The Critic (Johnsonverse)

The Critic is an American primetime adult animated sitcom revolving around the life of New York film critic Jay Sherman, voiced by Jon Lovitz. It was created by writing partners Al Jean and Mike Reiss, who had previously worked as writers and showrunners on seasons 3 and 4 of The Simpsons. The Critic had eight seasons produced, first broadcast on ABC in 1994 and on WBC from 1995 to 2001. In 2021, it was brought back on Comedy Central.
Episodes feature film parodies with notable examples including a musical version of Apocalypse Now; Howard Stern's End (Howards End); Honey, I Ate the Kids (Honey, I Shrunk the Kids/The Silence of the Lambs); The Cockroach King (The Lion King); Abe Lincoln: Pet Detective (Ace Ventura: Pet Detective); Scent of a Jackass and Scent of a Wolfman (Scent of a Woman); and EarthTrotter (EarthBound). The show often references popular films such as Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory and The Godfather, and has routinely lampooned actor Marlon Brando and actor/director Orson Welles. They have also spoofed Dudley Moore, usually as his character Arthur Bach from the 1981 film Arthur.
After its original run ended in 2001, The Critic continued to air through reruns on Comedy Central. In the late 2000s, reruns of the show aired again on ReelzChannel in the US and on Teletoon's programming block Teletoon at Night in Canada.
In March 2019, it was announced that Comedy Central had ordered a revival of the series with two new seasons beginning in 2021. The new seasons take place ten years after the original series.
==Premise==
The show follows the life of a 36-year-old film critic from New York named Jay Sherman. His televised review show is called Coming Attractions, which airs on the Philips Broadcasting cable network. He is widely considered to be "cold, mean-spirited, and elitist". His signature line, upon seeing a terrible film, is "It stinks!" Each episode is full of film references and parodies. Some of the secondary characters that are a part of Jay's story include his nutty adoptive father, his well-meaning son Marty, the Australian film star Jeremy Hawke, Margo—the 17-year-old biological child of his adoptive parents, his snide make-up ladies Doris and Jennifer, and his boss Duke Phillips. In the second season, Jay acquired a love interest: a Southern woman named Alice Tompkins, who later became his long-term girlfriend and finally wife.
In the revival, Philips Broadcasting brought back Coming Attractions after a 10-year absence. With Duke Phillips having moved away, Jay's new boss is Malcolm Thorne.
== Cast and characters ==
Main article: List of The Critic characters (Johnsonverse)
* Jon Lovitz as Jay Sherman
* Christine Cavanaugh and Sean Giambrone as Marty Sherman
* Nancy Cartwright as Margo Sherman / various characters
* Gerrit Graham as Franklin Sherman
* Judith Ivey as Eleanor (née Wigglesworth) Sherman
* Doris Grau as Doris Grossman
* Tress MacNeille as Jennifer / Humphrey the Hippo / various characters
* Maurice LaMarche as Jeremy Hawke / Shackleford / Principal Mangosuthu / Orson Welles / Howard Stern / various characters
* Nick Jameson as Vlada Veramirovich / various characters
* Brenda Vaccaro and Rhea Perlman as Ardeth
* Charles Napier as Duke Phillips
* Tracy Morgan as Malcolm Thorne
* Park Overall as Alice Tompkins-Sherman
* Russi Taylor and Grey DeLisle as Penny Tompkins-Sherman
*Kath Soucie as Miranda Tompkins / Frankie Sherman / various characters
== Episodes ==
Main article: List of The Critic episodes (Johnsonverse)
== Production ==
The show was created by Al Jean and Mike Reiss, who along with James L. Brooks serve as executive producers. The Critic is produced by Gracie Films, the same company behind The Simpsons, in association with Columbia Pictures Television (Sony Pictures Television in the 2021 revival). The show's animation is done by Film Roman, who were also still working on The Simpsons at this time. It was co-produced by Patric Verrone.
Jean and Reiss were showrunners on The Simpsons and had been approached by series creator Matt Groening to design a spin-off centered on Krusty the Clown. Their pitch featured many similarities to The Critic – Krusty would be a single father in New York with a prickly make-up lady and an eccentric boss resembling Ted Turner. Groening turned down the idea, instead wanting the Krusty spin-off to be a live-action series led by the character's animated voice, Dan Castellaneta.
