Best Bob Odenkirk Movies and Shows to Watch Before Nobody 2
If you were looking to cast a lead in an action movie involving a lot of fight scenes, Bob Odenkirk might not be your first choice. You'd be wrong, of course; the 2021 action thriller Nobody, starring Odenkirk as a retired hitman, was a success both critically and at the box office.
The sequel is due to land in theaters on August 15, and while you're waiting, here are seven other excellent Bob Odenkirk shows and movies to get you in the mood.
Nobody
If you're a fan of Bob Odenkirk, then you should thank the 2021 action thriller Nobody for the fact that he is still with us. In July 2021, Odenkirk suffered a heart attack on the set of Breaking Bad spin-off Better Call Saul . He was given CPR on the set while the ambulance took 25 minutes to arrive. On The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon , Odenkirk said that his heart was helped to survive that incident by the fact that he went through two years of fight training to play his role in Nobody , which left him in excellent shape.
In Nobody , Odenkirk plays Hutch, a man with an apparently ordinary and mundane life. However, when a group of thugs harasses a woman on a bus, Hutch fights them all off with impressive and brutal skill and almost kills one of the thugs. Unfortunately, the thug turns out to be the brother of a Russian crime boss, who seeks out Hutch for revenge.
Odenkirk isn't an obvious choice as an action hero, which is kind of the point of the movie, but he pulls off the role with aplomb. The fight scenes are excellent, and Odenkirk performed many of the fighting sequences himself.
Fargo
Creating a spin-off series of a movie as iconic as the Coen brothers' 1996 cult classic Fargo is a bold move, but writer and creator Noah Hawley somehow managed to craft a show that perfectly captures the tone of the original film. The show is an anthology series , with each of the five seasons telling a different story with new characters. The show has featured some big names, including Kirsten Dunst, Ewan McGregor, Chris Rock, Jon Hamm, and Ted Danson.
The first season stars Billy Bob Thornton, Allison Tolman, Martin Freeman, and Colin Hanks, and follows the story of Thornton's psychotic hitman, whose chance encounter with Freeman's insurance salesman leads to a spiraling series of murders that local cops Tolman and Hanks attempt to solve. Bob Odenkirk plays the recurring character of Bill Oswalt, the inept chief of police who continually gets in the way of Tolman's investigation.
If you enjoy Fargo , you should also check out Legion on Hulu , also written and created by Noah Hawley. It's a superhero series, but unlike any other. If you're suffering from superhero fatigue, this show might just cure it.
Nebraska
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Nebraska is another movie featuring Bob Odenkirk, but this one is very different from Nobody . It tells the story of an elderly man, played by Bruce Dern, who believes that he has won a million-dollar sweepstakes thanks to a mail scam letter he received. He is trying to get to Lincoln, Nebraska, to claim the prize.
Despite realizing that the letter is a scam, his son David, played by Will Forte, agrees to drive his dad to Nebraska in order to spend more time with him. Odenkirk plays David's older brother, Ross, who is initially skeptical of David's plan and believes his confused father should be placed in a nursing home, but eventually joins up with his father and brother.
Nebraska is a gentle mix of drama and comedy, filmed entirely in black and white, and while Odenkirk isn't a lead character, he's a key part of the ensemble cast.
Undone
Undone is an Amazon Prime Video original drama series that features Bob Odenkirk in a way you've never seen him before. The show is an adult animation that was made by filming the live actors performing in front of a green screen and using motion capture and rotoscoping to transform those performances into animation. The result is an animation style that captures every nuance of the actors' performances.
The story centers around a woman named Alma, played by Rosa Salazar, who is involved in a near-fatal car accident. After the accident, she starts to have visions of her dead father, played by Bob Odenkirk, who was killed in a car accident when Alma was a child. In the visions, Alma's father reveals that his death was no accident; he was murdered.
Her father then reveals that Alma has the ability to move through time, and tasks her with traveling back through time to prevent his murder. Throughout, the audience is left guessing as to whether all of this is real or whether Alma is suffering from schizophrenia, a condition that also afflicted her father.
The show is visually stunning and more than a little mind-bending. Bob Odenkirk is excellent as the dad, and the animation is so good that it's easy to forget you're not watching real actors.
Mr. Show with Bob and David
Bob Odenkirk is now best known as an actor, thanks in large part to the final two entries on this list. However, he started his career as a comedian and comedy writer. He cut his teeth as a writer on Saturday Night Live , as well as writing and performing on shows such as The Larry Sanders Show and The Ben Stiller Show . It was on the latter show that he met fellow actor and writer David Cross, and the pair started performing in live sketch shows.
This culminated in the TV sketch show Mr. Show with Bob and David, which ran from 1995 to 1998. Each show is a series of often surreal sketches that transition into one another, with the key characters usually played by Odenkirk and Cross. The show also includes an impressive roster of actors and comedians, such as Sarah Silverman, Jack Black, Scott Aukerman, and Mary Lynn Rajskub. Originally an HBO comedy show , Netflix briefly revived the similar W /Bob & David show in 2015.
Mr Show showcases the impeccable comic timing of both Bob Odenkirk and David Cross, as well as their somewhat surreal writing skills. You'll never look at three holes in the wall of a barn in the same way ever again.
Breaking Bad
Breaking Bad was a hugely successful show that regularly appears at or near the top of lists of the greatest TV shows of all time. It tells the story of a high school chemistry teacher who is dying of cancer and decides to turn to manufacturing and selling drugs to ensure that his family will be provided for. Over five seasons, we see his transformation from a man trying to do the right thing for his family into a hardened and dangerous criminal.
This is the show that brought Bob Odenkirk into the mainstream. He was cast as the shady lawyer Saul Goodman, but was initially only meant to appear in a handful of episodes in season two. However, show creator Vince Gilligan liked the character so much that Odenkirk became a central cast member for the remainder of the show. Odenkirk himself has described Saul as a once-in-a-lifetime role that he considers himself incredibly lucky to have played.
If you've never watched Breaking Bad , you should count yourself lucky, because it means you still have one of the best TV shows ever made to enjoy in its entirety. Just make sure you watch it at some point.
Better Call Saul
Odenkirk was so good at playing the character of shady lawyer Saul Goodman in Breaking Bad that the show's creator, Vince Gilligan, decided that there was more of Saul's story that needed to be told. Better Call Saul is a spin-off series that follows the story of how a small-time lawyer named Jimmy McGill ended up transforming into a sleazy defense lawyer in the pocket of serious criminals.
Following up a show as popular and critically acclaimed as Breaking Bad is almost impossible, but Better Call Saul more than lives up to the quality of the original series. It has a different, more character-driven feel, but some people consider Better Call Saul to be even better than Breaking Bad . If you're an Odenkirk fan, then six seasons of watching him play Saul Goodman is about as good as it gets.
Despite starting life as a comedy writer and comedic actor, Bob Odenkirk has become best known for his dramatic roles, with many of the shows and movies on this list being far more dramatic than comedic. That's not to say he still doesn't have his comedy chops. This sketch from the truly amazing Netflix sketch show I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson proves that Odenkirk can still do funny just as well as he always could.
