“Long Story Short” was certainly among the most anticipated moments of the small screen in this 2025, at least for Raphael Bob-Waksberg fans. His “Bojack Horseman” has changed the idea of ​​animation for adults forever, with his mixing fantasy, indie, dramedy, demented comedy and pop culture. Now this adventure with which the author puts himself naked, talks to us about the time that passes, of the family, mourning, joy, surprising for maturity and depth of the whole.

“Long Story Short” – The plot

“Long Story Short” tells us about a family of American Jews, the Schwooper, and starts since the 90s, to show life with all its upheavals. They are Avi, Shira, Yoshi, sons of Naomi and Elliot, are a typical family of the American Jewish universe, a confused reality, casinist, full of life, love. The structure chosen by Raphael Bob-Waksberg is not regular or predictable, and I imposed ourselves in this 21st century, struggling with Covid19, a funeral that changes everything between the Schwooper. Of episode in the episode we understand something more than each of them, of their life, of each one we will understand, future, as they have lived those years, how much influential was her, Naomi, as well as the father Elliot, a little messy, not particularly charismatic, but still capable of making ends meet, to represent a figure anything but without merits and quality. “Long Story Short”, let’s face it, is completely different from “Bojack Horseman”, a series now mythical, part of the pop culture, or what remains, of our day. This time, however, we are distant from the caustic, irreverent tone, from the pungent satire that animated a will to demytize the golden world of Hollywood.

If the deforming vision of life was condemned there, here, here Waksberg instead chooses to talk to us about a family and not just any family but a family that represents him, and it is clear how important it is to make us understand everything concerning a certain vision of society, of the hearth, where religion with its rites, the moments of passage, are far from secondary. All in the service of a story that focuses on the change, the time that passes, the things that escape us, those guys who grow up and try to understand if they will live up to their dreams, of what they think or want those two parents from them. Waksberg demonstrates audacity in the way he decides to face a very particular community of chest, which has given a lot, a lot, to the small and large American screen, in all senses, and which perhaps today is, for obvious reasons, enough under siege. Here it brings us into their cultural heritage, the way in which the conception of oneself changes according to the different moments of life, elements that make this series animated by Lisa Hanawalt, even more precious, even more to discover the episode in episode.

A family struggling with time and many challenges

“Long Story Short” has the most interesting character in Matriarch Naomi, who is described to us as the classic a little emotional mother, a little anxious, too much also intrusive towards those children who feel, each in their own way, a little inadequate. But this series is also a journey into the past, or better still in the transformation of American society, the one that has literally eaten the middle class, which today no longer exists, what from the roaring 90s, and those who lived it knows it, characterized by optimism, balance, and a perfect balance between the various components of a continuous transformation, then it instead becomes a crazy circus. Through the protagonists, we live the various phases of the transformation of America, and Waksberg does not spare us anything, including pandemic. Small animated gem, of which a second, “long story short” has already been announced (given the success of this first season) appears to us as a family story and, together, the story of a country, of a community in particular, of what has changed over time to be recognized anymore. We are quite clearly from the parts of the dramedy, the purest one.

Here, of episode in the episode, we laugh, even a lot, but there are also tears, there is emotion, melancholy, and the quality of writing through which Waksberg manages to make us get to every character, every value and defect is incredible, how much the relationship between them is far from simple. But above all, this series focuses on how truly frightening change is sometimes, it is the symbol of our vulnerability. Life is a moment, yesterday becomes past, the future we wake up and escaped us from the hands perhaps, and then an entire generation, the millennial one, of which he represents without a doubt one of the most authentic autorative voices, can only look at this strange family, and seeing it so familiar. Beyond the surface, here we recognize what we have been and we are today, those many expectations, hopes that have vanished, the challenges we have faced. “Long Story Short” is really a lot of stuff, however it is discreetly, less arrear than the previous work, but not for this without poetry. It exudes a ability to be universal that also lives on the graphic design, so simple yet so easy suggestive. Certainly a product with a lot of heart but also a lot of brain.

VOTE: 8.5