Comingsoon.net has come up with a collection of all the TV shows with Rotten Tomatoes scores that are either way too high or a bit too low. Check out our picks in the gallery below!
Review aggregate Rotten Tomatoes has frustrated and confounded certain audiences for years. The website exists as a place where moviegoers can get an overview of what professional critics have said about movies, television shows, music, and even video games, but Rotten Tomatoes suffers from being far broader in comparison to other similar sites like Metacritic. Instead of taking the actual star rating or letter grade a critic assigns a season of television, Rotten Tomatoes determines whether or not reviews are positive or negative and assigns a “fresh” or “rotten” rating according to which side of the spectrum is more prevalent.
Because of this incredibly polarizing take on review aggregation, Rotten Tomatoes tends to have quite a few overreactions on any given week. Whether it be a much higher or a much lower review than what a show actually deserves, one can be sure that a Rotten Tomatoes rating is likely pretty extreme in one direction or another simply because they minimize criticism to “this show is good” or “this show is bad.” Let’s take a look at some of the most obvious examples of this throughout recent years.
Rotten Tomatoes TV
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Black Mirror (2011- )
Oh brother—Black Mirror has devolved into the definition of on-the-nose, especially after the most recent batch of episodes that dropped back in June of 2019. What started as a smart and inspired cautionary science fiction tales has essentially become a parody of itself, but the positive Rotten Tomatoes rating of 84% confirms that critics are either blind to this or they aren’t expressing themselves clearly enough for Rotten Tomatoes to pick up on what they’re putting down.
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House of Cards (2013-2018)
One of the very first Netflix Originals—hard to believe this was only six years ago—was always met with more praise than criticism, both before and after its star was ousted for being charged as a sexual predator. The show, like a couple of others on the list, was so watchable despite being so subpar. This watchability often gets confused with being good, and the show’s 78% fresh rating reflects this.
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Supernatural (2005- )
How is Supernatural still on? The CW has somehow crafted an empire that revolves around daytime television-quality programming plopped in the middle of primetime, and Supernatural is no exception. The show is truly campy in the worst way, but it continues to return year after year and is always met with positive reviews. Currently sitting at an 88%, Supernatural deserves to be knocked down a few pegs for sure.
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The Twilight Zone (2019- )
A remake of the sci-fi classic, CBS All Access’s The Twilight Zone is so heavy-handed it’s almost unwatchable. With the first season’s best episode being a remake of one of the most recognizable episodes of the original series and the worst being a metafictional look at the writing process of the remake, it’s clear that most feel The Twilight Zone is a lot worse than its 74% fresh rating.
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The Walking Dead (2010- )
Ask any Walking Dead viewer if they like The Walking Dead. There’s a very slim chance they’ll tell you the show is any good. So what’s with the show’s 80% fresh rating? Most critics seem to agree that the show has been in a downward spiral since its beginning, and audiences are not likely to disagree.
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This Is Us (2016- )
NBC’s This Is Us has completely transfixed audiences for a few years now. However, just because a show is watchable doesn’t mean it’s near-perfect. That’s what the show’s 92% fresh rating would suggest—that the show is practically perfect. This is far from true, though. This Is Us is honestly pretty manipulative, gripping the audience’s emotions and taking advantage of this fact.
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True Detective season two (2015)
Let’s get a little more specific: the other entries in this slideshow cover shows as a whole, but we’re going to take a look at True Detective’s second season here. Starring Vince Vaughn, Colin Farrell, Rachel McAdams, and Kelly Reilly, this second iteration of HBO’s crime-thriller anthology series is a one-of-a-kind experience that was more misunderstood than anything else in this collection. Its 64% on Rotten Tomatoes is the result of a bunch of critics completely neglecting to approach this series as its own thing, choosing to compare it to the first season instead.
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Westworld (2017- )
Christopher Nolan and his brother Jonathan have convinced audiences again and again that if a movie or TV show looks good and sounds good, then it must be good. This is an illusion. Westworld is nonsense, but presents itself as high-brow. Its high production values, professional direction, and a-list actors have convinced critics and audiences that they’re watching something truly great. Take another look—this show deserves something closer to a 68% than an 86%.
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You (2018- )
A classic example of a show so bad it actually shoehorns around to being considered good, Lifetime’s You was promptly cancelled by its network in 2018 before it was snatched up by Netflix. Its 90% fresh rating does a poor job reflecting the very real problems with the show—its depiction and romanticization of violence against women, for starters—that most critics brought up in their reviews.
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Young Sheldon (2017- )
Much like The Walking Dead, The Big Bang Theory stayed on air for so long because people noticed the significant dip in quality but couldn’t stop watching. Also like The Walking Dead, this huge viewership each week led to a spinoff. Young Sheldon takes away its predecessor’s laugh track and utilizes a single-camera style instead of The Big Bang Theory’s multi-cam approach, but it’s still not very good. Even 76% is a little high for this mediocre prequel.
