The Critic: Sherman, Woman and Child (aka Your Potential Is What's Essential)

Okay, so the last time I covered an episode of The Critic, I focussed on the series opener and my thoughts skewed heavily toward the negative. I figured I would balance that out by looking next at my favourite episode of the series, which (perhaps not so coincidentally) happens to be the Season 2 opener. "Sherman, Woman and Child" followed on from the show's ill-fated run on ABC and marked the beginning of its (equally ill-fated) second gasp at life on Fox. It first aired on March 5th 1995 (an excellent date) and received one of the most lavish (others, Matt Groening included, would say odious) welcome ceremonies conceivable in the form of a cross-over episode with The Simpsons which played right before it. If you stuck around to see what kind of adventures Jay had after he packed up and left the Springfield Film Festival, then this is what you were rewarded with.

In many respects Season 2 was the new retooled version of The Critic, with Jean and Reiss determined to learn from the mistakes they made on their initial go-round - first and foremost, how completely overboard they went in making Jay's personal life devoid of anything resembling joy or dignity. Jay was given a rounder, cuddlier look to make him more appealing (apparently his original flat-headed design was a major turn-off for viewers), but the most important change by far was the introduction of a new recurring cast member, Alice Tompkins (voice of Park Overall), who became Jay's long-term romantic interest, and finally put to rest one of Season 1's dominant running gags about the wretched state of Jay's (non-existent) love life. Good call. There is a world of difference between a character who is relatably hapless and a character whom you're effectively encouraged to look down upon - during its first season, The Critic leaned too heavily toward the latter. As I noted in my review of "Pilot", Jean and Reiss were always in a tricky position with Jay, who sees himself as above the everyman and leads a lifestyle that many would kill for, but their tactic of bringing him down to Earth, by having him cut down by the scorn of family, colleagues and public at every opportunity, gave the show an uncomfortably sour quality that I suspect alienated a whole wad of its potential viewership. Giving him a permanent girlfriend was an attempt to remedy that. And in my eyes it worked - Alice was a warmer, wiser creation than any the show had typically featured up to this point, she allowed for a little more drama and pathos, and having a character who was sincerely supportive of Jay helped to balance out the more vinegary moments. The addition of Alice was a huge step in the right direction for a series that, from the start, had so much potential but had always struggled to find its feet, although sadly it was not enough to save it from the inevitable. The series received better ratings on Fox than it had on ABC, but the current president of the network was not a fan and saw little reason to keep it afloat. The Critic only had ten more episodes to go, and one of those was a clip show. It was a sweet improvement, but short.

The episode opens with Jay at an even lower point than usual, with his ratings declining and his show at serious risk of cancellation. He finds solidarity in an unexpected source, following a chance encounter with Alice, a single mother who recently moved to New York from Knoxville, Tennessee with her daughter Penny (voice of the late Russi Taylor), having ditched her husband Cyrus (voice of Sam McMurray), an aspiring country musician who was cheating on Alice and, much like Lurleen Lumpkin, felt compelled to broadcast his indiscretions in his lyrics. Jay and Alice bond over their mutual solitude and, when Jay learns that Alice has financial issues and is threatened with eviction, helps her out by hiring her as his personal assistant. She, in turn, helps to reinvent his public image and boost his flagging ratings. But just as Jay is working up the nerve to confess his true feelings to Alice, he discovers that Cyrus has followed Alice to New York with the intent of renewing their relationship - and, to Jay's chagrin, Alice is giving serious consideration to taking him up on his offer.

I think of "Sherman, Woman and Child" as the anti-"Pilot", for it succeeds precisely where "Pilot" failed. Whereas "Pilot" was a crude exercise in nihilism that could barely conceal its disinterest in Valerie's character and her relationship with Jay, culminating in a hollow plot twist that raises more questions than it ever cares to answer, "Sherman, Woman and Child" takes time to develop the rapport between Jay and Alice, building our interest in their respective plights and ensuring that we become emotionally invested in the outcome. Unsurprisingly, the plot was taken from a suggestion by James L. Brooks, who felt that having Jay befriend an impoverished single mother would a good way to showcase his more human, compassionate side. When The Simpsons was in development, it was Brooks who advocated in favour of the series being grounded by a strong emotional undercurrent, and one of the reasons why "Sherman, Woman and Child" is my favourite installment of The Critic is because it's the episode that best works as a drama in the vein of those earlier Simpsons seasons. It still has ample helpings of the kind of wacky, random cutaway gags that were the series' speciality (among them, a particularly dark moment where Jay recalls his traumatic summer of '72), but this is definitely a more thoughtful, focussed Critic than you were used to seeing on ABC. It's not perfect by any stretch - unfortunately, it does end up showing the usual limitations of Jean and Reiss's approach to storytelling, in that it establishes a serious conflict only to settle it with rather a silly solution, but that's still leagues ahead of the forlorn non-resolution in "Pilot".

The other obvious advantage that "Sherman, Woman and Child" has over "Pilot" is that it's rid of the burden of having to introduce the full cast of characters. Even with the relocation to Fox and the knowledge that it was essentially pitching itself to a new viewership on Fox, it works on the assumption that you'll already know who all of these characters are, or else can quickly pick it up. And overall the supporting cast is used pretty sparingly throughout. Duke and Doris feature prominently throughout the first two acts, but Jeremy gets only one small scene, while Eleanor, Franklin and Ardeth are seen only briefly in flashbacks and Marty and Margo do not appear at all. All beneficial, since it allows the focus to be where it needs to be, on Jay and Alice.

Although Jay and Alice express a mutual attraction in this episode, they would not formally become a couple until the third episode of the season, "Lady Hawke", owing to Alice's initial reservations about the wisdom of an employer/employee romance. Again, good call. I appreciate that they didn't attempt to drag it out any further than that, not just because of the severely limited time this series had remaining, but because I personally have never been too fond of protracted Will-They-Won't-They arcs. The course of true love never did run smooth, but when the writers very blatantly intend for two characters to get together, it's difficult to pull off such arcs without it looking like stalling (I could tolerate the WT/WT between Niles and Daphne in Frasier because it provided a constant and reliable source of humor, but I put the WT/WT between Fry and Leela down as the major reason why I ultimately lost interest in Futurama). On top of which, and in spite of all the gags made throughout Season 1 about Jay's total lack of charisma as a mate, he and Alice have a genuinely sweet and convincing chemistry as a couple - healthier than Homer and Marge, less heavy-handed than Fry and Leela...I'd say that this is one area where Jean and Reiss had Groening licked, but then I suppose he also had Akbar and Jeff.

What's heartening about Jay's relationship with Alice is that it starts out from a place of empathy. Jay gets close to Alice because he identifies with her rejection, and becomes interested in hiring her because he can see how her vast talents are going to waste. The script makes it clear that Jay had no aspirations of being romantically involved with her at this stage, if only because it had never occurred to him that she would reciprocate his feelings. But Alice can see the finer qualities in Jay that are lost on everyone else around him. Where "Sherman, Woman and Child" excels is that it's manages to give us a strong sense of both characters' vulnerabilities. Again, it's inevitable that Jay's luxurious lifestyle is going to make his problems seem relatively minor next to Alice's - even at the risk of losing his job he's presumably going to be quite comfortably off by comparison. This is something the script is seemingly well aware of, for there is a bit where Jay reaches out for sympathy from his cab driver, who rebuffs (although possibly not in a language that Jay can understand) that he lives in an apartment with twenty-seven other people. Nevertheless, it's followed up by an affecting moment that, for as absurdly executed as it may be, with Jay looking down to the day's headlines and seeing only aggressive diatribes staring him in the face, really hammers home just how longing he is for a little friendly human company. It's helped by strong performances from all key players. Overall is especially wonderful as Alice - she brings a delightful spunkiness but also an underlying sadness to the character. Lovitz plays Jay with the usual pipsqueak extravagance but is fully capable of an authentic sensitivity where the story demands it, while McMurray portrays Cyrus with a casual, borderline oblivious brashness that makes him both fun and insidious. The drama is also balanced out by a typically sharp script - standout gags include Jay's manic depressive schedule (he has a bulimia one in another episode), Duke's infatuation with the Country Bear Jamboree he apparently has squirrelled away in his office, and Jeremy's questionable use of Latin (see below). The only gag that falls particularly flat concerns a guest spot by a foul-mouthed Madonna on Humphrey The Hippo (the show's analogue to Barney The Dinosaur).

