4 out of 5

Created by: Paul Lieberstein and Aaron Zelman (developed by)

covers season 1

There’s a world where Bob Odenkirk remained in the background or on the sidelines of Hollywood. We still, surely, would’ve gotten some great material out of the guy, and those who recognized his name or face from past projects would nod knowingly, but… we wouldn’t know what we were missing in a post-Breaking Bad world that allowed Bob to find his place headlining shows like Lucky Hank.

Lucky Hank is easy enough to picture with various actors, as it’s just one of many spins on man-child, midlife crises formulas – college professor Hank (Odenkirk) struggles with relevance with one published book in his past, a famous father, and a marriage that’s of the happy-on-the-surface type – but that’s maybe exactly the point: this is a fairly typical concept that Bob fully imbues with something extra; the same something that made his fast-talking lawyer on Breaking Bad more than a joke, and capable of carrying the arguably superior Better Call Saul for six seasons as well. That same typicalness is what prevents Lucky Hank from really nailing its dramedy vibes consistently, as we’re staffed up with amazing actors, but the show can’t quite find its level between workplace humor (the students are a pain! the teachers are childish!) and its harder-hitting onion peel of Hank’s life, except when Bob – or his costar Mireille Enos, equally fantastic as his wife – is leading the scene.

…But he is the main character, so that does lead to a healthy percentage of the good stuff. Stuff where Bob can use his cynical sense of humor in the way a person like Hank would use it: to deflect, deflect, deflect, with our writers inserting Hank into intersections of work politics and personalities and personal life that either feel very real – highlighting the ridiculousness of our lives in gloriously hilarious or anxiety-inducing accurate ways – or very unreal, which, again, tends to be when the more one-note side characters are used for some of the shows more hijinx-esque moments, which can be cringingly forced at times.

Thankfully, while the show might have this uneven tone, all of those one-note characters have talented actors committed to their bits, allowing us to at least shake our heads and grin when it’s cringe, or – much more often – laugh. And that laughter carries over to when Bob gets to light up a scene with something even funnier, or, at well-chosen points, tragic. Shifting back to that variant Odenkirk world, perhaps one of those other potential Hank actors would’ve erased this tonal seesaw, playing straight comedy or straight drama, but then… maybe it becomes a less compelling show.