Long Story Short is a Netflix adult animated comedy-drama created by Raphael Bob-Waksberg, his first new animated series since the acclaimed BoJack Horseman. Trading Hollywood satire for something more intimate, the show is a warm, melancholy, and very funny portrait of a single family told across the sweep of its members' entire lives.
The series follows the Schwooper family, jumping freely and non-chronologically through the decades, from childhood and adolescence to marriage, parenthood, and old age, so that a character might be a squabbling kid in one scene and a weary adult in the next. This restless time-hopping structure lets the show explore how families carry their history with them, how old wounds and inside jokes echo across generations, and how small moments accumulate into a life. Its voice cast includes Abbi Jacobson, Ben Feldman, Lisa Edelstein, Paul Reiser, and Nicole Byer.
Rooted in Bob-Waksberg's own Jewish American upbringing, Long Story Short earned strong reviews for balancing sharp comedy with genuine emotional depth, the same alchemy that made his previous work resonate. It is streaming on Netflix.
Follow along with the lives of several aspiring soon to be medical professionals who must endure the fast paced, physically demanding world of medical training. Medical interns have always been expected to complete this "trial by fire" method of learning and though the "burn out" rate is low many find it the most difficult time of their lives. Scrubs deals with the trying times of interns through much humor and a fast paced script each week. The actors are encouraged to improvise with their character's dialog in each episode, making the show interesting and always including something unexpected. Among the cast are Sarah Chalke (Rosanne, How I Met Your Mother) as Dr. Elliot Reed, Zach Braff (Manhattan Murder Mystery, Twelfth Night) as Dr. John Dorian, Donald Faison (Clueless, Remember the Titans) as Dr. Chris Turk, and Neil Flynn (The Middle, Re-animated) portrays the janitor who torments Dr. Dorian in what was supposed to be a one episode appearance but grew into a permanent character role. Scrubs shows the humor inside the manic determination that is part of becoming a doctor and this fast paced show always offers something different and fun to watch.
It was good while it lasted. Launched with much fanfare and intense audience interest, "FlashForward" brilliantly recreated the mysterious, fascinating, are-they-prophetic? two minutes and seventeen seconds on October 6, 2009, when almost everyone on Earth lost consciousness of their ordinary surroundings and caught glimpses of their lives on April 29, 2010. An ambitious attempt at transposing Robert J. Sawyer's "high-concept" novel from the printed page to the small screen, "FlashForward" focused on the team of FBI investigators charged with determining what had happened. One of the FBI agents enjoyed the special privilege of seeing his team crack the case in his vision of the future; all he has to do is recreate the six months of investigative work that yield the break-through. Meanwhile, the principal characters attempt to cope with the consequences of their visions for their lives in the present, because they have seen broken marriages, lives lost, and great portrayals on their horizons. Most viewers and critics sadly agreed "FlashForward" unfortunately juxtaposed a brilliant high-tech crime drama on some pathetically ordinary people and lives.
A spin-off from Fox's monster hit "Family Guy," "The Cleveland Show" easily could inspire serious questions about whether or not three middle-aged white men ought to attempt writing comedy about African-Americans. Somehow, though, Seth MacFarlane, Mike Henry, and Richard Appel have attracted a devoted multi-racial, multi-cultural audience for Cleveland and his family by making their points gently and with genuine humor. Consistent with his approach to "Family Guy," MacFarlane reserves most of his animus for middle-aged white suburban guys a lot like himself. Cleveland and his family have moved back to his home town, Stoolbend, Virginia, where he lives with Junior, his high school crush, and her two children. The majority of Cleveland's funniest lines derive more from his cluelessness than his color, and the majority of the ethnic humor derives from the creators' brilliant satire of racial attitudes among unenlightened southern white people. Among MacFarlane's only-slightly-exaggerated redneck characters, Lester does the majority of the comic work, languishing on his Confederate flag folding chair and cleaning his beloved guns. In general, the racial humor remains tame if not always politically correct, and "The Cleveland Show" gets the vast majority of its big laughs from allusions to pop culture.
