- Network: ABC
- Series Premiere Date: Oct 6, 2000
Critic Reviews
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Critics have been trashing this sitcom for weeks, singling it out as the season's first likely casualty. I have to admit I got a modest kick out of the first episode. [6 Oct 2000, p.D1]
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Pokes fun at paranoia and only succeeds in making it seem like the ailment of choice in Manhattan. [5 Oct 2000, p.E2]
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Now and then you hear yourself laughing out loud. More often, though, this plays like a one-joke series that keeps repeating the same punch line. [6 Oct 2000, p.F28]
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In what is almost certain to go down in history as a legendarily bad TV idea, Normal seeks to find weekly comedy in the sad, small lives of four paranoid men and their incompetent therapist. Odds are the idea, while novel, was unsalvageable -- but the execution of Normal is so flawed on every level, it's hard to be sure. [6 Oct 2000, p.11E]
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Particularly annoying because of its constant canned laugh track. The rhythm and cadence of the show are as fake as a current coffee commercial that's a satire of "Friends." [6 Oct 2000, p.E-10]
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It's like watching "Big Brother" with a less nutty and less interesting cast, or the old "Bob Newhart Show" without Bob - or laughs. [6 Oct 2000, p.5E]
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Here comes "Trouble," big, bad, ugly ratings trouble. [6 Oct 2000, p.44]
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This laugh-track loser pretty much wastes the not inconsiderable comic talents of Jon Cryer ("The Famous Teddy Z") and David Krumholtz ("Slums of Beverly Hills"). [6 Oct 2000, p.12D]
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Despite a decent cast that includes Jon Cryer and Paget Brewster, all the demented characters are too much to take. The trouble with The Trouble With Normal is that it needs some normalcy. [6 Oct 2000, p.1E]
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The Trouble With Normal is one of those television shows that makes it hard to believe that the networks ever turn down any idea. The premise of this new ABC sitcom is that people suffering from mental illness are funny...OK, that's stating it a little harshly, but only just a little. [6 Oct 2000, p.4C]
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A strong candidate for worst new series, ABC's The Trouble With Normal looks for humor in neuroses. The Bob Newhart Show succeeded in this tricky territory, but Normal proves witless and worthless. [6 Oct 2000, p.E1]
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Thoroughly unfunny paranoid romp through New York. Rev up the midseason replacement. [6 Oct 2000, p.22]
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These folks wouldn't be paranoid if they thought critics loathed their forced and annoying show and widely predicted it would be the season's first to tank. [6 Oct 2000, p.B51]
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May very well be the worst sitcom of the fall. [6 Oct 2000, p.55]
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ABC has been promoting the heck out of The Trouble With Normal, but the shockingly unfunny ensemble and rotten scripts will undo all that publicity in minutes. On a positive note, this will almost certainly end the TV career of Jon Cryer. [6 Oct 2000, p.E1]
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Truly awful. [6 Oct 2000]
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The characters are all so nutty it's like being trapped in a roomful of Kramers for a half-hour. [6 Oct 2000, p.117]
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