The Critic

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".^[2] 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 lady Doris, 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.

Jon Lovitz voiced Jay Sherman

• Jon Lovitz as Jay Sherman
• Christine Cavanaugh 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
• 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
• Park Overall as Alice Tompkins
• Russi Taylor as Penny Tompkins
• Kath Soucie as various characters
• Tress MacNeille as Humphrey the Hippo / various characters
• Valerie Levitt as Jennifer (webisodes only)

Discover more about Cast and characters related topics

List of The Critic characters

List of The Critic characters

This is a list of characters in the animated television series The Critic.

Jon Lovitz

Jon Lovitz

Jonathan Michael Lovitz is an American actor and comedian. He was a cast member of Saturday Night Live from 1985 to 1990. Lovitz starred as Jay Sherman in The Critic and played a baseball scout in A League of Their Own. He has appeared in 20 episodes of The Simpsons.

Christine Cavanaugh

Christine Cavanaugh

Christine Josephine Cavanaugh was an American actress, who had a distinctive speaking style and provided the voice for a large range of cartoon characters. She was the original voice of Chuckie Finster in Nickelodeon's Rugrats and the voices of Gosalyn Mallard in Darkwing Duck, Bunnie Rabbot from the Sonic the Hedgehog Saturday-morning cartoon on ABC, Oblina in Aaahh!!! Real Monsters and the title characters from Babe and Cartoon Network's Dexter's Laboratory.

Nancy Cartwright

Nancy Cartwright

Nancy Cartwright is an American actress. She is the long-time voice of Bart Simpson on the animated television series The Simpsons, for which she has received a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Voice-Over Performance and an Annie Award for Best Voice Acting in the Field of Animation. Cartwright also voices other characters for the show, including Nelson Muntz, Ralph Wiggum, Todd Flanders, Kearney, Database, and Maggie.

Gerrit Graham

Gerrit Graham

Gerrit Graham is an American stage, television, and film actor as well as a scriptwriter and songwriter. He is best known for his appearances in multiple films by Brian De Palma as well as appearances in two Star Trek series. He voiced Franklin Sherman on The Critic.

Judith Ivey

Judith Ivey

Judith Lee Ivey is an American actress and theatre director. She twice won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play: for Steaming (1981) and Hurlyburly (1984). She has appeared in several films and television series. For her role in What the Deaf Man Heard (1997), she was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or Movie.

Doris Grau

Doris Grau

Doris Grau was an American actress and script supervisor from Brooklyn. After moving to Hollywood in 1940, she began her career supervising film and television scripts. She continued to do this until the 1990s and worked on films such as Point Blank and King Kong and television shows such as Cheers and The Tracey Ullman Show. Grau did some acting in her later years, playing live-action and animated roles. On the sitcom The Simpsons, she worked as a script supervisor and provided the voice of Lunchlady Doris and other minor characters.

Maurice LaMarche

Maurice LaMarche

Maurice LaMarche is a Canadian voice actor, comedian, and impressionist. He has voiced the Brain in Animaniacs as well as its spin-off Pinky and the Brain, Big Bob in Hey Arnold! (1996–2004), the titular character from Inspector Gadget, and a variety of characters in Futurama. He also voiced Egon Spengler in The Real Ghostbusters and its follow-up Extreme Ghostbusters.

Howard Stern

Howard Stern

Howard Allan Stern is an American radio and television personality, comedian, and author. He is best known for his radio show, The Howard Stern Show, which gained popularity when it was nationally syndicated on terrestrial radio from 1986 to 2005. He has broadcast on Sirius XM Radio since 2006.

Brenda Vaccaro

Brenda Vaccaro

Brenda Buell Vaccaro is an American stage, television, and film actress. In a career spanning over half a century, she received one Academy Award nomination, three Golden Globe Award nominations, four Primetime Emmy Award nominations, and three Tony Award nominations.

Charles Napier (actor)

Charles Napier (actor)

Charles Lewis Napier was an American character actor known for playing supporting and occasional leading roles in television and films. He was frequently cast as police officers, soldiers, or authority figures, many of them villainous or corrupt. After leaving his Kentucky hometown to serve in the Army, he graduated from college and worked as a sports coach and art teacher before settling on acting as a career. Napier established himself in character roles and worked steadily for the next 35 years. He made numerous collaborations with director Jonathan Demme, including roles in Something Wild (1986), Married to the Mob (1988), The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Philadelphia (1993), Beloved (1998), and The Manchurian Candidate (2004).