As I say, the episode does end up highlighting Jean and Reiss's usual limitations as we reach the third act. Depth of narrative was never their strong point, either here or on The Simpsons, and "Sherman, Woman and Child" suffers from much the same fudging of central problems within its climax. The arc regarding Jay's professional woes receives a glib wrap-up before we even get that far (in which Jay becomes more amenable to emphasising style over substance), but then I doubt that anyone was ever too flustered about that outcome. The greater issue is that Alice's dilemma, for as serious as the stakes are, isn't particularly well-developed, opting for a facile resolution that doesn't quite bear the weight of its build-up. This feels especially salient during the sequence where Jay quizzes Alice as to why she feels so tempted to return to Cyrus:

 

Alice: Alright, I've got this weakness, okay. I know Cyrus is completely wrong for me, but every time I'm about to kick him out, he sings to me.

Jay: And?

Alice: And I melt like butter on a bagel...God, I've been in New York too long.

I think that one exchange encapsulates perfectly the major strengths and weaknesses of this series. On the one hand, Alice's "God, I've been in New York too long" is hilarious, and Overall's delivery is terrific. At the same time, that is ultimately a really flimsy rationale on which to hang our final conflict. Alice is reluctant to break things off with Cyrus because his singing is too great a turn-on for her? "Sherman, Woman and Child" might represent the absolute peak of Jean and Reiss's dramatic flair (at least within The Critic) but clearly there was only so seriously they were willing to take this scenario. People remain in unhealthy relationships all the time in real life, and I can think of a number of more compelling reasons why Alice might be tempted to go back to Cyrus - fear of being unable to make it on her own, guilt over their having a child together, pressure from extended family members, etc. As it is, there's a strange incongruity throughout this entire sequence, with Overall's performance being so powerful and sincere, and her imbuing the character with such a harrowing vulnerability (of particular clout is the jaded resignation in her line, "Haven't you ever been in a situation that was bad for you but at the same time you couldn't leave?"), and yet what she's actually confiding to Jay just seems so trivial and silly. I do wish that the episode had been willing to go the extra mile and develop Alice's dilemma into the marginally more complex one that her narrative and characterisation up until now had warranted. Instead, a shallow conflict begets a ludicrous confrontation, with Jay attempting to counter Cyrus's singing by showing up at Alice's apartment with an accordion in hand and his own lyrics imploring her to decide what's truly best for herself. Well, you have to admire Jay's fighting spirit, and he does get one particularly good line out of it ("I've lost my ability to tell between what's cute and what's idiotic"), but it definitely feels like it was conceived more with the yucks in mind than anything too stark or sincere on the emotional front (although there is some sweetness in Jay's admission that he doesn't know if things could ever work out between himself and Alice, he would just hate to see her return to a relationship that makes her so unhappy). I like the idea of Jay supporting Alice by appealing to her self-belief ("Your potential is what's essential"), but then self-doubt was never really shown to be the key issue for her. Regardless, the gambit works - Jay's encouragement gives Alice the willpower to ask Cyrus to leave her for good, and the episode ends with her suggesting to Jay that perhaps one day she might be ready to see him as more than a friend.

For the "What Could Have Been" files, Jean and Reiss state on the DVD commentary that they had plans for Cyrus to become a semi-regular character, but the series didn't hold out long enough for him to return. Apparently, there were nine further scripts that went unproduced, including one where Jay went to Nashville and became a music critic, which I presume would have been the episode where Cyrus reappeared. Another reportedly involved Marty in a Quiz Show-esque scandal. Personally, I would have liked to have seen an Ardeth-focussed episode, as she never received any development beyond being Jay's embittered ex-wife (added to which, I don't think we ever met her new man Alberto). I would also hope that had the series continued then the issue of Jay's biological parentage (and Doris's long-lost child) would have been raised again. Oh, the possibilities. What's important, though, is that the matter of Jay and Alice's relationship was addressed within the time we had, clearing all obstacles and enabling them to get together and live happily ever after.

...or not. Regrettably, there is an epilogue to the Jay/Alice story that came about a few years later, when The Critic was revived, briefly, in 2000 for a series of flash animated internet shorts (or "webisodes") and Alice was nowhere to be seen. She wasn't alone in that regard - besides Jay himself, Vlada was the only character from the TV series to return in the webisodes, and even then only for a single scene (in part, I'm sure this was due to complications in bringing the full voice cast back, although Maurice La Marche was still there, so I'm not sure why we couldn't at least have had Jeremy). However, and much to the heartbreak of Jay/Alice shippers everywhere, there was a line of dialogue in the first webisode that seemed to have been slipped in specifically to account for Alice's absence - when Jennifer, Jay's current make-up lady, asks Jay what happened to his self-esteem, he responds, "I lost it in the second divorce settlement." It doesn't take a whole lot of reading in between the lines to conclude that Jay and Alice were married but that it ended just as bitterly as his marriage to Ardeth. Some viewers contend that we don't know for certain that Jay was referring to Alice, as technically Jay did have another spouse in between Ardeth and Alice - in the Season 1 episode "Marty's First Date", he marries a Mexican airport employee in order to gain entry into Cuba, and she swiftly announces her intention to divorce him and take half his money. Sorry, and I do wish this wasn't the case, but I believe that Jay was indeed meant to be talking about Alice in that scene. For one, Jay's wife from "Marty's First Date" was never mentioned again after that episode, and why should she be? She was only ever a dumb plot device, and as such, I doubt that we were expected to have her high in our minds when Jay brings up his second divorce. Not least because it's also followed by another, equally enigmatic statement: "Still, it was all my fault..." That line, and Jay's obvious dejection in admitting it, seem purposely designed to prod at some glaring gap in our knowledge - evidently, something happened to sour the relationship between Jay and his established partner, but we're not going to find out what. Likewise, whereas Jay expressed no hard feelings or regrets about his Mexican bride's position in "Marty's First Date" (after all, he was using her, too), here he clearly has been hurt by the outcome. So I suspect it was included as a reset button enabling us to get back to square one and shed all of the character's existing baggage, so that Jay could once again be single, desperate and constantly angling to fuck Jennifer. And the mere fact that Jay had moved onto Jennifer suggests that one way or another, things did not work out between himself and Alice. I don't blame the shippers for being upset about it - a lot went into building Jay and Alice's relationship across the second season, so for it to be hand-waved so flippantly and off of screen definitely feels like a cheap move. But then if it really bothers you, I suppose you're under no obligation to regard the webisodes as canon. They had their moments ("Pikachu, I understand in your most recent film you fired the director, Paul Verhoeven") but tonally and formally, they definitely feel more like a minor offshoot than a legitimate continuation of the series.

