For most of his career, Bob Odenkirk was synonymous with alternative comedy. That changed when he delivered a transformative dramatic performance as the silver-tongued Saul Goodman in Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. In 2021, Odenkirk pivotally shifted gears again, reinventing himself as an unlikely action hero in Nobody. As Hutch Mansell—a dormant assassin pulled back into a world of violence—Odenkirk proved he could handle a firearm as skillfully as a punchline.
While the world marveled at this cinematic metamorphosis, longtime fans of Mr. Show with Bob and David weren’t the least bit shocked. On his seminal HBO sketch series, Odenkirk spent years portraying an array of unhinged, dangerous, and inexplicably “hard” characters. If anything, some of his sketch personas make Hutch Mansell look like a pacifist. Here are five Mr. Show characters who are even more “badass” than the protagonist of Nobody.
5
The Kidnapper
In a standout Season 4 sketch, Odenkirk plays a criminal whose incompetence is matched only by his pain tolerance. After kidnapping a child and returning him without a ransom demand, the kidnapper calls the frantic father to gloat about a “package” left in the park—a severed toe. The twist? The child is perfectly intact. In a moment of surreal realization, the kidnapper checks his own feet and discovers he accidentally mutilated himself instead of his victim.
While Hutch Mansell is a tactical genius, it takes a terrifying level of commitment (or sheer lunacy) to slice off your own digit and not even notice until you’re on the phone. Hutch might be tough, but he still values his extremities.
4
Don Tirelli
Don Tirelli is a mob boss with a very specific, very violent worldview. In Season 3, we meet Tirelli in a pizzeria where his henchmen are debating the existence of numbers beyond 24. Tirelli eventually shuts down the argument with an iron fist, decreeing that 24 is the definitive mathematical ceiling. When a delivery bill of $25 proves him wrong, Tirelli doesn’t admit defeat—he opens fire on his subordinates.
There is a unique brand of badassery in being so ruthless that you attempt to enforce your own reality on the laws of mathematics. Hutch fights the Russian mob; Don Tirelli fights the concept of counting.
3
The Job Interviewee
In this sketch, Odenkirk’s character undergoes a polygraph test for a prospective employer. What begins as a standard background check quickly descends into a confession of impossible feats. He admits to every illicit drug known to man, stealing classified NASA technology, and even committing murder with his mind. The legendary punchline reveals he once derailed a train using only his anatomy and then proceeded to eat the locomotive bit by bit.
Hutch Mansell can clear a bus full of thugs, but he hasn’t exactly displayed telekinetic assassination skills or the digestive fortitude to consume heavy machinery. For a shoe salesman, this guy has a resume that would make John Wick tremble.
2
Todd Benley
Season 4 introduced us to Todd Benley, the sole survivor of a horrific plane crash in the Andes. While the world viewed him as a miracle, the grim reality was far more gluttonous. Benley, depicted by Odenkirk in an expansive fat suit, managed to survive for a month by eating all 234 of his fellow passengers.
Hutch Mansell’s body count is impressive, but analytical fans estimate his kill count at roughly 78. Todd Benley tripled that number and did so without a single bullet—just a fork and a knife. That is a level of savage survivalism that Nobody simply can’t touch.
1
Edmund Premington
Finally, we have Edmund Premington, a “Great White Hunter” who takes the concept of masculinity to a grotesque extreme. While regaling a high-society audience with tales of the African veldt, Premington repeatedly references the physical sensations in his scrotum. When the crowd recoils at his vulgarity, Premington reveals his secret: he isn’t just being crude; he is a biological marvel.
Opening his coat, he reveals he is covered in scrotums from head to toe. Hutch Mansell might have “balls” in the metaphorical sense, but Premington literally possesses dozens of them. In the world of Mr. Show, anatomical redundancy is the ultimate power move.
Source: Polygon