Kath Soucie

Kath Soucie

Kath Soucie is an American actress, known for playing Linka in Captain Planet and the Planeteers, Lola Bunny in the Looney Tunes franchise, Fifi La Fume and Li'l Sneezer in Tiny Toon Adventures, Minx in Jem, Bea in Mighty Max, Dexter's Mom in Dexter's Laboratory, Maddie Fenton in Danny Phantom, Phil, Lil and their mother Betty DeVille in Rugrats, Agent K in The Replacements, Princess Sally Acorn in Sonic the Hedgehog, Cadpig and Rolly in 101 Dalmatians: The Series, Kat Harvey in The Spooktacular New Adventures of Casper, Morgana Macawber in Darkwing Duck, and Kanga in the Winnie the Pooh franchise. She also voiced Tuffy Mouse in The Tom and Jerry Show, Perdita in the 101 Dalmatians franchise, since 101 Dalmatians II: Patch's London Adventure (2003), Ray Ray Lee in The Life and Times of Juniper Lee, and Kappei in Ninjala.

Al Jean	Mike Reiss

The show was created by Al Jean and Mike Reiss, who along with James L. Brooks served as executive producers. The Critic was produced by Gracie Films, the same company behind The Simpsons, in association with Columbia Pictures Television. The show's animation was 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.^[8]

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.^[9]

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.^[2] 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.^[10]

The Critic was "the first major non-family sitcom animated program to appear in primetime."^[2] 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 Fox 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.^[11] But despite improvement of the ratings,^[3][4] Fox moved it to a different timeslot after five episodes, and also cancelled it after this run had finished airing in May 1995.^[11] According to The TV IV, nine scripts were already written for the planned third season and the show was going to be moved to UPN, but an agreement was not reached.^[12][13] Also, Fox refused to officially cancel the show until much later.^[12][13] The show was not renewed on any network, and effectively became cancelled. The show returned in Flash-animated webisode form in 2000–2001, for a third season with 10 three- to five-minute installments. Apparently, it aired on Cartoon Network Spain around 2000-2001 on late-nights, alongside Duckman, months before Adult Swim was launched in the US.

Design

David Silverman designed Jay Sherman

Four people have a design credit on the show: David Silverman, Rich Moore, David Cutler, and Everett Peck. Silverman designed the look of Jay Sherman. Moore and Cutler designed the general look of the show including some of the backgrounds and supporting cast. The character of Doris was based on Peck's drawings. Cutler helped in the hard task of standardizing all these animation styles. Moore was the supervising director, so oversaw a lot of the design process—and was also responsible for how the action would play out, and how each shot would be framed. Rich Moore explains "the design of Jay Sherman began as a sketch done by David Silverman" on a napkin/place-mat in a restaurant. He was designed as "Kaufmanesque," and Jim Brooks liked the design, so his design remained much the same for the pilot episode. Moore had his reservations as the character had a "flat head and tiny eyes that were hard to act with", and was composed of shapes that were difficult to turn in a 3D space. It was decided the drawing encapsulated the humanity and reality of the critic, so was left unchanged. Over the course of the two seasons, however, the design was altered slightly. The flat head was made more round, and his eyes became bigger—in order to make Sherman more appealing and easier to animate. The design team never intended to make the characters too cartoony as it would not have fit tonally with the type of show. The characters were designed via a general think-tank process of "what do we like about the characters and what are we trying to say about them?". Quick sketches were completed in front of the full creative team after a discussion about characters, which were then critically analysed. In particular, the design of the parents caused some issues. Jim Brooks described the father as a "crazy wasp." The designs were eventually based on a photo of a professor and his wife. Moore explains that the animation should never "step on the voices or the writing."^[10]

Vlada, an Eastern European restaurateur, was named after Jean and Reiss's film professor at Harvard University, Vlada Petrić. The character's physical appearance was based on Gábor Csupó, a Hungarian animator on the early seasons of The Simpsons. Though some believed Sherman to look like the film critic James Wolcott, this was not intentional.^[14]

Casting

Script supervisor Doris Grau, who had played Lunchlady Doris on The Simpsons, was cast as Sherman's make-up lady, Doris. Four actresses, including Margaret Cho, were hired and dismissed as the voice of Sherman's younger sister Margo. The role eventually went to the voice of Bart Simpson, Nancy Cartwright, who was pleased to finally be voicing a female.^[15] Duke Phillips, Jay's Ted Turner-esque boss was played by Charles Napier, using his real voice. Due to the sheer number of film and TV parodies, the team also sought character actors who could play many different roles. During the audition process, they asked them to perform their acts, which Reiss described as "very entertaining." Maurice LaMarche impressed Jean by doing "perfect" impressions. LaMarche even beat out genuine Australians for the role of Australian actor Jeremy Hawke. He was often asked to work on his accent of a pop culture figure related to media just released or that would have been released by the time of the episode's airing. Depending on who could do the voice better, the characters were divided up between Nick Jameson and LaMarche. Each would play about 20–30 characters per show. According to LaMarche, he played twenty-seven characters in one episode.^[16] He specialized in impressions, while Jameson's specialty was accents and dialects.^[10]

