30 years ago, The Critic enrolled six-year-olds everywhere in film school

While most of the references went over my head, one doesn’t need to know the specific works to find “Take that, Guernica!” funny. The Critic always excelled at jokes over plot, playing to its grade-school audience that hadn’t seen Goodfellas or The Piano. Thankfully, the spoofs were never too sophisticated, often simple black-out sketches the size of a Mad Magazine panel with targets only a half-step removed from the real thing. Nightmare Before Christmas became Nightmare Before Hanukkah, in a sequence that probably took way more time than it was worth. Meanwhile, a Goodfellas parody can be a setup for another of Jay’s memorable catchphrases, “Hi, guy.” The under-10 crowd might not get the Picasso jokes, but Jay’s ridiculously basic catchphrases, like “buy my book” and “hotchie motchie,” gave us plenty to chew on as the deeper references wormed into our subconscious.

Like all good criticism, The Critic expanded my view of the wider cinematic world. More than parodies of memorable moments, the show introduced me to Orson Welles, whose blocky frame, “country goodness and green pea-ness” became a fixture of my pop culture understanding. The Critic didn’t always treat him kindly, often reverting to fat jokes, but voice actor Maurice LaMarche’s impression is still what I hear in my head when I think of Welles’ dulcet tones.

The Critic often had a complex relationship with creators. Jay’s pitch for his second Pulitzer, an essay entitled “Chaplin, Polanski, And Woody: Three Men And A Little Lady,” teases a more complex, systematic situation. Nevertheless, the show’s opening credits and Han Zimmer’s theme are a direct homage to Woody Allen’s Manhattan and its use of the New York skyline and George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody In Blue.”

Of course, the show made critics worthy of celebrity, too. At that point, the extent of my interest in film criticism was the 1993 book Movies On TV And Video Cassette and the Blockbuster Video guide. But the series aired at the height of Siskel and Ebert’s television fame, so in the critics’ section of L’ane Riche, the exclusive restaurant Jay frequents, Gene Shalit raves about linguine, Pauline Kael gets a name check, and Rex Reed is calling Ebert for a job. The show wasn’t a critical darling, but despite getting panned by Siskel and Ebert on At The Movies, the pair appeared in the second-season classic, “Siskel & Ebert & Jay & Alice.” It’s still the show’s most famous episode.

After its 1995 cancelation, the series existed as a dream only accessed through the Simpsons crossover episode “A Star Is Burns.” The crossover might be controversial for Matt Groening, but it’s a fan favorite responsible for some of the show’s most beloved jokes, like “Saying the quiet part loud,” “That’s the joke,” and “Boo-urns.” Quoting those lines was my only connection to the Shermometer until Comedy Central added the show to its late-night offerings in 1997. Couched between other comedies far too adult for my delicate disposition, like Dr. Katz and the USA “Up All Night” classic Duckman, The Critic played the sleepover circuit. My friends and I would stay up well past midnight to glimpse “Ghostchasers III,” cackling our heads off at a skyscraper-sized Ed Koch, asking, “How’m I doing?” Who cares if I didn’t know who Ed Koch was? I didn’t know who Michael Dukakis was, either.

The Critic offered a primer for the film and cultural canon. It gave me junk food parodies of The Lion King and Indiana Jones and prepared my brain for a more expansive pop-culture universe populated by a flirty Elephant Man and a ghostly Orson Welles. But more than that, it instilled in me a belief that good movies were worth defending and that movies, in general, were an interest one could have. The people who make movies and the people who talk about them are all part of the same absurd, hostile, and fascinating world, a world I wanted to join.

Over the years, my love for The Critic receded into the background. But whenever I see another Jurassic Park sequel, a voice from the deep recesses of my memory cries out: “It stinks.”