The story in "Sherman, Woman and Child" is engaging enough that the movie parodies end up being largely overshadowed, but there is one highlight in the form of a spoof of The Nightmare Before Christmas (misleadingly billed as a Tim Burton movie) that's animated in some pretty slick-looking stop-motion (courtesy of L.H. MacMullan and Olive Jar Animation). Elsewhere have parodies of A Few Good Men (this was from around the time that comparisons were being drawn between Jack Nicholson's acting style and Christian Slater's, and apparently also William Devane), Forrest Gump (hate the movie, but the parody's tolerable), Dennis The Menace and Scent of A Woman, in what I believe may have been already the third time that the series had parodied that specific movie. This is worth flagging up, as I think another issue The Critic had is that it was always fairly limited in the scope of the movies it was willing to lampoon, and there were certain pictures they kept returning to again and again, most obviously Scent of A Woman and Rain Man. I'm going to assume that their fascination with those two in particular lay in their amusement at the way Al Pacino and Dustin Hoffman's characters talk in their respective roles. Scent of A Woman was at least a relatively contemporary reference, but I'd have thought that Rain Man gags would have been considered a bit old hat by the mid-90s. Nevertheless, they couldn't get over it. Every time Tom Cruise came up, you knew a Hoffman reference wasn't far behind.

The formalities:

• The Call:  Pharmacist - "Jay, this is your pharmacist. Instead of hair restore we've accidentally sent you Preparation H."
  
• The Movie: The Sound of Music (Robert Wise, 1965). This parodies the opening scene where the camera zooms in on Julie Andrews performing "The hills are alive with the sound of music" in a beautiful alpine meadow. In this case, the camera zooms in too far on Andrews and knocks her down those lively hills.
  

Quote of the episode: Jeremy - "In the words of the poet, Carpe Canem!"

The Critic: Pilot (aka How To Lose Viewers And Alienate Zeitgeist)

Since 2016 I've had it in mind to take a close look at The Critic, Al Jean and Mike Reiss's attempt at creating their own animated sitcom following their successful turn as showrunners on the third and fourth seasons of The Simpsons (I covered some of the history of the series here). The reason why I've been putting it off for the past four years is because I was reluctant to commit myself to the same kind of rigid, episode-by-episode retrospective that I did for Family Dog some years back, when this blog was still young and I was half-expecting my interest in it to crumble at any given moment. The drawback with doing everything according to such an inflexible structure is that it's easier for it to become a chore that way, particularly if you hit a roadblock with an episode that you don't have much to say about, but have to go through in order to talk about the ones that you do. You start dragging your feet, and before you know it your enthusiasm in the whole project's just evaporated (one reason why I didn't keep the Oscar Bites up past 2018 is that I never got round to seeing most of the nominees for that year, which inevitably brought the whole thing to a screeching halt). However, I figured that I could apply the same approach that I'm currently using for The Simpsons, which is to just cover the episodes I want to cover, as and when and in no particular set order, and which seems to work a lot better for me.

That being said, for my first review of The Critic I am going to start at the very beginning, with the pilot episode (simply titled "Pilot"), which first aired January 26th 1994 on ABC, aka what to was to be the first of several different platforms for the nomadic series (after its failed second start on Fox, The Critic enjoyed a period of reruns on Comedy Central, and in 2000 was revived, briefly, as a series of internet shorts). I'm starting here, because there is one recurring criticism that's going to come up a lot whenever I talk about The Critic, and that has to do with the series' lack of narrative finesse. And, just so there's no misunderstanding, let me be very clear right away that I love The Critic and think it is a wonderfully entertaining and unfairly overlooked show. Three compliments that I can offer straight off the bat are that a) the writing is incredibly sharp, and you can always guarantee that you are going to laugh out loud at multiple points with every episode, b) the voice cast is uniformly excellent and c) the series is handsomely animated and the illustrative New York backgrounds are a real treat to look at - in fact, this may be one of the most visually gratifying television cartoons of all-time. There are plenty of reasons why The Critic deserves your attention, but I doubt that anyone who became hooked on this show did so for the anticipation of being regaled with a compelling and well-constructed story that left the characters seeming that much richer and more nuanced. This, I feel, is the one pivotal factor that always kept the series at least two or three rungs below The Simpsons on the evolutionary ladder - The Simpsons could tell meaningful and well-crafted stories, whereas The Critic preferred to bypass that bothersome narrative process altogether. Recently, when I reviewed the Simpsons episode "Selma's Choice", I mentioned that narrative isn't Jean and Reiss's strong point and, looking back on Season 4 of The Simpsons, on which they worked as showrunners, you can see the basis of what would subsequently become their template for The Critic, with its emphasis is on rapid-fire gags, outlandish humour and surreal non-sequiturs. Multiple episodes seem to end not because they've reached their logical conclusion, but because so much time was spent noodling around with the aforementioned elements that they ran out of time and were forced to hastily wrap up with some vague semblance of resolution (two really obvious offenders would be "Marge Gets A Job" and "Marge In Chains"; I'd say that Marge was probably the worst-served character under Jean and Reiss's reign, but then she did also get "A Streetcar Named Marge", one of the very best episodes). For as critical as I can be of that specific era of The Simpsons, the problem is tenfold with The Critic; there, the cart is put all the more conspicuously put before the horse, so that narrative development barely stretches further than the basic premise, and those premises don't end so much as simply stop, once they've accumulated enough gags to fill up twenty minutes. The Critic is likeable and it's hilarious, but it's a glib, glib creature.

The reason why I'm focusing straight off on the one real drawback of a series I've professed to otherwise enjoy is because the pilot episode contains by and far the most egregious example of the above phenomenon, one that unfortunately may have hurt the show fatally right from the beginning. The Critic makes the grievous error of opening with its series low. By that, I don't mean that the pilot is a little rougher around the edges or less refined than subsequent installments, as you might typically expect from a first effort, when the show is still in the process of finding its feet. I mean that it actively plays an unpleasant card in facilitating its hasty wrap-up, one that not only fails to resolve the narrative in a satisfying fashion but also leaves a bitter, lingering aftertaste, and it gets the series off to a seriously ill-judged beginning. The good news is that the series would only get better from here on in, but it remains a testament to just how dramatically a pilot can wrong-foot a series, to the point that it spends the rest of its existence having to repair that damage. The mistakes made in "Pilot" are ones that the Season 2 opener, "Sherman, Woman and Child" seemed to be consciously trying to atone for.

"Pilot" represents a dismal beginning for a marvelous series, but in some respects it's also a perfect introductory episode. The plot, which sees Jay (Jon Lovitz) enter into a relationship with a seductive young model named Valerie (Jennifer Lien) who is looking to kick start her career as a Hollywood actress, seems purposely structured to introduce as many supporting characters as possible, and it does a slick job of clearly setting out who each of them is and cementing their individual dynamic with Jay. We get snapshots of Jay's professional life, of his ongoing creative disputes with his brash, self-congratulatory boss Duke Phillips (Charles Napier) and his self-pitying asides with his tacitly sour make-up lady Doris (Doris Grau). This is followed by a glimpse into his miserable personal life, his troubled relationship with his ex-wife Ardeth (Brenda Vaccaro, although she was replaced by Rhea Perlman in Season 2) and his efforts to be a reliable source of paternal wisdom to his adoring son Marty (Christine Cavanaugh). We also meet Jay's closest friend, Australian action hunk Jeremy Hawke (Maurice LaMarche), who acts as a confidant to Jay's deepest hopes and fears but conversely thinks little about putting him in the shade, and Vlada (Nick Jameson), the toadying owner of Jay's favourite restaurant, L'ane Riche. Finally, Jay takes Valerie to the WASPs nest to meet his wealthy adoptive parents, the perpetually confused Franklin (Gerrit Graham) and the aggressively formal Eleanor (Judith Ivey), as well his teenage sister Margo (Nancy Cartwright) and their begrudging butler Shackleford (LaMarche). It's such a deftly assembled tour of our entire secondary cast that for a while it just about masks the episode's biggest problem - which is that curiously little interest is shown in adding any kind of dimension to Valerie herself as a character. Whatever flavour she has comes largely from Lien's voice-over, which is soft and sultry but with just the vaguest tinge of steeliness, suggesting some kind of hidden volatility. In all other respects, though, her only purpose is to look comely, to go on about how much she likes Jay and to provide set-up for the episode's numerous expository moments ("Jay, I didn't know you were married?", "I can't believe your parents live here!"). It's almost as though Jean and Reiss never regarded her as a character at all, but as a plot device...which as good a sign as any that you're best off not getting too attached to Jay and Valerie as a pairing.