Discover more about Production related topics

Al Jean

Al Jean

Alfred Ernest Jean III is an American screenwriter and producer. Jean is well known for his work on The Simpsons. He was raised near Detroit, Michigan, and graduated from Harvard University in 1981. Jean began his writing career in the 1980s with fellow Harvard alum Mike Reiss. Together, they worked as writers and producers on television shows such as The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, ALF and It's Garry Shandling's Show.

Mike Reiss

Mike Reiss

Michael L. Reiss is an American television comedy writer and author. He served as a show-runner, writer and producer for the animated series The Simpsons and co-created the animated series The Critic. He created and wrote the webtoon Queer Duck and has also worked on screenplays including: Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, The Simpsons Movie and My Life in Ruins.

James L. Brooks

James L. Brooks

James Lawrence Brooks is an American director, producer, screenwriter and co-founder of Gracie Films. His television and film work includes The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Taxi, The Simpsons, Broadcast News, As Good as It Gets, and Terms of Endearment.

Gracie Films

Gracie Films

Gracie Films is an American film and television production company founded by James L. Brooks in 1986. The company is primarily responsible for producing its long-running flagship animated series The Simpsons, as well as the films Big, Broadcast News, and Jerry Maguire.

Columbia Pictures Television

Columbia Pictures Television

Columbia Pictures Television, Inc. was launched on May 6, 1974, by Columbia Pictures as an American television production and distribution studio. It is the second name of the Columbia Pictures television division Screen Gems (SG) and the third name of Pioneer Telefilms. For 26 years, the company was active from 1974 until New Year's Day 2001, when it was folded into Columbia TriStar Television, a merger between Columbia Pictures Television and TriStar Television. A separate entity of CPT continues to exist on paper as an intellectual property holder, and under the moniker CPT Holdings to hold the copyright for the TV show The Young and the Restless, as well as old incarnations from the company's television library such as What's Happening!!

Film Roman

Film Roman

Film Roman, LLC is an American animation studio currently based in Woodland Hills, California and formerly in Burbank. It was previously owned by Starz Inc., which is now a division of Lionsgate, and currently by Waterman Entertainment, the production company of producer Steve Waterman.

Matt Groening

Matt Groening

Matthew Abram Groening is an American cartoonist, writer, producer, and animator. He is the creator of the comic strip Life in Hell (1977–2012) and the television series The Simpsons (1989–present), Futurama, and Disenchantment (2018–present). The Simpsons is the longest-running U.S. primetime-television series in history and the longest-running U.S. animated series and sitcom.

Krusty the Clown

Krusty the Clown

Herschel Shmoikel Pinchas Yerucham Krustofsky, better known by his stage name Krusty the Clown, is a recurring character on the animated television series The Simpsons. He is voiced by Dan Castellaneta. He is the long-time clown host of Bart and Lisa's favorite TV show, a combination of kiddie variety television hijinks and cartoons including The Itchy & Scratchy Show. Krusty is often portrayed as a cynical, burnt-out, addiction-riddled smoker who is made miserable by show business but continues on anyway. He has become one of the most frequently occurring characters outside the main Simpson family and has been the focus of several episodes, many of which also feature Sideshow Bob.

Dan Castellaneta

Dan Castellaneta

Daniel Louis Castellaneta is an American actor, comedian, and writer. He is best known for voicing Homer Simpson on the animated series The Simpsons. Castellaneta is also known for voicing Grandpa in Nickelodeon's Hey Arnold!, and has had voice roles in several other programs, including Futurama, Sibs and Darkwing Duck, The Adventures of Dynamo Duck, The Batman, Back to the Future: The Animated Series, Aladdin, Earthworm Jim, and Taz-Mania.

Jon Lovitz

Jon Lovitz

Jonathan Michael Lovitz is an American actor and comedian. He was a cast member of Saturday Night Live from 1985 to 1990. Lovitz starred as Jay Sherman in The Critic and played a baseball scout in A League of Their Own. He has appeared in 20 episodes of The Simpsons.

