'Long Story Short' Netflix Share on Facebook Share on X Share to Flipboard Send an Email Show additional share options Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share on Tumblr Share on Whats App Print the Article Post a Comment Logo text Television has long had a Jewish mother problem. From The Goldbergs (Gertrude Berg's medium-spanning landmark) to The Goldbergs (Adam F. Goldberg's barely Jewish ABC hit), TV's Jewish characters have too often seemed to emerge from the same mother - and I'm not talking about the mystical concept of the shekhinah, or the divine feminine. Long Story Short The Bottom Line Not 'BoJack,' but rich and distinctive in its own way. Airdate: Friday, August 22 (Netflix)Cast: Ben Feldman, Max Greenfield, Abbi Jacobson, Paul Reiser, Lisa Edelstein, Nicole ByerCreator: Raphael Bob-Waksbrg Small-screen characterizations have too frequently leaned into one form of maternal representation for Jewish characters, a brash and clingy archetype fixated on marrying off their daughters, emasculating their sons and manipulating affections through occasionally grotesque culinary endeavors. These TV Jewish mothers are all played by Tovah Feldshuh or Susie Essman or Linda Lavin, or at least feel like they are. It's not that this stock character is inherently bad, but I've seen more than a few otherwise admirable Jewish snapshots undone by an insufficiently explored version of it. Related Stories TV 'Long Story Short' Stars on Doing a Jewish Family Comedy in 2025: "There's Going to Be Vitriol" TV 'Long Story Short' From 'BoJack Horseman' Creator Lands Season 2 Renewal Ahead of Series Premiere For at least half of the 10-episode run of Long Story Short, the new animated series from Raphael Bob-Waksberg, it seems that the animated dramedy is also going to have a Jewish mother problem. Naomi Schwartz (Lisa Edelstein), matriarch to the show's central clan, is a demanding guilt ninja, a sultan of smothering, an exacting critic of rabbinic sermons and the life choices of her offspring alike. Naomi holds her family together and tears it apart in ways that feel instantly familiar in unsettling or reductive ways. Shame on me, I suppose, for doubting Bob-Waksberg, whose BoJack Horseman is, it becomes increasingly clear with each passing year, the best show to be birthed under the Netflix banner. As the series' title implies, Long Story Short is a nesting doll of small stories that builds, lovingly, to something more emotionally resonant by the end of the first season, and whether she's the protagonist or antagonist, Naomi Schwarz is the series' linchpin. The ways that she comes across as a caricature are real, but like everything in Long Story Short, they're a matter of perspective, of memory and of subjective myopia. The character's evolution and expansion are mirrored throughout the storytelling in Long Story Short, which marks Bob-Waksberg's first solo series creation since BoJack. (Amazon's Undone, which he co-created, was really Kate Purdy's baby, while Tuca & Bertie, which he executive produced, belonged in spirit to Lisa Hanawalt.) The whole, which left me teary for much of the finale, is far more than the sum of its parts, which are generally entertaining and sometimes quite funny, though occasionally a bit forgettable. Jumping around in time and geography, Long Story Short is primarily about siblings Avi (Ben Feldman), Shira (Abbi Jacobson) and Yoshi (Max Greenfield), children of Elliot Cooper (Paul Reiser) and the aforementioned Naomi Schwartz (Edelstein). The kids have taken the last name "Schwooper," a thoroughly Bob-Waksbergian portmanteau, just one piece of the wordplay that will instantly remind fans of banter from BoJack Horseman, even if little in the overall tone or style of the Hanawalt-conceived animation is otherwise an exact match. In vignettes closer to the present day, we see the difficulties facing Avi, his gentile wife Jen (Angelique Cabral) and daughter Hannah (Michaela Dietz); the reproductive challenges of Shira and partner Kendra (Nicole Byer), a Jew-by-choice; and Yoshi's general complications finding his personal and spiritual place in the world. Those scenes are juxtaposed against moments from their upbringing, often but not always related to their Jewishness. Long Story Short isn't as visually or narratively audacious as Undone - one of many ballsy shows that Amazon deserves credit for developing and demerits for never knowing how to promote - but you can see that show's fingerprints all over how Bob-Waksberg approaches memory, causality and the illusion that any of our lives is entirely linear. We're impacted by things that happened before we were born and by events that we weren't initially party to. One person's formative trauma is another's nostalgic footnote. We sit with each other at shared resting points or destinations, but we don't always remember that we took different paths to get there. It's impossible for me to predict how non-Jews will respond to Long S