Maurice B. 'Buddy' Sorrell

Buddy Sorrell is one of the two gag writers in the cramped office where Rob Petrie earns his living writing for a TV variety show. Quick with an insult, quicker with a pun, he trades barbs constantly with secretary Sally and needles their boss Mel without mercy. Work is really just an excuse for nonstop joke-slinging.

Amsterdam had been a working comic for decades before this role, and it shows: Buddy's one-liners land with the timing of a man who's told a thousand jokes to a thousand rooms. The writers gave him an inexhaustible supply of insults for bald, unfunny Mel, and Amsterdam never lets a single one feel rehearsed.