A League of Their Own

A League of Their Own

A League of Their Own is a 1992 American sports comedy-drama film directed by Penny Marshall that tells a fictionalized account of the real-life All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL). The film stars Tom Hanks, Geena Davis, Madonna, Lori Petty, Rosie O'Donnell, Jon Lovitz, David Strathairn, Garry Marshall, and Bill Pullman. The screenplay was written by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel from a story by Kelly Candaele and Kim Wilson.

Gene Siskel

Gene Siskel

Eugene Kal Siskel was an American film critic and journalist for the Chicago Tribune. Along with colleague Roger Ebert, he hosted a series of movie review programs on television from 1975 until his death in 1999.

Nancy Cartwright was a member of the cast on The Simpsons and The Critic

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".^[17] 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".^[18] Planet Simpson describes the show as "the closest thing The Simpsons ever had to a spin-off."^[11] The Critic also shares The Simpsons' love for criticizing Fox and the audience, such as Jay's frequent line "You're watching Fox, shame on you" and "The Critic will be right back, you TV-addicted couch monkeys"^[19] before the show went to commercial break.^[18] 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."^[17] 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."^[17] PopMatters said "The Critic's humor is very much in the spirit of The Simpsons, taken in a more brazenly surreal direction."^[20]

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.^[21]

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.^[16]

Crossovers

In "Dukerella", Jay and Alice attend a costume ball dressed as Homer and Marge.^[2] 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.^[2]

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.^[22] 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."^[11]

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.^[23]

Discover more about Relationship with The Simpsons related topics

Nancy Cartwright

Nancy Cartwright

Nancy Cartwright is an American actress. She is the long-time voice of Bart Simpson on the animated television series The Simpsons, for which she has received a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Voice-Over Performance and an Annie Award for Best Voice Acting in the Field of Animation. Cartwright also voices other characters for the show, including Nelson Muntz, Ralph Wiggum, Todd Flanders, Kearney, Database, and Maggie.

Planet Simpson

Planet Simpson

Planet Simpson: How a Cartoon Masterpiece Documented an Era and Defined a Generation, also abbreviated to Planet Simpson: How a Cartoon Masterpiece Defined a Generation, is a non-fiction book about The Simpsons, written by Chris Turner and originally published on October 12, 2004 by Random House. The book is partly a memoir and an exploration of the impact The Simpsons has had on popular culture.

Homer Simpson

Homer Simpson

Homer Jay Simpson is a fictional character and the main protagonist of the American animated sitcom The Simpsons. He is voiced by Dan Castellaneta and first appeared, along with the rest of his family, in The Tracey Ullman Show short "Good Night" on April 19, 1987. Homer was created and designed by cartoonist Matt Groening while he was waiting in the lobby of producer James L. Brooks's office. Groening had been called to pitch a series of shorts based on his comic strip Life in Hell but instead decided to create a new set of characters. He named the character after his father, Homer Groening. After appearing for three seasons on The Tracey Ullman Show, the Simpson family got their own series on Fox, which debuted December 17, 1989. The show was later acquired by Disney in 2019.

PopMatters

PopMatters

PopMatters is an international online magazine of cultural criticism that covers aspects of popular culture. PopMatters publishes reviews, interviews, and essays on cultural products and expressions in areas such as music, television, films, books, video games, comics, sports, theater, visual arts, travel, and the Internet.

Matt Groening

Matt Groening

Matthew Abram Groening is an American cartoonist, writer, producer, and animator. He is the creator of the comic strip Life in Hell (1977–2012) and the television series The Simpsons (1989–present), Futurama, and Disenchantment (2018–present). The Simpsons is the longest-running U.S. primetime-television series in history and the longest-running U.S. animated series and sitcom.

Doris Grau

Doris Grau

Doris Grau was an American actress and script supervisor from Brooklyn. After moving to Hollywood in 1940, she began her career supervising film and television scripts. She continued to do this until the 1990s and worked on films such as Point Blank and King Kong and television shows such as Cheers and The Tracey Ullman Show. Grau did some acting in her later years, playing live-action and animated roles. On the sitcom The Simpsons, she worked as a script supervisor and provided the voice of Lunchlady Doris and other minor characters.

Maurice LaMarche

Maurice LaMarche

Maurice LaMarche is a Canadian voice actor, comedian, and impressionist. He has voiced the Brain in Animaniacs as well as its spin-off Pinky and the Brain, Big Bob in Hey Arnold! (1996–2004), the titular character from Inspector Gadget, and a variety of characters in Futurama. He also voiced Egon Spengler in The Real Ghostbusters and its follow-up Extreme Ghostbusters.