Indeed, we know right away that Jay's relationship with Valerie is not fated to last out the episode because the substance isn't there to make it either convincing or alluring. So the plot is largely a matter of watching Jay coast through his superficial paradise and wondering when and where the inevitable serpent is going to rear its head. Jeremy cautions him against entering in too deep with any actress, but doesn't actually elaborate why. Margo doesn't buy the relationship - throughout the dinner, she surveys Jay and Valerie with the same incredulous eye I'm constantly giving Homer and Marge. We get whisper of the possible dark clouds on the horizon when we learn that Valerie's debut film, Kiss of Death, is due for a critic screening next week, and Eleanor articulates her own suspicions more bluntly: "You're just dating my son until he gives you a good review. Then you'll drop him and he'll be back here with one of those "nice girls" from the escort service." Regardless of Valerie's intentions, Jay fears that having to give a negative critique of her performance will spell an end to their relationship, and this gives rise to our third act conflict, which does a good job of establishing the two key driving and often conflicting factors behind Jay's character - his desire to find love, respect and acceptance in the world and his unrelenting commitment to his professional ethics. Jay wants to be liked but he also aspires to be a beacon of integrity in a cultural landscape where mindless blockbusters rule and so many of his fellow critics are bought out by the studios, and he finds his dual impulses at odds when he is forced to view Kiss of Death and discovers, to his horror, that Valerie has no flair for acting and that no self-respecting critic could possibly give her a pass. In the end, Jay's professional integrity wins out and he slaughters Valerie's performance in his televised review, albeit in the gentlest, most sugarcoated way possible. He returns to his apartment, terrified that Valerie will no longer be there, and is relieved to find her standing in wait for him. Only she immediately slaps him and indignantly declares, "You're fat, you're bald, and even for a critic you're ugly!" before storming out, making a beeline for the nearest airport and boarding a plane to Paris (for some reason), with Jay trailing her every step of the way and imploring her not to leave him. We get an epilogue in which Jay is still in low spirits about losing Valerie, but Marty manages to spur him out of his funk by suggesting that he direct his festering rage at a critic screening of Sylvester Stallone's lasted flick, in which he plays a concert pianist. "To the multiplex!" Jay declares, and the episode ends.

Here is my major contention with this ending. It can be split into two separate points, but it comes down more-or-less to the same thing:

• Firstly, WHY was Valerie dating Jay? Was she simply trying to wheedle a few words of professional endorsement from him before going her merry way, as Eleanor infers, or was she really in love with him, and genuinely spurned to hear such a damning appraisal from the object of her affections? The script never specifies, and from what we have to go on, either scenario seems entirely possible. And while I suspect that we are intended to see Valerie as a hoodwinker, for no other reason than her improbable aptitude for saying everything that Jay wants to hear, the ultimate implication is that it's not important either way. Jeremy's advice on the matter was that actresses are a dangerous class, period, so Valerie was always a ticking time bomb and the particulars of her wanting to be with Jay are irrelevant.
• Secondly, IF Eleanor is correct, and Valerie was only dating Jay because she was fishing for a good review, after which she intended to dump him and never look back, then what does it matter whether he panned her performance or not? He was going to have his heart broken either way, so perhaps we should feel relieved that he didn't flush his professional integrity down the toilet for a relationship founded on false pretenses? All the same, would anybody feel genuinely satisfied if that were confirmed as the outcome? I doubt it - I think we need to believe that there is some prospect that things could work out between Jay and Valerie in order for there to be anything much at stake. At the very least, there needs to be some semblance of  a bond between them, so that we can actually feel a sense of loss at the end, when Jay chooses to remain true to his ethics at the risk of alienating the person he loves. Otherwise, it just amounts to a shallow exercise in rug-pulling, which is what we're left with.

What I think is going on is that Valerie comes to Jay from what she assumes to be a mutual understanding that if she sleeps with him and goes through all the motions of being his lover then he'll give her a good review. Hence, when he fails to make good on his side of the unspoken agreement, she gets angry because as far as she's concerned, he's the one who took advantage of her. Jay, however, is naive (or lonely and deluded) enough to have convinced himself that this is the real deal, and to hang his heart on a relationship with a clear expiry date. It's a situation in which both parties could be perceived as equally vulnerable, and there would certainly be ample scope for pathos, were the script actually interested in shining a little more light on Valerie's perspective. The harsh reality, I fear, is that the episode doesn't care to delve any deeper beneath the surface of Valerie's character, because as far as it's concerned, there's nothing to uncover. As noted above, Valerie is less a character than a plot device, and her last minute 180 degree turn with Jay is afforded no deeper motivation than that it's needed to suit the demands of the script. How self-aware is Valerie about her acting abilities? Are we supposed to view her as a kind of wily femme fatale (a couple of allusions are made throughout to Sharon Stone's character from Basic Instinct) or are we to view her efforts to win over Jay as an act of extreme desperation, to cover for the fact that she has no confidence in her talent? Why does she fly out to Paris after discarding Jay, other than that the ending requires her to get as far away from him as possible? Alas, we never get any clarity on what was rattling away in Valerie's head this entire time, not because the episode is seeking ambiguity on the subject, but because it's totally indifferent. All that matters is that Jay got rejected, thus cementing his status as a lovelorn loser who's royally screwed whatever tactic he chooses. That, ultimately, is the real purpose of "Pilot" - to demonstrate roundly that everything stinks.

On the DVD commentary for "Pilot", Jean and Reiss predictably offer no insight into Valerie's characterisation or motives, although they do imply, interestingly, that the need to secure allies in the business is the underlying basis for Jay's friendship with Jeremy. They acknowledge that the entire notion of Jay being pally with Jeremy seems somewhat improbable, given that, on the surface, the two should be natural adversaries (one abhors cinematic refuse, the other creates it), but reflect that it is not uncommon for actors and critics to form tight, mutually beneficial relationships, and cite a cautionary anecdote in which Dustin Hoffman turned down an interview offer from a television critic who professed to be a great fan of his, and who subsequently went on to pan Hoffman's latest performance in retaliation. The implication that Jay's camaraderie with Jeremy is itself a facet of the "feed me and you get a good review" mentality that characterises much of the real-life film industry is startling, given the subject of this very episode. We get all this hand-wringing over Valerie's motives for getting close to Jay, and yet it's hinted that this may all be a broader, unexplored problem happening right under Jay's nose, and Valerie is only the tip of the iceberg. If we are expected to draw this conclusion about Jeremy, then arguably there is something quietly misogynistic about it too - to get a foot in the door, Valerie's imperative is to sleep with Jay, whereas all Jeremy has to do is to hang around in restaurants and swap life advice, and neither Jay or the writers feel the need to probe his sincerity any further (added to which, Valerie is not the only instance we get in "Pilot" of a woman in the media biz who is implied to have slept with a man in exchange for professional favours - at one point, Duke gives an interview to a female journalist who compliments him on how great in bed he was last night). Personally, I can believe that Jay and Jeremy's relationship might have started in that manner, but that they've gotten the point now where they're familiar enough to have a genuine rapport. There is a vaguely Sam Sheepdog and Ralph Wolf vibe to their dynamic, which is most apparent during a sequence where a couple of adoring fans approach Jeremy to compliment him on his performance in Crocodile Gandhi, and Jeremy gleefully informs Jay that, "You see, people did like that picture!" Jay indignantly responds that, "I'm sorry, I just didn't think you made a very convincing Mahatma!", and we see shades of professional enmity momentarily spiking their genial banter. This also confirms that, contrary to what's suggested in the commentary, Jay doesn't give Jeremy glowing appraisals where he feels it's not merited, and that Jeremy harbours no hard feelings in return. But then, his star power is such that a negative review from Jay is unlikely to break his career.

