The Critic is an
American
animated series revolving around the life of
movie critic Jay Sherman, voiced by actor Jon Lovitz. It was created by
Al Jean and
Mike Reiss,
both of whom had worked as writers on
The Simpsons.
The Critic had 23
episodes produced, first broadcast on ABC in 1994, finishing its
original run on FOX in 1995. The show was produced by
Gracie Films in association with Columbia
Pictures Television (now
Sony
Pictures Television on reruns), and was animated by
Film Roman.
Episodes featured
movie parodies with notable examples including
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). The show often referenced popular movies such
as
Willy
Wonka & the Chocolate Factory and
The Godfather, and routinely lampooned
actor
Marlon Brando and director
Orson Welles.
Despite the ratings improving,
The Critic was cancelled
after only two seasons, though nine scripts were written for
UPN that never panned out. It continued to air
through reruns on
Comedy Central. Ten
web episodes were later produced, which in turn were included on
the DVD box set. The show continues to run in syndication.
Cast
Characters
Jay Sherman
"New York
's third most popular early-morning cable-TV film
critic," Jay Prescott Sherman is the host of Phillips
Broadcasting's Coming Attractions. His
catch phrases include his exclamation of
surprise ("Hotchie motchie!"), his common putdown of sub-par films
("It stinks!") and his distinctive cough/sneeze ("Acch-um!"). He is
known for his surly and sarcastic putdowns of nearly every film he
sees (an act that has earned him disdain from the public and rather
low ratings). His favorite films are usually
Golden-Age classics and foreign
films such as
The Red
Balloon,
Citizen
Kane, and
Mr.
Smith Goes to Washington. He often uses the "Shermometer"
to measure the films he reviews, or a list of diseases he would
rather have than see a movie. He has been known to rate films on a
numerical scale, in which his highest score is seven out of ten.
Most of his dislike for films comes from a love for cinema that has
been disillusioned by seeing the
commercialism that has overtaken the film
industry.
Jay is 36 years old and is the adopted son of wealthy New-England
socialites Franklin and Eleanor Sherman, who originally thought he
was a monkey. Jay is Jewish despite his
WASP upbringing.
In preschool, he was
given LSD-laced Kool-Aid by guest speaker Timothy Leary (he claimed afterwards, he "was
down at the hungry
i
, jamming with
"Dylan"), and was mistakenly sent to
Attica
Prison
instead of summer camp
as a child in the summer of 1972. He has a teenage sister
named Margo and a young son named Marty who visits often when not
staying with Jay's ex-wife Ardeth. In the second season, Jay begins
a long-term relationship with Alice Tompkins, a Tennessee woman
living in New York whom Jay meets on the street and later hires as
his personal assistant.
In the
second first-season episode "Marty's First
Date," in desperation to retrieve his son from Cuba, Jay goes
to Mexico
City
's "Linda Ronstadt
International Airport" and marries a Mexican woman in order to
travel there. She then admits to him that she is only
marrying him "for citizenship" and then openly states "I plan to
divorce him and take half his money." It is a possibility that this
may be the "second divorce" Jay mentioned in the first
webisode (see below).
Jay has also held several other jobs in his time, including a truck
driver, speech writer for Duke Phillips' presidential campaign and
a writer for the film
Ghostchasers III (renamed
Ghostbusters III during the
final episode clip show.)
Jay has won a string of prestigious awards for his career: two
Pulitzer Prizes for criticism, a
People's Choice Award, five
Golden Globes, an
Emmy Award, a
PhD in film, and a
B'nai B'rith Award.
Jay blames his weight problem on the fictional disorder
"vitilardo", a word-play on the skin pigmentation disorder
vitiligo. His weight is suggested to be greater
than a
tank, as a helicopter that was
originally designed to lift tanks was unable to even get him off
the ground. He was also shown in a file photo on a news report as
"weighing more than the entire band
Los
Lobos," in which he is sitting on a see-saw, lifting the entire
band into the air. When he exercises, Duke often uses Jay in place
of a set of
dumbbells when lifting weights.
His weight led to the death of a horse when he was a child,
crushing it to death when Jay was forced into sitting on it. Jay's
stomach seems to have a mind of its own, often giving him commands
that he obeys out of fear, going so far as to call it "Master."
Acting on the advice of a quack public-relations expert, Jay once
gained so much weight that he had to have several months' worth of
liposuction.
Duke frequently makes patronizing comments to suggest that Jay is
gay; Jay maintains that he is straight.
