5 Mr. Show sketches where Bob Odenkirk is a bigger badass than he is in Nobody

After decades of exclusively dedicating his career to comedy, Bob Odenkirk surprised everyone with his dramatic turn as Saul Goodman in both Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. Then five years ago, in March 2021, Odenkirk made another unexpected career turn by starring in the action thriller Nobody, where he plays retired assassin Hutch Mansell, aka “Nobody,” who must return to his former life when his family is in danger. Like everyone else, I was impressed by Odenkirk’s action-star turn, yet I can’t say it surprised me. This is not only because Odenkirk has incredible range, but because I was a dedicated viewer of his 1995 HBO sketch-comedy series Mr. Show with Bob and David, where he and David Cross co-starred in hilarious, loosely connected sketches with a wide array of outrageous characters, many of them badasses in their own right. In fact, many of them were even bigger badasses than his Nobody character. Here are just five of them. In the fourth season of Mr. Show, a sketch begins at the home of a father whose son was recently kidnapped, then returned without a demand for ransom. With the police still at the home, the kidnapper calls and asks the father whether he found the p