Elsewhere on the DVD commentary for "Pilot", Jean and Reiss acknowledge that the one big mistake they made all throughout Season 1 was in overselling Jay's pathetic personal life. At the beginning of the series, the only truly positive relationships he had were with Marty (who clearly reveres him, but seems every bit as awed by Ardeth's new partner Alberto), Margo (with whom he doesn't hang out too often) and Jeremy (who doesn't like Jay half as much as he likes himself), and most other characters seemed to either barely tolerate him (Doris, Eleanor, Duke) or actively dislike him (Ardeth, Shackleford, the entire populace of New York). In his review of the episode on The AV Club, Nathan Rabin points out that the episode finds itself in a tough position, because when you look past all his relationship issues, Jay does lead quite the enviable existence: "over the course of a single episode we learn that he is a Pulitzer Prize winner, makes $271,000 a year appearing on a national television show and has sex with a beautiful starlet the night of their first date." As such, there is the omnipresent risk that Jay's non-stop carping will merely translate into the insufferable self-pity of an extremely well-off individual, a sentiment certainly felt by Doris when Jay confides with her his concern that his job isn't worth the $271,000 salary tag, and she retaliates by setting his head on fire. Jay is not the everyman that Homer Simpson is; his celebrity and his cultivated outlook elevate him well above the average man, and Jean and Reiss feel obligated to humble the living Hell out of him - possibly to the point of excess, so that Jay ends up wandering through most of the first season in a state of off-putting wretchedness. "Pilot" represents this excess at its most ill-judged, most notably the sequence where Jay willfully surrenders his pride and follows Valerie to the airport on the futile presumption that enough grovelling will get her to turn around and profess her love for him at any moment. The sequence can't seem to decide whether it's going for pathos or dark comedy, but doesn't quite manage either, leading us only into black hole of uncomfortably numb despair - the culmination, in which Jay is shown sobbing in the dark and abandoned airport lounge, transcends mere bleakness and feels downright nihilistic. The closing punchline, which implies that Jay's merciless skewering of the Hollywood product is but an outlet for his own unexpressed feelings of personal inadequacy, does not take off the sting, but instead drags us ever deeper downward into that inescapable well of nihilism. There were episodes of The Simpsons that incorporated unhappy endings too - eg: "Simpson and Delilah" and "Oh Brother Where Art Thou?", but they were never this implacably cold about it.

On that basis, I have a lot of sympathy for those viewers who tuned in for the show's debut on ABC, watched this episode and immediately thought, "Yeah, I'm done." "Pilot" was not, thankfully, the first episode I personally ever saw, but if it had been, then I suspect that I too might have had second thoughts about persisting with the series. Yet, for as sour a first impression as "Pilot" seems determined to make, Jean and Reiss reflect on the commentary that The Critic was probably never likely to charm a substantial viewership on ABC, on which it always felt hopelessly out of place. They recall a sorry story about how soon after "Pilot" first aired, they arrived at their office and were greeted by a stack of hate mail (something they had apparently never encountered while working on The Simpsons); this was largely concerned the fact that Jay had slept with Valerie within hours of meeting her, which was way too ribald for the kind of audience ABC traditionally netted (although things have reportedly changed since). Fox, in theory, should have been a more fitting platform for the series, and yet a problem it ran into there was that it was considered too tame. Like Jay himself, The Critic was a perpetual misfit, blighted with the misfortune of never being in the right place at the right time.

Since I've been mostly down on "Pilot", I'll cite something that I really love about it, which is the entire "Beauty and King Dork" musical sequence, a parody of the now iconic ballroom sequence from Disney's Beauty and The Beast. This stands on its own terms as one of the most singularly wonderful moments of the entire series. At one point, Jay envisions Valerie as Belle and himself as the Manhattan equivalent of the Beast, King Dork (a callback to the graffiti sprayed across his car in the first act), and his apartment is suddenly transformed into a luxurious dance hall, complete with chandelier and enchanted household objects. As a sequence, it's both emotionally transportive and replete with tinges of trouble, since Jay's life is certainly no Disney movie (on top of which, the fantasy is made somewhat disturbing for the presence of a singing toilet). And visually, it's beautiful, boasting computer animation that hasn't aged too shabbily.

Last off, although Jean and Reiss are at pains to state that while developing The Critic they were consciously looking to avoid comparisons with The Simpsons, there are a few features that were blatantly lifted wholesale from the Book of The Simpsons. The opening sequence for The Critic has its equivalent of the Chalkboard Gag and the Couch Gag (themselves inspired by the titles for Mickey Mouse Club, where a number of possible misfortunes would await Donald Duck whenever he banged the club gong). The sequence, which takes us through a typical day in the life of Jay Sherman, opens with Jay being awoken by an early morning telephone call - the caller and their unwelcome message changes with every episode. Then, at the end of the sequence, we see Jay on Coming Attractions, and a preview spoofing some popular movie, followed by Jay's review. The clip varies from episode to episode (myself, I'm particularly fond of the parody of The Fugitive where Harrison Ford does his infamous dam leap and gets scored by a panel of judges), but his review doesn't. Everything stinks.

Here's what we get in "Pilot":

• The Call: Eleanor - "Jay, this is your mother. Your father and I are taking you out of our will. We feel you already have enough money. Oh yes, and happy birthday!"
• The Movie: Alien 3 (David Fincher, 1992). This parodies the sequence where the Xenomorph corners Sigourney Weaver but mysteriously refrains from killing her, but with a more candy-coated twist. Here, the Xenomorph opens its mouth to reveal its inner set of jaws, which lovingly kisses Weaver and they stare fondly.

And finally a quote, because they're fun:

Quote of the episode: Jay - "Son, let me tell you the key to holding onto a woman. You must building from a foundation of trust and understanding. If that doesn't work, tell her you have a tumor. Either way, the key word is growth."

A Star Is Burns (aka Why I Really Am Saying Boo-Urns)

Every so often, I keep threatening to take a closer look at The Critic, the short-lived but fabulously sharp primetime animated sitcom that aimed high and went down in a fiery blaze not once, but twice back in the mid-1990s. And now, finally, I am genuinely serious about making good on that threat. There's a review of the first episode coming shortly. First, though, we're obligated to cover that peculiar time in the spring of '95 when titular critic Jay Sherman temporarily left his New York abode to drop in on the Simpsons household and host the first Springfield Film Festival. I speak of course of Simpsons episode 2F31, "A Star Is Burns" of Season 6, and what an earth-shattering event it was. This was the first occasion on which The Simpsons had attempted any kind of full-on crossover with another show (obviously, I'm not counting cameo appearances for the purposes of a single scene or gag, such as when the entire cast of Cheers showed up in "Fear of Flying"), and The Critic doesn't seem like too left of field a series for them to extend a token of kinship to. It was created by Al Jean and Mike Reiss, who had previously worked as showrunners on The Simpsons for Seasons 3 and 4. Jon Lovitz, who voices Jay, was likewise no stranger to the Simpsons universe, having made numerous guest appearances throughout its second and third seasons, where he played various characters of the week, most notably Marge's high school sweetheart Artie Ziff. In order to fit in with the Simpsons universe, Jay was forced to undergo a slight assimilation process, so that he was given yellow skin and equipped with the characteristic Simpsons overbite. If only the rest of his transition could have gone so smoothly, for Jay was in for one hell of a bumpy ride as he made his way over to Springfield. Prior to "The Principal and The Pauper" of Season 9, this was probably the single most controversial episode of the series (both episodes were written by Ken Keeler, coincidentally). As with "The Principal and The Pauper", a lot of that controversy went on behind the scenes as well as in front of it - in fact, in this case the backstage drama easily overshadows the fan reaction. To this day, "A Star Is Burns" remains a divisive episode, but no viewer negativity would appear to match that of series creator Matt Groening, who jammed every button at his disposal in an effort to get the episode pulled. Groening later went on record as saying that he was "nervous and opposed" to "The Simpsons Spin-Off Showcase" of Season 8, which he felt upset the reality of the series, but that's small potatoes compared to what "A Star Is Burns" brought out in him back in 1995. This particular episode was the brainchild of James L. Brooks, who worked as executive producer on both series, and we know that he and Groening didn't always see eye-to-eye when it came to handling the Simpsons brand.

