The show is cornball, but I'm willing to grant him this small, soft lob toward career rehab.

It hyperventilates when it means to be breathless. [18 Feb 2013, p.44]

Silly. [7 Nov 2005, p.41]

This new four-hour version... trims back the pageantry and tries for a degree of modern psychological realism. [17 Apr 2006, p.43]

The acting in the kickoff episode is awfully anemic, and that's no lie. [24 Jul 2006, p.33]

The cast has an ordinariness that's a little too believable. [16 Apr 2007, p.43]

The premiere delivers a show that's more winkingly cute than it really needs ro be. [25 Jan 2010, p.42]

Some of it's funny, but revelatory? Not too. [6 Dec 2010, p.52]

Reiser, a precise, nimble comic, doesn't have the gut-level energy to bully life into this contraption. It's stalled. [25 Apr 2011, p.46]

The show might work if Steven Pasquale had a script that allowed for bolder contrasts. [2 Feb 2013, p.40]

The opening gag of this new series is not just contrived but also uncomfortable.... But the show improves from there. [17 Sep 2012, p.40]

The show is just as bad as several other recent WB shows (Modern Men, The Bedford Diaries), neither cartoonish enough nor realistic enough to register as anything more than a conceptual shell with a handful of dried peas rattling inside. [24 Apr 2006, p.39]

The only thing more uneven than the quality of the videos is host Bob Saget's comic commentary.

The show is flat. [7 Nov 2005, p.41]

An abysmal new series, but Tony winner Katie Finneran is a great comic talent. [5 Dec 2011, p.48]

The only thing that might make them come to their senses would be a violent but salutary shock. Like Cancellation. [7 Nov 2011, p.45]

Smits is breezily bold, but the show feels fussy--flushed out with "interesting" details and characters. [20 Sep 2010l p.54]

Dreyfus... seems to be laboring to turn a so-so show into the I Love Lucy of the 21st century.

[Laura Prepon] doesn't have any of the original's bone-tired, hard-earned scorn. [19 Jan 2012, p.42]

Unless several characters get more interesting in a hurry, hungry tyrannosaurs will have to provide all the excitement.

In her enjoyably ridiculous reality show, she's self-consciously restrained, perhaps trying to project old-fashioned noblesse oblige-even while goosing her Google profile with this project in self-exposure. She just ends up neutralizing herself. The show is dominated instead by a supporting group of rich kids who take the reverse tactic of whole-hog shamelessness.

It's like watching The Hills with all the shallow fun, glamor and Lauren Conrad edited out. [25 Jun 2012, p.47]

There's no erotic pull between him (Jay Ryan) and the detective (Kristin Kreuk). [15 Oct 2012, p.49]

Allen and Travis, who are both better than you r average comic actor, seem aware that they're trapped in a particular cookie-cutter sitcom hell, forced to laugh their way through stale gags about kids while other new TV comedies explore family life with clever, contemporary touches. [17 Oct 2011, p.39]

As an ensemble they are, like their teacher, attractive but not very exciting. [10 Apr 2006, p.35]

This isn't much different from the studied vapidity of an earlier E! star, Paris Hilton, except that Lochte seems awfully nice. [29 Apr 2013, p.40]

Maybe Prinze should just clear the soundstage of all these people, stand there alone and start over. [24 Oct 2005, p.41]

New executive producer Arnold Shapiro has made Big Brother 2 less tedious than last summer's ... But the show still has too many blah periods in which the players simply sit around and scheme.