George C. Scott

George C. Scott

George Campbell Scott was an American actor, director, and producer who had a celebrated career on both stage and screen. With a gruff demeanor and commanding presence, Scott became known for his portrayal of stern, but complex, authority figures such as prosecutor Claude Dancer in Anatomy of a Murder, General Buck Turgidson in Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove, Herbert Bock in The Hospital, Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, Lt. Kinderman in The Exorcist III, and General George S. Patton in the biopic Patton, which won him the Academy Award for Best Actor. Described by The Guardian as "a battler and an actor of rare courage", his performances won him widespread recognition and numerous other accolades, including a Golden Globe, a Genie Award, and two Primetime Emmys.

Marge Simpson

Marge Simpson

Marjorie Jacqueline "Marge" Simpson is a character in the American animated sitcom The Simpsons and part of the eponymous family. Voiced by Julie Kavner, she first appeared on television in The Tracey Ullman Show short "Good Night" on April 19, 1987. Marge was created and designed by cartoonist Matt Groening while he was waiting in the lobby of James L. Brooks' office. Groening had been called to pitch a series of shorts based on Life in Hell but instead decided to create a new set of characters. He based the character on his mother Margaret Groening. After appearing on The Tracey Ullman Show for three seasons, the Simpson family received their own series on Fox, which debuted December 17, 1989.

Bart Simpson

Bart Simpson

Bartholomew Jojo "Bart" Simpson is a fictional character in the American animated television series The Simpsons and part of the Simpson family. He is voiced by Nancy Cartwright and first appeared on television in The Tracey Ullman Show short "Good Night" on April 19, 1987. Cartoonist Matt Groening created and designed Bart while waiting in the lobby of James L. Brooks' office. Groening had been called to pitch a series of shorts based on his comic strip, Life in Hell, but instead decided to create a new set of characters. While the rest of the characters were named after Groening's family members, Bart's name is an anagram of the word brat. After appearing on The Tracey Ullman Show for two years, the Simpson family received its own series on Fox, which debuted December 17, 1989. Bart has appeared in every Simpsons episode except "Four Great Women and a Manicure".

Geraldo Rivera

Geraldo Rivera

Geraldo Rivera is an American journalist, attorney, author, political commentator, and co-host of The Five on Fox News Channel. He hosted the tabloid talk show Geraldo from 1987 to 1998. He gained publicity with the live 1986 TV special The Mystery of Al Capone's Vaults. Rivera hosted the news magazine program Geraldo at Large, hosts the occasional broadcast of Geraldo Rivera Reports.

D'oh!

D'oh!

"D'oh!" is the most famous catchphrase used by the fictional character Homer Simpson, from The Simpsons, an animated sitcom. It is an exclamation typically used after Homer injures himself, realizes that he has done something foolish, or when something bad has happened or is about to happen to him. All his prominent blood relations—son Bart, daughters Lisa and Maggie, his father, his mother and half-brother—have also been heard to use it themselves in similar circumstances. On a few occasions, Homer's wife Marge and characters outside the family such as Mr. Burns and Sideshow Bob have also used this phrase.

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.

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."^[17] 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.^[24] 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.^[2] 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.^[2]

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)^[2][25] 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".^[26]

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.^[27]

Discover more about Themes related topics

The A.V. Club

The A.V. Club

The A.V. Club is an American online newspaper and entertainment website featuring reviews, interviews, and other articles that examine films, music, television, books, games, and other elements of pop-culture media. The A.V. Club was created in 1993 as a supplement to its satirical parent publication, The Onion. While it was a part of The Onion's 1996 website launch, The A.V. Club had minimal presence on the website at that point.

The Simpsons

The Simpsons

The Simpsons is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a satirical depiction of American life, epitomized by the Simpson family, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie. The show is set in the fictional town of Springfield and parodies American culture and society, television, and the human condition.

Casablanca (film)

Casablanca (film)

Casablanca is a 1942 American romantic drama film directed by Michael Curtiz, and starring Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, and Paul Henreid. Filmed and set during World War II, it focuses on an American expatriate (Bogart) who must choose between his love for a woman (Bergman) and helping her husband (Henreid), a Czechoslovak resistance leader, escape from the Vichy-controlled city of Casablanca to continue his fight against the Germans. The screenplay is based on Everybody Comes to Rick's, an unproduced stage play by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison. The supporting cast features Claude Rains, Conrad Veidt, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, and Dooley Wilson.