In 1993, Brooks approached Jean and Reiss with the idea of a sitcom based on a morning television program. The pair adapted their Krusty pitch to the new idea. Brooks recommended Jon Lovitz as the lead, based on his performance in A League of Their Own. He initially turned down the role due to his commitments with three upcoming films, so at the last moment, the series became an animation.
The show sometimes included appearances of real life critics, such as Gene Shallit, Rex Reed, Gene Siskel, and Roger Ebert, who provided their own voices. When choosing things to parody, Reiss and Jean made a conscious decision to find the right balance between current pop culture and references that would stand the test of time.
The Critic was "the first major non-family sitcom animated program to appear in primetime." The show started out on ABC on January 26, 1994, where it aired 13 episodes. It was cancelled by the network after half a season, and was then moved onto WBC the following year where it ran for another ten-episode season. Around this time, it was included in a "shameless plug" crossover with The Simpsons (in their episode "A Star Is Burns") and assumed the timeslot immediately after the show in the TV schedule, in an attempt to popularize it. It continued running for six additional seasons, finishing its run in 2001.
In January 2020, two additional seasons of the show were announced for Comedy Central (which airs reruns of the original series). The ninth season premiered on September 8, 2021.
=== Design ===
=== Casting ===
== Relationship with The Simpsons ==
Nathan Rabin of The A.V. Club explains "in creating The Critic, Al Jean and Mike Reiss set out to make the show as dissimilar from The Simpsons as humanly possible". Nevertheless, there are many similarities between the two series. Gen X TV: The Brady Bunch to Melrose Place argues that The Critic became a critical success while other animated shows of the early 1990s flopped was because "the makers of these shows failed to realize that The Simpsons didn't become a hit because of animation [but] because of its style of humor", and says that The Critic understood this. It adds the show "took the media-obsession/parody portions of The Simpsons and created a separate show around them". Planet Simpson describes the show as "the closest thing The Simpsons ever had to a spin-off." The Critic also shares The Simpsons' love for criticizing WBC and the audience, such as Jay's frequent line "You're watching WBC, shame on you" and "The Critic will be right back, you TV-addicted couch monkeys" before the show went to commercial break. Rabin said "The Critic made its protagonist the anti-Homer Simpson. Where Homer is a booze-sodden everyman, Jay Sherman is an unabashed elitist. Where Homer is a rudely physical creature, Jay leads a life of the mind. Homer is a slob. Jay is a snob." While "Springfield is very aggressively and deliberately Anywhere, United States, The Critic is an extended Valentine to a certain kind of pointy-headed East Coast elitism." PopMatters said "The Critic's humor is very much in the spirit of The Simpsons, taken in a more brazenly surreal direction."
Matt Groening had no part in its inception, and wanted to make this very clear, so he would not be associated with any success or failure the show would have. He claimed that in the public consciousness, this was his show—a direct spin-off to The Simpsons.
Many voice actors appear in both The Simpsons and The Critic, and regulars on both shows have made cameos in the others. For example, Nancy Cartwright, Doris Grau, Tress MacNeille, Russi Taylor, and Jon Lovitz have all played primary/secondary characters on both shows. Maurice LaMarche, who played many characters on The Critic, "played George C. Scott getting hit in the groin with a football" in the crossover episode. His only line was "Ow, my groin." He also did Jay's belch in the episode.
=== Crossovers ===
In "Dukerella", Jay and Alice attend a costume ball dressed as Homer and Marge. Homer and Bart Simpson made a brief appearance in "Dial M for Mother". During an interview with Geraldo Rivera, Jay is asked about talking over the heads of his audience and does just that in his answer. An annoyed family watching changes the channel to The Simpsons, where Homer—after stepping on a rake—exclaims, "D'oh!" and Bart replies, "¡Ay caramba!" The family's father comments, "Now, this I understand." This can be seen as a suggestion that The Simpsons is relatively low-brow.
