JOHN MULANEY is a 29-year-old comedian working the stand-up circuit and looking for his big break. But life drastically changes when self-centered comedy legend and game show host LOU CANNON (Emmy Award winner Martin Short) hires Mulaney as a writer. Lou may be John's entrée into the world of big-money show business, but he's also a total nightmare. Still, the job represents everything Mulaney thinks he wants. But does he really? And, at what cost? And what does it say about him if he quits? And what does it say about him if he stays? And has Lou had work done?...If Mulaney has one refuge from the chaos that surrounds him, then it's his neighbor, OSCAR (Elliott Gould), a 71-year-old gay veteran of New York who has seen it all. Oscar is opinionated, refined, gentle, wise and sometimes extremely cantankerous, but most of all, he's an oracle of sound advice when Mulaney feels like life has gone off the rails.
USA Today calls it a "misfire," noting:
...former Saturday Night Live writer and comedian John Mulaney comes across as a very nice young man. He may even be a funny one, though there's no evidence of that in this almost shockingly inept sitcom. What he's obviously not, however, is someone who has any idea of what he's doing as the star, creator and producer of a network television series. And what that apparent cluelessness produces is the worst new sitcom of the season.
Not a great start. And other are calling it a dismal rip-off of Seinfeld, with Cinema Blend stating:
The main problem for any throwback is to avoid feeling dated and Mulaney suffers by not adding a new spin on the old formula. It is Seinfeld
all the way down to the stand-up sequences and jaunty noise between
transitions. I originally challenged myself to not mention the NBC
cultural juggernaut during this review, but that's nearly impossible.
With all the comedies coming out this fall, we should expect quite a few duds. This may be one of them, but it is best to give it a chance to see if it gets better.
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