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."
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