Will I do a Mission Hill retrospective? Only time will tell.
The Critic tells the story of fat, somewhat snobby, but genuinely good natured TV critic Jay Sherman, his friends and family and his many misadventures through mid-90's New York. While the Critic definitely displays a lot of the comedic writing style that fit season 3 and 4 of The Simpsons, it was also a show that focused far more on film parodies and pop culture references, some horribly dated, while many extremely endearing. It's like Family Guy with the cutwaway gags, except usually they're actually funny. So, who do you get to voice a character like Jay Sherman?
Why Jon Lovitz of course! Lovitz, known for his run on SNL and being that guy who was in a lot of movies and TV shows (including multiple appearances on The Simpsons), but never really felt like he got that one big role. I'd say The Critic is definitely among his strongest and still most memorable starring roles. And honestly, when you look at Jay and his characteristics, you really couldn't find anyone who could play the part better. One of the ultimate examples of pitch perfect casting.
The Critic started, much like the other two shows I've covered for Rapidly Reviewing (ReBoot and Sonic SatAM) on ABC. And that's where our story begins. It's time to rapidly review as we look at the pilot episode of The Critic, simply known as "Pilot".
We open the episode with Jay getting some hair dye sprayed on his head by his makeup lady Doris (voiced by Doris Grau). Jay is 36, balding, single and all in all, pretty depressed. With no more dye, and feeling pretty terrible about his looks, Jay chooses to just wear Doris' hat. We get our first look at Jay's show, Coming Attractions, where he critiques the latest films. This being a parallel to the 90's, the parodies are all very similar to the shlock that was filling the theatres at the time. Parodies including Home Alone 5 and Schwarzenegger's new film, Rabbi P.I, which he rates a zero on the Shermometer.
We meet Sherman's boss, TV mogul Duke Phillips (voiced by Charles Napier), a clear cut homage to Ted Turner. He's pretty pissed about the fact that Jay is too negative about most movies, saying he should be rating them from good to excellent. "This isn't art, this is just mindless pablum for people who can barely reads" says Duke before an interview with People Magazine.
In his "Star Poop" segment, Jay interviews the actress Valerie Fox, who has a new movie coming out that he hasn't seen yet. Jay is instantly smitten by her, and it appears that the same can be said about Valerie, who claims to find smart men very sexy. I guess smart men who look like flesh colored potato men also fit the bill. He agrees to have dinner with her.
He takes her to L'ane Riche (the Wealthy Jackass), where his celebrity status is so low that even a 1994 Conan O'Brien is higher up in the food chain. Despite this, he still manages to still hit it off. We later learn about Jay's previous relationship with is ex-wife, and how the marriage was literally doomed from the wedding day. We also get a lot of jokes about Jay being fat and a wuss, which fits his character to a T. He even hits it off in bed with her, so everything is really coming up King Dork.
The next day, their intimacy is interrupted by Jay's son Marty (voiced by Christine Cavanaugh), as Jay tells him that he should tell everybody about how lucky he was last night. In fact, his luck continues to get better as Jay and Valerie confess their love to each other. He talks about it later to his movie star friend Jeremy Hawke, who even for being a sexy actor, is somehow not as attractive to Valerie as Jay is.
Despite this being a 24 hour romance so far, Jay is already planning on marrying her, which Jeremy advises no to as marrying an actor isn't a good idea, and he doesn't want anything to happen to his friend as Jay is the only good guy he's met since coming from Australia. So, despite Jay being fat, unattractive, and snobby, at least he isn't a total loser.
We meet the rest of Jay's adopted family (because little fat Jewish man living with a more waspy New England-ish family is actually pretty hilarious), mother Eleanor (a character with clear Katherine Hepburn references) sister Margo, and one of my favorite characters of all time, father Franklin, who is... eccentric to say the least. While he's more tame in this one (talking about how a peanut is neither a pea, nor a nut... wait, it is a nut), he spirals much further into cartoonish insanity as the show goes on. Despite Valerie's claims that she honestly loves Jay, the rest of the family do have their concerns that she's just using him to get a good review of her movie.
Jay opts out of seeing a screening of Valerie's movie by pretending he's sick. She goes to check up on him, which leads to a really well done parody of the dance scene from Beauty and the Beast (or in this case, Beauty and King Dork). Eventually he still ends up with a copy of "Kiss of Death" and he finally watches it, and HOTCHI MOTCHI she's awful! So, with no better option, and choosing the truth over love when it comes to movies, he ultimately reviews the movie, trying to point out the positives, but saying that she isn't a very good actress. And as expected, this causes her to leave him. While he's sad, he ultimately bounces back, knowing he can critique a really bad Stallone movie. And thus the cosmic ballet goes on.
For a pilot episode, The Critic's pilot is a solid one, albeit very slow in a lot of places, and really lacking in the stronger humor the show would have much later. But that's usually to be expected with most pilots. We get enough time to establish Jay as a character, his job and the people around him. We get some great parodies and while the whole love story with Valerie moves at a far too rapid pace, it still serves as a great way to get us accustomed to this show and its world. It's a great way to get us started, and excited for what's to come in the future.