Like Alex Hirsch, Ward was born in California to a Jewish father and gentile mother and eventually dropped his paternal last name Cohen.

Rocky and Bullwinkle, as well as the iconic “George of the Jungle,” was the brainchild of Jay Ward. The distance between Gravity Falls and Frostbite Falls is not all that great. After listening to the speeches - one senator demands that “We get government out of government!” while another lambastes sending foreign aid “to places like Hawaii and Alaska” - Boris and Natasha conclude that goof gas would be redundant. How could she not? Take “Goof Gas,” where the Pottsylvanian spies, Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale, debate whether to spray the gas into the Senate chamber, turning its members into goofballs. Looking back, I relished the voices and slapstick, but my mom cherished the dialogue.

How an extremist Jewish politician has become the ‘auteur’ of his own demise.

According to my 17-year-old Louisa, with whom I’ve watched (more than once) all the episodes and who is a proud owner of a Dipper cap (yes, Gravity Falls has its own virtual souvenir shop), the show is “meta” - a four-letter word for self-awareness served with a dollop of irony. But he is also persistently louche because this is, as well, a special kind of kid’s cartoon. He is inevitably lovable this is, after all, a kid’s cartoon.

He lives in a roadside dump that doubles as tourist trap called The Mystery Shack, where he throws wool over the eyes of visitors with exhibits of fantastic fauna he has pasted together - the Jackalope or Sascrotch - then fleeces them in his souvenir shop. Slovenly and shifty, Stan is a shameless shyster. The show follows the adventures of the Pines twins, 12-year-old Dipper and Mabel, packed off by parents we never see to spend the summer with a great uncle, or Grunkle, they never knew: Stanley Pines. Much to the dismay of Disney suits - the show topped the ratings for its cartoon channel - as well as “Falls” fans, Hirsch decided that he had told the story he wanted to tell and brought it to an end. It burst into being 10 years ago and blazed for just two short years. “Gravity Falls” is the title not for a Richard Russo or Ann Beattie novel - much less Thomas Pynchon’s sequel to his epic laff riot, “Gravity’s Rainbow” - but instead for Alex Hirsch’s remarkable animated television series.

Ever forward review