Jerry Seinfeld’s Darkest Joke, According to John Mulaney
Long before John Mulaney released his own confessional comedy specials, he suggested that true dark confessions can be found in seemingly innocuous punchlines. “There are things that people ignore in observational humor or just jokes that seem small,” he said on a 2018 episode of Off Camera With Sam Jones, “where you go, ‘That's that whole person right there.’”
There are jokes, Mulaney said, “that seem just like an innocuous everyday observation that are as dark about human nature as any real, ‘tear open your guts and show all the horrible sides of you’ comedy.”
Mulaney professed to love both kinds of comedy, but he clearly was more fascinated by the jokes that are less obvious about their dark underpinnings. “One thing that gets ignored sometimes is the fact that (comedians) are talking about this, or the way they talked about this mundane thing, says so much.”
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As an example, Mulaney offered up “What’s the deal with airline food?” — doesn’t seem to reveal much about the guy behind the joke. But Mulaney suggests we need to look closer.
“I think one of the darkest jokes I’ve ever heard is Seinfeld’s,” the comedian says. The gag was a more recent one, which Mulaney tried to recreate. (He apologized that he probably wasn’t getting the joke exactly right, but this was the gist.) In the bit, Seinfeld talks about how theaters always ask patrons to clean up after themselves at the movies. “And he's like, ‘No. I paid $13 for the ticket, I paid $8 for the popcorn, I paid $7 for the soda. When I’m done, I open my hand.’”
Mulaney opened his own hand to mime a half-eaten box of popcorn falling to the floor in an act of eff-you defiance.
The gesture — and the way Seinfeld delivered the line about opening his hand — said everything to Mulaney about how “dark and shitty we are as human beings.” Clean up after myself? Nope. You clean it up. Seinfeld might as well have said, “I left my wife and kids because I’m God.”
It probably says as much about Mulaney as Seinfeld that he related to that feeling so strongly, though the comedian said we all have those moments of “I’m not going to throw that away” defiance.
Mulaney wasn’t sure Seinfeld was aware that the joke has a dark side. After all, Mulaney confessed that he doesn’t understand his own comedy: “I watched the special that I just put out, editing it, and I realized, Oh, I’m not aware of anything about myself.”
Mulaney’s 2018 revelation feels ironic after 2023’s Baby J, a comedy special in which he confirms that he still has a lot to learn about the darkness beneath his own stand-up.
