The critically acclaimed animated series Long Story Short has been resonating with me ever since Netflix dropped all 10 episodes of its first season in late August. Created by Raphael Bob-Waksberg (BoJack Horseman), the show takes the familiar growing pains and family matters of a sitcom and reshapes them through an inventive, time-jumping format. It’s been tugging at my heartstrings and grief journey while making me laugh in between moments of poignant relatability.
The show follows the Schwoopers, a Jewish family in the San Francisco Bay Area. Their surname is a portmanteau of matriarch Naomi Cooper (voiced by Lisa Edelstein) and patriarch Elliot Schwartz (Paul Reiser), passed down to their three children: Avi (Ben Feldman), Shira (Abbi Jacobson), and Yoshi (Max Greenfield).
Unlike other animated series about families, Long Story Short shows these characters at different ages, jumping across time to capture snapshots of parenting, loss, religion, rites of passage, and shifting dynamics. Even the opening titles, set to Jesse Novak’s plucky theme song, feature different photos of the Schwoopers in each episode. (Resist that “skip intro” button!)
Watching those sequences feels a lot like what I’ve been experiencing on my grief journey after losing both my parents within three years. I’ve been rewatching old home videos and flipping through family photos I haven’t seen in decades, time-traveling from the comforts of my couch, reliving holidays, birthdays, and vacations, reuniting with long-lost loved ones and faces I haven’t thought about in years.
Long Story Short beautifully — and quite literally — illustrates the passage of time and the complicated emotions that come with it. The show feels like an exercise in wish fulfillment, tapping into the desire to see my family from an almost omniscient point of view: to rewind and fast-forward through moments, drawing parallels between past and present and seeing how they shape each other.
Memories, meatloaf, and Michael Bolton
In Episode 4, “Shira Can’t Cook,” Shira struggles to perfect her mother’s knish recipe for a school potluck. She wants to make Naomi proud, and in one scene, Shira tears up while reviewing her mom’s handwritten instructions, realizing how much love went into Naomi’s cooking when she was younger.
Every once in a while, I try to recreate my late mother’s signature meatloaf, a dish she served every Monday for our extended family. She loved hosting meals, especially during the holidays, in our apartment in New Rochelle, New York. I’ve carried on the tradition in my own way, with an annual holiday cocktail party in my L.A. apartment. I even dug up her handwritten anisette cookie recipe — her favorite Christmas treat — and keep it posted to my refrigerator as a reminder of her love.
These stirred-up memories don’t feel that far away, but time marches on because that’s what it does. Opening the nostalgia floodgates has brought me face-to-face with the fragility of life, reminding me of a song lyric from Michael Bolton, one of my mom’s favorite artists: “Nothing heals a broken heart like time, love, and tenderness.”
Reuniting with my younger self to heal myself
Long Story Short also touches upon the aftereffects of the pandemic through passing references (see: “Wolves” and “Uncle Barry”), which made me reflect on the time with my parents that felt stolen from me back then. While I eventually tried to make up for that lost time, it never felt like enough, because I soon lost my father in 2021 and then my mother in 2024. It’s an emotional struggle similar to what the older Schwooper siblings wrestle with as they reflect on their own losses.
However, watching my family’s old home videos has shown me that I got to spend a lot of wonderful moments with my parents. Even though my awkward, pre-pubescent self tried to avoid the camera at all costs (I never liked the sound of my own voice), I can now sit back and appreciate the memories that were captured. I can be grateful for what I had with them. And if I could, I’d give my younger self a big hug, letting him know he’ll eventually find his voice, his confidence, and more reasons to feel secure in himself.
Watching Long Story Short while revisiting these memories has ultimately helped me develop more compassion for myself, for what I went through, and for where I was at certain points in my life. That compassion remains, especially while I continue to grieve my parents.
Confronting so many “if only I had knowns”
In Episode 2 of LSS, “Hannah’s Dance Recital,” Avi and Shira realize they remember a family trip to the Jersey Shore very differently. For Avi, what seemed like an innocent decision to leave his sister and play with some kids on the beach turns out to be a hurtful act of abandonment for Shira when she’s left alone and nearly drowns in the harsh ocean waves, becoming a traumatic moment she carries into adulthood.
While I thankfully never had a near-death experience like Shira’s, my younger cousin (who’s always been like the kid sister I never had) once revealed how scarred she was from a haunted house ride my very persuasive mother and I had dragged her onto while visiting the pier at Seaside Heights, NJ. What my Mom and I thought was a fun, innocent family outing turned into a horrible night for an 8-year-old who’s terrified of haunted houses to this day.
In hindsight, she’s grateful that my mom pushed her to face her fears and try something new because that’s just how my mom operated. One piece of advice she left me with remains: “Keep broadening your horizons.” These four simple words have shaped how I approach the rest of my life. They help me look forward to new opportunities, new experiences, and, of course, new memories.
And in the meantime, I can look forward to more hilarious and human stories from the Schwoopers; Long Short Short has been renewed for a second season.
Season 1 of Long Story Short is now streaming on Netflix.