Yes, John Mulaney Did Fight Three Teenagers on the 'Everyone's Live' Finale

Several weeks ago, on Everyone’s Live with John Mulaney, the host teased—in a take on the 100 people vs. a gorilla meme—that he, John Mulaney, would engage in a fight with three teenagers. He wasn’t kidding. He trained for this fight. And in last night’s season (and potentially series) finale of Everyone’s Live, Mulaney followed through on that promise.

The theme was Teen Night. He had on Adam Sandler, who rambled about his teen experiences; Joe Mande, who likewise rambled about his; and, later in the episode, Sean Penn. Penn was a bit of an odd guest, mostly because he smoked a cigarette throughout his entire interview, apparently incapable of going a few minutes without one. He’s also kind of humorless, so not exactly a great talk show guest—particularly for Everyone’s Live, which largely feeds off the energy of its guests.

I’ve been enjoying Everyone’s Live, although I will concede that while the freewheeling interviews and viewer calls have been a fun break from the typical late-night format, Mulaney’s own nonsense format grew a little stale over the course of the season. I’ve liked the off-the-wall segments in between the interviews, but I also understand why talk shows do pre-interviews and provide more structure. Letterman and Conan often worked so well because they could go off script during interviews. Here, everything was off script, a lot of the phone calls were duds, and too often the interview segments meandered.

In other words, I enjoy the unpolished novelty of Everyone’s Live, but it could use a little more polish. That said, Richard Kind is always a pure delight.

But then there have been delightfully unexpected moments, like John Mulaney fighting three teenagers. Granted, knowing the fight would happen at the end of the episode was a little frustrating, only because it’s all anyone wanted to see, and we had to get through all the interviews to finally witness the event.

And it didn’t disappoint, mostly in the sense that it was an absolute mess of a fight. From the whistle that began the fight until John Mulaney tapped out, it lasted less than one minute. Basically, two teenagers held him while one grabbed his feet to get him on the ground, and all three piled on top until Mulaney had no choice but to tap out.

One 42-year-old man was no competition for three 14-year-old boys. Mulaney never had a chance. But the best part is that, after joking earlier in the show about a booking snafu in which Bone Thugs-n-Harmony ghosted him on the fourth episode of the season, the group came out after the fight to sing “Crossroads.” It was perfection, and the whole debacle had the real feel of one of those great, unexpected moments in late-night television, rivaling, to me, some of the great moments in Letterman’s history.

You can watch the entire 60-second fight on Netflix, although I’d recommend skipping past the Sean Penn interview. And maybe the Adam Sandler one, too. But before the fight, Sleater-Kinney performed “Kids in America” with Fred Armisen on drums, which was fun.