Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Mulligan’ on Netflix, a Derivative, But Funny Animated Satire About America’s Post-Apocalyptic Rebuild

If you didn’t think there was enough Family Guy in your Futurama (or vice versa), Mulligan (now on Netflix) may be just the animated sitcom to scratch your itch. Creators Robert Carlock and Sam Means (collaborators on The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt) rope in their pal Tina Fey to lead the voice talent for this post-apocalyptic satire about twits and ignoramuses attempting to rebuild society in the wake of a devastating alien invasion. It also may be for people who didn’t think there was enough Rick and Morty in their (looks up that thing I watched a few episodes of on Paramount+ a couple years ago) The Harper House. I guess what I’m getting at here is, there may be enough talent behind this new 10-episode cartoon series to make it feel a little less like something we’ve seen before. 

MULLIGAN: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: The Sun! But then, a flash of zoom (yes, a flash of zoom, just work with me here) and: Aliens! In ships! Descending towards Earth!

The Gist: A tattooed crypster (crypto hipster, natch) looks up from his phone to see a massive destructo-laser cutting through the earth. As a burst of apocalyptic flame roils toward him, he utters his final words: “I’ve wasted my life.” (Hm. Where have we heard that joke before?) It was with a single “osh kosh b’gosh” – translated from alien language: “Attack” – that the insectoid marauders massacred the entire population of the planet. The only thing left standing is Washington, D.C., and they’re about to finish the job with an ID4 flourish when flameout baseball player Matty Mulligan (Nat Faxon) and Miss America pageanteer Lucy Suwan (Chrissy Teigen). Lucy makes Matty can the speech and the kiss-the-romantic-lead formalities – Matty’s seen a lot of crappy movies, it seems – and finally throw the damn hand grenade into the damn vent and kill the damn alien hive ship, for chrissake. Kablooey. The osh kosh b’gosh is officially BASF SE-130’d (am I translating that correct?). And so, as always happens in crappy movies, the biggest ship is incapacitated, causing all the ships to plummet to the ground. Earth is saved. Hooray!

Well, what’s left of Earth is saved, anyway. Matty, a Bahstan fella with a Bahstan accent, stands triumphant on the White House steps. Lone surviving Senator Cartwright LaMarr (Dana Carvey) declares Matty the new President, and himself Veep. Matty puts the grenade pull ring on Lucy’s finger, making her the First Lady-to-be. Surviving alien leader General Axatrax (Phil LaMarr) is locked up. And they all lived happily ever after – without clean water or electricity or internet, and there’s a really bad smell everywhere, and many of society’s treasures are slowly burning up in an ongoing museum fire. Matty sits in the Oval Office in front of a giant hole in the wall and next to a fridge full of warm beer and mutters, “I shoulda stayed awake in school more.” He whiteboards a bunch of things that have to be done, and it includes reviving the Fast and Furious franchise. Hey everyone! Idiot’s in charge! So what else is new!

Matty decides that he has to bring together all the smart people who are still alive so someone can figure out what to do next. The smartest seem to be lady scientist Dr. Farrah Braun (Tina Fey) and well-read historian Simon Prioleau (Sam Richardson), who quietly lament that yet another dumb White guy is running things. Then there’s the only British person left on the planet, Jeremy (Daniel Radcliffe), and General Scarpaccio (Ayo Edebiri), who nobody notices is just a kid wearing a gilded military jacket he pulled off a corpse. Now let’s see, who can we get behind here? Braun is smart (“You’re the President because you’re good at throwing” is a typically wry observation) and could solve all kinds of problems with the sciences, but she’s a single mom who can’t find child care for her two sons: “My nanny melted and now there’s NO SCREENS!” And then there’s Lucy, who everyone assumes is a ditz, but is smarter than she lets on, evident by how she begins to question whether she should marry dumbass Matty Mulligan, who belittles her interest in saving the animals and whatnot. 

We definitely can’t get behind Sen. LaMarr, who makes Mitch McConnell look like, well, Mitch McConnell. He has those make-himself-Veep-so-he-can-puppeteer-the-Prez vibes, and is way into guns and Caucasians and distracting the citizenry with dumb crap while he passes all the laws he proposes to an empty Congress. Meanwhile, Matty steals the zoo’s generator so he can give everyone cold beer, and the animals escape – an unpopular move with the populace, especially Lucy. Aww, it’s his first scandal! He ends up quasi-befriending the imprisoned Axatrax, who functions as Matty’s de facto psychotherapist while outwardly lamenting how he, a great general of a mighty species of conquerors, is now subservient to morons. Matty eventually makes things right with everyone by having the people pour skunked beer on the museum fires, thus pointing the way toward a new day: America II!

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? American Dad. And Solar Opposites. To name a couple more shows that I didn’t already reference in the first paragraph.

Our Take: OK, so the jokes here are a bit dated, with ratatat references ranging from Borat to RoboCop to, at least indirectly, Idiocracy. And its light-toned cynicism is very (cough) Gen X. But hey, we Gen Xers hate jokes about YouTubers, because we don’t understand YouTubers, and would rather hear jokes about how our kids are always watching annoying YouTubers, or jokes about how hard it is to take care of our kids when they can’t watch annoying YouTubers because all the annoying YouTubers are dead, which has us wondering if the world of Mulligan is potentially utopian because all the annoying YouTubers are dead, or at least their chosen medium, the internet, is dead, and if I were Matty and not a dolt, I’d consider leaving it that way. Not that I wish death upon annoying YouTubers – or anyone, thank you! – or the internet, but since we’re discussing theoreticals, it’s perfectly morally OK to entertain the thought of a better world, right? Sure.

I digress, slightly. Mulligan feels like the mean average of all the aforementioned TV series, including the one that I didn’t mention by name, but that Mulligan steals a joke from. You know the series; it goes without saying; it’s the benchmark, the one that none of the other ones would exist without. The tone, style and quick-paced joke-after-gag-after-joke M.O. here is familiar and functional, and Mears and Carlock don’t seem too interested in pushing the boundaries too much. Those who prefer the warmer, more laid-back comedy of something like Bob’s Burgers may find its pace and snarkiness wearisome. 

However! The writing has the we’re-all-doomed-might-as-well-laugh fatalism that opens the door to political and social satire with considerable potential: What will Matty and Lucy and Sen. LaMarr consider worth saving from the old society, and what will they bring to the new one? The pilot episode throws in some easy jokes about Jeff Bezos’ spaceship and whether Fonzie’s jacket is worth saving, and bullseyes racist Southern right-wing politicians in the LaMarr character (a scene in which he passes laws to an empty chamber reminds me of the terrifying Trump-era satirical column by Washington Post writer Alexandra Petri, in which she envisions Mitch McConnell approving judge after judge long after the world has ended). Is that potential, and the handful of chortles the script inspires, enough to warrant watching a few more episodes of Mulligan? I think so.

Sex and Skin: None so far.

Parting Shot: The D.C. populace tosses buckets of beer on the burning Smithsonian while a bald eagle flies overhead with a callback to an Axatrax’s-severed-arm gag in its talons and we hear Matty’s voice joyously say he found a trumpet, which he then plays very poorly and out of tune. 

Sleeper Star: In the Lucy character, Teigen has the juiciest dynamic to play with: Everyone thinks she’s an airhead, but she’s sneaky-smart, and may be the most morally grounded person in Matty’s circle of ninnies. 

Most Pilot-y Line: Matty to Axatrax: “Why did you come here? Earth is like a C-minus these days.”

Our Call: Mulligan is derivative. You can’t avoid that truth. But it shows some promise, and is just funny enough to warrant your attention for another episode or three. STREAM IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.