Post by starman on Nov 25, 2007 4:55:49 GMT -5
What a great, great show. It has such an immensely similar style and humour to The Simpsons (mostly in the second season), that it's hard to describe without seeing it. I was a little edgy about buying the DVD without seeing any of the episodes, but by god, that was money well spent. This show really is extremely funny; some scenes are possibly just as funny as anything on The Simpsons. The first season was still good, but the show, and even more importantly - the humour - found who it was in the FOX produced episodes (Season 2). Season 2 is just generally funnier. Something I found interesting is that the ABC produced episodes (Season 1) are of a lot better visual quality than the FOX episodes.
As you may know, this show has tonnes of parodies; primarily film parodies (after all, Jay Sherman is a film critic). And you know what, the parodies are possibly just as good as the ones on Family Guy and Drawn Together.
It has a slightly odd-looking animation style, but unlike The Simpsons, the animation/art is incredibly detailed.
This show borrows so much from The Simpsons; especially seeing as The Critic was created by Mike Reiss and Al Jean - 2 former show-runners and writers for The Simpsons. As I said, extremely similar style, and the show has actually gone as far as to actually feature The Simpsons on the show. For those of you that haven't seen it, here are some frame-grabs:
Basically, Homer walks into a rake and says, "D'oh!", then Bart says, "Aye Carumba!". Excellent animation, I must say.
There are numerous other references to The Simpsons within the show. Such as:
- In the phone gag for, "From Chunk To Hunk", a lady says "Jay, this is the Fox network with a little advice: At the beginning of each show, why don't you write on a chalkboard like Bart? And could you change your name to Homer? And wear an 8-foot tall blue wig like Marge? And how would you feel about sucking on a pacifier?".
- While Jay and Alice are at a ball, Alice is wearing a tall, blue wig, and Jay is wearing a yellow wig with two hairs on it.
I'll finish by saying: This show isn't perfect, but it's so unimaginably better than so many other shows of it's kind, and it really deserved another chance. Something special was going on here, no matter how much ABC and FOX want to deny that.