If you’ve not read Naomi Odenkirk’s excellent and long out-of-print Mr Show - What Happened?: The Complete Story and Episode Guide, remedy that oversight tout de suite. Alongside hundreds of pages of interviews with the show’s cast and crew, Naomi prompts her husband Bob to explain the creative pulse behind HBO’s Mr. Show, capturing a comedic philosophy that not only influenced my sense of humor but also my understanding of what comedy should be (she also does a far better job of getting him to cut to the chase than he does in his rather workmanlike autobiography). In the most revealing section of What Happened?, Odenkirk—fed up with lame comedic pablum like SNL, for which he once wrote “thumbsucking” sketches—declares that relying on topical comedy and recurring characters is like saying, “Oh, I want to do this guy again!” It’s a blunt rejection of easy laughs and a salute to those who dare to innovate each time the curtain rises.
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