John Mulaney Fans Lament That ‘Everybody’s Live’ Feels Like A Surprise Breakup

John Mulaney’s Netflix talk show Everybody’s Live with John Mulaney is almost as divisive among his longtime fandom as was his divorce. 

In the entire history of stand-up comedy, no comedian has unintentionally formed as many powerful, romantic and one-sided relationships with their fans as did Mulaney, the internet’s most hot-and-cold ex-boyfriend and ex-husband. Before Mulaney’s split from his wife, multi-media artist Anna Marie Tendler, back in 2021, the public perception of the New in Town and Kid Gorgeous at Radio City comedian was the closest the Tumblr generation ever got to turning a stand-up comedian into a sort of teen idol who appears in the romantic fantasies and bedroom posters of young and young-at-heart fans alike.

Now, more than three years removed from Mulaney’s high-profile public image reshaping, the comic is the host of an experimental late-night show with Everybody’s Live that tests both the limits of the talk show formula and the patience of the fans who liked him better when he joked about Law & Order in his spiffy suit with a pep in his step that could only have been chemically contrived. In a recent viral Reddit post, one Mulaney fan parasocially declared, “Watching Mulaney’s Netflix Show Felt Like a Breakup I Didn’t See Coming.”

Imagine how Tendler must feel every time she opens up the Netflix homepage.

In the post that hit the front page of the television subreddit, the formerly amorous Mulaney fan pontiuspilate01 lamented how the comic's new project is a huge departure from the early stand-up work that first made him the comedy industry’s soon-to-be-problematic crush. “The whole thing feels oddly lifeless and flat,” the OP wrote. “It’s disjointed, the bits don’t land, and the pacing is all over the place. There’s this forced ‘meta’ awkwardness that’s trying to be quirky but ends up just feeling off.”

“Even Mulaney himself feels… off,” pontiuspilate01 posited. “Like a watered down version of his old self. The signature timing, the confident strut, the razor-sharp delivery, it’s just not there. And I say this as someone who wants him to do well. But this felt more like watching someone try to channel the ghost of their former on-stage persona than a return to form.”

While many of Mulaney’s fans agreed with the poster’s take that the comic’s current era of content makes them long for the simpler times when Mulaney loved his first wife, riffed at nearly light speed and walked the stage with the panache and showmanship of a Borscht Belt comedian, others pointed out that, yes, of course this version of Mulaney is very different from the spritely young Saturday Night Live writer who first stole our hearts in the early 2010s — this Mulaney isn’t high off his ass.

Everybody's Live isn’t for everybody, that much is clear. The surrealist aspects of the talk show seem to alienate half of Mulaney’s guests along with half of his audience. But, hey, Mulaney can’t exactly just stitch himself into one of his old suits and start doing the “What’s New Pussycat?” bit like the last 13 years of his life and career never happened. Today’s Mulaney is sober, he’s a father and he’s a far less creatively restrained artist than the constructed comic persona that made him a star more than a decade ago, and that version of Mulaney isn’t ever coming back.

Basically, Mulaney didn’t break up with the most parasocial section of his following, they just grew apart.