Doll & Em

:

Season 1
Season #: 2, 1
Metascore
63

Generally favorable reviews - based on 23 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 13 out of 23
  2. Mixed: 9 out of 23
  3. Negative: 1 out of 23

Critic Reviews

  1. Wall Street Journal
    Reviewed by: Nancy DeWolf Smith
    Mar 13, 2014
    60
    Despite some funny and even pungent moments, in fact, Doll & Em is so gentle that you can barely feel anything.
  2. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Erik Adams
    Mar 19, 2014
    58
    It’s painfully funny at times, and occasionally poignant. In between those peaks, however, it’s needlingly formless.
  3. New York Magazine (Vulture)
    Reviewed by: Matt Zoller Seitz
    Mar 21, 2014
    50
    Despite its refreshing commitment to realism, Doll & Em is ultimately too relaxed and meandering for its own good. There are times when you may wish it had embraced the occasional cliches with more gusto.
  5. Boston Globe
    Reviewed by: Sarah Rodman
    Mar 19, 2014
    50
    There are definite laughs and tears to be wrung from Doll & Em, but the actresses’ own inherent likability and warmth toward each other, oddly enough work against the premise.
  6. Hitfix
    Reviewed by: Alan Sepinwall
    Mar 19, 2014
    50
    Every beat of that material is predictable and clumsy and unfunny.
  7. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
    Reviewed by: Rob Owen
    Mar 19, 2014
    50
    Much of the comedy comes out of that type of awkwardness but Doll & Em is less a comedy-of-the-uncomfortable series (a la a female "Curb Your Enthusiasm") and more just kind of slow and boring.
  8. TV Guide Magazine
    Reviewed by: Matt Roush
    Mar 19, 2014
    50
    While sporadically and quietly amusing, the entire enterprise has the whiff of an in-joke vanity production.
  9. Uncle Barky
    Reviewed by: Ed Bark
    Mar 19, 2014
    50
    There’s some enjoyment to be had from the lead performances of real-life best friends Emily Mortimer (The Newsroom) and Dolly Wells (Bridget Jones’s Diary). A brisk walk would be better for you, though.
  10. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: David Wiegand
    Mar 18, 2014
    50
    It has some promise at first but quickly becomes predictable.

Awards & Rankings

99
#99 Best TV Season of 2014

User Reviews

All reviews »
User Score
4.9

Mixed or average reviews- based on 14 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 6 out of 14
  2. Mixed: 3 out of 14
  3. Negative: 5 out of 14
  1. NObullsh17
    Apr 28, 2014
    1
    This review contains spoilers, click full review link to view. Watching this show made me hate women.

    (This review contains "spoilers" because this show is already rancid enough that knowing details in advance couldn't possibly make it worse. I created an account JUST to post these comments--it's that bad.)

    Two adult women who claim to be lifelong friends just pointlessly treat each other like crap. One goes out and reflexively locks the doors, unknowingly stranding her friend outside for hours because she is from England and apparently the women there are pathetically helpless.

    When her friend finally comes home, the stranded one childishly refuses to allow for it being an innocent oversight and runs upstairs to punish her friend like a sullen child.

    Doll and Em are at a party. Doll is bored, Em agrees to meet Doll outside to go home.

    But on the way Doll is overcome with a flirtatious man, and instantly abandons her friend who only agreed to leave because SHE wanted to! Not only doesn't Doll think to signal her "best friend", who is now standing in the driveway like an abandoned waif, but she refuses to take calls from her "friend" to tell her why she just ditched her!

    It goes on this way for all six episodes, with each "friend" that the other "loves" taking turns doing hateful-chick things to each other. As a man it made me wonder, "Could every crappy thing I've ever attributed to females be RIGHT?" Is this show proof that women tend to be vacuously "affectionate", demonstrating their superiority to men by HUGGING their victims before they shove something trivial painfully up their girl-holes?

    No, I actually know some women who even if they aren't offended by this show at least refrain from the childishly spiteful behavior that this show seems to want to attribute to all women. (Susan Sarandon ingenuously protecting her 8-year old son (?!) from the pretend living room "sharks" that the idiot kid made up himself? I never thought I'd see this liberal goddess playing a psychotic woman who likes to ridicule autistic children!)

    Wells was passable in her teensy anonymous role in "Peep Show", but Mortimer has always seemed too precious by half. (Exactly who COULDN'T bring off any of Aaron Sorkin's cartoonish characters? The acting in his shows always reminds me of high school.)

    "Doll and Em" is exactly the right show to watch before going out to a pick-up bar, because then you won't care if none of the women talk to you--whether you're a man OR a woman. Otherwise, only watch it if you have absolutely nothing to do but want to feel aimlessly pissed off at everyone.    … Full Review »
  2. Marmalade2
    Jun 18, 2015
    0
    Dreadful- I couldn't watch it and I'm a woman. Just tedious and precious and heavy handed. Totally over done with pauses for the tiniestDreadful- I couldn't watch it and I'm a woman. Just tedious and precious and heavy handed. Totally over done with pauses for the tiniest nuance of feeling. I watched the latest episode -season 2 ep 2- and it cut to a scene of them both in white around a bespoke 'shabby chic' white desk laughing and writing their inane play. Ugh! Thought it would be good chick lit escapism but they are so totally up themselves, it is absolutely toe curling.… Full Review »
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