He also has an alter-ego in "Ethel." His Ethel persona is an
elderly woman, whom he often pretends is his assistant, and
therefore assumes her persona when answering the phone. "Ethel"
only appears in the first season.
In the opening sequence for every episode, Jay is awakened by a
disquieting phone call or radio news brief. At the end, he is seen
sitting in a movie theater, eating popcorn and drinking soda as the
closing credits are shown on the screen. When they finish, an usher
approaches and says, "Excuse me, sir, the show's over." Jay then
delivers one of the following four responses:
- "But I have nowhere to go..."
- "Is the snack bar still open?"
- "Get away, zit-face!"
- "I'm stuck in the chair!"
Marty Sherman, Jay Sherman's son
Marty Sherman
Jay's 13-year-old son Martin (Marty for short) usually stays with
his mother, but visits Jay often.
Like Jay, he is overweight, which causes
him problems at United Nations International
School
. He was elected eighth-grade president
thanks to a speech written by his father, dated
Fidel Castro's granddaughter (he even secretly
boarded the plane she was on in order to see her again), and
discovered he has a gift for belly-dancing (he has great muscle
control in his belly). In the second season episode "
From Chunk to
Hunk," he lost a lot of weight, but found his new thin body to
be more trouble than it was worth and gained it all back before the
end of the episode.
Ardeth
Jay's ex-wife, last name unknown, who fell in love with Jay as his
nurse, during a period in which he was completely bandaged and
gagged. She instantly regretted marrying Jay, admitting so during
the wedding ceremony. They spent their wedding night playing
The Newlywed Game, which
they won (Jay correctly guessed Ardeth compared his sex appeal to a
dead mackerel).
Ardeth spends most of the series insulting Jay or demanding more
alimony. At one point, when he greets her at
a school athletic competition, she tells him he has to pay her $100
every time he talks to her. Handing her a wad of cash, he replies,
"Fine. Here's two hundred. Get bent!" It is implied that Ardeth
cheated on Jay with the judge who presided over their divorce
hearing when, during said hearing, they make suggestive comments
and flirtatious purring sounds to each other in front of Jay. She
once attempted to place a voodoo hex on Jay's girlfriend Alice,
despite the divorce settlement specifically forbidding such
actions. Despite her dislike of Jay, she shares Jay's affection for
their only son Marty and even goes so far as to admit, "We raised a
great kid." She is often seen when Marty is in a show or event. She
is voiced by
Brenda Vaccaro in the
first season and then by
Rhea Perlman
in the second season.
Margo Sherman
The youngest child of the Sherman family, and the only biological
child of Franklin and Eleanor. She is 16 years old and is a junior
at a finishing school for "untouched girls." Margo is an
activist who often protests her mother's socialite
lifestyle. She also cares greatly for Jay, making sure his
girlfriends are not just dating him to get good reviews and having
him escort her to the
debutante ball. In
the second season episode "
A Song for
Margo," she briefly dated
grunge rock
singer Johnny Wrath (real name: Jonathan Rathberg) after he moved
next door to the Shermans.
Franklin Sherman
Jay's adoptive father and Eleanor's husband. Franklin speaks with a
thick "
Locust Valley lockjaw,"
wears slippers and always has a glass of
brandy in his hand no matter where he goes. His
mental health is uncertain, and he often acts quite erratically.
His family claims that he had a stroke (to which Eleanor adds "He
didn't really. We just say that to explain his personality"). A few
of his oddities include burning down the house (this is explained
by him forgetting to turn the oven off), becoming stuck to an ice
sculpture, gluing the dog to the ceiling, wearing underpants on his
head at the dinner table, and sticking a banana in his ear which he
claimed was to try to lure the monkey out of his head. He is also
well-known for dressing up as the New Year's Baby for the year
1937.
He is a
former governor of New
York
, as well as a former ambassador, Cabinet member, a
Rhodes scholar and a heavy
contributor to the Republican Party. He was also U.S.
Secretary of
Balloon Doggies. When
told by President
George Bush that
the position is a ridiculous figment of his imagination that
Congress will no longer provide funding for, Sherman vehemently
claims, "I didn't
ask to be Secretary of Balloon Doggies,
the balloon doggies
demanded it." Franklin was Duke
Phillips' running mate when he ran for president, though Duke tried
to remove Franklin after he claimed to be the first black female
head of the
Ku Klux Klan.
Despite his behavior, Franklin proves to be competent in some
cases. In the episode "
Marathon
Mensch," he trains Jay to run in the
New York marathon. Also in the
episode "
Frankie and Ellie
Get Lost," much to his wife's surprise, Franklin proves that he
can be a problem-solver and an apt handyman by building a shelter,
a signal fire and training an ape as a butler. In the episode
"
Lady
Hawke" it is revealed that
gin is to
Franklin what spinach is to
Popeye the
Sailor.
