John Mulaney, ‘Baby J,’ and the Respectability Politics of Addiction
Early in Baby J, John Mulaney’s first stand-up special in five years, released on Netflix this Tuesday, the comedian addresses his long absence from the industry in sing-song. Nearly three years after a very public stint in rehab and subsequent divorce, he croons, “now [my] reputation is…different!” He riffs that former fans have already switched allegiances to “less problematic” comedians like Bo Burnham, and he finishes with a flourish: “Likability is a jail!”
That line hangs over the rest of the show, because he’s right: Celebrities endure massive pressure to maintain their public image while navigating private problems, and it is an undoubtedly burdensome task. And yet the success of Mulaney’s comeback special depends deeply on his likability. More bluntly, it depends on his respectability, his status as someone who can be trusted to reenter society. If likability is a jail, it’s not one Mulaney is ready to leave behind quite yet; it’s one he must burrow further into in order to reclaim his cultural cachet.
Throughout Baby J, as he walks audiences through challenging subject matter—the night of his intervention in December 2020, his first week of getting sober, and his various convoluted plots to obtain drugs, among other things—Mulaney brings an attitude of, “Aw shucks, wasn’t I being crazy?” Recalling the night of his intervention, when he decided to get a haircut from the stylists at Saturday Night Live, he jokes about how they accommodated his unreasonable ask: “You know… when a junkie walks into your office and asks for a haircut, and you’re like, ‘Eh, it’d be faster to cut the hair?’”