The Nose looks at ‘Chip ’n Dale: Rescue Rangers,’ ‘Is It Cake?’ and more

This week’s Nose gave an idiot a machete.

Chip ’n Dale: Rescue Rangers is a hybrid live-action and animated sequel to and reboot of the 1989 Disney Channel series. It’s a metafictional comedy that might really be less for kids and more for their parents. The Lonely Island production stars Andy Samberg, John Mulaney, KiKi Layne, and many others.

Old Enough! is a reality TV show that has aired intermittently on Nippon Television since 1991. Twenty short episodes hit Netflix in March. Here’s their synopsis: “This long-running Japanese reality show follows along as young children leave the house to run errands by themselves for the very first time.” By “young,” they mean very young.

And: Is It Cake? is a game show-style baking competition reality TV Netflix original series thing. Bakers compete for $5,000 by trying to fool judges into thinking that their cake — styled to look like a bowling ball or a hamburger or a chess set, etc. — isn’t actually a cake. The winner of each episode can then win a second $5,000 by correctly identifying which bag of cash is actually a cake.

That may be the dumbest paragraph I’ve ever typed. Is It Cake? was renewed for a second season early this month.

Some other stuff that happened this week, give or take:

• Philip Baker Hall, ‘Boogie Nights’ and ‘Magnolia’ Actor, Dead at 90
• Jennifer Hudson becomes an EGOT as a co-producer of the winning musical, ‘A Strange Loop.’
• BTS Says It’s Taking a Break, but Promises It’s Not Permanent Members of the K-pop juggernaut said in a video conversation that they wanted time to explore their individual artistic identities.
• Internet Explorer, the love-to-hate-it web browser, has died at 26
• After Seeing Our First Look Of Ryan Gosling As Ken In “Barbie,” It’s Safe To Say This Was The Role He Was Born To Play It’s now a Ken world and we’re just living in it.
• Vince McMahon Steps Down as Head of W.W.E. During Misconduct Investigation Mr. McMahon, the pro wrestling company’s chairman and chief executive, agreed to pay a secret settlement to an employee with whom he was said to have had an affair, The Wall Street Journal reported this week.
• Tom Hanks Explains It All
• No more Mr. Nice Guy: Tom Hanks drops F-bomb on fans who nearly toppled Rita Wilson
• People are using DALL-E mini to make meme abominations — like pug Pikachu ‘Pug-a-choo’ isn’t real, ‘Pug-a-choo’ can’t hurt you
• The Google engineer who thinks the company’s AI has come to life AI ethicists warned Google not to impersonate humans. Now one of Google’s own thinks there’s a ghost in the machine.
• One Weird Trick To Make Humans Think An AI Is “Sentient” Vulnerability.
• I made mistakes over Rebel Wilson, and will learn from them
• The Numbing Rise of I.P. TV Whereas golden-age television aspired to bring viewers something unexpected, a new glut of ripped-from-the-headlines content gives them exactly what they’ve had before.
• She Wrote a Dystopian Novel. What Happened Next Was Pretty Dystopian.
• Sarah Polley: ‘It took me years to see how responsible Terry Gilliam was for my terror’
• The Books Swallowed by the Black Hole of the Coronavirus Some spectacular titles had the terrible luck of being released in early 2020. They still deserve our attention.
• ‘Squid Game’ is being turned into a reality TV show — minus the death
• A Frog So Small, It Could Not Frog Most frogs can jump and land with the precision and grace of an Olympic gymnast. And then there’s the pumpkin toadlet.
• What the BLEEP? Maine Is Cracking Down on Obscene License Plates. End of vanity-plate free-for-all likely to cause recall of hundreds of vulgar tags, but not in time for summer vacations
• Jerrod Carmichael’s 12-Step Truth Program The very private comedian-writer-director made his personal life very public with his recent HBO special, Rothaniel. Now he shares what happens when you have nothing to hide.

GUESTS:

• Jim Chapdelaine: An Emmy-winning musician and a patient advocate for people with rare cancers
• Taneisha Duggan: A director, producer, and arts consultant
• Carolyn Paine: An actress, comedian, and dancer; founder, director, and choreographer of CONNetic Dance

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Colin McEnroe and Cat Pastor contributed to this show.

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