http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/04/arts/television/mulaney-a-comedy-that-riffs-on-seinfeld.html 2014-10-03 21:52:22 ‘Mulaney,’ a Comedy That Riffs on ‘Seinfeld’ “Mulaney” is a throwback to “Seinfeld,” but also to the 1960s, when hamming it up was a substitute for acting. === Throwback TV seems to be popping up fairly often these days, and maybe some people have been eager for it. There’s the clunky comedy “Mulaney,” John Mulaney, the title character, is a struggling stand-up comic who takes a job writing for an irritating game-show host played by Martin Short. Mulaney has three friends, one of them a woman named Jane (rhymes with “Elaine”). Two — Nasim Pedrad (Jane) and Seaton Smith — are his roommates; the third (Zack Pearlman) has a knack for dropping by when he’s not welcome. The humor all seems recycled from a time when wan was good enough. An old prostate-exam gag in the premiere tells you the level of sophistication the show is striving for. Mr. Short is probably still funny, but not here; Elliott Gould, playing Mulaney’s gay neighbor, is just painful to watch. And when the show occasionally aims for “cutting edge,” as with a plotline about celebrity deaths, it accidentally hits “bad taste.” It’s a so-called