The going-nutty professor
Better Call Saul’s Bob Odenkirk plays a university head of deparment in crisis in new black comedy Lucky Hank.
Bob Odenkirk spent nearly 14 years playing fast-talking conman-turned-lawyer Saul Goodman in Breaking Bad and its spin-off prequel, Better Call Saul.
It almost killed him. In July 2021, Odenkirk suffered a heart attack while filming.
“I was trending,” he says. “Any time someone trends on Twitter, I get scared if it’s a celebrity. But in this case, it was a near-death experience and people found out. It was a rare moment when the Twitter universe came together with just an outpouring of love.
“I was knocked out by the response. I heard about it over the following two weeks because I had a loss of memory during the incident and even during the week after, and I had to hear about it from everybody. I’m curious as to why, because I play rascals mostly,” he shrugs. “But I’ll take it.”
Now Odenkirk’s gone back to school and returned to his comedic roots in Lucky Hank.
Again, he’s the title character – William “Hank” Devereaux Jr, a seemingly permanently exasperated English professor and head of department at a middling college somewhere in Pennsylvania.
“I play another crabby guy but, like most older crabby guys, he’s a likeable crab.”
Again, he’s the fast-talking centre of a show that’s a mix of satirical comedy and drama. Hank’s long-unfinished second novel and a class full of creative-writing students, self-deluded about their talents, are all adding to an apparent mid-life crisis.
“Well, it’s not really a crisis,” he says. “It’s just a moment. Death and birth hit you at [times] and it makes you think about life. This show is about that.
“Everybody has chapters in their lives; sometimes you see one coming, you can sense it. Obviously, if you’re graduating college, you go, ‘Everything’s going to be different in a month from now, and for the rest of my life it’s going to be different.’ Unless I go to grad school – which is one of the reasons, I think, people go to grad school.”
For Odenkirk, Hank is a good left-turn from Saul.
“I always think, ‘Why did you get into this business? If you want to do the same thing every day, maybe go to the post office and work there.’ No offence to postal workers – I still want to get my mail – but surely [actors] get into this business to go, ‘I’m going to do an action thing, and then I’m going to do comedy, and then something else.’ That’s the fun of it and Lucky Hank, at its core, is very different from Saul.”
Odenkirk’s first job of note was as a writer on US comedy institution Saturday Night Live, alongside the likes of Adam Sandler, Chris Farley, Chris Rock, and Conan O’Brien.
After attending Columbia College in Chicago, where he studied graphic design, Odenkirk joined famed Chicago comedy improv troupe The Second City, which helped launch many A-listers’ careers, including Bill Murray, Tina Fey, and Stephen Colbert.
His writing experience on SNL and The Ben Stiller Show led to Mr. Show, a late-90s Pythonesque sketch show which he wrote and performed alongside David Cross and which remains a cult favourite.
His foray into drama arrived unexpectedly. “I never put myself forward in dramatic acting and I would have never predicted I would have gotten to where I have,” he notes.
“It was by chance that Vince Gilligan [creator of Breaking Bad] asked me to play Saul Goodman. I don’t know why they gave me that role because it’s hard to see anything in my earlier career that connects me to having been given that great opportunity. I didn’t read for it. In fact, I’ve probably read for two or three dramatic parts in my life. But I remember when I was younger, at Second City, I was with Chris Farley on stage and thought, ‘I shouldn’t be here. But if I was in a drama, I could be the funniest person in it.’ I remember looking at Chris and thought, ‘I can’t compete with that.’”
One of seven siblings, Odenkirk was born and raised just outside of Chicago. He described his father in his 2022 memoir, Comedy Comedy Comedy Drama, as a “hollow man” who eventually walked out on the family when his issues with alcohol escalated. His mother, a devout Catholic, encouraged the young Odenkirk’s performing, something he would do to entertain the family at dinnertime.
A story thread in Hank concerns the character’s estrangement from his father, an esteemed literary critic. There is also a life-imitatingart episode in which an actor playing Booker Prize winner George Saunders – who the show has as an old friend of Hank’s – arrives at the college on a talking tour.
Lucky Hank is an adaptation
“I play another crabby guy but, like most older crabby guys, he’s a likeable crab.”
of Richard Russo’s 1997 book, Straight Man, and was scripted by TV comedy veterans Paul Lieberstein ( The Office) and Aaron Zelman ( Silicon Valley).
The first episodes were directed by Peter Farrelly, who in his early days with his brother Bobby created a run of lowbrow Jim Carrey comedies before co-winning two Oscars – best picture and best original screenplay – for 2018 drama Green Book.
The onscreen version expands the role of Hank’s wife, Lily, a high school principal (played by Mireille Enos), who acts as a balance to Hank’s misanthropy. Her levity and optimism are the perfect counterpoint to her husband’s mercurial nature, while the role of their daughter (played by Olivia Scott Welch) was also fleshed out for the screen.
Lucky Hank isn’t the first series in recent times about a frustrated university English department head – Sandra Oh played one in The Chair, which despite acclaim for its 2021 debut season, was cancelled by Netflix.
As to what Lucky Hank says about the state of American academia, Odenkirk alludes to a recent New York Times article about the decline of English as a major subject and the supposed end of education as we know it.
“Things are changing in academia, and there is a decline of the English department at colleges because everyone is on the damned TikTok. Get off the TikTok and read a book.” ▮
Lucky Hank is streaming now on TVNZ+. Better Call Saul is available on Neon.