So, what's the deal with The Critic, and how did it end up encroaching on Simpsons territory? Premiering on ABC in January 1994, the series followed the misadventures of Jay Sherman (Lovitz), a New York film critic and host of cable TV show Coming Attractions. Jay has a low opinion of contemporary film-making standards, and endeavors to maintain his discerning sensibilities in face of the endless slew of sequels, remakes and blockbuster decadence that characterised mainstream film-making back in the 1990s (the guy would certainly have a lot to say about the current state of Hollywood cinema); his audacious tendency to pan anything popular makes him a frequent target of public scorn. His personal life isn't much to speak of; women tend to give him a wide berth, and he's still feeling the aftershocks of his acrimonious divorce from his ex-wife Ardeth (Brenda Vaccaro/Rhea Perlman). Jay never knew his biological parents, having been given up for adoption at birth, and his adoptive family are well-to-do but exceedingly eccentric. Other characters include his best friend, Australian leading man Jeremy Hawke (Maurice LaMarche), his chain-smoking make-up lady Doris (Doris Grau) and his eventual long-term girlfriend Alice Tompkins (Park Overall) who was introduced at the start of the second season that nearly never was. The Critic bombed on ABC and was cancelled mid-season, but strings were pulled and the series was granted a second chance on Fox the following spring. The new season premiered - what do you know - on my 10th birthday, in a time slot right after The Simpsons, and Brooks thought that a great way to boost publicity for the event would be to precede it with a special crossover episode in which Jay came to Springfield and rubbed shoulders with America's most popular cartoon family (well, it's as Patty and Selma say in this very episode - the easiest way to be popular is to leech off the popularity of others). Brooks, along with Jean and Reiss, had enough clout to get the episode made, but Groening resisted every step of the way and ultimately made his displeasure public when he went to the press about it shortly before the episode debuted. Brooks in turn called Groening a "gifted, cuddly ingrate" and argued that for all the hard work they had put into The Simpsons over the years, Jean and Reiss had earned the right to a little support.

"A Star Is Burns" made it to air, despite Groening's objections, but so determined was Groening to be seen to have washed his hands of the episode that he had his name removed from the credits. As David Sims points out in his review of the episode on the AV Club, whoever was responsible for removing Groening's name from the opening credits did a really conspicuous job of it too. I appreciate that this was likely Groening's last ditch, eleventh hour howl of protest when he realised that he couldn't get the episode pulled, and they were probably obligated to to carry out the edit very hastily, but look - not only has Groening's name been messily scrubbed from the chattering cyclops (squint, and you can make out the blue patch where it's been painted out), poor Sam Simon has had his credit semi-kamikazed in the process.

The first time I saw "A Star Is Burns", I had never even heard of The Critic (to this day, I still have no idea which channel, if any, aired the series in the UK, but they clearly gave it zero fanfare), and naively assumed that Jay was an original character created for the purposes of this story (in the same vein as other Lovitzians Llewellyn Sinclair and Professor Lombardo). I'll say this, though - I did think it a little odd when he randomly reappeared in "Hurricane Neddy" of Season 8. The second time I saw "A Star Is Burns", I went in none the wiser, but my brother was a little more perceptive - he picked up on that comment Bart makes about detecting a cheap cartoon crossover and noted, "Oh, that Jay character must be from another cartoon." Well, that just blew my mind then and there. I had to know more, so I did the research and that's how I discovered The Critic.

Strangely enough, I think that "A Star Is Burns" works a whole lot better as an episode if you're NOT familiar with The Critic. If you can forget that this is a crossover and accept Jay as another of those one-off creations that Lovitz would intermittently voice, there doesn't seem to be anything especially off or out-of-step about this one. Problem is that having watched every episode of The Critic, and knowing exactly what kind of character Jay is in context, I now find it damned near impossible to see past the overwhelming hokeyness of the scenario. Partly, it's because it's hard to imagine the circumstances under which Jay would conceivably become this tight with the Simpsons. Groening protested that "The Critic has nothing to do with the Simpsons' world", and while I suspect he was getting more at the fact that the two shows were conceived independently and never intended to be part of the same narrative universe, he's also correct in the sense that Jay and the Simpsons hail from very different walks of life and are not exactly a natural fit when it comes to palling around under the same roof. I'm pretty sure Jay would regard the Simpsons, and Springfield in general, as the kind of uncultured, blockbuster-guzzling degenerates he deplores on his show week after week, and Springfield in return would regard Jay as much the same elitist killjoy as his viewership on his own turf. It's as if Jay knows, the second he walks through the Simpsons' front door, that it's within his interests to cozy up to these small-town plebeians, no matter how much they repulse him, and the Simpsons likewise understand that the onus is on them to extol the praises of their brand new neighbour, thus appeasing the higher powers that be. There's a thick layer of phoniness that pervades each and every moment of interaction between these uneasy bedfellows. Is there a chance it could possibly be deliberate, I wonder? Is the phoniness itself part of the joke, as a dig at cheap cartoon crosses that bring characters who would logically be incompatible together, purely for the purposes of promoting two brands for the price of one? After all, we do get a smattering of obvious meta commentary on the underlying tackiness of the enterprise, all of it from Bart, who acts as an outlet for the show's self-consciousness throughout. There's that aforementioned moment where Jay's arrival is heralded by a TV announcement for The Flintstones Meet The Jetsons (an actual feature film from Hanna-Barbera's Superstars 10 era - shall we go over that some time?), which prompts to Bart to observe, apprehensively, that a cheap cartoon crossover is close at hand. Jay enters in, and Bart obediently informs him that, "I really love your show; I think all kids should watch it," before shuddering and admitting under his breath that he feels so dirty. Later, at the end of the episode, Jay thanks the Simpsons for their hospitality, and suggests that they might like to visit his show sometime, which Bart promptly dismisses: "Nah, we're not gonna be doing that." Ostensibly, the "show" to which they each refer is Coming Attractions, but knowing who Jay actually is, and the real raison d'être of his visit to Springfield, we're unlikely to miss out on the implicit exchange between Jay and Bart, with Bart insincerely endorsing The Critic and then reflecting on how compromised he feels. In his final scene, Jay begins laying the ground for another possible crossover in which the Simpsons would appear on The Critic; Bart's instant rejection of the invitation is both an acknowledgement of The Simpsons' superior status in the pop culture hierarchy, and a reassertion of the series' commitment to the integrity that made it so superior in the first place. (Incidentally, it is slightly ironic that Bart, of all characters, would be the one to provide this commentary, seeing how Nancy Cartwright was the only core member of the Simpsons cast to also voice a recurring character on The Critic - there, she was Margo, Jay's adoptive sister.)

