For all of the can't-miss TV going on, there are lots of series critics say you can go
ahead and skip.
The following shows are our picks for the very worst of 2018.
ABC promoted this midseason replacement as the triumphant return of Zach Braff, who was
away from TV for almost a decade after Scrubs finished its long run.
What those ads didn’t include was a discussion about what Alex, Inc actually is.
It would appear to be a typical family comedy about a goofy dad, his long-suffering wife,
and their kids, but it’s also about a guy who has a midlife crisis, starts his own company,
and documents the journey with a podcast.
Based on the true story of StartUp host Alex Blumberg, Alex, Inc. brings the thrill of
watching people talking into microphones to the visual medium of television.
It’s about as exciting as it sounds, especially since everyone on the show treats Alex like
he's an absolute genius for deciding to do a podcast.
“Nobody thinks radio is cool, but when you do it, it’s amazing.”
Who doesn’t love people who do podcasts talking about how smart they are because they
do podcasts?
Remember that Disney movie, Max Keeble's Big Move, about a middle schooler who pranks all
his bullies when he learns his family is moving, but then has to deal with all the consequences
when they don’t actually move?
The CW's breezy dramedy Life Sentence has that same premise, but replaces schoolyard
pranks with the much more tragic subject of cancer.
A young woman named Stella thought she was dying and for years lived every day like it
was her last, only to be cured and left with the consequences of her impulsive decisions.
If you enjoy getting some laughs out of a character being humiliated for thinking she
was going to die, Life Sentence is the show for you.
There’s rarely a shortage of medical dramas on TV, so if a new one is going to stand out,
it has to give viewers a hook early.
For The Resident, that involved establishing its lead character, Dr. Conrad Hawkins, as
a medical rogue who plays by his own rules by having him pour out an energy drink on
someone’s car and then peel off his shirt to show a hilariously massive “Death Before
Dishonor” tattoo.
Sadly, that’s about as much character development as you get before the show starts asking you
to side with Hawkins as he makes rash decisions and ignores his superiors because he has a
gut feeling about what crazy medical procedure to go for.
He doesn't come across as heroic, just arrogant and smarmy, a standard-issue hard-to-like
anti-hero story like House without the charm, or Mad Men without the style.
“I have only one rule, covers everything …I’m never wrong.”
Star Matt Czuchry has plenty of talent and intensity, but since Grey’s Anatomy felt
fresher at the start of its 14th season than this show does in its first, it looks like
The Resident is terminal.
Splitting Up Together is familiar in that it's a family sitcom about overwhelmed parents
raising their kids.
It does, however, offer up a twist we haven’t seen before.
Mom and Dad are in the process of getting a divorce, but rather than have one parent
move out, both parents stay in the house and keep separate living quarters to provide their
kids with a stable home situation.
While that's a very modern and true-to-life situation, it's a hard sell for a silly little
sitcom.
Considering that TV audiences mostly know star Jenna Fischer from watching her slow-burn
romance as Pam on The Office, seeing her quip through the collapse of a marriage is just
a little too depressing for laughs.
Here’s something that sounds like a fever dream: Co-created by Oscar-nominated actor,
Empire star, and Hollywood oddball Terrence Howard and his wife, Fright Club is a hybrid
of a reality prank show and a dark comedy with a horror movie premise: Howard invites
his friends, and a fan who thinks she won a contest, to a spooky haunted estate in the
spooky haunted estate capital of America, New Orleans.
Then Howard and his cohorts scare their victims with elaborate schemes in the form of swamp
monsters and gory, realistically rendered voodoo rituals before gently letting his victims
know they’ve been pranked.
The audience, however, had no such reveal.
Believe it or not, this show was actually real.
Ricky Gervais is a TV legend for co-creating and starring in the original British version
of The Office, but his latest project isn't a single-camera comedy or nuanced character
study.
