John Mulaney’s Latest Episode Had Bartees Strange, Bubbles The Chimp, And Richard Kind As Gene Simmons

For the past few weeks, John Mulaney and his associates have been doing great, weird things with Everybody's Live, the live Netflix talk show that Mulaney hosts. They've been deconstructing the entire idea of the late-night talk show, and the results have been entertaining and bemusing to equal degrees. Music has been a big part of that. Last week, for instance, Mulaney told a long story about getting scammed while attempting to book a Bone Thugs-N-Harmony surprise performance, which was both weirder and funnier than the actual planned Bone Thugs bit would've been. Wednesday night's show featured a whole lot more of that.

Last night's Everybody's Live did have a relatively normal musical guest. Bartees Strange released his new album Horror a couple of months ago. He's an electric live performer with a whole lot of gravitas. On Everybody's Live, he did a great job bashing out the single "Sober," which Mulaney said is his favorite song on the LP.

The episode also had an extended comedy bit about Michael Jackson's pet chimpanzee Bubbles. Mulaney informed us that Bubbles is "now 41 years old, and he resides in the Center For Great Apes in Wauchula, Florida." He then conducted an interview, in the style of a TV-news exposé, with someone in a chimp costume and an MJ-style red leather vest. We learn that Bubbles speaks by pressing buttons on a speech board. Bubbles insists that Jackson's music is the important thing, that Jackson left "a great legacy." He also smokes a banana and claims that John Landis drank toilet water. It's good shit.

After the interview, Bubbles made an appearance in the studio audience.

This kept up for the entire episode. Richard Kind wore a frizzy Gene Simmons wig, a shiny red shirt, some sunglasses, and a baseball cap with a moneybag on it. Every once in a while, he butted in to say stuff like this: "I don't need to make sense. I prefer to make dollars. I'm Gene Simmons from KISS [raises devil-horn salute]." He did the Gene Simmons voice and everything. Simply a magnificent bit.

The episode had the sadly-timely theme of getting fired. Mulaney discussed this with viewers calling in and with guests Bill Hader, Chelsea Peretti, Johnny Knoxville, and human resources and employee coach Catie Maillard. Also, André De Shields sang a song while in character as Chesterton Cheadle, the cat who inspired Chester Cheetah. Dave Grohl was also hanging out backstage. Weird and bad things are happening all around the world, but at least we get this. Watch it here. Next week: Randy Newman!