her breath away. But it’s rare that we find a standup special that isn’t so mundane and safe that it’s not even worth watching, or so far beyond what is deemed comfortable for us to sit next to each other during that we quietly suffer through it or wind up turning it off. (I can’t even really put into words what it was like trying to watch a filthy Louis C.K. bit about God knows what together years ago, and nowadays, this memory takes on an even darker quality, but that’s neither here nor there). But it takes a lot to make this woman laugh, because she isn’t really wooed by overtly political comedy, or racy sex jokes. Tell her a tale about the inherent meanness of 13-year-olds, however, and you may very well win her heart.
Mulaney is a special kind of funnyman, a person so in touch with his comedy calling that he doesn’t have to lean on off-color bits or predictably below-the-belt clichés that many of his fellow standup comedians do. Instead, he draws from stories that might ring true to us in one way or another, or goes places so patently absurd it’s impossible not to admire the sheer inimitability of his whole act. His comedy manages to be smart, fresh, and familiar all at once. Who is this strange, silly alien man, and where did he come from? How do these things materialize in his brain? It’s a mystery we’ll likely never really solve, and it’s probably better that way. It’s the reason why his comedy resonates with so many of us, mothers and daughters and sons alike.
I’m no comedy expert, but I do love to laugh – and that’s something never in short supply when you’re watching John Mulaney. Exaggerated stories of childhood, delightful self-deprecation, and metaphors involving a horse in a hospital all fall under a comedy umbrella that literally leaves me in stitches, and doesn’t leave my mother in the dark, or offended, or bored, but laughing along with me as we share another glass of wine. He’s not here to dole out too much personal information or treat us like dummies, or make loud declarations about the state of the world or condemn all who disagree with him. No matter how absurd or outlandish a bit may be, there’s an earnestness to everything Mulaney does, a pure love of his craft and how it’s cultivated, and it translates every time he gets on stage. We enjoy watching him because he seems to truly enjoy being up there.
It’s harder than you think to tell jokes that bring people together. I just feel lucky that John Mulaney is generous to do that for people like me and my mom.
