Comedy

Review: Bob Odenkirk and David Cross

Despite the revelation that there’ll be no ‘Breaking Bad’ spinoff, the night careened through hilarious ‘Mr. Show’–style sketches.

Photography by Robert Ham September 30, 2013

The biggest surprises that Bob Odenkirk and David Cross provided during the final night of the tour they've been doing this month in support of the recently released book Hollywood Said NO! came at the end of their show on Saturday at the Newmark Theatre.

It was then that Odenkirk revealed that all the talk about a spinoff series featuring his Breaking Bad character Saul Goodman was premature (though he'd be willing to do it). And it was then that Cross told the crowd that he and Bob were planning another stage show that would be more like their work on cult sketch show Mr. Show and would go on tour in a couple of years.

Otherwise, the preceding 90 minutes were pretty much what we've come to expect from the creative collaboration of these two unique comic voices: brilliantly satirical sketches, discursive and hilarious stand up routines, and witty improvised asides.

The real draw of the night was the sketches that Odenkirk and Cross put together for the show. The best was the big closing set piece that had Odenkirk angrily running the actors on stage (Cross, fellow Mr. Show alums Brian Posehn and John Ennis, a female performer whose name was never mentioned, and Brody Theater founder Tom Johnson) through a rehearsal of his new film script that follows the creation of Twitter.

As great as it was it faced tough competition like the elderly gay man coming out of the closet and insisting on telling his grown children every salacious detail of his new sex life ("Not a drop of any fluid will pass between me and my lover without you knowing"), and a scene where the members of a theater troupe pretending to be the Founding Fathers commented on modern life, and would not stop marveling about all the freed slaves.

Like Mr. Show, the evening was perfectly paced. Just when the chaos of the sketches threatened to push things over the top, giving the stage over to Cross, Odenkirk, and Posehn for some solo standup time righted the ship. Of the three, Cross came across best, if only because he seems to have lost the bitterness and vitriol that made his standup CDs so rousing. I can't imagine the David Cross of a decade ago daring to do a joke as adorable as the one he told on Saturday that wondered how French soccer fans feel hearing their South American compatriots chant "With milk! With milk, with milk, with milk!" after every goal.

Filed under
Share
Show Comments