Instead, Child Support is basically a more convoluted, humiliating version of Are You
Smarter Than a Fifth Grader.
See if you can follow this bizarre setup: In a TV studio, host Fred Savage asks an adult
contestant a trivia question.
If they answer correctly, their response is compared to the answer given by a member of
a panel of adorable children who were asked the same questions by Gervais in what looks
like a focus group situation in a creepy conference room.
If the kid answers correctly, the adult player stays in the game.
If the adult was wrong, they can save themselves if a kid panelist answers correctly; if the
kid is wrong, too, then the adult is eliminated.
Exactly the kind of simple, easy-to-follow setup that a great game show needs.
Or not.
“This is worse than the Golden Globes.”
Maybe Gervais thought a game show about children should feel like it was designed by one.
All in the Family was among the most popular, and controversial, shows of the 1970s.
Through Carroll O'Connor's portrayal of Archie Bunker, a stubborn conservative at best and
unrepentant racist at worst who was constantly arguing with his son-in-law, writers could
debate the social issues of the day.
In 2018, the CBS sitcom The Neighborhood obviously emulates that classic formula.
It's about a middle-class white couple who move into a predominantly African-American
area, where they’re happily oblivious to the challenges their neighbors face until
they're called out on it by their new neighbor.
It’s one thing to never quite get to the provocative, progressive territory of All
in the Family, but with formulaic and frankly boring stories, it doesn’t even come close
to contemporaries like Blackish, either.
"Oh boy oh boy they weren't kidding when they said you guys were were not from around here."
There's certainly nothing wrong with a TV series that aims to tell relatable truths
about contemporary life, but sometimes a show is a little too devoted to encapsulating a
realistic experience, and becomes an annoying, unpalatable slog.
I Feel Bad is that kind of show.
Feeling like a retread of countless other "stressed mom" sitcoms like Roseanne or The
Middle, I Feel Bad is about a video game artist who constantly wonders, often aloud, if her
work life suffers because of her family commitments, and if her family life suffers because of
her demanding job.
Oh, and if those weren’t enough cliches for you, don’t worry: I Feel Bad also adds
in a dopey husband and meddling parents.
It’s just a shame they forgot to include things like good jokes, and well-developed
stories.
Obnoxious and self-centered people who have no idea how loathsome they are can be prime
targets for comedy, but what happens when the writers don’t seem to have any clue
that their characters are unwatchably awful?
It turns out, what happens is HBO’s Camping, from Lena Dunham and Jenni Konner.
The eight-episode show agonizingly takes place over just a single weekend.
It follows a birthday for a whiny suburban milquetoast named Walt, played by Doctor Who's
David Tennant, that's planned down to the minute by his wife Kathryn, played by Jennifer
Garner.
They're joined by a series of annoying friends and associates played by hard-trying, well-liked
actors as they swim, hang out, and passive-aggressively gripe at one another.
It’s all the fun of hanging out with people you hate for an entire weekend, but with the
added twist that everyone involved is getting paid for it except you.
The world's most famous Baldwin brother has done pretty much everything you can do on
television, from sitcoms like 30 Rock, soap operas like Knots Landing, game shows on the
revival of Match Game, and even frequent appearances on Saturday Night Live.
The only thing he had left was a talk show, but thanks to ABC, he can finally check that
one off his bucket list.
Unfortunately, that’s not actually a good thing.
The Alec Baldwin Show is just not good.
Talk show interviewing is a unique skill, a host must ask simple but interesting questions
that set up their guests to speak at length in an entertaining fashion.
Unlike the established hosts who actually excel at it, like Stephen Colbert and Jimmy
Kimmel, Baldwin frequently interrupts his very patient guests so that he can tell a
story about his favorite subject: Alec Baldwin.
It seems like audiences weren’t as into Baldwin as he was himself, though.
It did so badly that ABC moved it from its prominent Sunday night time slot to bury it
in the hinterlands of Saturday.