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Mixed:
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Critic Reviews
TV Guide MagazineMay 21, 2021
Season 3 Review:
The ballroom scenes are still outrageously enjoyable, but Pose finds its surest footing as a classic tearjerker, unabashedly sentimental in its happiest moments. ... Pose really is a dream come true. [24 May - 6 Jun 2021, p.9]
Jun 11, 2019
Season 2 Review:
Pose applies the lessons learned from real-world history as well as its own to deliver a second season that’s just as lovingly crafted as its first, but with even grander spectacle and greater urgency—and in so doing, makes wearing your heart on your sleeve look downright fashionable.
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Jun 11, 2019
Season 2 Review:
What’s remarkable is how much Pose manages to accomplish simultaneously—and without sacrificing the specificity of each character’s personality, relationships or aspirations. ... For producing such an extraordinary, uncompromising second season, everyone involved in the show deserves to take a bow.
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Apr 28, 2021
Season 3 Review:
While the specter of AIDS hangs over the whole season, Pose leaves a significant milestone in the history of the virus until the 90-minute finale. It's a lot of ground to cover, and some of the dialogue trends toward overwrought speechifying. But this was a time when ACT UP literally had to throw the ashes of their loved ones on the White House lawn to get the government to pay more attention to the AIDS crisis, so perhaps a little melodrama is called for.
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Jun 1, 2018
Season 1 Review:
It’s hard to hold a preference for heartwarming moments over heartbreaking ones against the show, especially when its creators are motivated by a reality that’s frequently the opposite. Pose has many excesses, and that level of consideration is just among the more positive ones.
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May 22, 2018
Season 1 Review:
For all of its ballroom flash and diva fierceness, Pose is a sweet, touching drama about finding your family, your purpose, yourself. The number of transgender actors in the cast may have made history, but it’s the humanity of the stories they tell that is truly revolutionary.
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May 3, 2021
Season 3 Review:
While no one sails through these last chapters without a hitch, "Pose" leaves them and us on a soft-but-firm bed of optimism at the end of a slide lubricated with tears, gasps and a whole lot of entirely implausible turns. ... Anyway, the charm of "Pose" remains in its performances. ... Enough about their harsh realities feels genuine enough for such grandiose fantasies to come off as a necessary indulgence.
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Apr 28, 2021
Season 3 Review:
Some episodes pick up days after their previous installment. Some take place months, or even years down the line. At times it can be a bit jarring. Suddenly, the House of Evangelista jumps from being ballroom mainstays to largely absent legends. Characters who barely dabble with drugs have full-blown addictions. But this season has so much heart, these little logical leaps can be forgiven. If anything, they add to the ethereal feeling of the series’ conclusion.
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RogerEbert.comApr 28, 2021
Season 3 Review:
Another Emmy nomination shouldn’t be out of the question for Porter, but Rodriguez deserves one, too. Around the characters of Blanca and Pray, “Pose” predictably bounces between fantastical indulgence and inconsistently weighted depictions of drug use, Mafia involvement, and death. ... [Whitney Houston] sings “The Lord asks me what I did with my life/I will say I spent it with you,” and that sense of gratefulness suffuses and strengthens this final season of “Pose.”
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TV Guide MagazineJun 20, 2019
Season 2 Review:
[Realness] is what distinguishes Ryan Murphy's downtown drama in its fabulous second season. [24 Jun - 7 Jul 2019, p.11]
Jun 10, 2019
Season 2 Review:
Innate decency and hopefulness casts a lovely spell over the whole endeavor, both last year and in Season Two. The story threads can feel thin and frayed at even the best of times, but the warmth of the series’ vision makes coherence much less important than the power of individual moments.
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Jun 9, 2019
Season 2 Review:
The spectacle of “Pose” is a meticulous construct, one dazzles the beholder while concurrently prioritizing the humanity of its players. And in this new season the writers, including the creators along with Our Lady J and Janet Mock, who also directs, cash in some of that currency the show has built in popular culture by emphasizing visibility.
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Jun 5, 2018
Season 1 Review:
Though the FX series sometimes has trouble balancing earnest kitchen-sink drama with the otherworldly flamboyance of its ’80s New York ballroom scenes and the innately didactic quality of some of its main characters’ arguments and moments of crisis, the totality hangs together quite well.
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Jun 1, 2018
Season 1 Review:
Throughout, the series runs on a kind of self-supporting enthusiasm, and is borne aloft by some extraordinary performances. ... Their [Mj Rodriguez and Indya Moore's] work here is natural and moving; they ground what's melodramatic in the writing and keep the fantastic elements in the production from swamping what's human in the story.
