Fast Facts

• Born: October 22, 1962, Berwyn, Illinois.
• Defining comedy collaborator: David Cross.
• Best known for: Co-creating Mr. Show with Bob and David (HBO, 1995–1998); playing Saul Goodman / Jimmy McGill on Breaking Bad (AMC, 2009–2013) and Better Call Saul (AMC, 2015–2022); lead role in Nobody (2021) and Nobody 2 (2025).
• Early writing credits: Saturday Night Live (1987–1991), The Ben Stiller Show (1992–1993), Get a Life (1990–1992), Late Show with Conan O'Brien (briefly, early 1990s).
• Emmy wins: Outstanding Writing, Variety Series (SNL, 1989); Outstanding Writing, Variety Series (The Ben Stiller Show, 1993 — post-cancellation).

Chicago, SNL, and the Writing-Room Years

Odenkirk grew up in Naperville, Illinois, and started in comedy in Chicago — the iO (then called ImprovOlympic) and Second City scenes in the early-to-mid 1980s. He was one of the original performers in the Del Close-trained iO generation, alongside people who would later populate the UCB founding group. Chicago was where Odenkirk developed both the improvised-sketch sensibility that would define Mr. Show and his lifelong affinity for writers-room work.

In 1987, at age 24, Odenkirk was hired as a staff writer on Saturday Night Live. He spent four years on the show (1987–1991) during a transitional period in which the cast included Dana Carvey, Phil Hartman, Jon Lovitz, Nora Dunn, and, starting in 1990, a young Chris Farley. Odenkirk's most frequently-cited single contribution from his SNL tenure is co-writing the "Motivational Speaker / Van Down by the River" sketch that became Chris Farley's signature — a credit he shares with Farley and Odenkirk's longtime writing partner of the period, Robert Smigel.

Odenkirk left SNL in 1991 for West Coast work, a move that placed him in Los Angeles at the exact moment the American alt comedy scene was consolidating there.

The Ben Stiller Show (1992–1993)

Odenkirk was hired as a writer on The Ben Stiller Show in 1992. The thirteen-episode Fox sketch series is, in retrospect, the single densest 1990s writers' room of future alt-comedy talent: the staff included Odenkirk, David Cross, Judd Apatow, Dino Stamatopoulos, and Andy Dick. The show was cancelled after one season; it won the Emmy for Outstanding Writing the year after cancellation.

Within Odenkirk's arc, The Ben Stiller Show matters for two reasons. First, it introduced him to David Cross, beginning the writing partnership that would define both their careers for the next decade. Second, it established Odenkirk's functional role as a sketch showrunner — someone who could take material from a roomful of strong voices and assemble it into a coherent half-hour. That skill was what made Mr. Show possible.

Mr. Show with Bob and David (1995–1998)

Full history on our Mr. Show page. Within Odenkirk's career, the show is the central document. The distribution of responsibility across the series — Odenkirk as structural architect, Cross as political-polemical voice, a writers' room full of generational talent — worked because Odenkirk's specific skill was turning other people's sketches into a show.

Watch any random Mr. Show episode and then compare it to the same writers' room members' post-cancellation work: nobody else's post-Mr. Show sketch output has the same structural tightness. This is Odenkirk's through-line as a comedy creator. He is a maker-of-wholes.

The Post-Mr. Show Years: Producer, Director, Discoverer (1998–2008)

The decade after Mr. Show's cancellation was, for Odenkirk, an unusually productive period of finding and producing other people's work. Rather than chase his own stand-up career or front another sketch show, he spent the 2000s helping a younger generation get their projects onto television.

Tim and Eric

Odenkirk executive-produced Tom Goes to the Mayor (Adult Swim, 2004–2006) and Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! (Adult Swim, 2007–2010), the Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim projects that became the defining Adult Swim absurdist shows of the 2000s. He is widely credited with being the reason the pair got their first network deal — he discovered their video work online and championed them to Cartoon Network / Adult Swim. This is, on its own, a significant enough contribution to American alt comedy to warrant a separate line on Odenkirk's résumé.

Derek Waters and Drunk History

Odenkirk directed the original web-video pilot of Drunk History (2007) that became the Comedy Central series. He also appeared in the pilot. The property's subsequent success — five seasons on Comedy Central, international adaptations — is a direct descendant of that pilot.

David Cross's work

Odenkirk continued to produce and guest in projects with Cross throughout the 2000s, including The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret and various stand-up releases.

The David Cross comparison

What Cross did as a political stand-up during these years, Odenkirk did as a producer. Both were central to the shape of 2000s American alt comedy, but Cross's contribution was visible (albums, specials, Tobias Fünke) while Odenkirk's was largely behind the camera. The work was no less substantial for being less visible.

Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul (2009–2022)

In 2009, Odenkirk was cast as Saul Goodman — a slick, sleazy Albuquerque lawyer — for what was planned to be a three-episode arc in season two of Breaking Bad. The role expanded dramatically across the rest of the show's run. By the final season of Breaking Bad in 2013, Saul had become one of the most-discussed secondary characters in prestige television. AMC announced a spin-off in 2013; Better Call Saul began airing in 2015.

Odenkirk's six-season run as Jimmy McGill / Saul Goodman (Better Call Saul, 2015–2022) is one of the defining American television performances of the 2010s. The show's structure — Saul's slow, tragic descent from idealistic public defender to full-blown criminal facilitator — required an acting register that Odenkirk, in his comedy work, had never publicly demonstrated before. Very few performers successfully make the transition from sketch comedy to long-form dramatic lead. Odenkirk is one of them.

The Better Call Saul run is also notable for being structured around Odenkirk's specific strengths. The show's creators (Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould) wrote substantial sequences around Odenkirk's verbal dexterity, his ability to play slightly-off-register sincerity, and his improv training. The single most-praised Saul monologues of the series' run are sequences that read, in retrospect, as exercises Odenkirk was uniquely equipped to execute.

In July 2021, during filming of the show's final season, Odenkirk suffered a serious heart attack on set. He has been public about the incident and its effect on his subsequent career decisions. The show went on hiatus, Odenkirk recovered, and the final season resumed. He has since spoken about the experience as a meaningful career pivot point.

Nobody and the Action Career (2021–)

In 2021, Odenkirk starred in Nobody, an action thriller in which a mild-mannered suburban father turns out to be a retired black-ops assassin. The film was released by Universal, grossed substantially more than its modest budget, and launched what became an unexpected third major Odenkirk career — as a grounded, age-appropriate action lead.

Nobody 2 was released in 2025 to similarly strong reviews. A third film is in pre-production. Odenkirk's physical commitment to the role — the film's fight choreography required roughly two years of training before the first film's shoot — has become a well-documented aspect of his late-career public persona.

The Nobody franchise is not, strictly, comedy. It is included here because Odenkirk's specific performance choices inside the action genre — the register of grounded, slightly bemused middle-aged violence — are clearly informed by his comedy sensibility, and because the franchise's success is directly continuous with the cultural capital that Better Call Saul built.

The 2023–2026 Comedy Return

Since Better Call Saul's 2022 finale, Odenkirk has returned, partially, to the comedy world. Selected recent work:

• Lucky Hank (AMC, 2023) — an eight-episode half-hour dramedy adaptation of Richard Russo's Straight Man, starring Odenkirk as an embittered English department chair at a small college. Short-lived but well-reviewed; a clear continuation of the verbal-comedy register that made Better Call Saul work.
• Stand-up return (2024–) — Odenkirk has performed occasional stand-up sets at Largo (see our Largo page) and at UCB diaspora venues since 2024. He has not released a stand-up special.
• Producing credits — Odenkirk continues to produce and develop projects, including a long-rumored second W/ Bob & David-style revival with David Cross that has not yet been formally announced.

Why Odenkirk Matters

Three arguments for why Odenkirk is a central alt-comedy figure, even though the public largely knows him now for his dramatic work.

First: his production and mentorship record. The list of people whose careers Odenkirk meaningfully advanced — Tim Heidecker, Eric Wareheim, Derek Waters, and a longer list of writers he staffed on projects and stand-ups he produced — is disproportionately long. Most comedy careers are not built with this much internal mentorship; when it happens, it is visible in the eventual shape of the ecosystem.

Second: his structural writing. The sketch architecture that defines Mr. Show (see our Mr. Show page for detail on the segue and deferred-payoff techniques) is an Odenkirk-specific contribution. The technique has propagated into essentially every ambitious American sketch project since 1998. It is a durable formal innovation.

Third: the alt-to-mainstream bridge. Odenkirk's path — from iO improv to SNL to Mr. Show to Breaking Bad to Nobody — is the clearest public demonstration that the skills of American alt comedy (fast character work, verbal dexterity, improv training, tolerance for weird material) translate directly into prestige dramatic work. The path Odenkirk walked is now walked routinely by performers a generation younger (see the UCB diaspora into prestige-drama casting rooms). Odenkirk walked it first.

Where to Start

• If you want the sketch work: start with Mr. Show season two.
• If you want the dramatic work: Better Call Saul is the complete argument, and it is better watched after (not before) Breaking Bad. If you only have four episodes: season three, episodes 5 through 8.
• If you want the action career: Nobody (2021), then Nobody 2 (2025).
• If you want Odenkirk's prose: his 2022 memoir Comedy Comedy Comedy Drama (Penguin Random House) is the primary-source account of most of the career covered above. It is frank, frequently funny, and unusually revealing about the economics and interpersonal dynamics of the 1990s alt scene.