It was also revealed during a period newsreel from "
Frankie and Ellie
Get Lost" that he was completely sane and had never had a drop
to drink in his life until
Ted Kennedy
spiked the punch at his wedding.
Eleanor Sherman (née Wigglesworth)
Jay's adoptive mother and Franklin's wife, Eleanor is very prim and
proper. She can be very nasty and underhanded when it suits her
purposes, such as willing to shoot her daughter's horse to force
her to go to a debutante ball. She is often embarrassed by her
family and its eccentricities. She seeks to have all poor people
shot into space, and when she wrote a children's book about Jay
called "The Fat Little Pig," she promised to put all the profits
toward that goal. She loves Jay but often shows humiliating photos
of him. She is a little too concerned with her outward appearance,
despite her lack of tear ducts. This is brought to light when she
is asked how her skin is so smooth, and she replied that she scrubs
her face rigorously with steel wool, and then soaks her face in
boiling hot water for two minutes exactly. Eleanor's voice and many
of her mannerisms were inspired by
Katharine Hepburn.
Duke Phillips
Duke is Jay's boss, and head of Phillips Broadcasting (formerly
Duke Phillips' House of
Chicken and
Waffles). He somewhat resembles
Ted
Turner and has a virtually superhuman constitution (he's able
to lift Jay with relative ease and walk through concrete walls). He
runs the network that shows
Coming Attractions, and is
always trying to change things to increase ratings and maximize
profits. He owns an amusement park called Phillips Land, dubbed
"The Happiest Place In Jersey", founded his own preschool ("Built
on a dare"), runs PNN (Phillips News Network), and a
hospital/medical research center (with a giant statue of himself on
it chanting "All hail Duke, Duke is life"). He also tried to run
for president with Franklin Sherman as his running mate. He
possesses a hypnotic power called the "Evil eye" which he used to
avoid reporters questions during that campaign. Contracted a fatal
disease, later dubbed "Duke Phillips" disease; the treatment for
which includes an 8 ounce injection of a medication discovered by
Jay entitled "Jay Sherman's Oil" (a parody of
Lorenzo's Oil) into his eyeball
every 4 hours. He believes Jay is gay and in love with him, and
wastes no opportunity to belittle him in public about this. Towards
the end of the series, he marries Alice Tompkins' sister Miranda.
When asked about religion, Duke commented that he, along with the
rest of America's cultural
elite, worships
Pan, the goat god. Also, pigeons love the
sound of his voice, as when he once spoke to explain it, a pigeon
flew into his mouth. He has a secret love of cats, and in the
episode "All the Duke's Men" a videotape of him tearfully singing
to his cat is used by
Bob Dole to
discourage Duke from running as a Republican.
Duke loves America,
but for tax purposes is a citizen of the Dutch
Antilles
.
Jeremy Hawke
Jeremy is an
Australian actor, and is
Jay's best friend since Jay gave his first film its only positive
review. Best known as the star of the "illogical, blasphemous, and
ultra-violent"
Crocodile Gandhi series, he has starred in
multiple action movies and played former
president James Monroe (as a spoof of
James Bond e.g. "Monroe, James Monroe"). He has a
twin sister, Olivia, who tries to win Jay's affection. He is a
combination spoof of Australians
Paul
Hogan in terms of the exaggerated accent, and
Mel Gibson with his luck with the ladies as well
as his action film roles. His hidden shames: he's 43, uses elevator
shoes to give the illusion of height, had allegedly fired a caterer
for bringing the wrong kind of biscuit and has had extensive
plastic surgery. He can also imitate the voice of
Bullwinkle J. Moose.
Doris Grossman
Doris is Jay's make-up artist. She is a
chain smoker, only has one lung and anytime a
cigarette is removed from her mouth a new one appears. In the
episode "
Every Doris Has Her
Day," there was a possibility that she was Jay's biological
mother (there are many similarities between his circumstances and
her own son whom she gave up for adoption), but was proven not to
be from a DNA test. She also tries to be attractive to Duke, by
purring to him and sending him nude photos of herself. Doris lives
in a very spacious and luxurious apartment, affordable to her since
it has been "rent controlled since 1946," and also for the fact
that Duke pays her $300,000 per annum, believing that this was what
average people earned. Her rent is $120 per month. She says that
one of her talents is making shapes out of cigarette smoke, but
when she tried to make a bunny she created one with a demonic face
which told her "Doris... Tick! Tock!" She was once a Commercial
actress for Phleghm Fatale Cigarettes, but her career in acting
ended after she "got knocked up by the
Fruit of the Loom banana." Doris was even
married to horror-movie actor
Lon
Chaney as evidenced on her arm tattoo. Voiced by Doris Grau who
also played a character named
Lunchlady
Doris in
The Simpsons.
