Odd Job Jack
| Odd Job Jack | |
|---|---|
| File:Odd Job Jack Logo.png | |
| Genre | Animated situation comedy |
| Directed by | Adrian Carter Denny Silverthorne Jr. |
| Starring | Don McKellar |
| Country of origin | Canada |
| Original language(s) | English |
| No. of seasons | 4 |
| No. of episodes | 52 (list of episodes) |
| Production | |
| Producer(s) | Jonas Diamond |
| Editor(s) | Adrian Carter Denny Silverthorne Jr. |
| Running time | 21–23 minutes |
| Release | |
| Original network | The Comedy Network |
| Original release | March 5, 2003 – October 14, 2007 |
| External links | |
| Website | |
Odd Job Jack is a Canadian animated sitcom television show featuring Don McKellar, about one man's misadventures in temporary employment. Seen on and produced for The Comedy Network, a cable specialty channel, and shown on Adult Swim in Latin America, the show has currently finished its production run as of its fourth season. The second season has been released to DVD, and seasons two through four can currently be seen on the on demand streaming video service Hulu.[1]
Contents
Production
Odd Job Jack is created by Smiley Guy Studios in Toronto, Ontario. The show was originally developed as a web-based cartoon, but quickly moved to cable television distribution. The producers of the show pay homage to their web roots by maintaining a web site that contains unique interactive content to support each episode, largely consisting of Flash games. They advertised this connection as being a "sit.com".
On July 14, 2006 in an email to subscribers, Smiley Guy Studios announced FreeJack, an initiative under which they have started releasing the master files of every character, prop, and background from every episode for the upcoming season under a non-commercial share-friendly license.[2]
Plot
The eponymous character, Jack Ryder, graduates from university with a degree in sociology and becomes a temporary employee at an agency called Odd Jobs which specializes in filling difficult and unusual positions. Each episode ends with Jack adding a chapter to a book which he is writing about his experiences on his laptop.
When not working, Jack often hangs with his eccentric friends, Leopold "Leo" Trench, an agoraphobic computer hacker who, like one of the characters in McKellar's earlier comedy series, Twitch City, is unable to leave his apartment but nonetheless leads a complex and bizarre life, and Bobby Lee, an Asian kid who works in the family store by day, and is a club disc-jockey and masked hero by night.
Jack also spends some time at the beginning and end of each episode at the agency where he attempts to develop a rapport with Betty Styles, the female assignment "associate" while under electronic surveillance from the gruff, imperious, and decidedly unpleasant, manager/owner (Mr. Fister) who is often involved in some way in the bizarre conspiracies, sordid sexual escapades, and crimes which lurk behind the workaday appearances of Jack's assignments.
Mr. Fister never appears in season three, but makes a final appearance in season four, while at the conclusion of season three Betty, after stealing the company jet to rescue Jack from African kidnappers, runs away to a distant country. Instead Jack is greeted in each season four episode with a new assignment associate, each with a personality defect. The first season also featured Jacques, a French Canadian doppelgänger to Jack who serves as an office nemesis.
Season One
Among the unusual situations in which Jack finds employment during the show's first season are mortuary worker; rodent wrangler on the set of a James Bond-like movie produced entirely with rodents; tree-planter in Bigfoot country; waiter in a chi-chi restaurant where something is definitely not right in the kitchen; security guard in a high-tech firm; Eighties-style business executive in a take-over firm; and Christian theme-park employee. None of these assignments are as straightforward as they seem. Jack's co-workers and employers can only be described as contentedly psychotic.
In the rodent wrangler episode, McKellar plays and parodies himself as a stereotypical vain, role-hungry and superficial actor, as well as voicing the anti-hero, Jack, and is the subject of a self-deprecatory episode based on Being John Malkovich in which a tunnel is dug from Jack's kitchen into McKellar the actor's ego.
There are also a number of sly allusions in the episode to McKellar's movies, including The Red Violin (1998) and Highway 61 (1991)[citation needed].
Cast
- Don McKellar as Jack Ryder
- Matthew Ferguson as Bobby Lee
- Jeremy Diamond as Leopold Trench
Guests
The show features voice work by a number of largely Canadian celebrities, especially after the first season: celebrities appear occasionally on the second season, and the third season has a special celebrity guest star for each episode, who either play themselves or voice one of the show's eccentric, if not mad, characters. Celebrities in the first season were Dave Foley, Troy Hurtubise and Gary Farmer. The second season featured the Barenaked Ladies, Jeff Tweedy of Wilco, John O'Hurley, Megan Follows, Christopher Plummer, Rick Mercer, Catherine O'Hara and Don Knotts. And the third season sees Tom Arnold, Scott Thompson, James Woods, Tom Green, Leslie Nielsen, Will Arnett, Samantha Bee, and John Goodman accompany Jack on his adventures in the weird world of work.
Reception
Odd Job Jack was nominated for the Canadian Comedy Awards in 2007 in the "Writing Series" category.[3]
Notes
- TheGATE.ca Review of Odd Job Jack
See also
References
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ FreeJack: Odd Job Jack and Creative Commons
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
External links
- Odd Job Jack Homepage
- Odd Job Blog
- Smiley Guy Studios Homepage
- FreeJack
- "Free Jack City" -kapiTal magazine, December 2006
- Lua error in Module:WikidataCheck at line 28: attempt to index field 'wikibase' (a nil value). Odd Job Jack at IMDb
- Odd Job Jack at TV.comLua error in Module:WikidataCheck at line 28: attempt to index field 'wikibase' (a nil value).
