This is a video from my YouTube channel, Jack’s World.
Bob’s Burgers is one of my favorite shows. And one of the reasons for that is how well it does holiday episodes. The Christmas and Thanksgiving episodes tend to have the most drama, but Halloween also inspires a special kind of Belcher family fun.
And the episode that best embodies this spirit is “The Wolf of Wharf Street.” I’ll go on record as saying it’s the best Halloween episode of the show and it raises the bar for every other show. Enjoy!
Have you heard of Tilly Norwood? She’s a beautiful young actress who is just starting to make her presence felt in Hollywood. She hasn’t been in much, but she’s already negotiating with talent agents to get bigger roles.
Naturally, that doesn’t sit well with real life actors and unions. There is already a concerted effort to prevent Tilly Norwood from being cast in anything beyond your typical AI slop content. I completely understand this sentiment. I don’t blame anyone who works in Hollywood for being concerned about this. However, having covered the rise in AI for years, I’m comfortable making this prediction.
Tilly Norwood will eventually be cast in major movies and TV shows.
Other AI actors like her will be cast, as well.
Traditional actors and actresses will hate it. A sizable chunk of the audience will hate it as well. But this is going to happen. It was always going to happen the moment generative AI reached a certain level of refinement. A big reason for that involves money, as tends to be the case in Hollywood and most other industries. But there’s another reason that’s worth highlighting.
Dollar for dollar, movies and TV shows are getting more expensive to produce. This isn’t just due to inflation, unions, and the “personalities” that tend to comes with Hollywood. The logistics involved with making media has become bloated and inefficient. We’re no longer in an era in which media can only go through certain channels, be it TV and movie theaters. Thanks to streaming media, as well as online content like YouTube and Tiktok, the competition for eyeballs has never been greater.
Unless you’re a big budget blockbuster with a massive distribution network, such as Disney or Warner Bros., it’s harder to make content that turns a profit. The scale, resources, and personnel required to produce a movie or show is such that it’s limiting. Add to that the general enshitification of streaming media and the current model for producing content just isn’t sustainable.
Generative AI, as much as it is derided, offers a significant cost advantage. On top of that, an AI actor or actress is less likely to get accused of harassment, arrested for public intoxication, or go on some anti-sematic rant during a routine traffic stop. And for certain Hollywood agents, you can’t put a price on that kind of assurance.
But the question remains. Will audiences accept AI actors? Will the content they produce actually be worth watching?
A lot of people will probably refuse to watch anything with Tilly Norwood or anything like her out of principle. But what happens when AI gets to a point where it’s hard to tell if a person is AI generated? There are already AI tools like SORA and Veo3 that make extremely realistic videos of people who look and sound real. This is one element of AI that is not in the distant future. It’s here and it’s evolving fast.
It’s not yet clear what kind of career Tilly Norwood will have. She may never show up in anything mainstream. But like it or not, she marks the first step in a new trend with AI. We don’t know where it will lead. Hollywood is already undergoing significant change. Technology like this is only going to accelerate that change in ways we can’t imagine.
This is a video from my YouTube channel, Jack’s World.
TV dads are known for being stubborn, dense, and foolish. But some do manage to stand out for all the right reasons. They’re still stubborn, but that doesn’t prevent them from having greater depth.
Hank Hill from King of the Hill is a perfect example of this. He is very much defined by how stubborn and uncompromising he is. But he has also been shown to be reasonable. And that helps make him such a better character while also providing for some endearing comedy.
This is a video from my YouTube channel, Jack’s World.
This video entertains the possibility of a revival of The Critic, a remarkable, yet forgotten show from the 90s. After my previous video, both Jon Lovitz and Al Jean came out in support of a revival. And while I’d love to see Jay Sherman return, I think it’s worth asking whether such a revival could work.
This is a video from my YouTube channel, Jack’s World.
In this video, I highlight a remarkable new show called Common Side Effects. It’s rare for a show to come along and really impress me after just one season. But this show, which debuted on Adult Swim, really raised the bar for just how great adult animation can be. And I highly encourage everyone to check it out for themselves. Enjoy!
This is a video from my YouTube channel, Jack’s World.
This video revisits and celebrates The Critic, one of my favorite shows from the 90s. This brief, but memorable animated series was unique in so many ways. It was even ahead of its time in how it approached modern movies. Even though it ended too soon, it left quite a mark that’s worth exploring.