Alice and Penny Tompkins
Introduced in the second season episode "
Sherman, Woman and
Child," Alice Tompkins becomes Jay's girlfriend. She is named
for
Alice
Kramden on
The
Honeymooners. She is once married to a country singer,
Cyrus Tompkins, but she leaves him when she begins to suspect he is
cheating on her (she reaches this conclusion after seeing Cyrus'
album, entitled
"I'm Being Unfaithful to My Wife, Alice
Tompkins. You Heard Me, Alice Tompkins.") As a
consequence, Alice moves to New York from Knoxville,
Tennessee
, to show her daughter Penny that a woman can make
it without a man. He later tracks her to New York and tries
to seduce her, but his attempts get thwarted by Jay. She has an
older sister named Miranda, who has usurped her popularity many
times over the years, and a younger brother named
Bisquick.
Alice was originally an artist and is capable of perfectly
replicating art masterworks on the walls of her apartment (such as
Michelangelo‘s
The Creation of Adam and
Georges-Pierre Seurat’s
A Sunday
Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte). She
pepper-sprayed Jay upon first meeting him on
the street, an act he shrugged off (even enjoyed). She now works as
Jay's personal assistant. It is in the episode "
Lady Hawke" that she
realizes she has fallen in love with Jay, and the two become a
couple at the end of the episode.
Despite hitting him when she first met him for not liking
The Lion King, Penny quickly
takes a liking to Jay, initially calling him "funny man" due to the
comical mishaps that repeatedly befall him when he is around her.
Later in the season, she begins to call him "Uncle Jay." When he
and Alice are unable to get her admitted into any of the top
preschool in New York, Duke
Phillips founds one exclusively for her, staffed by
Jimmy Breslin,
Sean
Young, and
Prince
Charles.
A fifth tagline for the closing credits was created to go with the
original four (see
Jay Sherman). Here,
Jay and Alice are seen kissing in the theater seats as the credits
roll. At the end, they are interrupted by an usher who says,
"Excuse me, the show's over." Alice responds, "Get away,
pipsqueak," and Jay says to the camera, "That's why I love
her!"
In the first Critic webisode, Jay's makeup artist Jennifer asks him
what happened to his self-esteem, to which Jay replies that he lost
it in the second divorce settlement. Although Alice is not
mentioned by name, this led many fans to believe that Jay and Alice
had married and eventually ended up in a bitter divorce. Despite
this belief, the fate of Alice is left unknown as his second
divorce was technically from a Mexican airport employee who he
married in the episode "
Marty's First Date."
(Also see
Jay Sherman for
more information.)
Vlada Veramirovich
Vlada, who is an Eastern European immigrant, runs a restaurant
called
L'ane Riche (French for "The Wealthy Jackass"),
which Jay and Jeremy both frequent. He hates Jay, but loves his
money.
During the series most of his wealth is
thanks to Jay's appetite and when Jay dieted they couldn't afford
Harvard
for Zoltan, his equally effeminate and disturbing
son. Also according to Zoltan that they bought a yacht as a
result of Jay's appetite. Vlada frequently belittles Jay quietly or
in a foreign language to the staff. Best known for his greeting to
Jay, "Meeester Sherman," he has a keen understanding of who is hot
and who is not in New York and a posse built for schmoozing. Zoltan
attends the same UN School as Jay's son Marty and sings
unintentionally hilarious songs about his homeland. The headmaster
of the UN School once described Zoltan as "The boy who used to be a
girl. Oops, that
used to be a secret!..."
On a side note the
restaurant is also a parody of Sardi's
of New York, which is frequented by Broadway stars
and New York socialites alike.
Shackleford
The Shermans' butler, Shackleford is an older Englishman with a
dour, sarcastic attitude. He is not particularly loyal to the
family. As shown when he watched the house burn down yelling "Burn,
Baby! Burn!" after Franklin left the stove on causing it to burn
down. but he stays with them for the money and fringe benefits.
