Critic Reviews
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Not a single thing William Shatner's Dad has said in those ubiquitous CBS ads has been even remotely funny, a trend that continues in tonight's premiere.
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What makes Justin's dad funny is the brevity. Without it, $#*! My Dad Says is not.
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The attempt to shoehorn the Shat into the strained story of a father and an adult son, Henry, getting to know each other for the first time seems false. And when there are glimmers that it might work, Shatner's character, Ed, is visited by his grating other son, Vince, and his even more grating wife, Bonnie. They're awful.
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Oddly, at 79, Shatner comes across as too energetic and youthful even for the 72-year-old he's playing. The bigger problem is that he's given nothing to do or say worth the doing or saying. He gets better mileage from a Priceline commercial.
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The new version, with Jonathan Sadowski as Shatner's estranged son seeking to establish a relationship, feels less like a Twitter feed and more like an actual television show--but not a good television show.
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There was one laugh-out-loud moment in the premiere and that was when son Henry imitated his father and William Shatner's character remarked that no one can do a good impression of him. Otherwise it was a lot of furrowed-brow staring at the TV when the laugh track roared, wondering what the #*!! they were laughing at.
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The show displays all the sophistication you might expect from a social media that limits its statements to 140 characters. Here's a tweet from me: This show is a piece of (bleep).
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Obviously, beware of salty language, but also beware of joke setups that belong in a vaudeville act. The corny tone begins and ends with Shatner; he's supposed to be playing a curmudgeon, but he just comes off as a ham.
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Face it, $#*! My Dad Says was a bad idea from inception to pilot.
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CBS prounouces $#*! as "bleep," although the Twitter account that inspired the show uses an actual profanity. Either works as a short critique. [4 Oct 2010, p.38]
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As awful as $#*! My Dad Says is, you almost detect an ember of promise here. Maybe it's Shatner--whom we will always love, no matter what--or maybe it's an illusion. But CBS needs to blow some life into that ember before it's too late. Maybe it already is.
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If it's any solace to the handful of organizations that are boycotting this new William Shatner sitcom over its attention-getting title, the title is the least of the reasons not to bother watching. A better one is that it's not very good. In the process, $#*! My Dad Says wastes the talents of Shatner.
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So they can't use the name, can't use most of the jokes and can't keep the tone of the Twitter feed. Remind me again why CBS wanted to make this into a TV show?
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A loser it is. Shatner's quips in real life are better and more outrageous than anything Halpern's father or Halpern himself (who exec-produces this bomb) ever came up with. Hearing Shatner deliver them just points that out.
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It's kind of like Dad says: "If it looks like manure and smells like manure, it's either Wolf Blitzer or it's manure." $#*! My Dad Says is no Wolf Blitzer.
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There isn't a shred of fun in this tale of a curmudgeonly grandpa and his unappealing adult children. Its only redeeming quality could prove to be that it persuades clueless executives, desperate to "monetize" social-network technology, never to try to marry TV and Twitter again.
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Let's put it this way: $#*! makes ABC's ill-fated appropriation of the Geico cavemen in 2007 look like sheer genius.
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$#*! My Dad Says is a dismal show, harboring the worst qualities of every lame, four-camera, laugh-tracked sitcom on television. The jokes are painful, the acting is hammy, the characters are flat, and it simply isn't funny. Ever.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 26 out of 69
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Mixed: 11 out of 69
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Negative: 32 out of 69
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Sep 24, 2010
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Sep 24, 2010
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Sep 24, 2010