Long Story Short (2025)

I had high expectations for this show beforehand, because this is the new animated series by Raphael Bob-Waksberg. With Undone and especially BoJack Horseman, he created two of my absolute favorite series ever. Good news: Long Story Short is great again.

At its core, it is a sitcom about a Jewish family, the Schwoopers. Father Elliott, mother Naomi, sons Avi and Yoshi, and daughter Shira. Naomi is somewhat of a walking cliché of a Jewish mother who, with a sharp New York accent—even though the family has lived in California for decades—always passively-aggressively criticizes everything and makes everything revolve around herself. The first episode was therefore nothing more than decent.

But then Bob-Waksberg starts playing with this standard premise. The series jumps through time all the time, so that cause and effect regarding how the family members influence each other over a longer period becomes clear, and there are also plenty of the bizarre digressions that we know from BoJack. Long Story Short stays a bit closer to reality, but something like the mattress episode is still hilarious. Or the wolves at the school.

But the emotional knockout blows we know from BoJack Horseman also return, and in Long Story Short, they often revolve around the family's Jewish background.

The animation is also creative and regularly switches styles, sometimes to an almost psychedelic style that, typically enough, reminded me a bit of the Pink Panther cartoons.

It consists of 10 episodes of 25 minutes, so you can't go wrong. Just keep in mind that the first episode is the weakest. The third episode is the mattress episode. A second season has already been confirmed.

(Watched on Netflix)

Translated from Dutch · View original