Shackleford is particularly contemptuous toward Jay, referring to
him as "
Adopted Master Jay," with a tone that suggest that
he does not consider Jay to be a true member of the family (yet he
does appear with the family waiting for Jay to finish the New York
Marathon). He is also a fan of
grunge rock
and has worked for a number of famous musical groups. Shackleford
was inspired by
John Gielgud as the
Butler Hobson in the movie
Arthur. He has an ape counterpart named
Shackleape who hates Franklin and tries to eat both Frankiln and
Jay at the end of the episode.
Guest characters
Throughout the show’s run, other famous critics have also guest
voiced as themselves, including
Gene
Shalit,
Rex Reed and the duo
Gene Siskel and
Roger
Ebert.
The Simpsons crossovers
Jay appeared in a guest role on the episode of
The Simpsons, "
A Star Is Burns," in which he presided over
a local
film festival, much to
Homer's envy.
Simpsons
creator
Matt Groening did not want to
do a crossover with a current FOX show (which
The Critic
was at the time) and
executive
producer Jim Brooks did. Groening refused to allow his name to
be shown in the credits, or discuss the episode on the later DVD
commentary, feeling that the episode was nothing more than a 30
minute advertisement. When Jay enters the Simpson household, Bart
is watching a
Flintstones-
Jetsons crossover show (which was probably
the movie
The
Jetsons Meet the Flintstones), 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 to appear on
Coming
Attractions/
The Critic, but Bart declines, saying,
"Nah, we're not going to be doing that." Oddly,
The
Simpsons also appears on television as a cartoon in
The
Critic. Jay Sherman has yellow skin when he appears on
The
Simpsons but pink skin on
The Critic.
Jay appeared briefly on
The Simpsons a few more times. In
the episode "
Hurricane Neddy," he
was in an insane asylum apparently unable to say anything more than
his catchphrase (Doctor: "Yes, Mr. Sherman.
Everything
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.
Home media
Due to the success of DVD sales of
Family
Guy, FOX Network rushed to release
The Critic on
DVD, including the two regular seasons and the web episodes. The
show achieved good sales, jumping onto the DVD list at 14 on
Amazon, and quickly going through five
issuings.
Animated Views gave the DVD set good reviews, giving it an overall
rating of 10/10.
Episode List
Season 1: 1994 (ABC): 13 Episodes
Season 2: 1995 (FOX): 10 Episodes
Season 3: 2000 (Internet): Webisodes: 10 Episodes
In early 2000, show creators Al Jean and Mike Reiss ran a series of
ten 3-5 minute long internet episodes of
The Critic, still
with Jon Lovitz as the starring role. While still making fun of
movies and Hollywood in general, its story focused on Jay lusting
after the lovely Jennifer, his new makeup lady. Alice does not
appear in any of the episodes and is not mentioned by name, though
Jay does briefly refer to a "second divorce" in the first episode —
presumably from her or the Mexican woman he married in order to get
to Cuba. Besides Jay, Vlada is the only other character from the
show to make an appearance. All ten of the "webisodes" were
included on the complete series DVD (but not
iTunes). Parodies include gaffs on
The Patriot,
Harry Potter,
Mission: Impossible II,
X-Men, Pearl Harbor and
Cast Away.
| # |
Description |
| 1 |
Jay talks about his rise and fall from fame and introduces his
new make-up lady, Jennifer. |
| 2 |
Jay reviews the best movies from the year 2000 in a
beach-themed studio (since all public beaches have banned Jay until
he loses 20 pounds) and gets an unexpected visit from Arnold Schwarzenegger. |
| 3 |
Jay pans The
Patriot with a special guest from Pikachu (from the Pokémon video games, TV shows, and
movies). All the while, Jay tries to prove to Jennifer he is nice
enough to date. |
| 4 |
Jay finally lands a date with Jennifer. He takes her to
L'ANE Riche where he talks about the movies he missed out
on reviewing while unemployed. |
| 5 |
Jay reviews the Oscars. |
| 6 |
Jay reminisces about his failed love life. |
| 7 |
Jay takes a look at the best films of the year 2000, including
Cast Away and The Legend of Bagger
Vance. |
| 8 |
Jay visits the set of the Harry Potter film and takes a
look at the Planet of
the Apes remake. Jay shows Jennifer his favourite spots in
New York. |
| 9 |
Jay
defuses Broadway bombs with "Death of a Seinfeld" and
others. |
| 10 |
Jay reviews Pearl
Harbor and is mistaken for Shrek while waiting in line at the movies
with Jennifer. |
See also
References
- .
- .
- .
- .
- .
- .
- Weinstein, Josh. (2006) Commentary for "Hurricane Neddy", in
The Simpsons: The Complete Eighth Season [DVD]. 20th
Century Fox.
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