It seems like it would take a lot to get on the bad side of the eminently lovable, hilarious, and talented Bob Odenkirk, who seems like the kind of guy just about anyone would be down to have a beer with, even if they don’t like beer. Steven Seagal, though, managed the feat — and he did it by way of that ill-fated 1991 “Saturday Night Live” hosting gig, perhaps the most egregious mismatch of variety show and host that has ever been conceived. Odenkirk was a writer on “SNL” at the time, and in a conversation with Howard Stern in 2022, he was still, after three decades, as confounded as anyone by the level of humorlessness and cluelessness displayed by Seagal that night.
“His attitude the whole week, was … he kept saying, ‘I’ve never seen your show. I don’t know what you do here,'” Odenkirk remembered. “Like, really? You’ve never seen ‘Saturday Night Live?'” He went on to describe a sketch written by Seagal, the final one of the evening, wherein the star invaded an Exxon board meeting to beat the crap out of everyone present before angrily proclaiming, “This is what happens when you pollute the planet!” The audience, Odenkirk, went on, was “mystified,” and when Stern inquired as to how the heck “SNL” producer Lorne Michaels could have allowed this fiasco to happen, Odenkirk simply said that by the time the train was coming off the rails during the week-long rehearsals, it was too late.