The episode does know, then, just how crummy its whole set-up is, and in that sense, it's reminiscent of  "So It's Come To This: A Simpsons Clip Show", which also threw in a few self-aware digs at the expense of its own dubious premise. As with "So It's Come To This", though, the self-awareness makes up only a tiny percentage of the episode overall, and when it's not being self-aware it seems to be playing its dubious premise more-or-less straight. When the family talk about how great Jay is, laugh at his jokes and hang upon his every word, they are apparently being completely serious. There's something about Lisa's immediate reaction to Jay - "I like him. He's smart, he's sensitive, he's clearly not obsessed with his physical appearance - that doesn't seem altogether different from what she would later say to Wiggum in "The Simpsons Spin-Off Showcase", only minus the acerbic irony. In spite of his initial and parting wariness toward Jay, Bart seems to take a genuine shine to the family's latest house guest, trailing him adoringly as he sings one of two hot dog advertising jingles I would probably never have heard of if not for this show. As for Marge, she develops something resembling a school girl crush on Jay, giggling at the mention of his name, and Patty and Selma likewise seem pretty taken with him (until he goes and spoils it all by saying something stupid like "MacGyver's gay") - which is really odd, when you consider that one of the running gags of The Critic had to do with Jay's total lack of charisma with the fairer sex (although this was something they were attempting to tone down in the second season, hence the introduction of Alice).

As strange and jarring as all of this Jay worship is, it thankfully does serve more of an immediate story purpose than to simply hammer home the impression that Jay is this awesome guy who you should totally want to hang with. The only member of the Simpson household who isn't thrilled to pieces to have Jay bedding down on their terrain is Homer, who quickly starts to feel threatened when he observes how much more revered Jay is than him. This, honestly, is the one aspect of the crossover that I think really works, in part because it's the only aspect that seems interested in exploring any kind of culture cash between the family and this uncanny outsider. The episode does a nifty job of highlighting the similarities between Homer and Jay, but also their fundamental differences. After watching Jay brandish his vast assortment of Pulitzer Prizes, Golden Globes and People's Choice Awards at the family table, Homer counters by producing a trophy of his own, which he won for a belching contest at work. It may not be as esteemed as a Pulitzer Prize, but to Homer it's as good and valid a symbol of his personal worth as any. Only Jay proceeds to let rip the most unnaturally awe-inspiring belch imaginable, and Bart dutifully pushes Homer's trophy into his collection. Jay may be articulate and intellectual, but he shares in Homer's vulgar appetites. He presents as the perfect foil to Homer, being Homer and the anti-Homer all in one. He embodies many of the defining characteristics that make Homer who he is - they're both gluttonous, balding, and prone to physical mishaps - while being smarter and more successful in every way. This works, because arguably there is a clever subtext in Homer's insecurity about having to his share his territory with another prime-time animated protagonist who potentially could upstage and supplant him. Despite the false unity between the two shows on display in this episode, The Simpsons knew that The Critic was competition, and that as such it was to be regarded with suspicion. At this point in the series' run, The Simpsons was still enjoying its status as the only primetime animated sitcom to have made any kind of significant cultural splash, and any success on the part of The Critic inevitably posed a threat to that status. Moreover, there is perhaps the slight fear, communicated through Homer, that The Critic, if it succeeded, could potentially end up outclassing The Simpsons as the go-to "thinking man's cartoon", not least because it boasted a protagonist who was discerning and educated and championed those values (whereas in The Simpsons, the character who most obviously does that - though he doesn't feature in this episode - is the villain). There is a joke in a Season 1 episode of The Critic in which a disgruntled viewer is watching Jay on TV and groans, "They curb violence, but they allow this." He then switches over to The Simpsons, where we see Homer injure himself by stepping on a rake and Bart yelling, "Ay caramba!", and contentedly muses that, "This I understand!" This playful dig at the series where Jean and Reiss had earned their stripes carries the implicit accusations that The Simpsons spoke to the masses because it was, at heart, a crude cartoon stuffed with lowbrow characters and noisy pratfalls. In "A Star Is Burns" we see The Simpsons basically continue this gag with the implication that The Critic puts them in the shade, and that suddenly has them feeling a little shame-faced. (If you ask me, though, they didn't have anything to worry about - for as witty and cleverly-written as The Critic was, I would argue that The Simpsons is definitely the smarter and more highbrow of the two.*)

Jay himself doesn't really have much of an arc - the emotional stakes of the episode, as far as the family are concerned, have to do with Homer's desire to demonstrate that he can be as discerning as Jay, which he fulfils by persuading Marge to let him join the festival jury. Meanwhile, Jay mainly just shows up, shows up Homer, fulfils his duties as festival judge and leaves, with no indication that he's learned or grown from any of the experiences therein. Ultimately, what enables Homer to overcome his differences with Jay is their unity against a common enemy in the form of Mr Burns, who sees the festival as an opportunity to salvage his own self-image and orders the production of a ridiculously lavish biopic about and starring himself; in the process he ends up becoming the Springfieldian analogue to the kind of self-serving Hollywood excess to which Sherman is diametrically opposed. And yet what's driving Burns throughout "A Star Is Burns" is not altogether different from what's driving Homer internally or Jay externally - all three characters just want to be liked and admired. In fact, this is exactly what motivates Springfield to hold the film festival in the first place. The desire to radically alter one's public profile ends up being the prevailing theme of "A Star Is Burns", and I don't think the episode ever escapes the irony that while we have all these Simpsons characters (Homer, Burns and everybody else in town) bending over backwards to change how the world perceives them, the entire episode was conceived to convince you to like and pay attention to this overlooked show that had already failed on ABC. Homer and the rest of Springfield may be the uncultured degenerates in this scenario, but it's by hanging with them that Jay seeks to increase his credibility as a character and entice you into following him over to his show. As Jay bids his farewells to the Simpsons at the Springfield airport, the implicit suggestion accompanying the sequence is "Wouldn't you just love to tag along with Jay and see what wacky adventures he gets up to in New York?"

Did the stunt pay off? Yes...in the short term. The Critic received better ratings after moving to Fox and hitching itself to the Simpsons bandwagon...until it was moved to another time slot, and its luck once again ran out. On the DVD commentary for the episode "Sherman, Woman and Child", Jean and Reiss state that the two problems facing The Critic were thus - a) the then-current president of Fox, who was not in charge when the show got picked up, was not a fan and b) The Critic was not a 20th Century Fox production, so Fox had less of a vested interest in making it succeed. They reflect that as painful as their story is, it is in no way unique, and that countless series (among them, other primetime animations like Futurama and The PJs) have been sunk in much the same fashion. "Television is the only medium that eats its young", laments LaMarche in Johnny Carson's voice. The DVD commentaries for The Critic (which, unlike The Simpsons, were only recorded for select episodes) can be a difficult listen, as there's no doubt in my mind that the series was a real labour of love on Jean and Reiss's part and, for much as they try to laugh the whole thing off, you can tell they're still hurt and bewildered by the experience.

Now that The Critic is long gone and "A Star Is Burns" has lived out its original purpose to persuade you to watch the show that was coming RIGHT AFTER, in a way it stands as a nice little monument to the fact that The Critic existed. I'm sure that there are plenty of viewers out there who, like myself, were able to discover the show after the fact thanks to Jay's appearance here. But regardless of how you feel about the episode itself, it represents a pretty unfortunate chapter in the series' production history, and it's unlikely it will ever escape the shadow of that perfect storm of controversy hanging over it. It's hard to say if Groening's position on the episode has softened at all in the intervening quarter-century, although he is notably absent from the DVD commentary for "A Star Is Burns", suggesting that he retained his hard feelings well into the 00s - or, at the very least, he still found the matter too sore to talk about back then. Brooks is present, but he tactfully avoids any mention of his dispute with Groening. Some fans consider this whitewashing, but I suppose they just didn't want to be airing their dirty laundry in public all over again. Instead, we get a ton of jokes from Lovitz about how Jean and Reiss are gay, which, as per the DVD commentaries for The Critic, he was fond of making all through that series too. (While we're on the subject, there's a lovely tip of the hat to Harvey Feirstein in this episode too.)

