Bob Odenkirk Says ‘Saturday Night Live’ Writers Use Up All Their Good Ideas By Christmas

It’s hard to come up with quality comedy sketches on a weekly basis for almost a half-year straight, which is probably why so many Saturday Night Live veterans from Bob Odenkirk's time were always dreaming of a White Christmas in the writers’ room.

Saturday Night Live is legendary for its ability to cause its writers and performers to develop comical levels of job burnout due to its grueling production schedule. The late nights and long hours of the 30 Rockefeller Plaza workplace are often romanticized by the alumni who turned their SNL start into a thriving career with much more manageable hours of operation, but of all the nostalgic A-list comedy talent who once called SNL home, Odenkirk isn’t one to wax poetic about the weekly nightmare that produces each episode of the sketch series. 

While Odenkirk has since expressed his gratitude for how hard SNL pushed him to become a quality comedy writer, he has also not been shy about admitting that SNL was a stressful experience from the moment he set foot in the building, revealing on a recent episode of The Kelly Clarkson Show that he felt like he had run out of material by the holiday break of his first SNL season.

Maybe that's why Mr. Show always wrapped it up before the new year.

“I worked here for four years from 1987 to 1991. I was with the cast that included Dana Carvey, and Phil Hartman, but also with Adam Sandler and Chris Farley and Chris Rock,” Odenkirk recalled of his time on SNL, admitting, “It’s hard to write that show! When I come in here (at 30 Rockefeller Plaza) and I walk these hallways, I just remember myself, 26 years old, ‘I don’t have any comedy ideas left!’ And you’re just exhausted after you do — by Christmas, you’ve done like 11 shows — and you have nothing in your brain. It’s rough.”

But, somehow, the writing staff comes back after the holidays and begins work on another 11 shows before the merciful summer break releases them from the production schedule. And, after a while, Odenkirk, too, managed to produce quality material for more than just half the season, but it took him some time to mature into the amazing writer we now know him to be. 

During a talk on Tig Notaro's Don't Ask Tig podcast back in September of 2023, Odenkirk reflected on his growth during his grueling four-year tenure at SNL, saying, “I was too young when I got hired at SNL. That was not a good thing. That could’ve gone wrong. That could’ve gone so wrong. It came this close so many times to going so wrong. It’s hard for kids to believe you when you say, ‘I had no fucking clue what I was doing, and I was scared outta my wits for years.’”

Eventually, Odenkirk mastered the sketch-writing process and made it work for him — on his own show. I imagine that Lorne Michaels watched the first episode of Mr. Show and wondered, “Where the hell was that every spring?”