Rex Linn Talks Apple TV’s Stick, Better Call Saul, Longhorns & More with Rich

Rex Linn's introduction takes a while. He played Sergeant Frank Tripp on CSI Miami and the man in charge of Mesa Verde on Better Call Saul. He is on Happy's Place, airing Fridays at 8 Eastern on NBC, with season three just two weeks old. And he joins season two of Stick on Apple TV. Rich joked that the intro might outpace the clip.

Linn's opening line was pure Rex. "Can I just tell you that I am so glad to be back on my favorite show on the planet," he said. The friendship goes back two decades, to the original celebrity fantasy football league the two were part of on NFL Network.

In Stick, Linn's character has Alzheimer's, and more specifically a condition within Alzheimer's called paradoxical lucidity, which series creator Jason Keller wrote into the script. Linn described it as "a meaningful return of mental clarity." He explained it this way: "I'm talking to you and calling you Rich and everything's going great, and then two seconds later I don't have a clue who you are." Some episodes last seconds, some minutes, some hours.

Linn did a lot of research, and he said Keller "basically gave me full reign to put my interpretation of that and what that looks like on the screen."

Season two also reunites Linn with Rhea Seehorn from Better Call Saul. "I think she's the best ever," he said, explaining that they bonded because she prepares the way he does: "rehearse, rehearse, rehearse, rehearse."

The twist this time is that Seehorn plays his daughter. Linn admitted his first thought was the age difference, so he called her. "I'm going to be your dad," he told her. Her reply: "You would have had to have been 14." Linn's comeback: "Well, I mean, I got around the neighborhood." It worked out, he said.

Linn came bearing gifts, too: a Stick gift bag with a hat, a towel for Rich's golf bag, golf socks, a drink container and one golf ball. Rich promised the socks alone would remove at least five strokes from his game, and predicted he would lose the ball with one swing.

For the longest time, Linn couldn't get his hands on a Rich Eisen Show coffee mug. He recently put that history to work. While promoting Happy's Place on KTLA's morning show, he complimented their coffee cups and announced that he collects them. Nobody reacted. An anchor told him they don't give the cups out, so Linn told her Rich gives his out. By the end of the show, they handed him one. Linn credited the Rich Eisen Show's approach to coffee cups: if you don't ask, you're not going to get.

He also brought up the Super Bowl 54 show open he and Rich made together, a project Linn nicknamed Finding Lombardi, with Colin Hanks also in it. Rich played David Caruso's Horatio and, in his words, "channeled my inner Caruso."

Linn showed it to Reba, "the love of my life," and she had a message for Rich: "David Caruso is really lucky that you were not available when they were screen testing in the early 2000s for the role of Horatio." Rich wholeheartedly approved that message from Reba McEntire. Linn had told Rich during filming that the glasses move was exactly what David used to do, and said Rich did it perfectly.

As for that celebrity fantasy league, Linn won it and still has the Woody, a trophy shaped like a wooden football. His team was T-Rex, and he beat Paul Rudd's team, Tastes Like Chicken. He remembered draft day vividly. Jeff Garlin and Rudd sat on either side of him with graphs and rulers, while Linn had grabbed a fantasy football magazine from a newsstand on the way in. "Is that all you brought?" Rudd asked. Garlin told him he had no shot. "Well, I beat him," Linn said.

Linn recalled that the person who almost got beat up during that taping was Garlin, for calling Jaleel White "Urkel" over and over. Garlin even named his team Urkel. Linn compared it to "Jim Rome and Jim Everett. Say it one more time." Rich noted that Garlin must be "out of his skull" with how his Bears look right now.

Rich called Linn one of the biggest Texas fans he has ever come across. Linn didn't argue. "I've checked myself into the psychiatric ward several times during the season," he said. The schedule ahead is tough: Missouri this Saturday, LSU at night, Arkansas, then a finish at Texas A&M.

His fix starts up front. "What would I give for a better offensive line," he said. He also thinks Sarkisian should hire an offensive coordinator and step back from calling plays. "He's a great play caller, but I think it's time for an offensive coordinator," Linn said, adding that he wants him to be "the CEO of the team." He acknowledged he may get in trouble for saying it, and doubts it will happen.

As for Arch, Linn is not as down on him as some people are. A better offensive line would help, he said, though he admitted some issues with accuracy and holding the ball too long. "But hell, I'm just an armchair coach."

Rich remembered Linn's custom golf cart on the CSI Miami set, which had Longhorns horns mounted on the front like a hood ornament. "That was scary, wasn't it?" Linn laughed.

Linn's favorite Better Call Saul memory happened before he ever shot a scene. On his first day, he and Cara Pifko, who played his lawyer, were walking to the stage when the door opened and there was Seehorn, mid-scene with Bob Odenkirk. She introduced herself, told them craft service had hot homemade chocolate chip cookies in the back, and said she looked forward to seeing them in front of the camera. "It was my favorite moment of all when I look back," Linn said. He did go get cookies.

His favorite scene to perform was a boardroom monologue in which his character unloads on Seehorn, Pifko and several other attorneys over the land deal involving Barry Corbin's character. They worked on it for two and a half days, and Odenkirk enters at the end.

The first scene he ever shot with Odenkirk came in an underground parking lot where the production had Saul Goodman's car from Breaking Bad. "It was like looking at the Batmobile, man," Linn said. When a crew member leaned on it, Linn objected. Odenkirk later told him to get in and sit down. Linn refused. "I'm not worthy of sitting in Saul Goodman's car."

Linn is all in on anything from Vince Gilligan. "He has me at hello every single time," he said. Reba had never seen all of Breaking Bad, so they just finished it together, and now they are on to Better Call Saul.

Rich admitted he had to pause Breaking Bad midway through because it is so disturbing, but called it unmatched for commercial television. Both agreed the pilot is a hurdle. Linn's sister called him after one episode asking why he would think she'd want to watch it. Rich said Suzy, his wife, tapped out of the pilot too, until he watched the first season and told her she had to see it.

Linn's own discovery came through CSI Miami co-star Adam Rodriguez, who handed him DVDs of the first two seasons. Linn binge-watched all of them. And then, as Rich put it, he wound up on Better Call Saul.