Long Story Short: A New Animated Masterpiece From BoJack Horseman Creator

BoJack Horseman creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg has a new animated series on Netflix, Long Story Short, and while it might not yet have the accolades of his career-making masterpiece, it’s just as great. When a TV show breaks out, its creator is typically set for life. Whatever they come up with, the networks want to buy it, because they have a proven track record.

But not everyone can catch lightning in a bottle a second time. Not everyone can follow up The Simpsons with Futurama, or follow up Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul with Pluribus. Netflix was bound to greenlight whatever Bob-Waksberg’s next project turned out to be, since he gave them a gift that keeps on giving in BoJack Horseman.

But Long Story Short wasn’t guaranteed to match the success of BoJack Horseman. Phoebe Waller-Bridge still has yet to deliver Fleabag 2.0. David Simon’s porn drama The Deuce fell far short of his classic crime drama The Wire. But Long Story Short did match BoJack’s success. It may have even surpassed it.

Long Story Short Is Just As Great As BoJack Horseman

When Long Story Short premiered its first season on Netflix last August, it was universally praised by critics — it literally has 100% on Rotten Tomatoes — but in terms of audience engagement, it came and went with very little fanfare. The same thing happened with the first couple of seasons of BoJack, but Netflix was much more willing to give shows time to find their feet back then.

Thankfully, Long Story Short has already been renewed for a second season, but I still think more people need to watch it. This is more than just another adult-oriented animated sitcom about a family; it’s much more profound than any Simpsons clone.

Bob-Waksberg isn’t interested in capturing the universal family dynamics seen in hundreds of other sitcoms; he’s specifically focusing on his own generation and his own Jewish identity, and — as the old adage goes — the more specific it gets, the more universal it feels. Long Story Short is no ordinary cartoon; it’s deeply personal, and brutally honest.

The patchy, pastel-colored, almost Microsoft Paint-like animation style will undoubtedly take some getting used to. But it’s perfect for the messy, laidback vibe of the show. This beautifully minimalistic aesthetic doesn’t distract you with any unnecessary visual flair, which allows the little human emotions to shine through.

There’s a scene in which one character watches in silence as his daughter dances at a recital, and we hear the pride and the excitement and the joy just in his breathing. There are very few animated shows paying such granular attention to the subtleties of human behavior. It’s much more Anomalisa than Family Guy.

Long Story Short's Unique Structure Captures How Much We Change During Our Lives

Long Story Short has a totally unique way of structuring its stories. It jumps all over the timeline of this family’s history, spanning from the 1950s to the 2020s. The entire season follows a loose nonlinear structure as it goes backwards and forwards depending on which memories and experiences will complement the story at hand.

In an episode where a character feels like she can’t depend on her big brother, we’ll get a flashback to a traumatic childhood experience where he let her down. It’s like that nightmare Tom Hanks deepfake movie Here, except good.

This back-and-forth storytelling is a great vehicle for foreshadowing and ironic twists, but it also captures how much we change over the course of our lives. When we see the characters as grumpy middle-aged grownups, they’re virtually unrecognizable from the bright-eyed young adults in the flashbacks.

Long Story Short Reinvents The Family Sitcom

The family sitcom is one of the most well-worn genres in television. This format has been chopped and changed every which way. The Dick Van Dyke Show made comedy Dad’s job. All in the Family reflected the fraught U.S. political climate of the 1970s. The Simpsons brought in a cartoonish surrealism to juxtapose with the grounded family situations.

We’re running out of ways to reinvent the wheel, but Long Story Short truly reinvents the family sitcom and presents it in a way that’s never been done before. As it covers decades of the family’s lives in snippets, watching Long Story Short often feels like flipping through their old family photo albums, piecing together this long, complicated history with each new image.

Long Story Short Has A Stellar Voice Cast

Bob-Waksberg created a rich ensemble of three-dimensional, human characters, and he enlisted an amazing voice cast. When you’ve given Will Arnett a career-defining role as a talking horse, every actor in Hollywood is waiting for the opportunity to play one of your characters.

The iconic voices of Paul Reiser and Lisa Edelstein play the parents, and the three siblings are played by a trio of sitcom icons: Ben Feldman (a.k.a. Jonah from Superstore) as the oldest and most jaded, Broad City’s Abbi Jacobson as the frazzled middle child, and Max “Schmidt from New Girl” Greenfield as the laidback youngest. Seriously, just watch Long Story Short. It’s amazing.