'Long Story Short': An Interview with Raphael Bob

SPOILER ALERT: This article contains spoilers for Season 1 of “ Long Story Short ,” now streaming on Netflix.

The adult animated sitcom “Long Story Short” begins with a family grieving the loss of a matriarch. But because the show uses a non-linear structure that jumps around in time, it takes about half the 10-episode season before we realize the show is about the same family grieving another loved one. In the first scene, set in the 1990s, the Schwooper family — Naomi (Lisa Edelstein), Elliot (Paul Reiser), and their children Avi (Ben Feldman), Shira (Abbi Jacobson) and Yoshi (Max Greenfield) — drive home from Naomi’s mother’s funeral. In the 2020s, we learn that the adult Schwooper kids are now in mourning for Naomi herself, who died from COVID in the early days of the pandemic.