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Critic Reviews
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The worst thing about Room 104 is that it’s completely inconsistent. The most satisfying episodes function like one-act plays, with well-structured narrative arcs and twists and reveals. The most irritating ones feel overly self-indulgent—transparent opportunities for the writers (Mark Duplass wrote seven out of 12) and directors (a notably diverse group) to play around with form. Still, there’s something thrilling about a show that’s so eager to experiment.
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Some of Room 104’s episodes do have a sort of half-formed quality to them, built around character relationships that seem like they are just getting started once the episode ends. But for the most part, the series is an intriguing experiment, allowing the Duplasses and their collaborators the chance to explore multiple genres and approaches.
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All in all, Room 104 is to be lauded for its adventurousness, but more rigorous attention to quality control could have made it more consistently enthralling.
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While some of the episodes--I have not seen all 12--show flashes of creativity, there is something synthetic about the series, like a hotel room’s pretend hominess.
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The variety--particularly if you watch them consecutively--shines through. Because it’s such a confined space, directors like Smith have to focus on the acting. The episodes are like little workshops. ... It's like any motel--hit and miss.
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The viewer truly doesn’t know what they’ll be getting from week to week. But it also makes Room 104 intensely uneven, with a few stories standing out in a crowd that barely transcends a quality rating of middling.
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Room 104 is extremely uneven.
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There's something remote and stiflingly preordained about the series, which suggests Playhouse 90 cocooned in a derivative formal polish that stripes it of grit and uncertainty.
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They run the gamut from weird to unnerving to poignant.
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In letting their freak flag fly, the Duplass boys tried a little too hard to be all things to all genres and ended up creating a series that at best is mildly pleasant and at worst is unoriginal and tiresome.
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The series brandishes a consistent lack of imagination when it comes to exploring the troubled woman who falls in with a religious cult or the lonely, lost Mormon boys who feel at a distance from their strict faith. By putting focus on the circumstances they find themselves in over the people they are, the series produces little more than cheap thrills.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 14 out of 38
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Mixed: 10 out of 38
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Negative: 14 out of 38
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Aug 13, 2017
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Sep 8, 2017
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Aug 12, 2017