As a crossover, I don''t think "A Star Is Burns" quite pulls it off - Jay's "friendship" with the Simpsons feels forced and unconvincing, despite the episode's attempts to throw in a little self-conscious commentary via Bart. And while Jay's rivalry with Homer provides scope for some interesting subtext, it's developed and resolved in a fairly perfunctory manner. The jury vote is ultimately split between two entries - Barney's sensitive, poetic piece about his struggles with alcoholism and Burns' ridiculously overwrought love letter to himself (fortunately for Burns, the system in Springfield is as corrupt as in Hollywood, and two of the jurors, Quimby and Krusty, are susceptible to bribery). Homer has the opportunity to break the tie, but votes with his viscera, for the most lowbrow entry of the lot (Hans Moleman's "Man Getting Hit By Football", which is what it says on the tin), because it's the one that best speaks to him, thus reaffirming his status as an uncultured plebeian. Homer cannot help being Homer, even when he's determined to prove otherwise. Jay persuades him to rethink his vote with a glib little sliver of imploration (although it does provide us with the sight of Jay being socked in the groin by a football, one of only two instances in the episode to accurately convey what a magnet for physical punishment Jay is on his own turf), Homer watches Barney's film again and changes his mind, and that's it.

The most successful aspect of the crossover has nothing to do with the family, it being the scene in which Rainier Wolfcastle appears on Coming Attractions to promote his new film, McBain: Let's Get Silly (this was from the era in which Arnold Schwarzenegger, on whom Wolfcastle is obviously based, was trying to broaden his horizons as a comic actor, after making a name for himself in R-rated action flicks like The Terminator, Predator and Total Recall). I have no qualms about how Jay is represented in this scene; he regards this interloper from the Simpsons verse with the all searing contempt I would expect, and it's a sequence that feels as if it would have worked just as aptly in an episode of The Critic. Another nice touch is the shot of the New York skyline shortly before Jay accepts Marge's invitation, which is a nod to the opening titles of The Critic. This is the only glimpse we get into Jay's world outside of Coming Attractions, and it is fascinating to see it reinterpreted in the Simpsons animation style.

The amenable (if awkward) alliance between the two shows is further underscored by the background music in this sequence - as Jay is strolling along the streets of Manhattan and reading Marge's letter, we hear the Simpsons theme filtered through the woozy clarinet tones of The Critic (fun fact: the theme for The Critic was composed by Hans Zimmer at the same time that he was working with Brooks on the music for I'll Do Anything), which recurs at the closing credits.

What enables "A Star Is Burns" to function as an episode, though, has overall very little to do with Jay's input, but rather is implicit in the title. Burns' foray into the world of glossy, romanticised biopics stands out as by far the strongest thing about it, and I would argue that he's actually pretty sympathetic throughout, if only because he's such a flat-out underdog. In fact, try watching the episode from the perspective that Burns is really the misguided anti-hero of the story and the outcome becomes bitterly poignant in ways that not even Barney's oblique sign-off "Don't cry for me, I'm already dead," quite touches on. His conceited desire to influence the masses through the artful manipulation of his onscreen image is obviously deeply insidious (if not too far-removed from the episode's own objectives), yet he approaches the endeavor with such jaw-dropping naivety that I think you end up feeling for him in spite of it. And he seems to whole-heartedly believe in what he's doing. When he asks Smithers, on reviewing the hostile reaction to his masturbatory labour of (self) love, "Are they booing me?", it's as if he cannot wrap his head around the notion that people could perceive his work - and himself - as anything other than sheer excellence. As ludicrous as his picture is, one has to admire the grotesque extravagance of it all, particularly the opening titles, which boast an obscene number of writers (we also have Tommy Tune playing Smithers and Bumblebee Man playing...himself, I guess? This had all the makings to become the best movie ever). Perhaps there is an additional layer of irony in how the wrong-headed efforts that merely magnify the dissonance between how Burns wishes to be seen and how his fellow Springfieldians actually perceive him are what make him pitiable to the viewer, so that he ends up becoming something of a tragic figure the narrative he is actually living. Determined not to be outdone, Burns proceeds to take his battle all the way to the Academy Awards, desperately seeking affirmation of himself and his art (even if he has to pay for it), but discovers that the Academy are far more corrupt than even he could have anticipated. Either that, or they have all the sensibilities of Homer Simpson, for they award the Oscar Burns was in the running for to George C. Scott in Man Getting Hit By Football.

Then again, not getting what you want can be a tremendous stroke of luck. Success is what finally destroys Barney, after all. Unlike Burns, Barney doesn't appear to have made his entry because he felt that he had anything to prove, and seems to have stumbled into his talent in an entirely unassuming fashion. He alone has not set out to to convince the world see him differently, but his victory at the festival convinces him, however fleetingly, that he merits far greater respect than he's has afforded himself, and during his acceptance speech he vows to go sober so that he can truly realise his full potential. Unfortunately, his fate is sealed when he receives his prize, a lifetime of Duff Beer, and winds up being dragged ever deeper into the spiral of addiction. The emergence of the sensitive, artistic Barney who has supposedly been lying dormant all along leads not to liberation, but to the reaffirmation that the vulgar, disorientated Barney is the one that must ultimately prevail. Of all the participants, Barney is the most sincere about genuine self-improvement, but he ends up at the most damning endpoint - the realisation that, due to the nature of the series, a newly-opened door leads right back to where he came in.

As an epilogue, obviously there are multiple movie references throughout this episode, but I wanted to create a rundown of what each of the festival entries specifically is parodying:

• Bright Lights, Beef Jerky (Apu's film) - The title is a reference to Bright Lights, Big City (James Bridges, 1988), although the film itself appears to be a homage to Kevin Smith's then-recent indie favourite Clerks (1994).
• Moe Better Booze (Moe's film) - The title is derived from Mo' Better Blues (Spike Lee, 1990), while the musical number performed by Moe is based on "Money, Money" from Cabaret (Bob Fosse, 1972).
• Man Getting Hit By Football (Moleman's film) - The quaint title cards and piano intro hark back to the silent slapstick films of Harold Lloyd, Charlie Chaplin, etc, although the film itself looks to be based on the kind of degrading camcorder footage one would expect to encounter in America's Funniest Home Videos, an allusion made explicit when Homer insists "This contest is over, give the man the $10,000!", in reference to the prize up for grabs on that series.
• Pukahontas (Barney's film) - The unfortunate title is a nod to Disney's then-upcoming animated feature Pocahontas (Mike Gabriel & Eric Goldberg, 1995). The film itself largely seems to be an amalgamation of various student film cliches, although he time lapse photography of the clouds sweeping overhead and the music that plays during that sequence specifically recall Godfrey Reggio's 1982 arthouse classic Koyaanisqatsi and Philip Glass's score.
• A Burns For All Seasons (Burns' film) - The title alludes to A Man For All Seasons (1966), Fred Zinnemann's Best Picture-winning biopic about Sir Thomas Moore, although parts of the film have been closely extracted from ET: The Extra-Terrestrial (Steven Spielberg, 1982) and Ben-Hur (William Wyler, 1959).

And finally here's a fun game - spot the festival attendee on MDMA.

* Exhibit A: Apparently in The Critic they made it a general policy to only parody bigger Hollywood movies because that was all they expected their viewers to have seen. According to one of the DVD commentaries, in their first season there was a big debate as to whether The Piano, a New Zealand film which had recently won the Palme d'Or at Cannes, was too obscure a target for their viewers. Exhibit B: In the first season of The Simpsons, they had an episode where Bart goes to France and gets stuck at a vineyard with two characters from Jean de Florette.