The 5 Hottest Teachers Fired For Being Too Sexy
Chris Distefano & Carly Aquilino Explain How They Started Dating, Kinda
The 10 Best Slang Terms For Female 'Alone Time'
Credit: ABC
Awful, adjective-laced TV reviews are fun to read. It's a guilty pleasure. Take one disgusted critic's assessment of ABC's canceled sitcom "Work It," in which a pair of guys dress unconvincingly as women to get pharmaceutical sales jobs because they can't find work as men: "Everyone is blind or a fool and every situation exists only to set up something vaguely resembling a joke," writes Alan Sepinwall for Hitfix. "It's hard to tell whether the show is most contemptuous of men, women or anyone dumb enough to watch it."
Maybe there's an odd, therapeutic benefit in digesting someone else's takedown of a show, particularly someone who's sorely disappointed by a show. Maybe TV hounds are simply drawn to scathing reviews in the same way that rubbernecks can't resist scoping an accident or crime scene. It feels like some critics take real joy in spraying haterade. Whatever the reason, check out nine vicious reviews of TV's recent offerings.
'I Hate My Teenage Daughter' (FOX)
Photo: Fox
Synopsis: Best friends and single mothers struggle with bratty, bully daughters.
Review: "...women are as capable of writing a misogynist, soul-killing TV comedy as anyone else. Exhibit A: 'I Hate My Teenage Daughter,' a shrieky nightmare...in the week since I watched the first two episodes of 'Teenage Daughter,' my anger about this disturbingly sexist mess has cooled and morphed into sadness." -- Maureen Ryan, HuffPost TV
'Charlie's Angels' (ABC)
Photo: ABC
Synopsis: You know.
Review: "I ranked 'Angels' as this fall's worst show. It's not just a lazy idea, it's atrociously executed, pathetically acted and cynically conceived. The tweaked premise turns the title trio into reformed bad girls, which is way beyond this cast's emotional range. With clumsily staged catfights and all the dramatic tension of a car wash, this joyless retread is best watched for visuals alone." -- Matt Roush, TV Guide
'How to be a Gentleman' (CBS)
Photo: CBS
Synopsis: Magazine editor writes a column on how to be a gentleman.
Review: " ...the pilot is virtually humorless. There's one small joke that lands, about why Dillon has a black circular tattoo on his upper arm, but otherwise, even the canned laugh track sounds underwhelmed. And throwing this poor, half-drowned little puppy onto Thursday nights against NBC's 'Parks and Recreation' and even ABC's pathetic 'Charlie's Angels' is sad at best and sadistic at worst." -- David Wiegand, SF Gate
'Rob' (CBS)
Photo: CBS
Synopsis: Schneider plays an ignorant dude who marries into a Mexican-American family.
Review: "...Rob!" is genuinely offensive...Rob Schneider's shudder-inducing "Rob!" goes out of its way to make jokes employing Mexican clichés. The premise is simple: clueless white guy marries into a Mexican-American family. All he knows of Mexicans is guacamole. Bring on the stereotypes: Mexicans as gardeners, Mexicans as illegal immigrants, the racist hilarity continues." -- Joanne Ostrow, Denver Post
'Ricochet' (TNT)
Photo: TNT
Synopsis: Adaptation of Sandra Brown's novel that follows a pair of homicide detectives in Savannah, Georgia.
Review: " ...it's a dead bore, weighed down by bad writing and a plodding performance by Mr. Corbett, who is to film noir what saltpeter is to sexual attraction." -- Alessandra Stanley, New York Times
'Whitney' (NBC)
Credit: NBC
Synopsis: Whitney Cummings as a slightly different Whitney Cummings.
Review: "The problem is that 'Whitney' is a terrible show, though in ways that resonate with our culture's debates about women and humor." --Emily Nussbaum, The New Yorker
H8R (The CW)
Photo: The CW
Synopsis: A reality series where Mario Lopez introduces a celebrity to one of their fiercest critics, however obscure that person.
Review: "Even if we weren't in a period of economic unrest, it would require a profound disconnect to think it a good idea to do a humiliation-based reality series in which the humiliation rolls downhill, a show in which the powerful make the essentially disenfranchised look like fools and then lecture them on their failings.... Mario Lopez, my name is Daniel Fienberg and your show sucks." -- Daniel Fienberg, HitFix
'Are You There, Chelsea?' (NBC)
Photo: NBC
Synopsis: Chelsea Handler's life, in which Laura Prepon plays the younger version of the comedienne, and Handler plays her nagging older sister.
Review: "The laugh track keeps roaring its approval when it should be periodically dry-heaving. What a clumsy, drunken sot of a sitcom this is.... Everything in 'Chelsea' seems painfully forced, including the intercourse between the title character and whatever guy she beds.... All concerned had better cash their checks fast and furiously. It's a wonder they got paid at all. But the joke's on NBC--as usual these days." -- Ed Bark, Uncle Barky
