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Bob Odenkirk and David Cross return to a TV comedy world overflowing with their influence

Bob Odenkirk, David Cross and Tom Kenny Netflix's "W/Bob & David."

In their first appearance on “W/ Bob & David,” a new four-episode sketch comedy series on Netflix, Bob Odenkirk and David Cross emerge in silver suits from what they thought was a real time travel machine. The future looks conspicuously unchanged: Same barely appointed stage, same two-drink-minimum crowd, same friends they had when they stepped into the machine 16 years ago.

The only big difference is that everyone has seriously aged, including them. Turns out, they weren’t in a real time travel machine at all, but a “Real-Time Travel Machine,” which is basically a deluxe outhouse. Had they pushed the “de-hyphenate” button, things would have turned out differently.

Fans of “Mr. Show,” Odenkirk and Cross’ cultishly-beloved HBO series, will get the message: Your favorite show is back, almost exactly as you remembered it. Bob and David are once again ringmasters of their own flying circus, slapping on an assortment of fright wigs and fake mustaches, and their team of writer/performers have returned, too, including Jill Talley, Jay Johnston, Tom Kenny, Paul F. Tompkins, Scott Aukerman, Dino Stamatopoulos and Brian Posehn.

The format is largely unchanged as well, with brief on-stage bits framing a series of silly, absurdist, occasionally political sketches, connected by odd segues and an elaborate wraparound sequence. The “Mr. Show” name is gone, but any other tweaks are mostly cosmetic.

In our current age of “Peak TV,” where everything old is new again, Odenkirk (now best-known as Saul Goodman from the “Breaking Bad” universe) and Cross (whose credit-filled career includes beloved “Arrested Development” never-nude Tobias Fünke) can be like Bruce Campbell in the Starz series “Ash Vs. Evil Dead,” wizened cult heroes sucking in their guts and returning for battle. Back when “Mr. Show” had its four-season run, from 1995 to 1999, HBO was virtually the only outlet possible for an offbeat, ratings-challenged half-hour that appealed to the passionate few. Now the mad rush for scripted comedy of any kind - on networks like Comedy Central, Adult Swim, IFC, and FXX; on streaming services like Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu; and even on web outposts like Fusion - makes a niche item like “W/ Bob & David” vastly more appealing than a show casting out for a new audience.

To put it in music-world terms: There’s no expectation for a show like “W/ Bob & David” to pack the arena, it just has to fill up the club. But Cross, Odenkirk and company are not embarking on some alternative comedy reunion tour, where they soak middle-aged fans on dusted-off versions of the old hits.

Nostalgists would have probably loved to have seen the further adventures of Ronnie Dobbs, the redneck star of a COPS-like reality show, or Three Times One Minus One, the R&B duo responsible for the soft-focus sensation “Ewww, Girl, Ewww.” But “W/ Bob & David” isn’t content to play the favorite or settle for a few callbacks or easter eggs - this is a brand new show with the bones of the old one. “Mr. Show” is back, but it isn’t.

For Odenkirk and Cross, that’s entirely in keeping with “Mr. Show’s” original spirit, which rejected the topical humor and recurring characters of sketch-comedy behemoths like “Saturday Night Live.” Donald Trump’s hosting gig on last week’s “SNL” was a cultural moment that passed with yesterday’s thinkpieces, but “Mr. Show” sketches from nearly two decades ago could be aired today without seeming the least bit dated.

Odenkirk and Cross bring a leftist bent to their comedy, but even their political sketches are broadly referenced and conceptual, more about lampooning ideas like San Francisco as a family-friendly theme park or an inoffensive, “pansexual” corporate logo than more obvious targets. Like Monty Python, a primary influence, they’re built to stand the test of time.

“W/ Bob & David” continues to assume a viewership with enough self-awareness to know the conventions it’s mocking. An inspired bit from the third episode builds off the cliché of a character talking smack about somebody and that somebody suddenly materializing like a rabbit from a hat. (“She’s right behind me, isn’t she?”)

“W/ Bob & David” imagines it as a special power, casting Cross as a sexist pig with such an uncanny talent for summoning women with the “c-word” that the FBI uses him on a missing persons case. Another sketch unpacks the conventions of slave-movie narratives with clips from “Better Roots,” a whitewashed answer to “the most disgraceful chapter in American history, the showing of ‘Roots’.”

While Cross and Odenkirk allow themselves the latitude to detour into silly tangents, “W/ Bob & David” often spins simple ironies into delightfully elaborate structural curlicues. A poker game where buddies share their New Year’s resolutions is funny enough as a standalone segment, with Tompkins laughed off for the achievable goal of giving up red meat and his friends encouraged for such absurd dreams as running for Pope.

Beyond a few bum sketches here and there - the freedom to go long on Netflix occasionally feels like a curse - the only trouble for “W/ Bob & David” in 2015 is its lack of singularity. Brian Eno famously said that only 30,000 people bought the first Velvet Underground record, but “everyone who bought one of those 30,000 copies started a band.” Sixteen years later, the children of “Mr. Show” are everywhere, from shows that feature alumni like “The Sarah Silverman Program,” “Arrested Development” and “Tenacious D: The Greatest Band on Earth” to the near-nightly array of sketch comedy shows (“Key & Peele,” “Inside Amy Schumer,” “Kroll Show,” etc.) that owe Odenkirk and Cross a plain debt.

“W/ Bob & David” can’t have the seismic impact of “Mr. Show,” which, along with predecessors like “Kids in the Hall” and “The State,” anticipated a wave of 21st century alt-comedy that has yet to crest. Now they have to compete for attention and try to win over younger comedy fans that didn’t grow up with “Mr. Show,” but also devour the work of its countless devotees. They are now one of many options, not the only game in town.

At a minimum, the new show stands to give Odenkirk and Cross a well-deserved victory lap before falling off the Netflix homepage. All things considered, there are worse fates than being overshadowed by your own legacy.



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