![]() For the vast majority of my picky eater period, though, I would only eat one food, and that food was spaghetti with butter and Parmesan cheese. I would eat a cheese sandwich, but only if the cheese had been cut with a cookie-cutter my parents had that was shaped like a duck (my aunt and uncle, who one babysat me while I was in this phase, still give me shit about this). I would eat peas, but only if they were frozen. For much of my childhood, I was an insanely picky eater. While I could easily imagine myself as the kid in “Grandma’s Boyfriend Paul,” one song made me go, “Oh my god, that was me.” The song is called “Plain Plate of Noodles,” and it’s about a kid who will only eat pasta with butter. When I was in high school, my grandfather got a girlfriend, prompting factional squabbling among my dad and his siblings much like what the kid in the song “Grandma’s Boyfriend Paul” witnesses if I’d been just a few years younger, I would have loved for there to have been a children’s comedy song to help me process what was going on. ![]() ![]() They nail very specific “kid feelings” that you either experienced yourself or which seem completely alien to you. It’s the precision of the songs in John Mulaney and the Sack Lunch Bunch that make the special so great. The whole thing is bizarre and kind of amazing, especially the part where a child helps David Byrne, playing himself, get over his fear of volcanoes. Who knows? Maybe it’s even a necessary corrective to whatever crap kids watch these days. It’s a musical revue show whose jokes often encroach upon territory that’s a tad too sophisticated for actual kids - no child alive will appreciate why it’s funny to flash the word “zwischenzug” onscreen as Mulaney and an elementary-schooler play chess, for example - but whose inherent sweetness, wholesomeness, and focus on positive life lessons make it technically kid-friendly. I have no idea why Netflix decided to give John Mulaney a budget to make a children’s special called John Mulaney and the Sack Lunch Bunch, but I’m very glad that they did.
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