4 Great Clips From Two Seasons of "The Critic"

For a brief moment (1994-95), it seemed like the producers of "The Simpsons" were going to pull off the unprecedented feat of getting another hit animated show into primetime. "The Critic" had promise simply by virtue of its star, Jon Lovitz, who had been trying to establish a film career since leaving SNL in 1991. That never really took off, but in 1994 it seemed like "The Critic" would take his voice talents and -- married to a potentially great plot of a film critic in New York City -- create a classic.

Wrong.

The show debuted on ABC and flopped, then moved to Fox (in a crossover episode from which "Simpsons" creator Matt Groenig had his name removed as a producer), where it also flopped. The second season added Park Overall as a love interest for Jay, and apparently they married at some point after the series wrapped... only to split up by the time a series of online-only shorts came out (2000). The best moments of the series, excerpted below, played on Lovitz's natural, hammy tendencies. The worst moments (of which there were many), went for too-clever showbiz jokes and parodies. The kind of thing you would have seen 20 years earlier on "Sonny & Cher."

Still, the best moments stand up today and point at what might-have-been. My favorite sections in this compilation are Jay ripping the bed to shreds (near the beginning, and unfortunately truncated to remove the jokes about Jay's sexuality), and then at 11:25, a slimy Hollywood exec (voiced by Billy Crystal) can't get his critique through Jay's head.


-One of the better film parodies was this one for "Jurassic Park II" (which didn't exist at the time as an actual movie):


-Jay's own student film ("L'Artiste Est Morte") is quintessential New York film school BS:


-Siskel & Ebert made an appearance on the show... one of their few non-talk-show appearances:



-And here's another compilation I haven't scanned completely through.

Unrelated to any of this, my brother swears he saw a segment (on "Entertainment Tonight") back in 1993-94, as the show was about to debut, which showed a Lovitz soundalike voicing much of the show.  Seems suspect -- why would they publicize that?!  If anyone knows anything about this, drop me a line.  #snl4kidz