Mental
FOX | Release Date: May 26, 2009
CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
39
METASCORE
Generally unfavorable reviews based on 18 Critic Reviews
Positive:
1
Mixed:
10
Negative:
7
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
63
New York PostLinda Stasi
Season 1 Review: You don't have to be nuts to love Mental, which is a kind of schizophrenic "House"--but you do have to be willing to suspend disbelief to the point of, well, insanity. Read full review
60
New York Daily NewsDavid Hinckley
Season 1 Review: Mental doesn't blow in with quite as fresh a breeze as "House." But it could get up into that division. Read full review
50
Chicago Sun-TimesPaige Wiser
Season 1 Review: Gallagher's played by Chris Vance ("Prison Break"), who tries to overcome the cheesy script with a British accent and a little dignity. He fails. Read full review
50
Entertainment WeeklyKen Tucker
Season 1 Review: Mental's plots are trite and secondary to establishing Gallagher as a policy-defying Brit who says ''Bang on!'' to express enthusiasm. Read full review
42
NewsdayVerne Gay
Season 1 Review: It is so numbingly derivative--effectively a dull mash-up of "House" and "Private Practice"--that you quickly forget it's also numbingly silly. But then, maybe that's the whole idea. Read full review
40
Boston GlobeMatthew Gilbert
Season 1 Review: It's a stubbornly mediocre product that really, really, really wants to be "House" in a hospital psych ward. Read full review
40
Pittsburgh Post-GazetteRob Owen
Season 1 Review: If you're bereft without new episodes of "House" this summer and willing to settle for a pale imitation, there's always Fox's Mental. Read full review
40
The New YorkerNancy Franklin
Season 1 Review: Mental, a new drama on Fox, starting May 26th, is solidly mediocre; it’s not good, it’s not terrible, and there’s no reason for it to exist. Read full review
40
Washington PostTom Shales
Season 1 Review: The parts of the show that don't seem recycled from previous medical dramas seem recycled from previous crime dramas, with just a few changes of vernacular and gadgetry. Read full review
40
Newark Star-LedgerAlan Sepinwall
Season 1 Review: Mental was produced on a relative shoestring by Fox Telecolombia, and there's a flatness not only to the sets (which look not unlike what you might see on a Univision show), but the dialogue and characterizations. Read full review
40
Philadelphia Daily NewsEllen Gray
Season 1 Review: As TV dramas go, Mental is far from unwatchable. But unless you're spending the summer without cable, it's also probably unnecessary. Read full review
30
The Hollywood ReporterRandee Dawn
Season 1 Review: Ultimately, the problem is that while someone's used considerable brain power to put all these pieces together, they clearly just haven't thought things through. Read full review
30
Los Angeles TimesMary McNamara
Season 1 Review: If Mental sounds a lot like "House" or "The Mentalist" or whatever other foreign-born-actor-playing-a-haunted-man drama you can think of, well, it is. Only nowhere near as good. Read full review
30
Miami HeraldGlenn Garvin
Season 1 Review: On Tuesday night, we're going to see if you can get it from television, with three shows that--intentionally or otherwise--document seriously disturbed minds, with results ranging from riveting to revolting. Tending toward the latter is Mental. Read full review
30
The New York TimesAlessandra Stanley
Season 1 Review: The creators of Mental couldn’t take Gallagher any further up the mean-spirited scale, so instead they went too far in the other direction and ran smack into cliché. Read full review
30
PopMattersCynthia Fuchs
Season 1 Review: Jack delivers to every brilliant-offbeat doctor expectation, which means that for all his hyper-performative charms, Jack is also tedious, right down to the zipper in his forehead that marks commercial breaks. Read full review
30
VarietyBrian Lowry
Season 1 Review: Despite some nebulous personal baggage involving a mysterious woman from his past, the character's simply not interesting enough to carry the show virtually alone. Read full review
30
Wall Street JournalMichael Judge
Season 1 Review: An early scene from this Tuesday’s premier of the new Fox series Mental, a drama about a psychiatric ward in a fictional Los Angeles hospital, is representative of the larger problems that plague this ill-conceived show. Read full review
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