This is a video from my YouTube channel, Jack’s World.
This video explores why and how Bob’s Burgers became the perfect comfort show. For me personally, it’s become the show I often turn to when I just want to watch something simple, wholesome, and fun. It’s also one of those rare shows that sets itself apart from other animated shows for all the right reasons.
Plus, it has Gene Belcher. What more could you want?
This is a video from my YouTube channel, Jack’s World.
In this video, I highlight and explore one of my favorite episodes of Batman: The Animated Series. While Batman has one of the best rogue’s gallery in all of comics, this episode had him clash with a different kind of enemy.
Like Bruce Wayne, they’re billionaires.
Unlike Bruce Wayne, they choose to be villains.
But it’s why they make such a choice that’s truly remarkable. And the nature of that choice does a lot to affirm why Batman’s story is so powerful. Enjoy!
These days, it’s easy to look back on old movies and TV shows you once found funny and cringe. Sometimes, it’s just part of changing trends. Sometimes, it’s just part of getting older. What you found hilarious when you were 10-years-old isn’t going to be as funny when you’re 40. It’s just a sad fact of life.
But then, there’s a movie like “Airplane!” And I submit that, in terms of comedies that have aged like the finest of wines, this movie is the gold standard.
I certainly understand that comedy and tastes are objective. I also don’t doubt that some people will watch a movie like this, not get the jokes, or take offense to it. But I would also argue that, while you can levy those kinds of criticisms about many comedies from that era, you can’t reasonably apply it to “Airplane!“
This movie isn’t just a classic comedy gem from the early 1980s. It’s one of those rare movies that takes a simple, but effective approach at being funny. It doesn’t try to be too smart for its own good. It doesn’t try to be too crude, so as only to appeal to a specific demographic and/or stoners. It just uses the basics of what makes good, endearing comedy and runs with it.
The story itself is not really that complicated. A traumatized ex-fighter pilot, Ted Striker, tries to win back his stewardess girlfriend, Elaine Dickinson, before she moves away and leaves him for good. He follows her to the airport, ends up on a plane with her to Chicago, and just happens to be there when disaster strikes and the flight crew falls ill. Along the way, some truly remarkable comedy gold ensues.
In essence, this movie is largely a parody of common tropes from that era regarding romance, war, and disaster movies. It also used the premise of a far more serious, less funny movie from 1957 called “Zero Hour!” But you don’t have to have seen that movie to appreciate plot, jokes, and comedy of “Airplane!” You just have to have the smallest semblance of a sense of humor.
It does get crude at times, but not so crude as to be juvenile.
It does get quirky with recurring gags, but it never overuses them.
It also gets more than a little suggestive at times, but not to the point where it needs to be rated R.
This movie came out before I was born. However, it was a movie my parents loved. Every time my mother watched it, she would keel over and laugh. I was only around nine-years-old when I first saw it. And even though some of the jokes flew over my head, I still found it funny.
Years later, when I rewatched it, I laughed even harder once I actually got the jokes. To this day, I can re-watch the movie any time of year and still find it hilarious. I still crack up at the scenes that involve speaking Jive. I still laugh every time Leslie Nielson says “And don’t call me Shirley!” And the autopilot steals the show every time.
While I wouldn’t go so far as to call “Airplane!” my favorite movie or even my favorite comedy, I can’t recall a single movie or TV show that has consistently made me laugh over the years. And at a time when so many other TV shows and movies are aging poorly, it just makes me appreciate “Airplane!” that much more.
So, for that, I thank David and Jerry Zucker, and all those involved in making this movie, for giving the world this timeless comedy gem. And if you haven’t seen it yet and are in the mood for some quality comedy, give “Airplane!” a watch. If laughter truly is good for the soul, this movie should give you plenty of nourishment.
This is a video from my YouTube channel, Jack’s World.
This video revisits That 70s Show. It’s a show I loved as a teenagers, but came to see differently as an adult. And a big reason for that difference is because of Red Forman.
For years, he was the antagonist of the show. He was the main obstacle for Eric, Donna, and the rest of the crew. And for a long time, he really did come off as a cranky old kill-joy.
But now, after revising the show years later, I see Red differently. And I see the main crew differently. That difference says a lot about me, personally. It also says a lot about how the show has aged and evolved.
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