TVSquad

Before The Simpsons begat Futurama, current executive producer of The Simspons Al Jean, along with Mike Reiss, created a short-lived animated series about a film critic who hated almost every film he ever saw.

Starring Jon Lovitz in some brilliant voice work, The Critic ran through two networks in two seasons. Like Futurama and Family Guy, it found some success with reruns on cable -- in this case, Comedy Central -- and a subsequent DVD release. But unlike those series, The Critic remains but a distant memory.

Former SNL and High School High star Jon Lovitz will be opening up his own comedy club at the Universal Citywalk on the West Coast. In a display of ego and lack of imagination, it will be called the Jon Lovitz Comedy Club.

Admittedly, I've never seen Lovitz perform stand-up comedy. I sort of figured he had faded into celebrity obscurity like so many before him and would only be seen time-to-time until his inevitable appearances on shows like Dancing With The Stars and Celebrity Boxing. If he got on Celebrity Apprentice, I think Trump would throw him out in the first round based on Lovitz's looks alone (which is both a statement about Lovitz and Trump).

I do wish the guy the best of luck with this business venture. I have been to Citywalk and think a comedy club would be useful and unique there. Hopefully it will last beyond the first year.

A lot of people have wanted to do this for a long time, and now Jon Lovitz has done it. It also brings up something from the past I wasn't aware of.

At L.A.'s Laugh Factory the other night, Lovitz and Andy Dick got into an argument about Phil Hartman's death and Andy Dick's drug use. Five months before Brynn Hartman shot Phil and herself to death, Dick allegedly gave her cocaine at a house party that Lovitz also attended. Brynn Hartman had been sober for ten years, and now Lovitz blames Dick giving her the cocaine as the reason why she got hooked again and killed Hartman and herself five months later.

Jon Lovitz recently signed a rather Faustian contract with Jamie Masada, the owner of the Laugh Factory comedy club that will require Lovitz to appear on stage at the Los Angeles club every Wednesday for the rest of his life. In addition, Lovitz will write a blog for the Laugh Factory in which he'll offer advice to young comedians.

Really? The rest of his life? That seems so depressing. Will he be bound by his contract to simply sit on the stage in a wheelchair for a twenty-minute set that consists of nothing more than drooling and an occasional story about wars he never actually fought in?

I think it can be universally agreed that the fifth season of NewsRadio - the final season - was by far the worst season of the series. Not only was Phil Hartman killed during the hiatus, but another cast member (Jon Lovitz) came on board and just didn't fit in to what the rest of the group had built over the previous four seasons.

The season kicks off with the "Bill Moves On" episode, where the gang has just returned from Bill's funeral (he died of a heart attack), and everyone mocks Dave's 2 hour eulogy. Matthew doesn't really believe Bill is dead, everyone thinks Lisa is drunk, and Catherine (Khandi Alexander) returns to the show for one episode. This is one of the better episodes of the last season, because it's important to the show's history and (as is revealed on one of the commentaries), they didn't really rehearse it or do any run throughs. It was hard enough getting through it once on tape night. The tears you see are real. It ends with everyone taking an item off Bill's desk to remember him. Jimmy takes the whole desk. A nice tribute.

For two reasons. The obvious reason is because Phil Hartman isn't in the picture. Instead, we get Jon Lovitz, who pretty much made the last season of the show unwatchable (except for a couple of episodes). He was really out of place as a regular cast member on the show (though he was great in the guest roles he had earlier in the series), and his character was completely unlikable.

But the second reason I'm not thrilled with the pic is that the original artwork on the box actually had Phil Hartman on it (you can see it here). The cast was standing in front of a picture of Hartman. In the new version, the cast is standing in front of a picture of New York City. Yeah, Hartman wasn't in the last season, but wouldn't that have been a nice nod to Hartman in the final set? The first episode of the season is about Bill McNeal's death, after all.

The fifth season set will be released on March 20.

Jon Lovitz is set to star as the judge in a new unscripted series for NBC called Bad Judge. The series will use the same format of real people trying to solve real grievances that made shows like The People's Court and Judge Judy so popular, but Lovitz will act more as comic relief, and his decisions will have little or no bearing on the actual law. The new series was conceived by Josh Lieb, who has written scripts for NewsRadio and The Simpsons, as well as the upcoming Big Stan with Rob Schneider. I think this new series could actually be really funny, since it's allowing Lovitz to improv in his own way, which I think always results in his best stuff.

Season three of NewsRadio is the best season of the show. Having said that, season four has quite a number of gems too. You can see that this was the season that they started to tinker with the show: they brought in new cast members, they switched around the jobs of a few characters, they fired Matthew, introduced more of story arcs over several episodes, and they started to have more surreal moments. Not all of it works (I, for one, was a fan of the Dave/Lisa romance, and breaking them up and then having them switch jobs put the show out of whack in a way), but this set is a lot of fun.

The Simpsons has been using guest stars since the very first season. Some have returned on several occasions, sometimes as different characters (Albert Brooks), sometimes as the same character (Kelsey Grammer), and sometimes as both (Jon Lovitz). By my calculations there have been exactly twelve thousand guest stars on the show so far, so obviously a list of just five is going to be lacking just a tad. Nevertheless, these are five guest stars who stick out in my mind. Got some more? That's what the comments are for. Here we go:

Albert Brooks: Brooks first appeared in season one as Jacques, the man with the fake French accent who tries to woo Marge away from Homer with his knowledge of bowling and women. He later appeared as Hank Scorpio, a rather paradoxical character who is both very friendly and yet extremely evil. I think my favorite Brooks episode, however, was the episode "The Heartbroke Kid" when he played Tab Spangler, a ticking time bomb of a coach who tries to coerce Bart back to health after Bart gains weight and suffers a heart attack. "Every sign is wrong!" He'll also be appearing in the Simpsons movie, which is very cool.

The Critic, while it was on television, aired on ABC, FOX, and Comedy Central, though not at the same time. The show, created by Simpsons vets Mike Reiss and Al Jean, started off on ABC where it wallowed in obscurity, and then moved to FOX for its second season. Actually, it didn't fare much better on FOX, either, and after two seasons the plug was pulled. It did, however, manage to find an audience when Comedy Central began airing reruns. Also, a "third" season of shorts was created for Shockwave.com. Not counting the Shockwave mini-episodes, the series only ran for a total of 23 episodes.

The titular character, voiced by Jon Lovitz, was a critic living in New York City who essentially hated every movie he saw. Of course, every movie he saw was incredibly bad, so you couldn't really blame him. The series premiered in 1994, and as anyone who has tried to get an animated show on primetime in the wake of The Simpsons knows, it can be an uphill battle, even if you happened to work on The Simpsons yourself. In fact, a crossover episode of The Simpsons featuring Jay Sherman (the Critic) was made ("A Star is Burns"). That episode, however, perhaps inadvertently zeroed in on why The Critic didn't last. While it was a great show, it seemed to wither under the shadow of a much bigger and much more popular series. Even I never gave it much of a chance when it first aired, seeing it as a lesser version of what The Simpsons was offering. It wasn't until I watched it on its own merit that I realized it was actually very unique, very well-written, and had carved out its own little universe separate from The Simpsons. The lesson, I suppose, is never jump to conclusions.

The Boston Phoenix picks the top 20 guest stars that have lent their voices to The Simpsons.

20. U2
19. Spinal Tap
18. James Taylor
17. Johnny Cash
16. Anne Bancroft
15. Jackie Mason