When it was announced that the creators of “Bojack Horseman” were working on a new project, many fans expected something of the same vein. But “Long Story Short” isn’t “Bojack,” to the disappointment of some; it is something else entirely. Told in a nonlinear sequence, the show unravels the lives of a Jewish American family in the San Francisco Bay Area, leaving the audience to piece together the gaps and unspoken emotions. The show was released on Aug. 22 — exactly 11 years after the first episode of “Bojack Horseman.”
Opening with a montage of family photos, the series immediately feels like a peek into someone’s family album. The first episode begins with Avi bringing his new girlfriend, Jen, back home for his younger brother Yoshi’s bar mitzvah, plunging both Jen and the viewer into the Schwooper family’s life. The dysfunction is clear almost instantly. The following episode cuts ahead to 2014, with Avi and Shira at Avi’s daughter Hannah’s dance recital. It’s a bit of a whiplash, kids become parents, parents become strangers and the audience has to work to fill in the blanks.
If the main hook of “Bojack Horseman” was the animal-human characters, “Long Story Short” finds its identity in its shifting timelines, from the 1950s all the way up to 2022. The show wrestles with unresolved grief, Jewish identity and most of all, family. There’s still humor, with Bojack-like quips and moments of suspended reality: a middle school overtaken with wolves that no one questions and the surreal cutthroat seriousness of BJ Banana Fingers, the children’s playplace where Shira’s wife Kendra, works.
However, it’s the relationships between the characters that ground the show. Avi and Shira’s knowing sibling banter, Avi’s bond with his daughter and most of all, the family’s complicated ties to their mother, Naomi. Naomi is the classic overbearing mother, smothering her children with affection but not truly listening to them.
The family’s Jewish faith is a central part of the story. The creator, Raphael Bob-Waksberg states, “I wanted to tell a story about characters in transition as far as their identities go, and one track that takes is their relationships with religion. Over the course of the season, you see characters push religion away, and you see characters move towards religion because it is not a set thing in our lives, and it is possible to have different relationships with our heritage, with our culture, with our community, and there are different ways to come at it.”
Each episode is a story within itself, centering on a specific character and peeling back the layers of their flaws. The show always circles back to Naomi and the children reckoning with their upbringing and personal lives. “Long Story Short” is the perfect show if you’re looking for something tender, messy and real.