After a nearly month-long hiatus, Mulaney is back, and just in time for the Christmas season. In a season so filled with parodies and Christmas specials before it, the Fox sitcom barely had a chance and, despite a occasional yuk or two, it's another dour affair.
In a rarity for the program, "It's a Wonderful Home Alone" doesn't start with show creator John Mulaney doing stand-up, but rather with a title card explaining how, even though writer John Hughes wrote the part of Kevin McCallister in Home Alone with actor Macaulay Culkin in mind, they auditioned several child actors for the part. One of those said actors was none other than Mulaney himself — likely just in the show's reality, at least as far as I know. Of course, John never got the part, and while he keeps on a brave face, it's clear he's never gotten over the rejection of the part. Even as a child, he was so scorned he didn't accept the part of Culkin's stand-in.
Despite Mulaney's best efforts to keep himself composed on the matter, when producing The Lou Cannon Christmas Special, he can't keep things together when it is revealed Culkin will guest star as himself before the credits roll. While Cannon's (Martin Short) television Christmas goes down the toilet, Lou's competition Jesse Tyler Monoz (guest star Nick Kroll, playing a fairly offensive Hispanic stereotype) tries to take what he can from this yuletide television event and make it his own.
Written this week by Dan Levy, "It's a Wonderful Home Alone" sadly just propels everything that made this show so ho-hum to begin with. Through tiredly predictable gags and storylines, indifferent attention to character motivations and a continuously wasted cast, Mulaney has basically settled into its mediocrity by now. For as much as I would love to see John finally do well with his own show, it's hard to muster up any goodwill if the show doesn't seem to make more than slight improvements with every other episode. What's more, they bring in another talented comedian, Ron Funches, and give him nothing to do than wear a bird suit.
Oddly enough, the acting in this show seems to be getting worse with each episode. I'm not sure why this is per se, but besides Tanner Flood, who does well enough playing the young John auditioning for Home Alone, everyone seems dialed up too high due to Mulaney's growingly more insecure performance. To the show creator's credit, John does feel more comfortable, and does fairly well, whenever he is set to make simple conversation with his peers. But his delivery of exposition always sounds like he is asking a question, which makes everything more awkward when considering most of his dialouge is supposed to be exclamations.
By now, I seem as tired with this show as it seems to be with itself. It's hard to imagine Mulaney getting renewed for a second season by now, after the network cut its episode run to 13 instead of 16. So with these last five remaining episodes, we'll see what the crew has in store. Hopefully they can pack some last minute laughs, but for now it looks like this show is, indeed, one big lump of coal.
Also, if you were wondering, Culkin doesn't make a cameo in this episode, despite his importance to the plot.
Image courtesy of ACE/INFphoto.com
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