The Critic/L.A. Jay

L.A. Jay
Season 1, Episode 9
Airdate	June 22, 1994
Written by	Steven Levitan
Directed by	Bret Haaland
← 1x08 Marathon Mensch	1x10 → Dr. Jay
The Critic — Season One

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L.A. Jay is the ninth episode of the first season of The Critic.

Starring: Jon Lovitz (Jay Sherman), Nancy Cartwright (Margot Sherman), Christine Cavanaugh (Marty Sherman), Gerrit Graham (Franklin Sherman), Doris Grau (Doris), Judith Ivey (Eleanor Sherman), Nick Jameson (Vlada Veramirovich), Maurice La Marche (Jeremy Hawke), Charles Napier (Duke Phillips), Kath Soucie (Various)

Special Guest Voice: Billy Crystal (Gary Grossman), Michael Carrington (Various), Rod Steiger (Himself)

Uncredited: Judd Apatow (Jay Leno)

Plot Overview

Jay manages to get the attention of a major movie studio with a film script he has written, so he and Jeremy fly out to Hollywood. The studio head is impressed with the script, but refuses to make it as it is too good, but instead assigns Jay to write a script for Ghost Chasers 3. The only problem? The acerbic critic HATED the previous two Ghost Chasers movies!

Trivia

The Show

• Opening Phone Call: "Jay, this is your sister. Mom just gave me your old room! Ummm... Do you still want this Leif Garrett poster?"
• Opening Movie Parody: In a parody of Cliffhanger, several people hang off the face of a cliff, holding onto progressively smaller things. The line of people goes: Sylvester Stallone, Janine Turner, a little boy, a dog, a cat, a mouse and a piece of cheese.
• Closing Theatre Shot: "Go away, zitface."

Behind the Scenes

• Notes: This episode was written after the network gave the writers a note saying that they thought Jay was too pathetic. As a result, they went the other way entirely by having everyone think he's great.

• Cameo: Billy Crystal did the voice of the Hollywood executive, but because he was filming City Slickers 2 in Utah, Mike Reiss had to fly out to the location they were shooting at to record Crystal's lines. They only had an hour and he initially refused to do more than 2 takes on a line, even though the standard was 5 or 6.

Allusions and References

• Beyond the Valley of the Dolls: The idea of a movie critic writing a screenplay was inspired by Roger Ebert writing the screenplay for Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, a musical comedy released in 1970 meant originally to be a sequel to the 1967 film Valley of the Dolls. They later revamped it as a parody film when the original writer's treatment was unsatisfactory for the executives. Incidentally, Charles Napier had a role in the film.

• Late Night with Conan O'Brien: At one point, Jay and Jeremy are on the beach and Jeremy has an issue of Variety with the headline "Conan Replaced by Dancing Chicken." Late Night with Conan O'Brien had a rocky start and Conan O'Brien was always under threat of being fired. NBC had such little faith in O'Brien that he was contracted for 13 weeks at a time, instead of a full year like most contracts.