Season Review: Mulligan Season One Part One

Overview:

The conclusion of a bitter battle against extraterrestrial invaders is only just the beginning in Mulligan, an outrageous animated comedy. Humanity technically wins this war, but the Earth is left in shambles and at the mercy of a slacker fool who lucks his way into becoming the nation’s leader. Left to make sense of this apocalyptic aftermath, Earth’s disenfranchised population attempts to rebuild their world with limited resources, but endless optimism, as everyone bands together for a better future–or at the least, to break even.

Our Take:

The end of the world may seem like niche subject matter, but there’s been an odd boom when it comes to post-apocalypse comedies, which has more or less become its own subgenre now. That being said, many of these projects struggle to really do anything new with the genre outside of broader takes like The Last Man on Earth, Future Man, or the film This is the End, most of which are heavily indebted to science fiction tropes, like time travel, or the meta narrative that’s present through the project’s cast. 

Mulligan very brilliantly answers the question of what happens immediately after the grand finale of some alien disaster epic like Independence Day or Mars Attack. Mulligan begins where most action fare ends and the series quickly proves that this reflexive approach is as appealing as any post-modern fairy tale that looks at “what happens after ‘happily ever after.’” It’s a fun, self-aware perspective that quickly helps Mulligan feel exciting and a breath of fresh air where previous apocalypse comedies have failed. Mulligan has a great concept, but it unfortunately takes some time for its shaky execution to mature into a creative, confident genre comedy.

Mulligan is co-created by Robert Carlock and Sam Means, with Tina Fey also executive producing, which is the same creative team that’s responsible for The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, 30 Rock, Girls5Eva, and Great News. These are all live-action comedies that often feel like living cartoons through their outlandish gags. It’s exciting to see what Carlock, Means, and company can really do with an actual cartoon where their ideas and gags technically have limitless potential for the first time. Mulligan leans into the wild nature of its premise with reckless abandon whether it’s through the truly ruinous state of the world or the heightened nature of the show’s characters, like a cricket-like alien or a disembodied brain in a mech warrior battle suit. Mulligan fully understands that endless parody is its greatest resource during the apocalypse.

Mulligan begins with a real disdain for humanity’s stupidity, not unlike the scathing heights of Idiocracy, which comes across as really quite refreshing. Nat Faxon plays the perfect everyman idiot here with Matty Mulligan, an obnoxious character who the audience will find themselves rooting for by the end of the season. The same is true for the rest of the comedy’s eclectic cast (which features an all-star voice cast that includes the likes of Tina Fey, Sam Richardson, Dana Carvey, and Phil LaMarr) and it’s really a series that deserves the benefit of the doubt during its first few episodes while it works out its apocalypse growing pains. Mulligan allows idealism to seep through as these displaced outcasts opt for a future that’s even the tiniest bit brighter than it was before.

Despite the large cast, Mulligan doesn’t feel unruly, and each individual serves a distinct purpose and has plenty to do in layered episodes. Everyone tackles a myriad of tasks to help society get back on track that range from the assembly of a new Air Force to the return of soda, which gives Mulligan a lot of wiggle room when it comes to the severity and scope of its episodes’ missions. Mulligan tackles societal norms like entrenched gender roles, holiday traditions, democratic elections, the toxic news cycle, charity event celebrations, and reality television that simultaneously progress the nation’s development. All of this is done while Mulligan touches on most of the Presidential and apocalyptic movie parody touchstones that one would expect (as well as National Treasure for good measure). There are also some excellent, absurdist jokes that lean into the implausible nature of stranded Axatrax’s inconsistent alien customs.

Outside of Mulligan’s general march towards society’s restart, the series entertains some uplifting ideas like how everyone–whether alien or slacker–deserves a second chance and that the end of the world can be the perfect time for people to reinvent themselves for the better. Mulligan also asks the larger question of what it means to be a hero, the importance of community, and how the ability to lead can come from surprising places. Mulligan finds natural causes for characters to consistently reappraise tenets of history that have been taken for fact while old legends and national relics get knocked off their pedestals in thought provoking ways. While it doesn’t always work, Mulligan is often at its strongest when this criticism of America’s backbone is its priority.

It takes Mulligan some time–and unfortunately in this day and age most of the show’s curious audience won’t stick around long enough to find out–but it does find a natural rhythm as the season progresses. The final few episodes of the season are easily among Mulligan’s strongest. The finale, in particular, is a great celebration of everything that makes this show work. The higher quality of the second-half of Mulligan’s season bodes very well for its already-confirmed season two.

Some of Mulligan’s jokes feel a little like too easy, low-hanging fruit. The fact that the aliens come from a planet that’s called Cardi-B and they communicate with an “Okurr” chirp is the perfect distillation of the type of humor that often drives Mulligan forward. That being said, there are still some great laughs to be had here and plenty of gags that do try harder and accomplish more. Those who watch Mulligan purely for its plot will also be pleased to learn that there are some genuinely big twists later on in the season that will likely land for many audiences, even if the series is tonally loose.

On an aesthetic level, Mulligan’s animation has a fairly grounded quality that doesn’t go nuts with its designs, but instead saves this creativity towards its alien and other supernatural elements. It’s an animation style that doesn’t feel derivative of existing series (possibly Venture Bros., if anything) so that the audience’s brain automatically conflates it to something else. It’s ultimately helpful that the animation in Mulligan isn’t distinct enough to the point of being distracting, but it still exhibits its own style among other “ordinary” series.

Mulligan debuts with an entertaining season that’s full of fun characters, solid laughs, and creative ideas. There are genuine stakes to this comedy and not only does it have something to say, but it attempts to hold America accountable for some of its greatest sins, which is a lot more than most comedies strive to do–especially those with a giant cricket alien. It’s a show that benefits those who go in with lower expectations and hope for more of a joke machine than a series with emotional depth, not that Mulligan doesn’t eventually provide some of the latter. Mulligan’s first season ends in the perfect place to leave audiences excited for where future seasons are headed now that it’s properly found its groove.

The entire first season of ‘Mulligan’ is now available to stream on Netflix