Mr. Mulaney, who has said he started work in a sketch troupe at 7, often slows the quick pace of his speech before the punch line, and when the audience is expecting the laugh, he may play with the cadence to add a kick to a joke. His first album, “The Top Part” (2009), could occasionally make such veteran maneuvers sound mechanical, but his style has become more seamless, even effortless now.

He also appears to have benefited from his experience writing sketches for “Saturday Night Live,” including the beautifully sharp jokes for Bill Hader’s popular character Stefon.

While his act has the feel of a friendly guy telling his favorite jokes, it is carefully constructed. Characters like his parents are woven throughout in a way that makes the jokes hit harder. His dad in particular is vivid: a dryly stubborn lawyer who drives a van full of kids dreaming of Big Macs up to a McDonald’s take-out window and proceeds to order just one black coffee. Mr. Mulaney expresses his childhood outrage, then moves to his adult perspective, which finds the order hilarious.

In longer bits, like a joke in which he imagines the pitch meeting for “Back to the Future,” he writes economical dialogue and plays distinct parts: the executive and the guy with the idea. (“So he’s a teenager whose best friend is a disgraced nuclear physicist,” Mr. Mulaney says, adding that the movie never explains this odd fact.) Mr. Mulaney is not a great mimic, but he can do a few voices and has the writer’s confidence to know that sometimes it’s best to end a scene on an odd note.

The risk for Mr. Mulaney is that he becomes too safe or predictable. (If he is Seinfeld, who is his Larry David?) The areas he covers are not that original. Jokes about the benefits of being born white and the way children bluff will inevitably recall the work of other, better-known comedians. In a pop culture crowded with comedy options, what will make him distinct?

You see strong hints of an answer in his characters. Imagining how adults would fake their way through a speech the way that kids do in school, he runs through several precise impressions. He first goes to a lockjawed news anchor’s hollow pronouncements (Mr. Mulaney also has a superb satirical analysis of New York Post headlines), before doing an ad pitch he calls “the Don Draper stuff.” His handle on these smooth, assured types is firm. He nicely plays the extremely appealing con man who knows less than you think but gets by on charm, a grin and quick wits. Mr. Mulaney would make a great Harold Hill.