‘Long Story Short’ review: The hysterical hysteria of life

Long Story Short is a bitingly funny and thoughtful animated comedy that further proves the brilliance of creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg. 

Stories about families and the dysfunction wrought by them are hardly new. They are, in many ways, the foundation of the television landscape. Pick any era of television and you’ll find a family defined by their desire to understand one another, but often their inability to fully land on the same page. From All in the Family, to Everybody Loves Raymond, The Cosby Show, and Full House, Malcom in the Middle, Rosanne, Leave it to Beaver, Fresh off the Boat, Succession, Fresh Prince of Bel Air, The Brady Bunch, and so, so many more, television is a frenzy of familial tales. Such is the case with life – the narratives that bear the ripest fruit will always be the ones we understand the most. And we all, by default, understand the pains and joys of familial connection.

All of which to say is that, in some respects, showrunner Raphael Bob-Waksberg (Bojack Horseman) faced a looming, steep hill when approaching his latest, Long Story Short. It’s exemplary. Made more so by the fact that he chooses not to deviate far from the blueprints of what has worked before in this method of storytelling. Parents don’t understand their kids, and vice versa. And despite their differences, they rally and come together when the occasion calls for it. But through understated writing and character-specificities, the series manages to refresh the old and revitalize the longstanding traditional sensibilities that give these stories their spark.

Life is messy – we are messy – and, in the end, we’re all doing the very best we can do better ourselves, enrich our lives, and spend as much time as we can with one another in ways that matter and ways that don’t. And it’s that last bit – the seemingly inconsequential bit – that makes Long Story Short such engaging viewing. It understands the humor in the collective understanding of life’s follies, our missteps and deviations, our inability to point North and go the best route. And, vitally, the laughter laced through all those stumbles.

Silliness gives way to profound character moments.

Long Story Short follows the Schwooper’s, a middle-class Jewish family over the course of a few decades. Through nonlinear storytelling, the series follows the lives of the three siblings, Avi (Ben Feldman), Shira (Abbi Jacobson), and Yoshi (Max Greenfield) from childhood to adulthood, often within the same episode. The series will begin with a flashback to days at the beach or Yoshi’s Bar Mitzvah before pivoting to Avi grappling with parenthood as his own marriage crumbles.

Each sibling goes through their own countless growing periods. Shira falls in love with another woman, Kendra (Nicole Byer), who, in her own journey, found her way to Judaism, and the two have twins. Yoshi moves through life rudderless and constantly in need of direction, before finding grounding in becoming modern Orthodox. Meanwhile, Avi spends his adult life grappling with what he saw as the restrictions of their religious childhood, his desire not to subject his daughter to it, and how all of it manifests in both a conflict of faith and a war of self.

All of which sounds heavy, but the series, like Bojack Horseman, understands a crucial balance of light and the expected angst of humanity. And while Long Story Short never shifts into the darker gear that ‘Bojack’ came to exist on, it does sustain itself by capturing the inexplicable, unpredictable pendulum of life. There are highs and lows that comes with existence, and the series beautifully captures as much. Questions of faith and the insecurities of self-denial are given as ample playing field as ridiculous sight gags and chaotic side plots (most of which involve Yoshi).

The characters shine in Long Story Short.

It’s this sense of ordinary, day-to-day relatability that fuels the story. The only extraordinary aspect of their story is, like any other life and any other family, their existence, period. Their stories are our stories, and that’s what makes it worthwhile.

Of course, there are other aspects as well. That familiar, deceptively simple animation style returns. And while the linework is deliberately crude and overdrawn, the colors and shifts in the direction give it a cinematic gloss. The fun is in the details. Things such as the controlled chaos of Shira and Kendra’s home and the animation of their sons as they storm through it. The backgrounds add color and substance, as characters careen or meander through each scene at their own paces, either at odds with those around them or, in the case of the main family, able to sidestep one another even when they’re not in sync.

While not every character gets an equal amount of time to shine, the writing for them – especially the main family – is extraordinary. Yoshi needed more time to be fully realized rather than just the primary source of over-the-top humor, and the patriarch Elliot (Paul Reiser) is the only member of the family whom we don’t seem to really know by the end. Kendra has a whole episode dedicated to her story, and by the end of it, we wish we had more (fingers crossed for Season 2). Meanwhile, Shira, Avi, and their mother, Naomi (Lisa Edelstein), are so enriched with layers of depth that they feel as though they have been stolen from memory and experiences.

The story soars as it follows the tumultuous lives of the Schwooper family.

Naomi is, by far, the best-written character. And so much of that strength comes from moments where she doesn’t even share the screen. Instead, the writing is so strong that we’re able to get a sense of who she is through how others interact with her and how they seek her approval, disapproval, or gaze in any given moment – even when she’s no longer physically present. It’s a moving character study that sees no reason to withhold her inadequacies – cruelty, even. She’s judgmental and no-nonsense, and her children all bear the marks of her strict upbringing. And yet they all love her something fierce, finding how she loves them through subtle gestures.

While the ensemble doesn’t reach the heights of voice acting displayed in ‘Bojack’ (and, in fairness, no one will ever hit the caliber of Amy Sedaris as Princess Carolyn), the work is still exceptional. Greenfield’s manic energy is present without simply mimicking his greatest hit, New Girl’s Schmidt. And Abbi Jacobson channels some wonderfully emotional moments with a dry delivery. But it’s Feldman as Avi who truly impresses. Feldman disappears into the character with an unassuming presence and dictation that always hints at his true feelings even before they’re plainly spelled out.

There are two moments in  Long Story Short, that speak to the cyclical yet ever-shifting dynamic between the gravitational forces of the Schwooper family. Of, really, any family. And, in them, the greatest of the series. In the first, following the death of Naomi’s mother, she and Avi catch each other’s eye in the rearview mirror, her glacial attitude thawing momentarily in a shared joke. Later, following a celebration for Naomi and her career, the two share another glance. Both smile until Naomi looks away, and Avi’s drops. The first showed a shared camaraderie—a sense of two people against the world. The latter, the universe-breaking moment where you realize you don’t know your parents as well as you thought you did.

We are a deeply flawed, imperfect species. Long Story Short understands the small triumphs and silly joys of living, the us against the universe mentality of families, and the built-in, devastating belief that our parents can and will be who the pedestal presents them as. In a series that reckons with absurdity and profundity, the magic lies in the small moments. The blink and you miss it beats that offer vitality to the makeup of our lives. And again, it’s funny as all hell.

Long Story Short Season 1 is available now on Netflix.

---

Images courtesy of Netflix.