Long Story Short is the latest animated series from Raphael Bob-Waksberg, the talented showrunner who is best known for his early Netflix hit BoJack Horseman.

As fans of his previous work will know, Bob-Waksberg’s sensibility seems to come through an eclectic mix of absurdist humour and raw, emotional realism.

BoJack started life as a madcap stoner comedy about a talking horse acting like an entitled fratboy. By the end of its six seasons, the show had evolved into a psychological drama about a supremely damaged man struggling in vain to heal himself, albeit a man who happened to have a horse’s head.

In contrast to BoJack’s evolutionary quality, Long Story Short starts exactly where it means to start. This is ironic, perhaps, given that the show’s central conceit is that it tells the story of a multi-generation family in a non-chronological manner.

In episode one, we are introduced to the Schwoopers, a dysfunctional middle-class Jewish family consisting of matriarch Naomi (Lisa Edelstein), patriarch Elliot (Paul Reiser), eldest son Avi (Ben Feldman), middle child Shira (Abbi Jacobson) and youngest Yoshi (Max Greenfield). Darting across decades of time and generations of tension, we witness couples meet, marry, divorce and die — sometimes all in the same episode and almost always not in that order.

The show possesses a primarily emotional rather than rational logic to it that fits nicely with it being an animation. It’s often said that animation possesses a quality that makes it particularly good for processing emotional trauma.

The essence of the medium involves purposely selecting moments in the world to bring to life, while leaving others behind. This process of self-conscious selection provides a space to order and sort the world in a manner comparable to something like therapy, processing the information differently through the act of bringing it to life on screen. BoJack did this particularly well.

Drawing on animation’s long-established history of anthropomorphic characters, BoJack was set in a confusing world of animals and humans. The grotesqueness of the visual design often mirrored the internal disgust the central character felt about himself. Despite his status as an uber-wealthy actor who rarely worked, the writing was so good that BoJack’s trauma became our own.

One of the strongest features of Long Story Short is its look. Using thick black lines and a minimalist approach to scenery, the world of the Schwoopers takes on a painted, almost impressionist quality. It is like watching a Van Gogh painting drawn by Hanna-Barbera, the colours vivid and spotted, punctuating spaces and distorting others, like the process of memory itself.

It’s approach to narrative, however, sits in contrast to its bold look. Its story primarily deals with family dynamics and emotional trauma, but these stories are painted with faint marks, opaque colours and tiny details. As such, a weariness emerges in the viewing experience, induced perhaps more by the times in which we are living rather than any failing of the show itself.

Premiering in 2016 and finishing in 2020, during the Covid-19 lockdowns, BoJack seems to provide a strange antidote to Trump’s first term in office. Its madness matched the madness of its times, and its relentless compassion and desire for complexity served as a nice contrast to a world marked by a politics of simplistic cruelty.

Long Story Short tries to replicate this effect, but doesn’t do it as well. Coming out in 2025, the show’s interest in the quiet, everyday traumas caused by living with siblings and partners feels somewhat narcissistic and navel-gazing.

Characters represent different sexualities and religions and all embody typical notions of family life. They are each given space and time to be represented on screen. Yet none of that makes them hugely interesting as people.

The character of Yoshi (Max Greenfield) is a good example of this. Presented as a loveable loser in the mould of BoJack’s haphazard roommate Todd Chavaz, Yoshi is supposed to be somehow sympathetic and wise. However, he spends most of his time doing very little, while his relatives struggle with far more arresting problems, such as surrogacy, divorce and bereavement. Among Yoshi’s biggest struggles are how he will get home after a night out at San Francisco’s trendiest, Instagram-friendly hangouts.

And the fact that a lot of this is set in San Francisco during Covid-19 makes the unremarkability of its characters and premise all the more apparent. San Francisco is an exceedingly wealthy city, dominated by a liberal elite. It is also a city that suffers from an undercurrent of real poverty and human suffering. This stark juxtaposition of worlds was made all the more intense during the pandemic. However, none of this finds its way on to our screens in Long Story Short.

As you watch these comfortable people be rather uncomfortable, you feel like grabbing the frame and turning it left or right, in the hope that we might have a break from all this hand-wringing. For those who know the city, we’re looking for reality to break in, to see an example of the suffering and pain probably happening on the streets that surround them.

This story about the liberal coastal elite fails to get beyond their narrow concerns to find more mutual and human territory in which we can all relate. It’s safe, comfortable, a little stifling, a bit boring, and seems to be completely fractured from the suddenly dangerous and precarious world that surrounds it.

The writer is a Lecturer in Digital Media Production at the University of Westminster in the UK

Republished from The Conversation

Published in Dawn, ICON, September 21st, 2025