Jay

I’ve recently re-discovered The Critic on this crazy cable channel called Reelz. They play one episode over and over again for a week, then switch to a new episode which they play nonstop for a week. Its odd for sure, but its worth the unruly DVR list to rekindle my romance with that show and see the amazing writers’ credits which include a handful of Simpsons geniuses and Judd Apatow. The Critic captures just the right combination of highbrow and lowbrow references. I can’t think of any other show that could get away with a throwaway reference to a movie like Picnic at Hanging Rock, nerdy law school trivia and Supreme Court justices, all while finding a way to rhyme “genitalia” with “Australia”. Sure, one can sometimes tell they wrote some jokes at the last possible moment cause the lip sync doesn’t really work out, but we can forgive such things when they have Jay’s dad drive a monster truck into Picasso’s masterpiece and scream, “Take THAT, Guernica!” The episode with the extended appearance of an animated Siskel and Ebert brought tears to my eyes. By the by, there’s a great clip of the two on their real life show critiquing the first three episodes of The Critic as being too sitcommy and not focused enough on the fascinating life of the movie critic. I’m pretty sure they were being serious.

I suppose I’m feeling the pull of early nineties New York nostalgia. You know that Mighty Aphrodite, Dream On, early Seinfeld milieu, when the city still seemed to hold a soupVon of danger. The Critic was a great platform for cut away jokes about Arnold Schwarzenegger movies, but it also managed to be a warm, sweet little view of city life. The show is full of Woody Allen, cab driver and doorman jokes and uses some beautiful watercolory images of Manhattan. But I do go on too much about New York. I romanticize it all out of proportion.