Saturday Night Live (or SNL) is an evening of music-comedy series on the NBC channel. SNL show is one of the most popular and long-playing in the history of U.S. television. The premiere of the SNL show is dating back in 1975 when the program was conceived by Dick Ebersol and Lorna Maykolsom. The first music director of the orchestra program was the composer Howard Shore. The format of the SNL consists of a humorous musical reprises, most of them played live by comedy actors - members of the permanent cast, with the participation of a guest host (popular celebrities) and some musical guest or quests. Typically, the series begins with a reprise in the last seconds of which one of the actors out of the way, proclaiming "Live from New York, it's - Saturday Night!" followed by a brand video and then played introductory monologue-patter with a guest presenter. Among the participants were well-known actors such as Martin Short, Bill Murray, James Belushi, Jim Carrey, Dan Aykroyd, Eddie Murphy, Hugh Laurie, Taylor Lautner, Mike Myers and others. Famous musicians are also participated: Britney Spears, Tupac Shakur, Sting, Jennifer Lopez and Rolling Stones. There were such the politicians as John McCain and Rudolph Giuliani. Over the years, SNL show has become an integral part of the cultural landscape of the United States and Canada. Widely known for exceptionally successful parody of the Presidents of the USA by Dan Aykroyd (Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter), Dane Carvey (George Bush, Senior.) Derrillom Hammond (Bill Clinton), Will Ferrell (George Bush, Jr.) and Fred Armisenom (Barack Obama). During the election campaign in 2008 parody of Tina Fey spoofed the candidate for vice-president Sarah Palin, with whom Fey has a striking resemblance. Considered by many this was one of the factors affecting the elections' outcome.
In its first review of "Dexter TV show", the New York Times summarized, "[Dexter Morgan] kills people and cuts them up. But they deserve it. Besides, he's neat." When a serial killer leaves a trail of tidy corpses in service of justice, audiences cannot get enough; he liberates everybody's inner vigilante. Dexter, played pitch-perfect and spot-on by television veteran Michael C. Hall (late of "Six Feet Under"), is a smart and smart-mouthed, self-aware crime scene investigator who moonlights as a blood-thirsty avenger. Dexter is your average psychopath-next-door, comparable with Macbeth or Hannibal Lecter, but with charm and good jokes. As critics and viewers have stressed since the show's very first episode, Dexter kills only people who deserve to die"”depraved pedophiles, drunk drivers with neither conscience nor remorse, and other reprehensible characters who slip through the cracks in the justice system. The show's producers John Goldwyn and Sara Colleton assert, "Dexter becomes a metaphor for people closeted by their secrets." They exaggerate their character's allegorical powers"¦but only a little.
One of two intense medical dramas NBC introduced in the fall of 2009, "Mercy" had all the advantages its one-named rival "Trauma" did not. First, it had talent behind the scenes. Liz Heldens from "Friday Night Lights" created the show and led the writers, proving once again that the best way to dramatize the real world is to show it realistically"”ugliness and all. Second, it had attitude and guts to stay true to its revolutionary premise, the well-informed notion "that nurses remain [not only] more generous caregivers, but that they are more intuitively apt, smarter, more committed and as technically able as their [physician] superiors, with none of the accompanying arrogance." In a winner-take-all ER smackdown, you always would go all-in with the Mercy Hospital nurses. The main character, nurse Veronica Flanagan Callahan, has just returned from a tour in Iraq, where she clearly learned more in each day than the pompous, presumptuous doctors learned in all five years of medical school. Of course, Veronica gets neither the respect nor the reward she deserves, but "Mercy" dangles the possibility of true love as just recompense for Veronica's skill and compassion. Taylor Schilling plays Veronica with exactly the right balance of toughness and vulnerability, skillfully juxtaposing her consummate skill as a nurse with her intrepid ingenuousness in matters of the heart. If only "Mercy" had survived into a second season, all the tangled threads in the story might have come to their proper denouement. If only.