Stanley Kubrick

Stanley Kubrick

Stanley Kubrick was an American film director, producer and screenwriter. Widely considered one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, his films—almost all of which are adaptations of novels or short stories—cover a wide range of genres and feature innovative cinematography, dark humor, realistic attention to detail and extensive set designs.

Spartacus (film)

Spartacus (film)

Spartacus is a 1960 American epic historical drama film directed by Stanley Kubrick, written by Dalton Trumbo, and based on the 1951 novel of the same title by Howard Fast. It is inspired by the life story of Spartacus, the leader of a slave revolt in antiquity, and the events of the Third Servile War. It stars Kirk Douglas in the title role, Laurence Olivier as Roman general and politician Marcus Licinius Crassus, Peter Ustinov as slave trader Lentulus Batiatus, John Gavin as Julius Caesar, Jean Simmons as Varinia, Charles Laughton as Sempronius Gracchus, and Tony Curtis as Antoninus.

Smokey and the Bandit

Smokey and the Bandit

Smokey and the Bandit is a 1977 American action comedy film starring Burt Reynolds, Sally Field, Jackie Gleason, Jerry Reed, Pat McCormick, Paul Williams and Mike Henry. The directorial debut of stuntman Hal Needham, the film follows Bo "Bandit" Darville (Reynolds) and Cledus "Snowman" Snow (Reed), two bootleggers attempting to illegally transport 400 cases of Coors beer from Texarkana to Atlanta. While the Snowman drives the truck carrying the beer, the Bandit drives a 1976 Pontiac Trans Am to distract law enforcement and keep the attention off the Snowman. During their run, they are pursued by Texas county sheriff Buford T. Justice (Gleason). Smokey and the Bandit was the second highest-grossing domestic film of 1977 in the United States. Sally Field and Burt Reynolds began a relationship after meeting on set.

Contemporaneous

The Critic received mixed to positive reviews when it first aired. In 1994, The Chicago Sun-Times gave a typical review of the show with, "Jay Sherman, the eponymous culture vulture of The Critic, would undoubtedly say his new animated comedy on ABC 'stinks.' Fortunately for him [The Critic] smells pretty good to me."^[28] The show has since developed a cult following,^{[3][29][30][31]} with much of it coming through the show's weekend reruns on Comedy Central up until about 2005.

The DVD set also got many positive reviews, such as one from Animated Views which gave it an overall rating of 10/10.^[32] Mike Reiss's favourite episode is the Siskel and Ebert one.^[10]

In September 2006, IGN ranked The Critic ninth on its list of the Top 25 Primetime Animated Series of All Time.^[33] In January 2009, they ranked the show 26th in their other list of the Top 100 Best Animated TV Series.^[34] In the latter article, IGN said: "Of all the projects completed by ex-Saturday Night Live players, The Critic is the most fully realized, hilarious and heartwarming. It took its cues from Woody Allen movies like Annie Hall and Manhattan, and offered up a style of random abstract humor that wouldn't really be seen again until Family Guy."^[35] In December 2011, Complex ranked the show 6th in their list of The 25 Most Underrated Animated TV Shows Of All Time.^[36]

People magazine gave it a B, saying "This animated series is slyly amusing when sticking it to showbiz, taking sarcastic swipes at everyone from Steven Seagal to Gene Shalit. At its best, it's still several strides behind the savage, protean wit of The Simpsons, and the humor sputters when the focus is personal."^[37] Of the third season, IGN said "I was thrilled to find out that Gracie Films has started producing new episodes of the cancelled ABC/Fox/Comedy Central show The Critic—and for web cartoons that don't depend on the violence/swear cop-out for the humor, the shows are actually really well produced."^[38]

Early on in its run, Siskel and Ebert did a review of the show. It was the only television series they ever reviewed. Some of the criticisms they provided, if left unattended to, may have been factors to the show's cancellation. They said the show doesn't have as many memorable characters as The Simpsons, and encouraged the writers to work on that. They said the second episode was a let down because "it didn't seem to be about the world of a movie critic," and was instead about "a single dad and his geeky son." They said the jokes involving Jay's dad get tiresome, and that the station boss isn't as sharp a parody as he could be. Gene Siskel said, "if The Critic is gonna succeed—and I hope it does—it desperately needs to refocus itself on the movies and the way critics interact with them." He added that the show needs a second critic, and jokingly said he and Roger Ebert should (and would love to) save the show by writing scripts for them. Ebert said the show should have 2 to 3 movie/genre parodies per episode. He added he would like to see Jay watch television to allow the show to satirize that medium as well. This would focus the show on the media, and not let it become another show about a man and his problems. Siskel said the writers should keep Jay as a smart critic. Regardless of his personality, if his critiques are witty and intelligent, by extension the show's satire becomes much sharper.^[39][40] The two critics later appeared as themselves in an episode where they ended their partnership and each recruited Jay to join them for a new series; when Jay realized that Gene and Roger deeply missed working together, he engineered their reconciliation and went back to his own series.

