The Five Lowest-Rated Sitcoms, According to Rotten Tomatoes
It stinks when the majority of television critics don’t think your sitcom is funny. It’s worse when the opinion is unanimous. I’m sure all involved worked their butts off on these five sitcoms, but they’re still rocking a putrid 0 percent on Rotten Tomatoes’ Tomatometer. Might as well wear it — that fat-zero tomato splotch is a badge of awfulness that cannot be denied.
Real Rob
Real Rob starred Schneider and his real wife in a comedy based on his real life, but all that “real” simply meant real bad reviews. “It’s painfully unfunny, thanks to jaw-dropping stereotypes about Mexicans,” offered Common Sense Media’s Kari Croop. “Real Rob has elements of Louie and Curb Your Enthusiasm's heightened reality,” added the Washington Post’s Bethonie Butler, “but the only thing that sets it apart from its predecessors is that it’s not very good.”
The deepest cut may have come courtesy of Philadelphia Inquirer’s Molly Eichel: “We don’t need to see the world through Rob Schneider’s eyes.”
The Michael Richards Show
After his run as Kramer on Seinfeld, Richards could have done just about anything. His pick of projects: Starring as an unconventional private eye who still finds a way to get the job done when he’s not launching into racist tirades at the Laugh Factory. “Almost nothing works here,” grumbled Chicago Tribune’s Steve Johnson.
“The humor is lacking at every turn in this series,” observed Variety’s Phil Gallo, “and the wit is practically nonexistent.”
Over at Entertainment Weekly, Ken Tucker piled on: “The Michael Richards Show isn't merely unamusing; it's shockingly incompetent.”
$#*! My Dad Says
You can’t spell Shatner without $#*!, but despite T.J. Hooker’s presence, the first mildly amusing Twitter account to become a sitcom failed to charm a soul. “We don’t think this comedy is the $#*!,” confessed Zap2It’s Andrea Reiher. Meanwhile, Newsday’s Verne Gay spat, “$#*! My Dad Says is a grim, soulless trek through a swamp of sitcom hackery.”
“I discovered that sometimes,” wrote Time’s James Poniewozik, “a bad-sounding sitcom is actually just a bad sitcom.”
Charlie Hoover
Charlie Hoover has my favorite premise of any of these flops: A middle-aged guy (Animal House’s Tim Matheson) gets advice about life and love from a tiny alter-ego who looks and screams suspiciously like Sam Kinison. Sam freaking Kinison! How could it go wrong? Apparently, in so many ways. “Charlie Hoover seems designed to appeal to the people who think beer commercials are the highest form of visual art,” opined beer commercial connoisseur and Baltimore Sun critic Michael Hill.
Entertainment Weekly’s Tucker was slinging more arrows: “Charlie Hoover is, in general, submoronic, an idiotic creation stuffed with crude jokes.”
“Brain-dead!” raved People’s David Hiltbrand.
Stark Raving Mad
Before How I Met Your Mother or Monk, Neil Patrick Harris and Tony Shalhoub teamed up for this all-time stinker. It’s a literary Odd Couple, with Harris as the neat freak editor and Shalhoub as a bombastic horror novelist with writer’s block. Apparently, the sitcom’s writers were blocked as well. “Its few real laughs look almost like accidents, since the premise itself strains plausibility,” said Variety’s Ray Richmond.
For his part, Entertainment Weekly’s Tucker was puzzled: “I can’t figure out why I’m not laughing.”
The last word from the Washington Post’s Tom Shales: “Stark Raving Mad is an ugly little item on many levels.”
