John Mulaney Ate Hot Wings at 11 a.m. and Told the Truth About Rehab

John Mulaney walked onto the Hot Ones set at eleven in the morning and immediately requested that the viewers be informed of this fact. Not as a complaint. As a matter of journalistic integrity. ‘I just,’ he said, pausing, ‘it’s of note.’ That instinct, the compulsion to tell you exactly what is happening even when it is mildly embarrassing, is basically the whole engine of Baby J, his Netflix special. It is also why this episode is one of the better ones the show has done in a while, because Mulaney does not want to seem cool. He wants to be accurate.

The early wings are easy enough. He describes the experience of waiting for heat to arrive with the precision of someone who has given a lot of thought to latency. Chewing, no opinion forming, and then suddenly the whole mouth votes. He is funny about this. He is funny about most things. But what the episode actually delivers, tucked between a Mitch Hedberg riff and a long tangent about overfeeding goldfish, is a reasonably candid accounting of what it felt like to be in rehab reading a GQ profile of yourself that was, by his own description, not a great moment in time.

I remember when it came out the interview I was in rehab and I was reading it and it was a very bad time in life. I did think to myself this is very funny.

That is a sentence that covers a lot of ground in very few words. The comedian’s defense mechanism running hot even in the worst conditions. The joke as a life raft. Chris Rock, who apparently just materializes whenever Mulaney needs dramaturgical advice, showed up at City Winery in May 2021 and told him to open the set with the intervention bit immediately. Mulaney did. The GQ writer, Frasier Tharp, delivered the final wing question via video. It was a nice closing of the loop, and Mulaney’s answer was genuinely moving without trying to be.

Waylon Jennings and the Cannibal Problem

Before all that, there is a long stretch of Mulaney just being very good at Sean Evans’s questions. The Museum of Broadcast Communications as a teenager, rewatching full Johnny Carson episodes from 1971 (‘they’re not that good’), the relief that came from watching a legend meander through bad monologue nights before starting his own career. The Waylon Jennings thing is the sharpest bit of comedy theory in the episode. ‘You guys used to sing about my life,’ someone told Jennings, ‘but now you just sing about your own life.’ Mulaney flags this as the central peril of autobiographical comedy and then, almost without meaning to, describes why Baby J avoids it. It’s about his life, but the GQ interview, the rehab, the recovery, that stuff happened to everyone who watched it happen. It became public property.

Not so much media scrutiny but more just cannibalizing your own life as a comedian I think can be dangerous.

The Bomb Is Not a Food

Da Bomb Beyond Insanity, the traditional Hot Ones inflection point, gets a verdict that should probably be on the label. ‘It doesn’t make… it’s not good food.’ He is straight-faced, tears running, taking it to the dome, and delivering a one-star Yelp review in real time. The flavor, he says, is ‘metallic and poisonous.’ ‘No one says I’m going to put a little Da Bomb on this.’ He is correct. No one does.

The flavor is metallic and poisonous kind of. It just sucks.

He also builds a Mount Rushmore of comedy albums that includes Mitch Hedberg’s Strategic Grill Locations, Chris Rock’s Bring the Pain, Eddie Izzard’s Dress to Kill, and David Tell’s Skanks for the Memories, calling Tell ‘the best comedian to ever perform in clubs at the absolute top of his game.’ That is a take worth arguing about, which means it is a real take, which is more than most guests give you. The goldfish tangent, which spins out of a wing that tastes like fish food, becomes a genuine meditation on people-pleasing. He related. He related a lot. At 11 a.m., still chewing, getting progressively more honest with each sauce. Classic Mulaney, really.