TV / Video

Review: W/ Bob & David (Netflix)

Bob Odenkirk and David Cross got the comedy band back together for four half-hour episodes of sketch comedy and an hourlong making-of special. It’s not Mr. Show. It’s not HBO. It’s W/ Bob & David on Netflix.

Why isn’t Mr. Show on HBO Go or HBO NOW or anywhere officially streaming? I investigated that question by asking sources from both sides.

Meanwhile, how do the fellas fare when they reunited 20 years after they first carved their own path for sketch comedy on TV?

Here’s an excerpt from my review that appears on Decider.com:

So the team addresses the elephant in your electronic device upon greeting the live studio audience after the opening credits in the season premiere of W/ Bob & David, available to watch on Netflix today. Our dynamic duo emerges in spacesuits from what’s billed via voiceover as a real time travel machine but looks like a deluxe port-a-potty. Co-stars Paul F. Tompkins, Jill Talley, John Ennis, Jay Johnston and Brian Posehn look at them, incredulous.

“Yeah, dude, it just sat there for 16 years,” Posehn says of their time machine.

Fortunately, the gang doesn’t just sit around for the next 16 minutes. In fact, the first of the four new half-hours employs some of the same comedy magic transporter tricks familiar to fans of Mr. Show, jumping from sketch to sketch based on images or punchlines, with a throughline that’s not too immediately obvious. From a poker game with the fellas making outlandish New Year’s resolutions, straight to scenes that accept and heighten the stakes of those resolutions coming true. A short vignette may prompt a fake ad, which cuts to another ad, which then reveals the show teased by that ad.

Read my full review of Netflix’s W/ Bob & David on Decider.com.

Roll the clips! Here are a few of the sketches available for you to sneak a peek at:

Sean L. McCarthy

Editor and publisher since 2007, when he was named New York's Funniest Reporter. Former newspaper reporter at the New York Daily News, Boston Herald and smaller dailies and community papers across America. Loves comedy so much he founded this site.

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