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Jun 1, 2018
Season 1 Review:
Through [Angel's] story and others, Pose illuminates the difference between between the genuine and illusory, outshining any imperfections that may slow down its initial episodes. Those are less noticeable than the bright dominating palette of attitude and affection propelling the drama.
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Jun 1, 2018
Season 1 Review:
Its tenderness makes up for any flaws, to the degree that I know I should tell you about the flaws, but I almost want to lie and say they aren’t there, because it carries itself with the confidence of a show that knows it’s good, and if you can’t recognize that, well, that’s your problem.
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Jun 1, 2018
Season 1 Review:
The series is not afraid of melodrama, the first four episodes suffer peak-TV bloat (at a full hour and up) and the scripts veer into the kind of speechy dialogue that comes across as read more than spoken. But the rough patches are lofted by its vitality and refusal to draw its characters in terms of tragedy.
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RogerEbert.comMay 31, 2018
Season 1 Review:
When it soars--and it often soars--it’s the result of authenticity. It’s there in the performances of a historic cast, in the writing, in direction that feels alternately simple and intimate, then glamorous and reverent. ... If it sometimes tries just a little too hard, then those missteps are both understandable and forgivable--and maybe even a little endearing.
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May 22, 2018
Season 1 Review:
There's an introductory quality to the opening episodes of Pose. Murphy and his fellow creators want viewers to be immersed, but they're also mindful of those unfamiliar with the rites and rules of the ball circuit; the show anticipates many of the questions certain viewers might have. Opinions on that approach may vary, but for now it looks like a winning strategy: Pose is poignant, funny and completely accessible, whether you've been part of this community or your only point of reference is Madonna's "Vogue" video.
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Uncle BarkyJun 4, 2018
Season 1 Review:
Pose is praiseworthy in terms of its unique diversity and overall style. The ball competitions, which are frequent, could well be a show in themselves. ... But man, Pose also can be cloying at times while also being as broad as, well, Dynasty with both its story telling and some of the acting.
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Jun 1, 2018
Season 1 Review:
Pose is less an experiment than an exuberant coming-out party for LGBT actors, one that quickly locates the heart, humanity and longing in these characters. In doing so, Murphy and company have turned material that easily could have been clichéd into a drama that proudly stands tall.
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Jun 1, 2018
Season 1 Review:
Pose makes no bones about its intent to school us on a litany of issues. A few of these lectures are memorably and even poignantly written and performed (I could listen to Jackson’s Elektra tell people what’s what all the way to 1989, at least), but most of them strain with effort. It’s always been hard to convince Murphy that a little goes a long way, and viewers will have to admit that most of Pose’s weaknesses tend to vanish during the fantasitcally entertaining ballroom scenes.
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May 31, 2018
Jun 11, 2019
Season 2 Review:
Too often, though, the series goes one step further by blaring that message out loud, with dialogue that suggests a kind of PSA speak. That isn’t so much an issue in scenes that see the characters fighting the menace of AIDS, as Pose knows that the gay community raised awareness of the disease in the bluntest of ways, but in various scenarios, like Angel’s pursuit of her modeling career, that are beholden to all manner of coming-of-age and aspirational clichés.
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The TelegraphAug 9, 2021
Season 3 Review:
The show itself feels increasingly conservative. It’s a cosy family drama, offering up neat lessons, unfailing optimism and traditional signifiers of success, such as expensive apartments and glossy social lives. That sentimental and aspirational sheen might well offer radical hope to those who have been excluded from society, and from our stories. But it turns a drama into a victory parade.
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Jun 12, 2019
Season 2 Review:
Pose has always been a worthwhile series rather than a well-crafted one, and its writing in Season 2 veers all over the place, between heartfelt, didactic, over-explanatory, and anachronistic. But strangest of all is the way the series fluctuates in its tone and sense of humor. ... Pose is at its best when it owns the inherent seriousness of its subject matter.
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TV Guide MagazineJun 12, 2018
Season 1 Review:
Pose owns its shamelessness in earnest, artless yet enjoyable melodramatic stories about these societal rejects. [11 - 24 Jun 2018, p.12]
Apr 30, 2021
Season 3 Review:
There's a lot of love, but a lot less compelling storytelling. At least showrunner Steven Canals has finally pared down the series to its most interesting characters: the parental figures. ... It's hard to begrudge these opulent happy endings to a marginalized group whose real-life counterparts met such tragically violent and premature deaths, but there's also something nigglingly inorganic (if not boringly bougie) about their five-star happily-ever-afters.
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May 31, 2018
Season 1 Review:
It’s a TV show from one of the most canny creators working today, yet as a viewing experience it can feel like an object lesson. ... So many of the people on Pose are strong women, trans paragons, and this comes at the expense of them being recognizably flawed human beings.
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