- Network: ABC
- Series Premiere Date: Apr 6, 2009
Critic Reviews
- Critic score
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- By date
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A conventional, by-the-book alleged laugh-fest that proves just how inert and lifeless the format can be.
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While its cynicism about suburbia is superficially novel, the show itself is quite old-fashioned if not old hat: lame dad, smart mom, cute child, knowing child, strange neighbor. Door here, door there, couch in the middle.
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It's difficult to imagine many "Dancing" viewers will be suckered into watching this unimaginative, predictable comedy series for more than the first couple of minutes.
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It's a hackfest of cliches and obvious, unfunny jokes about kids and neighbors and marriage, with multiple cameras, a smothering laugh track, precocious kids and a salty but loving wife.
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The pilot is not very funny or at all surprising.
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Suburbia isn't the worst show you've ever seen. It may not even be the worst show you could watch tonight in this time slot. But it is among the least-memorable.
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A show so fastidiously old-fashioned as to feel assembled from pieces of '70s family sitcoms.
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It has the air of something two teenage pals concocted while goofing around on the Internet, but the result of that would probably be fresher and bolder than Surviving Suburbia is.
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Saget plays a cynical dad, but his acid outlook isn't enough to juice up this blah comedy, which was originally slated for The CW.
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Domestic comedy doesn't get more generic, more insipid, or more pointless than "Surviving Suburbia," and no, I haven't forgotten about "Gary Unmarried" or "In the Motherhood."
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Modest but terrific, uncool but charming, this ain't According to Jim: Give it a try.
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Why anybody is paying the writers and cast of Surviving Suburbia for what is essentially an amateur-hour production is just one more of those eternal television mysteries.
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Surviving Suburbia starts out weak and declines rapidly.
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Most painful are the scenes of Steve and Anne with their daughter, Courtney (G Hannelius). They’re overacted, unfunny and, like much of the rest of the show, full of annoying cliches.
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In place of Saget’s real-life comic shtick, which is genuinely outrageous and dirty, we get sour, rehashed Honeymooners, misanthropy without insight.
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The jokes never got any better than that, not even when the girl-moppet later waxed ecstatic about Zac Efron in High School Musical.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 4 out of 13
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Mixed: 1 out of 13
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Negative: 8 out of 13
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BarbKApr 8, 2009Old fashioned humor. Simple but funny. Loved it.
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jkdsvnkvnkknsfcnkedApr 7, 2009
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LolaLittleApr 6, 2009This was painfully boring and should be canceled immediately.