Surviving Jack

The humor results from its realism and the blossoming relationship between father and son. Here's hoping this one sticks around.

Surviving Jack--based on Justin Halpern's memoir I Suck at Girls--distinguishes itself with a terrific turn by Christopher Meloni as the father and a refreshing treatment of gender roles.

The pilot is funny, Meloni holds the whole thing together and even the voice over works--despite there needing to be, at the very least, a five season moratorium on that little conceit.

Forget the kids: I could happily watch Meloni and Harris banter and flirt for a half-hour a week.

The dark tone might be the greatest barrier at first to viewers, but the cast rolls with the wisecracks.

Among the innumerable improvements here that lift Jack over Dad, start with turning the paternal lead over to Christopher Meloni--an actor who can convey warmth, brains and masculine menace with a glance--and giving him an actual person to play, rather than an insult-spouting cartoon. Then throw in making his wife a regular character, casting Rachael Harris and moving the story back in time, so that the son is now a more empathetic teenager, rather than an adult moving back home.

Warm--or more accurately, lukewarm--moments intercede before the final bells in both half-hours. And Meloni delivers them like a champ while also dominating during an American Gladiators face-off that jump-starts next week’s episode.

Even though the father-son territory has been trod before--in Halpern’s body of work alone!--it’s also where the show feels most alive.

There’s an acerbic charm to Fox’s 1991-set sitcom that elevates it above similar newcomers “Growing Up Fisher” and “The Goldbergs.”

Surviving Jack is very enjoyable, with Meloni delivering in a comedic role and ably supported by some clever writing and a solid cast.

There's a strange sense of distance in the picture here of a decade not exactly in the remote past, but there's also something sweetly enticing about its portrayal of relative innocence.

Jack's "surrounded by idiots" misanthropy and drill-sergeant parenting threatens to wear thin, but Meloni sells it with an underlying intelligence and empathetic warmth.

While the first two episodes of Surviving Jack available for review didn’t offer an avalanche of laugh-out-loud moments, there is a free-spirited realness to it that makes the show worth sticking with to see Meloni whip it into shape.

Jack has an excellent cast.... Maybe the writing will catch up with them. [31 Mar 2014]

A series that’s not as impressive as its lead actor’s performance.

If only Surviving Jack was more daring. But it falls into TV's sap-trap. Meloni is deliciously derisive, but only for the first 20 minutes of the episode.

The characters on Surviving Jack, like those on “Growing Up Fisher,” are more appealing and a little more nuanced. But they both are feel-good comedies that seem written to make their creators, more than the audience, feel good. Neither is as funny and durable as "The Middle."

Mostly, it’s another throwback to the twin notions that writers like tackling what they know, and adolescence--with all its potential for humiliation and exultation--offers fertile if not particularly original ground for comedy.

What's wrong here are some of the same elements that have made the 2013-14 network comedy crop one of the weakest in memory--not enough laughs, not enough of a show that feels like it has something interesting to say (and wants to say it).

No one can survive Surviving Jack’s hollow and formulaic dialogue, which is bursting with jokes that are half-funny at best.

Surviving Jack allows for a smidgen of heartfelt earnestness now and again, but it’s less heartwarming than the steadily-improving “The Goldbergs” because at heart Surviving Jack is the one-joke premise of its title: My dad’s a jerk.

The cast is likable, until they open their mouths to deliver the fourth-rate dialogue.