- Network: FOX
- Series Premiere Date: May 26, 2009
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Critic Reviews
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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.
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Mental doesn't blow in with quite as fresh a breeze as "House." But it could get up into that division.
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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.
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Mental's plots are trite and secondary to establishing Gallagher as a policy-defying Brit who says ''Bang on!'' to express enthusiasm.
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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.
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It's a stubbornly mediocre product that really, really, really wants to be "House" in a hospital psych ward.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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As TV dramas go, Mental is far from unwatchable. But unless you're spending the summer without cable, it's also probably unnecessary.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 21 out of 39
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Mixed: 4 out of 39
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Negative: 14 out of 39
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Dr.G.Aug 15, 2009For years I've been turning OFF the TV Give us more of this and we will tune in.
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ShawnM.Aug 15, 2009This show is funny as heck I laugh my booty off and really hope to see it through another season or two or three. I'm biting thanks.
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AaronA.Aug 15, 2009* Yes, yes, yes! At last a show that holds my attention! Love it and look forward to seeing a whole lot more of it.