Reason.com's Scores

  • TV
For 389 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 55% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 43% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 3.7 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average TV Show review score: 64
Highest review score: 100 The Chair (2021): Season 1
Lowest review score: 0 Elvis Lives!
Score distribution:
  1. Mixed: 0 out of 225
  2. Negative: 0 out of 225
225 tv reviews
  1. What follows are some awkward dates in which Walton is very forthright and earnest. That's not the same thing as funny. Not at all the same thing, as you'll realize well before the first commercial wakes you up.
  2. Despite Modi's manic presentation, Sunnyside resembles nothing so much as a 30-minute public-service spot for Catholic Legal Services or some other pro-bono law firm.
  3. There are lots of jokes about the sexual and intellectual traits of white trash, apparently the only remaining socio-economic minority without PC protection, but out of respect for the billions of pixels leaping to their fiery deaths to bring you this review, we will say no more.
  4. In short, Murphy Brown was a lovably fractured mess and nobody's poster child for anything. Turning her into a geriatric Rachel Maddow-style Stalinist (Bergen is 72, around the same age as her character) does lethal damage to the heart of the show.
  5. Billing itself as the story of "how crack began," Snowfall is really just a collection of cliches and set pieces you've already seen in other, much better narcodramas.
  6. MacGyver (played by Lucas Till, X-Men: Apocalypse) is soooo much smarter than us, his producers have helpfully slapped big bold chyron labels on all the household goods with which he builds Klingon battlecruisers and time-traveling Waring blenders. So yes, that black ashy substance is indeed "SOOT." And that tangle of wires? You guessed it: "ELECTRONICS." Then there are the moments—a lot of them—when MacGyver is boinking one of his chick assistants while whipping up a laser death ray with his free hand. You'll know when the MacGyver audience has reach its target IQ when you see a chyron reading "ORIFICE."
  7. A crime-fighting Miami pathologist who likes to smirkily show up the cops with whom he works as unscientific dumbasses--sort of like Neil deGrasse Tyson with a badge, and in just as much need of having his eyeballs slapped out.
  8. The constant, clumsy back-and-forth story line is not [Buhler]'s only annoying affectation. He's also larded Nightflyer with references to other, better, works, from Star Trek to The Shining, probably intended in homage but really serving just to remind you how much better all of them were. And the abundant gore, no doubt a confused nod to Martin's original premise that horror and sci-fi can coexist in the same vehicle, serves no purpose at all. [Buhler] may think he's speaking in some advanced new artistic argot, but really, it's just a lot of outer-space jabberwocky.
  9. It is difficult to understate the breathtaking and apparently straight-faced derangement of Agent X.
  10. One thing everybody will be able to agree on, though, is that the 9-year-old version of Sheldon in the Big Bang spinoff Young Sheldon is not ready for prime time or even the pre-dawn hours of a public-access channel. This prequel about Sheldon's childhood in rural Texas, surrounded by an uncomprehending family and a hostile town, is hideously misconceived.
  11. A weird attempt to blend documentary and sci-fi, Mars is an exquisite botch of both. Its only real accomplishment is to set back the reputation of executive producer Ron Howard to the days when he was murdering the mommies of adorable little baby birds on The Andy Griffith Show.
  12. In short, they're plotting to turn the world into an episode of Starsky and Hutch.
  13. Awful...A sci-fi fantasy vision of slavery and race relations, the TV version of The Underground Railroad is an incoherent mess of artistic pretension, full of scenes that are not under-lit but un-lit, nonsensical soliloquys with neither symbolic nor literal value (why would a slave recite lines from Gulliver's Travels to a young woman just beaten nearly to death by the plantation owner?) and surreal flashbacks that only further trash what is a very tentative narrative.
  14. From pacing to plotting to smirky hipster pseudowisdom ("Privacy? We gave that up a long time ago so we could watch cat videos on our cellphone"). Wisdom of the Crowd is a stylistic clone of Person of Interest and Bull. In terms of IQ points, it's the lowest yet.
  15. If Still Star-Crossed was taken hostage by a hacker the way the way the new Pirates of the Caribbean film reportedly had been, ABC and Disney would probably break out into delighted giggles and spend the promo budget on a karaoke party for the staff.
  16. Rebel is merely a boorish bore.
  17. Transforms the nerd-comedy masterpiece The Big Bang Theory into—well, garbage.
  18. It's a wretched mess and arguably an offense against human intelligence.
  19. Better Things is a faithful female-themed re-creation of Louis C.K.'s other shows: witless and angry, mistaking contempt for satire, self-important in its clueless disregard for plot, characterization or other niceties of the performing arts.
  20. For a show that really ought to be horsewhipped, have a look at NBC's alleged sitcom Indebted, which stars the animated corpses of Fran Drescher and Steven Weber as broke Baby Boomers who have to move back in with their son and his wife (Adam Pally, The Mindy Project, and Abby Elliott, Saturday Night Live). My only question after watching the pilot was, are they joking? And the answer was, no, not even once.
  21. Imagine, as I suppose you have many times, Footloose set in a Stalinist work camp. Or a Hunger Games in which the weapons are not bows and arrows but manuals of Canadian Choreography for the Big-Butted. Or that you suddenly and unaccountably found yourself with a fatally compelling urge to thrust red-hot pokers into your eyes and ears while praying for a quick descent into the fiery embrace of Hell. This last one, I must dutifully report, is no longer just an amusing fantasy but a genuine likelihood should you decide to watch an episode of Hulu's dizzying post-apocalyptic rap drama (I am pretty sure I'm the first person ever to type that phrase) Utopia Falls.
  22. Outmatched is abominable, repulsive claptrap, not just anti-intellectual but actually anti-intellect, a rousing call for the stupification of America.
  23. The Purge remains essentially a snuff film. Call me crazy, but it just may turn out that 10 hours of gory slaughter unconstrained by even the vaguest intellectual or moral framework is going to be irredeemable crap no matter how many pretty sociopolitical ribbons you put on it. Call it, I dunno, grade-Z nihilism.
  24. If we ever have a Scopes trial on the existence of devolution, Legends of the Hidden Temple is going to be Exhibit A.
  25. Elvis Lives! creates a black hole of sheer awfulness that threatens to suck in the entire universe and spit it back out as wayward atoms of desiccated goat feces.

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