Itâs just the other side of the end of the world as we know it, and it keeps on keepinâ on for the second season of Mulligan, the animated Netflix series from 30 Rock and Kimmy Schmidt writers/creators Sam Means and Robert Carlock, with Tina Fey, Dana Carvey and Chrissy Teigen leading the voice cast. The first season established the concept: IN A WORLD where humanity has been all but wiped out by invading aliens, the 1,100-ish people left not dead in the rubble are hereby tasked with making us laugh by lampooning our current reality and making as many silly pop-cultural references as possible. The first season was pretty Gen-X/Simpsons-derivative, but funny enough at times, and the second pretty much maintains that M.O.
MULLIGAN – SEASON 2: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: President Mulligan (Nat Faxon) sits in the Oval Office, singing and dancing a musical recap of the State of Things in America, post-getting nearly obliterated by intelligent green praying mantis aliens.
The Gist: So what happened in the first season thatâs worth noting here? A zillion jokes (about 51 percent of which landed), and would-be first lady and former Miss America candidate Lucy (Tiegen) dumped Mulligan because heâs a dumbass who makes Peter Griffin look like Rick Sanchez. Also, TOD-209, the brain-in-a-jar-in-a-battle-mech, is missing and presumed dead. Mitch McConnellalike LaMarr (Carvey) is still vice president of Earth, puppeting dipshit Mulligan around. Dr. Braun (Fey) is still a put-upon scientist and single mother of two. History dweeb Simon (Sam Richardson) is still treated like a dweeb by bros like Mulligan. The more things change, and you know how this one goes, etc. etc.
A fresh nonflict emerges when Mulligan and LaMarr decide that the people on the Thirsty Princess, a cruise ship thatâs grounded nearby, need to get the hell off the boat and become good voting citizens of Earth. Easier said than done, because itâs a 24/7 party on board, with booze and hot tubs and a moose going down the curly slide into the big pool. Cue a big pile of jokes about what a bunch of yokels the cruise-ship people are, e.g., a perma-lit woman with crappy tattoos who used to be a hostess at a Florida TGI Fridays who says she misses walking on the beach holding her late boyfriendâs handgun.
Meanwhile, captured alien Axatrax (Phil LaMarr) learns what itâs like to get drunk on Earth alcohol, and decides he wants to feel that way all the time, and defects to the cruise ship. Braun boards the ship to use the radio to try to find TOD-209 but gets trapped in a conga line. Tasked with infiltrating the ship and encouraging the partiers to drop the beachballs and highball glasses and be miserable on shore, Lucy befriends TGI Fridays Lady and soon catches a whiff of stink belonging to the people on board who seem to be running things like fascists of fun. Is the perfect party life on the Thirsty Princess too good to be true? Not sure, but at least theyâre not making wheezy Spider-Man: Turn on the Dark jokes like the landlubbers are.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? So many animated sitcoms look like Rick and Morty, donât they? But thereâs a retro-2000s element to the jokes on Mulligan, which drafts on the cram-in-as-many-gags-as-possible/cutaway snark/cynical comedy of Family Guy, Futurama and of course The Simpsons.
Our Take: The core joke here is a bit worn out: Wouldnât it be HIGHlarious if a bro in sweatpants was the leader of the remnants of the free world? You can sense Mulligan veering away from its namesake a bit and leaning into the ancillary characters â Lucy, the beauty queen whoâs smarter than she seems, has more complexity, and the embattled Braun and dweeby Simon seem on the brink of transcending their one-joke status.
Not that weâre here for the character development, mind you. Mulligan is a joke machine thatâs just consistent enough to inspire a few smirks, but not potent enough to give us much that we havenât seen already in many animated sitcoms. Gags about semi-trashy cruise-shippers capitalize on cheap stereotypes, and the socio-political satire is a bit gummy, playing off well-worn caricatures of politicians. More effective is this Fey-delivered line during a conversation about human nature with Axatrax: âYeah, we know about hangovers but we drink anyway. We also scratch mosquito bites and get bangs.â I didnât dislike this episode of Mulligan â itâs an easy, bemused watch â but I canât help but think that an emphasis on joke quality over quantity might tighten it up into something more laugh-out-loud funny than occasionally smirkworthy.
Sex and Skin: Nah. Besides, you gonna get all hot and bothered over a nude cartoon?
Parting Shot: A cruise-ship director winks at Braun coyly before we cut to the credits with none of the aforementioned conflicts resolved.
Sleeper Star: Iâm a fan of cross-gender voiceover casting (see also: Nancy Cartwright as Bart Simpson, a bunch of roles on Bobâs Burgers), and Ayo Edebiri is pretty funny as âGeneral Scarpaccio,â a boy passing as an adult military general.
Most Pilot-y Line: After all the land people predictably defect to the party boat, LaMarr laments, âTheyâre gone. All our citizens. What am I going to fill all our prisons with?â
Our Call: Iâm on the fence. But this season debut of Mulligan sets up a compelling-enough continuing conflict â a power struggle between the idiots on land and the idiots on the boat â that hopefully will push the series into fresher territory (maybe itâll be the tiny-people-living-in-the-wall-type storyline that makes Solar Opposites a cut above the chaff). STREAM IT for now, but feel free to abandon it after another ep or two if it doesnât kick the comedy up a notch.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
The post Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Mulligan: Season 2’ on Netflix, Which Offers More Gummy Satire and Pop-Culture References For Your Shrugging Bemusement appeared first on Decider.