Their friends acknowledge it always has been this way: Tina Fay gets lots of headlines and personal appearances while Amy Poehler does the majority of the comic heavy lifting. The trend continues in NBC's high-powered Thursday night comedy line-up as Fay continues driving "30Rock" to the top of Nielsen's charts and Poehler brilliantly busts-out gut-busters with her new sit-com "Parks and Recreation." In much the style of "The Office," Poehler's "Parks and Recreation" TV show works the popular mockumentary format; and her character, Leslie Knope, willingly gives voice to her relentless optimism as she speaks directly into the camera. Leslie serves as the Deputy Director of the parks and recreation department in Pawnee, Indiana, where she considers herself a rising star in the local political firmament. Think of her as the female equivalent of Steve Carrell's "Office" character, prone to pretzelating the truth with observations like, "These people are members of a community that care about where they live. So what I hear when I'm being yelled at is people caring loudly at me." Professionals devoted to the sad enterprise of explaining the jokes stress that Poehler's genius lies in her ability to make an obvious ditz both funny and sympathetic rather than just plain weak. Women may not feel inspired to vote for Leslie, but they cannot help loving her.
In their more than twenty years on Fox Network, the Simpsons have become not only a staple in the primetime line-up but also American cultural icons. Created by Matt Groening with early help from comedy genius James L. Brooks, "The Simpsons" brilliantly but brutally satirize working-class American life. Homer personifies the character of the average "working stiff," oblivious to the myriad ways his job and family abuse and exploit him. Marge, Homer's wife, captures the plight of the long-suffering housewife, imprisoned by but also devoted to her family. Precocious pre-teen Bart embodies every aggressive, rebellious, marginally criminal urge in adolescent American boys"”James Dean on a skateboard. Lisa, Bart's sister, represents every family's precious little princess; and Maggie is just "the baby." "The Simpsons" TV show owns a privileged place in American television history: In 2009, the simply but cleverly animated series surpassed "Gunsmoke" and "Law and Order," becoming the longest-running primetime series. Along the way to the record, "The Simpsons" became America's longest-running animated program and its longest-running sitcom. Even more impressively, "The Simpsons" earned a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and Time magazine called it the twentieth century's best television series.
"Trauma" survived almost a whole season in NBC's primetime line-up, but it ultimately became a victim of the Jay Leno scheduling brouhaha and its own penchant for taking itself much too seriously. The promotional materials for "Trauma" declared, "Executive producer Peter Berg delivers"¦the first high-octane medical drama series to live exclusively in the field where the real action is." The promo went on to describe "Trauma" as "an adrenaline shot to the heart," but viewers tended to characterize it as a sedative shot to higher consciousness, complaining that characters were stereotypic and plots were contrived. For all of its melodrama, "Trauma" did set valuable precedents for other, better-written medical dramas: The plots promoted paramedics and nurses over physicians as the true wonderworkers of emergency medicine, and the paramedic team included an openly gay character whom the writers treated with considerable insight and sensitivity. Held against TLC's "Life in the ER," "Trauma" betrayed its promise of realism, but it occasionally showed the promise of medical dramas focused on real caregivers instead of over-educated biochemists.
"Mad Men TV show" delivers its drama in the same slick and glossy packaging the Madison Avenue ad-men serve-up to their clients, making it just as stylized, trendy, and gotta-have-it cool as anything as a two-page spread for Chryslers and Chesterfields in the centerfold Life. Central character Don Draper, a pitch-man with a secret and sordid past, ruthlessly and relentlessly courts clients and seduces women, attempting to feed his insatiable ego. In other words, he personifies the archetype of the ad-man. Draper races full speed to stay one step ahead of changing times, cut-throat competitors, and revelation of his secrets: Born the son of a prostitute who died in childbirth, he stole a Korean war buddy's identity to put on a patina of respectability. Propriety and respectability figure prominently in the drama, which accurately represents steamy seductions and corner-office conniving hiding behind the Norman Rockwell wholesomeness of 1960s family values. Brilliantly written, beautifully photographed, and consummately well acted, "Mad Men TV show" has collected a boatload of awards, including three Golden Globes and back-to-back Emmys.