Later analysis

AOL TV published an article in 2009 entitled Gone Too Soon: The Critic, in which they analyzed the cancellation of the show. It said "The creators and Lovitz seem to [care about the show], as there are always talks cropping up of a revival of The Critic, either as an animated project, or possibly a live-action one. There are fan sites out there, but as time passes with no new material, many of these are becoming floating time capsules".^[41] Plus, a lot of effort was put into the release of the DVD (for which there was a lot of demand), meaning there is still a fan base as well as a passionate cast and crew.^[10]

Drawn to Television says that like Jay's show-within-a-show Coming Attractions, "audiences never quite warmed up to Sherman and his surrounding cast of characters" in The Critic, perhaps due to the lack of warmth between character interactions in both shows. He also criticized the sometimes rather mean-spirited ways the fat jokes were directed at Marlon Brando or Orson Welles.^[2] The book The Magic Behind the Voices put its cancellation down to "so-so ratings and network politics."^[16] Planet Simpson says it "failed to click with Simpsons fans."^[11] In 1994, Austin American-Statesman said "The Critic never had a prayer on ABC, where the comedy overload consists of domestic sitcoms".^[42] The show is generally considered one of the great TV shows cancelled too early into its run. The Columbia Spectator said the show was "one of television's great lost causes."^[43] Voice actor Maurice LaMarche considered The Critic one of his "personal favorites," saying "I would almost give anything to bring back The Critic, along with Pinky and the Brain; those are the two most satisfying jobs I've ever had."^[16] Ogeeku said "This show did not last as long as it should have and that is truly a shame. The Critic was in its time, one of the greatest animated shows ever made and one of the funniest shows period on television."^[44] Reiss thinks the show holds up very well.^[10]

PopMatters considered Sherman a perfect role for Lovitz, due to his strengths of "sarcasm and ironic overacting," but believed that there were too many jokes about the character's obesity, and these were too similar to and inferior to such jokes about Homer Simpson.^[20] The same review called the show "outlandish in a way that The Simpsons would not adopt until later", and likened its cutaway humor to Family Guy. However, it considered the cutaways on The Critic to be better than those of Family Guy, due to a lack of Family Guy's overt shock value.^[20]

Awards and nominations

Discover more about Reception and legacy related topics

Chicago Sun-Times

Chicago Sun-Times

The Chicago Sun-Times is a daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Since 2022, it is the flagship paper of Chicago Public Media, and has the second largest circulation among Chicago newspapers, after the Chicago Tribune. The modern paper grew out of the 1948 merger of the Chicago Sun and the Chicago Daily Times. Journalists at the paper have received eight Pulitzer prizes, mostly in the 1970s; one recipient was film critic Roger Ebert (1975), who worked at the paper from 1967 until his death in 2013. Long owned by the Marshall Field family, since the 1980s ownership of the paper has changed hands numerous times, including twice in the late 2010s.

American Broadcasting Company

American Broadcasting Company

The American Broadcasting Company (ABC) is an American commercial broadcast television network. It is the flagship property of the Disney Entertainment division of The Walt Disney Company. The network is headquartered in Burbank, California, on Riverside Drive, directly across the street from Walt Disney Studios and adjacent to the Roy E. Disney Animation Building. The network's secondary offices, and headquarters of its news division, are in New York City, at its broadcast center at 77 West 66th Street on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

Cult following

Cult following

A cult following refers to a group of fans who are highly dedicated to some person, idea, object, movement, or work, often an artist, in particular a performing artist, or an artwork in some medium. The lattermost is often called a cult classic. A film, book, musical artist, television series, or video game, among other things, is said to have a cult following when it has a small but very passionate fanbase.

Comedy Central

Comedy Central

Comedy Central is an American adult-oriented basic cable channel owned by Paramount Global through its network division's MTV Entertainment Group unit, based in Manhattan. The channel is geared towards young adults aged 18–34 and carries comedy programming in the form of both original, licensed, and syndicated series, stand-up comedy specials, and feature films. It is available to approximately 86.723 million households in the United States as of September 2018.

