The Slap (2015)
NBC | Release Date: February 12, 2015
CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
62
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 33 Critic Reviews
Positive:
17
Mixed:
11
Negative:
5
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
60
Under The RadarLily MoayeriFeb 12, 2015
Season 1 Review: There is enough going on in The Slap without the addition of the narration, which is reminiscent of the voice over on Pushing Daisies and sounds like it's describing a comedy. Get rid of that smug, knowing narrator, The Slap can speak for itself. Read full review
60
New York Magazine (Vulture)Margaret LyonsFeb 12, 2015
Season 1 Review: It's not fully good by any means, but I will watch more episodes, and I'm interested how everything will get resolved. I'm more curious about the characters of The Slap than I am about the characters of, say, The Affair. Read full review
60
Philadelphia InquirerDavid HiltbrandFeb 12, 2015
Season 1 Review: No question, this is a high-quality production with a fine cast that includes Marin Ireland, Brian Cox, Thomas Sadoski, Michael Nouri, and Penn Badgley. But it's also terribly stagey and saddled with a pretentious voice-over by Victor Garber. Read full review
60
Boston GlobeSarah RodmanFeb 11, 2015
Season 1 Review: Even if the tale is not particularly captivating, the actors, in particular Sarsgaard and Newton, enliven the quotidian details. Read full review
60
New York Daily NewsDavid HinckleyFeb 11, 2015
Season 1 Review: The Slap just misses being as sharp in the execution as it is in the concept. Read full review
50
Los Angeles TimesMary McNamaraFeb 12, 2015
Season 1 Review: It's quite a cast and a good thing too, considering the almost uniformly absurd character types they miraculously manage to animate. Read full review
50
SlateWilla PaskinFeb 12, 2015
Season 1 Review: Add all this up, and what results is not an elegant, adult, psychologically astute miniseries. Instead, The Slap is a bulldozer: bluntly, gracelessly effective. Read full review
50
Denver PostJoanne OstrowFeb 5, 2015
Season 1 Review: The cast is inviting.... But the too-prominent, overly obvious voice-over narrator is a truly awful innovation. Read full review
42
HitfixAlan SepinwallFeb 11, 2015
Season 1 Review: It is humorless, pretentious, a waste of a number of good performances, and about as subtle as its title action, but it is also very real. Read full review
40
The Huffington PostMaureen RyanFeb 11, 2015
Season 1 Review: Zachary Quinto, Peter Sarsgaard, Uma Thurman, Thandie Newton and Melissa George all try their best, but this is not a legal drama or a cop show, where a near-miss can more or less work. You either nail this kind of challenging material or you don't, and The Slap ultimately fails to live up to the potential implied in its attention-getting title.
40
TimeJames PoniewozikFeb 10, 2015
Season 1 Review: The Slap has the ideas and the assembled talent to make a better, subtler character exploration, but it’s brought down by hamhanded characterization and an assemblage of bourgeois-Brooklyn types that it’s impossible (even for another bourgeois-Brooklyn type) to care about. Read full review
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