Newark Star-Ledger's Scores

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For 511 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 50% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 48% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 4.2 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average TV Show review score: 63
Highest review score: 100 The Handmaid's Tale: Season 1
Lowest review score: 0 In the Motherhood: Season 1
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 270 out of 270
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 270
  3. Negative: 0 out of 270
270 tv reviews
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    • 70 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Californication: Season 1
    Californication doesn't have the courage of those movies' ["Shampoo" and "Blume in Love"] convictions. It acts like it wants to tell the story of Hank's comeuppance, his growth from obnoxious man-child to real man, but it can't bear the thought of the audience not liking Hank (and, by extension, Duchovny) right out of the gate.
  2. Flash Gordon: Season 1
    They've assembled a cast suffering a major charisma deficit and given them wooden, cliche-riddled dialogue to deliver.
  3. Damages: Season 1
    Damages offers two superb performances by old pros Glenn Close and Ted Danson.... One thing it doesn't have: a compelling main character. It's a doughnut show: lots of sweet, satisfying goodness around the edges, nothing in the middle.
  4. Saving Grace: Season 1
    The pieces shouldn't fit together--Earl's celestial presence with Grace's raging sex life, discussions of metaphysics with police procedural plots--but somehow they do.
  5. Mad Men: Season 1
    The show does such an amazing job of evoking a world not that long-gone, and in a way that makes it equal parts alluring and appalling.
  6. The Bronx Is Burning: Season 1
    As epic as Reggie vs. Billy or Billy vs. George were on the sports pages in the summer of Sam, it doesn't feel like quite enough to fill eight hours of scripted drama.
  7. Burn Notice: Season 1
    It wants to be a smart-aleck comedy/thriller hybrid in the spirit of Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiaasen, but the jokes are rarely clever enough and the thrills rarely exciting enough.
  8. Heartland: Season 1
    It is every organ transplant storyline you've ever seen before on "ER" or "Chicago Hope" or elsewhere, told in the most unimaginative fashion possible, acted out by a competent group of actors not given much to play.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Meadowlands: Season 1
    Whether this is all weirdness for weirdness' sake or something more complex isn't clear, not even after the first four episodes.
  10. Flight of the Conchords: Season 1
    The guys are so polite and harmless that it's hard to dislike them even when they repeat themselves in such a short span.
  11. Big Love: Season 2
    The show feels cold, like it's holding the audience at arm's length.
  12. John from Cincinnati: Season 1
    It's an odd little show, often more David Lynch than David Milch, and after three episodes I'm still not sure I understand it all.
  13. Gavin and Stacey: Season 1
    Horne and Page have sweet chemistry, but what makes the show work is the cast of eccentrics that Corden and Jones have created around them.
  14. Drive: Season 1
    The Sunday premiere has a nice mix of thrills, comedy and pathos, but is there a show here?
  15. Notes from the Underbelly: Season 1
    There’s nothing especially novel or insightful, let alone funny, about the show’s take on impending parenthood.
  16. Andy Barker, P.I.: Season 1
    Unfortunately, the idea's a little too thin to support a weekly sitcom.
  17. Raines: Season 1
    The hallucinatory gimmick can only do so much for the same old stories.
  18. October Road: Season 1
    All of the characters speak in the same exposition-heavy voice; their individual quirks... are too calculated to be interesting; and the soundtrack is both too on-the-nose... and, for the most part, 10-15 years too old for the characters.
  19. The Riches: Season 1
    Despite two fine leading performances by Eddie Izzard and Minnie Driver and a premise that's not like anything else on television, there's something missing in the execution.
  20. The Wedding Bells: Season 1
    It abandons all of Kelley's strengths, like the legal setting and male bonding, and drowns itself in his weaknesses: women discussing their feelings, women flirting with men, women acting body-conscious... basically, anything involving the female gender.
  21. The Black Donnellys: Season 1
    If "Donnellys" wants a shot at doing better than "Studio 60" in its timeslot, it needs at least a hint of a larger-than-life figure.
  22. Rules of Engagement: Season 1
    Having two nearly identical, equally mediocre sitcoms on the air at the same time isn't exactly a crime, but it seems an awful waste of someone's time and energy.
  23. The Sarah Silverman Program: Season 1
    I like her a lot, but the shaggy-dog nature of the storytelling... made the comedy miss about as often as it hit for me.
  24. The Dresden Files: Season 1
    It isn't until the werewolf-themed fourth episode that "Dresden Files" finally gives you a trick worth applauding. Hopefully, there's more of that to come.
  25. Skins: Season 1
    So, to sum up: decadent and adult, but too entertaining to be this week's harbinger of the apocalypse.
  26. 24: Season 6
    Last year's body count also makes some of this year's deaths feel routine; I spent a good chunk of the early episodes figuring out which characters had lived just a little too long, if you know what I mean.
    • 27 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    In Case of Emergency: Season 1
    There's a desperation to the whole affair, a sense that if the creators just keep the pace fast and the jokes tasteless, everything will be fine.
  28. The Knights of Prosperity: Season 1
    One of the better -- if stranger -- comedy debuts the networks have put out this year.
  29. Dirt: Season 1
    It's the first outright catastrophe of FX's post-"The Shield" era.
  30. Sleeper Cell: Season 2
    The new edition delivers many of the same thrills and intelligent debate that made the original so exceptional. But the mere act of bringing it back creates problems the original never had to deal with.
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