IGN

IGN

IGN is an American video game and entertainment media website operated by IGN Entertainment Inc., a subsidiary of Ziff Davis, Inc. The company's headquarters is located in San Francisco's SoMa district and is headed by its former editor-in-chief, Peer Schneider. The IGN website was the brainchild of media entrepreneur Chris Anderson and launched on September 29, 1996. It focuses on games, films, anime, television, comics, technology, and other media. Originally a network of desktop websites, IGN is also distributed on mobile platforms, console programs on the Xbox and PlayStation, FireTV, Roku, and via YouTube, Twitch, Hulu, and Snapchat.

Annie Hall

Annie Hall

Annie Hall is a 1977 American satirical romantic comedy-drama film directed by Woody Allen from a screenplay written by him and Marshall Brickman, and produced by Allen's manager, Charles H. Joffe. The film stars Allen as Alvy Singer, who tries to figure out the reasons for the failure of his relationship with the eponymous female lead, played by Diane Keaton in a role written specifically for her.

Manhattan (1979 film)

Manhattan (1979 film)

Manhattan is a 1979 American romantic comedy-drama film directed by Woody Allen and produced by Charles H. Joffe from a screenplay written by Allen and Marshall Brickman. Allen co-stars as a twice-divorced 42-year-old comedy writer who dates a 17-year-old girl but falls in love with his best friend's mistress. Meryl Streep and Anne Byrne also star.

Family Guy

Family Guy

Family Guy is an American animated sitcom originally conceived and created by Seth MacFarlane for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The show centers around the Griffins, a dysfunctional family consisting of parents Peter and Lois; their children, Meg, Chris, and Stewie; and their anthropomorphic pet dog, Brian. Set in the fictional city of Quahog, Rhode Island, the show exhibits much of its humor in the form of metafictional cutaway gags that often lampoon American culture.

Gene Shalit

Gene Shalit

Eugene Shalit is an American retired journalist, television personality, film and book critic, and author. After starting to work part-time on NBC's The Today Show in 1970, he filled those roles from January 15, 1973, until retiring on November 11, 2010. He is known for his frequent use of puns, his oversized handlebar moustache and fuzzy hair, and for wearing colorful bowties.

Gracie Films

Gracie Films

Gracie Films is an American film and television production company founded by James L. Brooks in 1986. The company is primarily responsible for producing its long-running flagship animated series The Simpsons, as well as the films Big, Broadcast News, and Jerry Maguire.

Gene Siskel

Gene Siskel

Eugene Kal Siskel was an American film critic and journalist for the Chicago Tribune. Along with colleague Roger Ebert, he hosted a series of movie review programs on television from 1975 until his death in 1999.

Marlon Brando

Marlon Brando

Marlon Brando Jr. was an American actor. Considered one of the most influential actors of the 20th century, he received numerous accolades throughout his career, which spanned six decades, including two Academy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, one Cannes Film Festival Award and three British Academy Film Awards. Brando was also an activist for many causes, notably the civil rights movement and various Native American movements. Having studied with Stella Adler in the 1940s, he is credited with being one of the first actors to bring the Stanislavski system of acting, and method acting, to mainstream audiences.

Responding to the successful DVD sales of Family Guy and The Simpsons, Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment decided to release The Critic: The Complete Series DVD box set on January 27, 2004, which includes all 2 seasons and 23 TV episodes (in their original production order) and the webisodes.^[47] The show achieved good sales, jumping onto the DVD list at 14 on Amazon, and quickly going through five issuings.^[22]

On June 8, 2021, Mill Creek Entertainment re-released The Critic: The Complete Series on DVD in Region 1.^[48]

As of 2021, the series can be viewed for free on Crackle, though the ninth episode of season one, "L.A. Jay" is missing for unknown reasons.^[49]

Discover more about Home media related topics

Family Guy

Family Guy

Family Guy is an American animated sitcom originally conceived and created by Seth MacFarlane for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The show centers around the Griffins, a dysfunctional family consisting of parents Peter and Lois; their children, Meg, Chris, and Stewie; and their anthropomorphic pet dog, Brian. Set in the fictional city of Quahog, Rhode Island, the show exhibits much of its humor in the form of metafictional cutaway gags that often lampoon American culture.

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment is the home video distribution division of Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Group Corporation.

Crackle (service)

Crackle (service)

Crackle, formerly named Grouper and Sony Crackle, is an American video streaming service founded in 2004. The service was purchased by Sony Pictures in 2006 and was renamed as Crackle. In 2018, the name was changed to Sony Crackle. Eric Berger served as the general manager of Crackle from 2008 to 2019. Sony sold a majority stake to Chicken Soup for the Soul in March 2019, and the name was changed back to Crackle. As of January 2022, Crackle has about 40 million monthly active users.