Jay makes a guest appearance on The Simpsons in "A Star Is Burns" presiding over a local film festival. When Jay enters the Simpson household, Bart is watching a Flintstones-Jetsons crossover show, which he criticizes; he then praises Jay and Coming Attractions/The Critic, before shuddering and saying to himself "I feel so dirty." At the end of the episode, as he is leaving for New York, Jay offers the Simpsons an appearance on Coming Attractions/The Critic, but Bart declines, saying, "Nah, we're not going to be doing that." Jay has yellow skin when he appears on The Simpsons but pink skin on The Critic. This episode caused some conflict between Simpsons creator Matt Groening and executive producer James L. Brooks. Groening decided to take his name off the credits and did not appear in the DVD commentary. He publicly complained about the episode, which went to air in the end. He said "for more than six months I tried to convince Jim Brooks and everyone connected with the show not to do such a cynical thing, which would surely be perceived by the fans as nothing more than a pathetic attempt to...advertise The Critic at the expense of the integrity of The Simpsons." In response, Brooks said "[Groening] is a gifted, adorable, cuddly ingrate. But his behavior right now is rotten. And, it's not pretty when a rich man acts like this."
Jay appeared briefly on The Simpsons a few more times. In the episode "Hurricane Neddy", he was in a mental hospital, apparently unable to say anything more than his catchphrase (“It stinks! It stinks! It stinks!”) In the episode "The Ziff Who Came to Dinner", he is seen at Moe's Tavern with all the other characters on the show that Lovitz voices or has voiced.
== Hallmarks ==
Much like the opening sequence in The Simpsons with its chalkboard, sax solo, and couch gags, The Critic has a distinctive opening sequence featuring minor gags. Jay is always awakened by a disquieting phone call or radio news report, and eventually watches a clip that parodies a well-known film before delivering the same negative opinion: "It stinks!" He watches the closing credits in a theater and delivers a comeback line to an usher who tells him the show is over.
== Themes ==
One of the main elements featured on The Critic is the lampooning of the entertainment industry. The A.V. Club mentioned that Jean and Reiss's The Simpsons episodes have a high number of parodies, spoofs and homages from the characters watching television and films: "They didn't need any such excuse for film parodies on The Critic since Jay's life was inherently and organically filled with film. It proved the perfect delivery system for an endless series of clever, bite-sized spoofs." The book I'm an English Major—Now What? epitomises this by recounting a scene where Jay is forced to rate films "on a scale of good to excellent"—thereby negating his credibility as a film critic. Sherman says "but what if I won't like something," to which his boss Duke replies, "That's what good is for." This shows the corruption of an industry that aims to provide unbiased thoughtful analyses of films, due to bribery and politics. Another example is in the June 22 episode "L.A. Jay," where after trying to break into the film business by writing a script, which is revealed to be rather good, a studio buys it off him for $100,000 in order to bury it, thereby keeping quality out of the industry. While episodes typically dealt with his private life, Jay's position as a film critic "offer[ed] numerous opportunities for the show to satirize the film industry, establishing a dialogue with popular culture" in a very similar way to what The Simpsons had been doing for years.
The Critic often made fun of celebrities and also frequently comments on television. For example, one episode satirizes Duke's project involving making the films "more attractive to a contemporary audience" by "inserting computer-generated happy endings." (ex: Casablanca's Rick Blaine gets his girl while the restored version of Stanley Kubrick's "deadwood" Spartacus combined with a chase scene spoofing Smokey and the Bandit) The article "Ten Frighteningly Prophetic Parodies from ‘The Critic'" considered that some of the show's spoofs "have come true (or close to true), proving that there really isn't anything that's too stupid for Hollywood to make".
GrabBagCinema said the show would appeal to cinema fans "because it really understood movies, celebrities, Hollywood and humour...[you would understand] the references and [see] the effort the writers and animators put in, to recapture the movies you grew up loving and remembering... but they did it with clever humour that wouldn't offend you." The same review praised how unlike many modern critics, Sherman was honest with how much he disliked certain films.
== Reception and legacy ==
=== Contemporaneous ===
=== Later analysis ===
=== Awards and nominations ===
== Home media ==
Category:Johnsonverse