Karl Puschmann: Can Bob Odenkirk’s lucky streak continue in new series Lucky Hank?

Bob Odenkirk stars in Lucky Hank, streaming now on TVNZ+. Photo: TVNZ

Most people like feel-good viewing. Like lasagne, they’re very cheesy but also so unchallenging and comfortable that they can’t help but leave you satisfied and smiling when you’re done. Bob Odenkirk’s new series Lucky Hank is not that. You could call it an anti-feelgood comedy. However, it does still leave you smiling at the end of each episode. Not because the show spent its running time emotionally manipulating you like a human Rubik’s Cube, but rather because it’s so darkly funny.

In the series, which is streaming now on TVNZ+, Odenkirk plays Hank Devereaux, a morose English professor at a mid-weight university who is wading half-heartedly through the sticky molasses of a midlife crisis.

“Who isn’t miserable, huh?” Hank asks his wife Lily at the breakfast bar one morning after she challenges him over his listless attitude. “Being an adult is 80 per cent misery.”

“No, I think you’re at 80,” she counters, before offering her own estimate. ”The rest of us hover around 30 to 40.”

“Nobody is 30,” he scoffs.

“I’m at 30,” she beams back.

“Then you’re unusually happy,” he mumbles in reply.

“I don’t think that’s true,” she states, effectively ending the conversation and leaving him to stare blankly at her back as she walks away.

Outwardly, he has it all. A solid job with tenure, a loving wife, a nice house. Hank finds no pleasure in that, his malaise brought upon by a few things. Like many people he’s stuck in a rut, finding no satisfaction in his work or the work of his students. But unlike many people, he makes the mistake of voicing his grievances, after being pressed for feedback other than the “mmm’s” and “ahhhs” he’d been mindlessly offering up to his class.

“We don’t know that I’m not the next Chaucer,” a student says as a defence against Hank’s initial tepid criticism. The comparison tips Hank over the edge.

“We do know,” he says, barely hiding his contempt as he stands from his chair. “The evidence is that you’re here. You. Are. Here. And even if your presence at this middling college in this sad forgotten town was some bizarre anomaly and you do have the promise of genius - which I’ll bet a kidney you don’t - it will never surface. I am not a good enough writer or writing teacher. Because I too, am here. At Mediocrity’s capital.”

The outburst lands him in the local newspaper, in the dean’s office and disgruntled colleagues, miffed at being tarred with his accusations of mediocrity, put his position as chairman of the department under threat.

But his venting reveals that his biggest frustration is with himself. As an author, his first novel was well received. But that was decades ago and he’s been struggling with the dreaded writer’s block ever since. His failure to make it weighs him down every day.

“I think we’ve become obsessed with happiness,” Hanks tells us via voiceover. “It’s a little much. What happened to just getting through the day?”

To paraphrase The Doors, Hank’s been down so goddamn long, that it looks like up to him. But more so, he’s happy in his unhappiness. After complaining to a pal during their weekly squash game his mate asks him to paint a picture of his dream life on the blank wall of the court.

“I can’t improve on that white wall,” he sighs. “It’s... soothing.”

He then voices his concerns over his long-running rift with his father, an acclaimed literary critic he hasn’t spoken with in 15 years.

“I’m scared my father’s retirement is going to upset this very delicate balance I’ve achieved.”

And, on top of that, there’s low-key dissatisfaction bubbling away under the surface of his marriage. His wife is keen to take up a job opportunity in New York and is increasingly frustrated by his moping and lack of ambition.

This all sounds very dour and it is. But it also has an off-skew absurdism to its humour. The vote to oust him as chairman is successful, but his usurpers are so clumsy that he accidentally wins the vote to replace him, thus cementing his safety in the job.

The whole show rests on the capable shoulders of Odenkirk and his incredible likeability and everyman charisma. As a follow-up to his acclaimed role on Better Call Saul, one of the television greats, Lucky Hank is a solid choice. It’s a premium show with a character that’s wildly different to his charismatic-yet-shady lawyer Saul Goodman. But like Saul it also offers him plenty of opportunities to flex his acting and comedic chops.

It’s said you make your own luck in this world and Odenkirk’s career from sketch comedian to celebrated drama actor to unlikely action hero (in the movie Nobody) certainly backs that up. While it’s too early to assess whether Lucky Hank will continue his genius, the evidence suggests it’d be hugely unlucky if it didn’t.