Matthias Clamer/FOXHave you ever heard the same joke seven times in a row?
It's hard to laugh after the second, let alone the seventh time. It's especially hard to laugh pleasantly, loudly, and realistically seven times in a row, on very little food, after sitting in a plastic chair for several hours, while watching a live performance of a never-ending 22 minute episode of a sitcom you've never seen before.
Alas, such is the life of a pilot taping audience member.
I've spent about 14 hours of my life watching the pilot of Mulaney. That's seven hours at the taping for the NBC version of the pilot, six hours at the taping for the Fox version of the pilot, and one hour watching and re-watching the finished pilot. As huge fans of John Mulaney's stand-up (to the point of being able to recite most of his jokes), my friends and I were thrilled to have gotten tickets to the original pilot taping in April 2013, which centered around John's friends throwing a major party after he had decided to give up drinking. By the end of that first day, as we rushed to Taco Bell to feed ourselves, we were quite a bit less thrilled.
When NBC passed on the project and Fox picked it up, we, for some reason, got tickets again. Some things had changed – Nasim Pedrad had gone from being a teacher to being a personal trainer, and Seaton Smith went from being a fellow comedian to a roommate. The party was nowhere to be found, and Martin Short (understandably) had a larger role.
While the second pilot experience was definitely better (as was the warm-up comedian hired to entertain us during breaks), I still could not tell you if it was actually good. I also can't tell you that I had a good time. I was tired, I was hungry, I was fidgety, and you can only hear the words "problem bitch" so many times before you want to completely get rid of your ears.
The quality of the show was a different matter entirely. The finished pilot of Mulaney hasn't been extremely well-received. The general opinion seems to be that while John Mulaney's stand-up is excellent and hilarious, it doesn't translate well to a multi-camera sitcom. That's probably accurate, but I couldn't really tell you.
I had a kind weird, visceral reaction to watching the finished pilot. It was like stepping back into a fever dream I thought I had long since left behind. I had lines memorized against my will. I was pretty certain I could actually still see Lorne Michaels (yes, the big boss was there, for both tapings) lurking just off-camera, judging all of us like we ourselves were auditioning for SNL with our impressions of super happy people.
While on one hand, the pilot taping was definitely terrible, it also wasn't. I'm a big fan of SNL and Mulaney's stand-up, and we were basically being treated to a free and intimate show, with guest appearances from Martin Short and Elliot Gould. We got to watch jokes change as a result of our reactions, and it sometimes felt like we were almost hanging out with people like Lorne Michaels, Bill Hader, and Fred Armisen, since they were also there to watch the show. At the second taping, Hader and Armisen even came up into the audience to answer questions and do impressions for us. It was a weird sort of heaven for an SNL superfan, as long as we forgot how hungry we were.
There was also a vague sense of being important. The audience is essential in a multi-cam, and there were a lot of times where we were explicitly told that we had to be actors. They knew we couldn't genuinely laugh after hearing the same monologue for the fourth time, but they asked us to try. My friend, who has a notoriously loud and recognizable laugh, got a note from producers to laugh a little more quietly, since he was drowning out every single other person in the audience.
There was even a DJ employed specifically to keep us happy between scenes. At one point, audience members began requesting that the DJ play "What's New Pussycat?" on repeat. Then, as if we were all of one mind, we all asked for him to throw in one "It's Not Unusual." As it started to play, we cheered and giggled to ourselves as if we had accomplished something. While John Mulaney reenacted his stand-up on stage, we were reenacting it in the audience. It may have been a long, strenuous, tiresome day, but it was a day we suffered/enjoyed together, all in the name of the comedy we loved.
I watched the pilot again, a few weeks after my first attempt. It was no longer like a bad dream, and was instead a small time capsule of those two days of my life as I watched a high-profile TV show come together from behind the scenes, twice. I'll never be able to tell you whether it's good or not, but I could probably pinpoint the two scenes between which we were finally, finally given sandwiches.
If you're unfamiliar with John Mulaney's "What's New Pussycat" bit, watch below. Then, vote in the poll to let us know how you felt about tonight's premiere!