What We Do In The Shadows’ Jackie Daytona shills for normal human alcohols
In this warm cowpie of a year, you’ve got to celebrate the purest pleasures and the undeniable wins. So we are going to go ahead and cheer unabashedly for the arrival of this delightful For Your Consideration ad for FX’s excellent What We Do In The Shadows, which is (rightly) up for a fistful of Emmy Awards and a Television Critics Association award at the moment. It is funny! It is smart! It brings to mind one of the best episodes of the season! That last point in particular makes it a great FYC ad, but you know what, it’s just excellent in general. Behold, Laszlo “Jackie Daytona” (Matt Berry) in all his glory.
A little top-secret context: Jackie Daytona is actually Laszlo, who flees Staten Island to avoid repaying a debt to Mark Hamill. Well, technically, it’s Jim The Vampire as played by Mark Hamill, but still. Here’s Katie Rife, in brief, on the many charms of “On The Run”:
Whether through the power of hypnosis or simply good old-fashioned charisma, his new identity as Jackie Daytona is a hit. Lots of details about Laszlo’s new life were really clever: The freezer he sleeps in instead of a coffin, his close personal relationship with the Big Mouth Billy Bass that hangs on the wall at Lucky Brews, his newfound love of women’s volleyball (again, were psychic powers at play in the team’s rise to dominance?), Berry standing with his hands on his hips in the parking lot after beating up the “motor bicycle criminals,” Berry throwing a full bus pan into a dumpster. Truly, a cornucopia of hilarious shit, and I haven’t even really touched on the many, many signature Matt Berry bombastic line readings in this episode.
It also makes us long for a few hours in a good old-fashioned dive—shout out to The Oasis, one of Chicago’s finest—but we can’t fault What We Do In The Shadows for that. Let’s all pour ourselves a Normal Human Drambuie, work some magic on the jukebox, push the button on the Big Mouth Billy Bass, and sidle up to the bar at Lucky Brew’s.
Start the clock on the WWDITS/It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia crossover… now.
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