Long Story Short is intricately plotted enough to reward a rewatch, but also easily followed the first time around.Netflix/Supplied
Since the turn of the century, the greatest of television shows have often been talked about as the novels of our time.
But one area where TV writers’ rooms have rarely succeeded as well as novelists is in the realm of multigenerational family sagas.
While there are exceptions – arguably This is Us is one – authors, overall, do a better job of following a clan over decades, flipping back and forth between characters as kids and adults, telling the story of a place and time period in the process.
There are reasons why Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections screen adaptation has been stuck in development hell for a quarter of a century – starting with the puzzle of casting actors of different ages (including children) in the same part and making a cohesive character out their performances.
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Long Story Short, a new series from BoJack Horseman creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg, has hit on a great way to deliver a family saga on TV as satisfying as one of Franzen’s better novels – through animation.
In contrast to never-ageing cartoon clans like The Simpsons, the Schwoopers at the centre of Long Story Short are depicted over the course of thirty-odd years, even in the first episode – the same voice cast anchoring differently aged drawings. (The visuals are created under the leadership of Lisa Hanawalt, also from BoJack.)
Naomi Schwartz (Lisa Edelstein) and Elliot Cooper (Paul Reiser) have three kids, who we first meet in 1996, squabbling in the back of the family car on the way to Naomi’s mother’s funeral. The children’s surname Schwooper is a progressive-signalling portmanteau.
The show follows the Schwooper family over the course of almost thirty years.Netflix/Supplied
Avi (Ben Feldman) is the oldest; Shira (Abbi Jacobson) his slightly younger sister; and Yoshi (Max Greenfield), the youngest by a fair bit and seemingly a little left behind.
After this initial introduction, the action jumps forward to Yoshi’s 2004 bar mitzvah – where viewers take the full pulse of Schwooper family dynamics.
Avi, now a music blogger in his early 20s, is bringing home his gentile girlfriend, Jen (Angelique Cabral), for the first time – the choice of timing, he hopes, meaning that she will get less intense scrutiny from his mother.
Shira, meanwhile, is angry that her mother invited a family friend she fell out with in high school – and then even angrier when she discovers that the friend is not coming.
Yoshi’s own mix of haplessness and sensitivity is elucidated as he escapes his family’s sensory overload with a ne’er-do-well pal Danny (aptly voiced by Dave Franco).
Naomi and her effect on her children is the central thread of this first season – the overbearing Jewish mother stereotype conjured for comic effect at times, but ultimately picked up and turned around and shown from many different angles by the end of ten episodes.
At that point, the funeral/bar mitzvah pairing of the pilot episode has gained hugely in emotional resonance.
Long Story Short is intricately plotted enough to reward an immediate rewatch – but, despite the time period constantly shifting, also easily followed the first time around.
In showing viewers how the Schwoopers grow, or don’t, Long Story Short is psychologically astute – but it is also frequently laugh-out-loud funny.
It works as Jewish screwball with its witty interrupting dialogue – sorry, “co-operative overlapping” dialogue.
But I also can’t say I’ve ever seen the madness of trying to parent two young boys (I would know) depicted as hilariously or accurately as a 2021-set episode that focuses on Shira, her wife Kendra (Nicole Byer) and their kids. (Again, animation circumvents the limitations of child actors.)
Bob-Waksberg and his writers don’t shy away from outright cartoonish moments, either.
Raphael Bob-Waksberg’s animated comedy offers a serious and nuanced exploration of Judaism in America.Netflix/Supplied
A 2013-set episode that centres on Yoshi’s brief attempt to turn mattress entrepreneur, devolves into gleeful Looney Tunes mayhem – and will remind viewers of the mattress-in-a-box fad that anyone who listened to podcasts at that time will recall.
While it’s easy to draw a line between the 1990s and life after Sept. 11, 2001 in North America, the culturally fragmented quarter century since can be hard to break up into definable chunks.
But Long Story Short finds distinct ways to depict the differences between 2002 and 2012, and even between 2021 and 2022.
Sometimes it’s simply visual cues such as a Discman – or a mask hanging from the rearview mirror of a car. (Yes, the pandemic actually happened in this cartoon, unlike 95 per cent of TV dramas.)
In contrast to Netflix’s last major Jewish-themed comedy Nobody Wants This, which sometimes stumbled over stereotypes, Long Story Short offers a more serious, nuanced exploration of Judaism in America.
The Schwoopers are raised in – as Naomi puts it – a “progressive egalitarian conservative Judaism with an emphasis on ritual and community over faith and blind practice.”
But as they grow up, the children either find their own ways to embrace their Jewishness – or, in the case of Avi, distance themselves from it.
Their story currently comes to an end in 2022 – but the show’s already been renewed. Here’s hoping theirs is a very long story.
