(There is a slapstick set-piece in which Hank’s nose is mutilated by a spiral notebook.) “Lucky Hank” prefers to keep its crimes social and its violence literary. The medium is not exactly allergic to stories about the disappointments of middle-aged white guys, but it prefers to have them address these crises through meth dealing or mafia hits. Mediocrity is not popular as a subject on TV, even if it is common as an outcome. And then there’s the matter of his second novel, currently a blank page taunting him from his laptop screen. His urinary tract is being uncooperative. What’s to loathe? He’s stewing in unresolved issues with his father, a renowned literary critic who hasn’t called him in 15 years. Impolite candor is a pattern with him, and his dark sarcasm has become the artistic expression of his self-loathing. But that appears to be a side he’s accustomed to. This virtuosic outburst lands Hank on the bad side of his dean (Oscar Nuñez), his colleagues and Bartow’s wealthy parents. The one place he prefers not to speak is in his classroom, to his diffident students. Technically an author, with one decades-old novel on the remainder pile, Hank is languishing as a writing teacher and English department chair at the middling, underfunded (yet somehow postcard-pretty) Railton College in deepest Pennsylvania. In this academic satire, whose wryly funny first two episodes were screened for critics, the main person his character is trying to deceive is himself. This is not to say, however, that Odenkirk is merely repeating himself with “Lucky Hank,” which begins Sunday on AMC. He’d still be better at it than most of us, but why waste a gift?
He could probably also play a stone-faced cipher who speaks only with his eyes, but that would be like Rafael Nadal switching to pickleball. Show,” a sleazy agent on “The Larry Sanders Show,” a sad sack on “I Think You Should Leave” or, memorably, the motor-mouthed Saul Goodman on “Breaking Bad” and “Better Call Saul.” Talkers are what Odenkirk does, whether he is playing a huckster on “Mr. William Henry (Hank) Devereaux Jr., played by Bob Odenkirk, is a talker.
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