quarterlife
NBC | Bravo | Quarterlife | NBC/Bravo | Release Date: February 26, 2008
CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
53
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 19 Critic Reviews
Positive:
7
Mixed:
7
Negative:
5

Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
80
The Hollywood ReporterRay Richmond
Season 1 Review: Doesn't sound like the formula for compelling, consequential drama, but quarterlife manages to take these typically narcissistic young adults and make them legitimately interesting. Read full review
80
NewsdayDiane Werts
Season 1 Review: The "quarterlife" series, too, offers an especially hopeful kind of exuberance, even a glowing warmth to the friendships, that shines brighter than previous Herskovitz-Zwick shows. Read full review
80
Philadelphia InquirerJonathan Storm
Season 1 Review: It is a finely crafted serial about contemporary and supposedly representative people in the same decade of life. Read full review
75
New York Daily NewsDavid Hinckley
Season 1 Review: What we get is a young adult soap opera whose story is as old as drama itself, but which is smartly packaged to look like you'd get it by typing www, instead of pressing the "on" button. Read full review
75
San Jose Mercury News/Contra Costa TimesCharlie McCollum
Season 1 Review: The writing is smart, the production is crisp and surprisingly stylish, given the budget, and the show has a fascinating central character in kinetic blogger Dylan Krieger. Read full review
70
Chicago TribuneMaureen Ryan
Season 1 Review: Though it soon settles into the standard patterns of an above-average (if overwrought) drama, the first episode of quarterlife may make you regret the creation of the Internet. Read full review
70
Wall Street JournalDorothy Rabinowitz
Season 1 Review: Their new effort--about a band of young careerists--shows considerable signs of promise along these lines, its depressing heroine notwithstanding. Read full review
60
Los Angeles TimesMary McNamara
Season 1 Review: Zwick and Herskovitz do capture the sweet self-absorption of youth--love is never truer, dreams never dearer and life never as complicated as it is when you are 24--it's just that it all feels so familiar when we were so hoping for something new and exciting. Read full review
60
VarietyBrian Lowry
Season 1 Review: It focuses on twentysomethings and employs the tired device of a character speaking to the camera, producing a video blog about herself and her equally self-obsessed friends. Read full review
50
Pittsburgh Post-GazetteRob Owen
Season 1 Review: As frustrating as it is fascinating, watching the quarterlife characters is like gazing at animals in a zoo. Read full review
50
USA TodayRobert Bianco
Season 1 Review: This may be a show about young adults, but there are older adults in charge. And we've come to expect better from them. Read full review
50
L.A. WeeklyRobert Abele
Season 1 Review: I don't feel negative necessarily about the flaws of quarterlife, but then I don't feel much at all about quarterlife either. Read full review
40
Newark Star-LedgerAlan Sepinwall
Season 1 Review: Any show that's willing to go to such a silly place, to have its main character utter a line of dialogue that's like a parody of a parody of stuff these guys were writing two decades ago on "thirtysomething," is not a show I have time for, even if other shows won't be back until April. Read full review
40
PopMattersMarisa LaScala
Season 1 Review: It’s as if quarterlife comes with a prefab drinking game: take one shot when the waterworks start, another if the word “scared” follows. Read full review
30
Boston GlobeMatthew Gilbert
Season 1 Review: Oh big sigh indeed. Quarterlife, is just plain creepy.... Rather than developing a clique of layered individuals, as they've done before, Herskovitz and Zwick deliver a small culture of flat, irritating generational emblems. Read full review
30
Philadelphia Daily NewsEllen Gray
Season 1 Review: Though the abbreviated installments of the online quarterlife had annoyed me with their very brevity, at an hour, NBC's quarterlife seems to drag on forever Read full review
30
Washington PostTom Shales
Season 1 Review: Regardless, what made it to the screen is something that is no stranger to television--whether it's aired or wired, blogged or beamed, uploaded or downlinked--and that something, sad to say, is mediocrity, with a portion of sheer annoyance thrown in. Read full review
20
Orlando SentinelHal Boedeker
Season 1 Review: This little pipsqueak of a show doesn't deserve the wider forum of broadcasting. Read full review
20
TV Guide MagazineMatt Roush
Season 1 Review: This exercise in tedium is better suited for its original home on the Internet, where it should have stayed. Read full review
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