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Positive:
19
Mixed:
14
Negative:
4
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Critic Reviews
Jun 11, 2016
Season 1 Review:
Not that BrainDead isn't bleakly hilarious, to a pee-your-pants-laughing degree, and drive-in-movie creepy. It sooooo is, and it's the show of the summer and possibly of the year. But not since The Werewolf Of Washington popped up during the 1973 summer of Watergate has Hollywood captured the moment's political gestalt with such deadly accuracy.
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TV Guide MagazineJun 16, 2016
Season 1 Review:
The genius of BrainDead, an enjoyably offbeat sci-fi/political satire hybrid, is in reminding us that it's possible to have fun without leaving one's brain at the door. [20-26 Jun 2016, p.17]
Jun 13, 2016
Season 1 Review:
Ridiculous, yes, but also engaging--and maybe some relief for viewers who are preoccupied with politics but could still use a break from cable news. BrainDead is no “Good Wife,” but it does have the Kings’ sense of wit and momentum. It also, to some degree, displays their knack for timely social commentary.
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Uncle BarkyJun 9, 2016
Season 1 Review:
One of the better things about this series is its ongoing updates via clever Gilligan’s Island-esque sing-along lyrics preceding each new chapter. Better yet is Winstead’s assured, appealing performance as a D.C. tenderfoot thrust into a new world of mystery and political polarization that escalates once those bugs begin infesting and in some cases, exploding the heads of their prey.
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Jun 14, 2016
Season 1 Review:
The pacing in the early episodes can be uneven, and some plot points you see coming from a long way off. But BrainDead is promisingly original, a deft combination of the tropes of a horror movie, the pace of a forensic drama and the barbs of a political satire that’s thoroughly of the moment.
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Jun 13, 2016
Season 1 Review:
BrainDead is zippy and witty, a thinking person’s beach read, but there is something not quite enough about the premise. Our political culture is so crazy it is nearly un-satirizable. BrainDead knows this: Its point--not a joke at all--is that a Washington infested with extraterrestrial creepy-crawlies is indistinguishable from a pest-free D.C.
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Jun 13, 2016
Season 1 Review:
If the series is too schematic and too noncommittal to really function as satire, that doesn't matter much; it’s fun--“The Good Wife” was always the best at its funnest--and Winstead has just the right mix of innocence, intelligence, idealism and pluck for the job. And it functions capably as a monster movie.
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ColliderJun 13, 2016
Season 1 Review:
BrainDead moves along at a plucky pace, with the always charming Winstead as an affable and compelling lead, especially as she starts to unravel more about the space bug conspiracy. ... While those aspects work--though they are occasionally too on-the-nose (early episodes were re-tooled to include timely references about Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton)--the series’ tone may be divisive.
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Jun 13, 2016
Jun 13, 2016
Season 1 Review:
Throughout, BrainDead has the goofy-A-student vibe of a particularly saucy public-radio show. The other parts of this mash-up are weaker. The sci-fi plotting is perfunctory. Ms. Winstead is charming, but Laurel is conceived mainly as an audience surrogate, there to roll her eyes for us at the egos in Washington. The pols, like Tony Shalhoub’s boorish Republican senator, are flat characters even before they come down with brain-bugs.
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Jun 8, 2016
Season 1 Review:
BrainDead manages to be intermittently intriguing just through the sheer strangeness of its premise not to mention the sparkling chemistry Winstead exhibits both with Tveit and Semine. And in a different series, Pino’s cheerful, adulterous, win-at-all-costs politico could’ve been downright fascinating. Ultimately, though, like the inside-the-beltway white matter that gets consumed by those little alien critters and winds up turning to pink goo, BrainDead goes splat under the weight of its outsized aspirations.
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Jun 13, 2016
Season 1 Review:
While the show shoots for Sorkinesque commentary and the hilarity of “Veep,” it doesn’t come anywhere close to either. Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Danny Pino, Aaron Tveit, Tony Shalhoub and other familiar small-screen faces don’t have much to work with, given writing that’s as weak as the excuses offered during high-profile sexting scandals.
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