Metacritic TV

Head Cases

SERIES: Fox, Wednesday 9:00p (60 minutes)

Starring Chris O'Donnell, Adam Goldberg, Rockmond Dunbar, Krista Allen, and Jake Cherry

Created by Bill Chais

Genre(s): Comedy, Drama

FIRST AIR DATE: September 14, 2005
LAST AIR DATE: September 21, 2005

Overall Metascore

This is a weighted, normalized average of all individual scores given by critics, on a scale of 0 (worst) to 100 (best).

43 / 100

Critic Reviews

90 Miami Herald Glenn Garvin
A gaspingly funny show that you ought to watch early and often.
88 Chicago Sun-Times Doug Elfman
The show's appeal is its breezy verbiage and well-suited cast.
70 Hollywood Reporter Barry Garron
Part improbable comedy, part unrealistic drama, "Head Cases" is nonetheless a clever series that gets incredible mileage out of its two central characters.
70 PopMatters Samantha Bornemann
The Practice should have been this much fun.
63 New York Post Linda Stasi
A show with a promising premise that could be a winner.
60 Kansas City Star Aaron Barnhart
An uneven but so far entertaining buddy show.
60 Los Angeles Times Robert Lloyd
It's too schematic by half, the banter rarely ascends to the level and wit, and it contains barely a believable moment... but it is not without a certain energy and cast-based charm.
60 Chicago Tribune Sid Smith
"Head Cases" might have more of a chance if it gets a little bit sharper, edgier, funnier and surprising. But it's a likable, potentially promising premise, buoyed by the expert casting of its leads.
60 The New York Times Alessandra Stanley
Mostly, it is a case load borrowed from "L.A. Law" and "Boston Legal." But the two troubled lawyers are amusing.
50 Variety Brian Lowry
Although the show works a little too hard at being quirky, "Head Cases" does deliver a pair of well-defined protagonists, but initially not the kind of obsessive-compulsive magnetism it will need to flourish in a pretty inhospitable timeslot.
40 Boston Globe Matthew Gilbert
The marriage of opposites is a simplistic and overused premise for a TV series, and ''Head Cases" doesn't travel very far beyond it.
40 New York Magazine John Leonard
All alone, Goldberg is beside himself, as if Ben Stiller and Adam Sandler struggled for possession of his soul.
38 USA Today Robert Bianco
O'Donnell is humorless, formless and vacant; Goldberg is manic and grating.
30 Newsday Diane Werts
Too many moments feel false, overblown or contrived.
30 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Rob Owen
The show is neither funny enough to be a comedy nor dramatic enough to be an engaging drama.
30 Seattle Post-Intelligencer Melanie McFarland
Had "Boston Legal" not perfected the art of office insanity, "Head Cases" ... actually, nope, can't even say it would have a shot in that circumstance.
25 New York Daily News David Hinckley
"Head Cases" has good leading men but a crushingly bad premise.
20 Orlando Sentinel Hal Boedeker
One of the more embarrassing new series this season.
12 San Francisco Chronicle Tim Goodman
The predictability and triteness of "Head Cases" make it difficult to type even a sentence in favor of any part of this series.
10 San Jose Mercury News Charlie McCollum
This is David E. Kelley on his worst days with wildly improbable plot developments and much forced humor.
10 Philadelphia Inquirer Jonathan Storm
The title could have many meanings, but primarily it refers to the people, all 27 of them, who might find something to like in this misfit buddy-lawyer dramedy.
0 Washington Post Tom Shales
Most of the shows now on network television, whether repugnant or tolerable or actually worthwhile, are competently and professionally directed, edited and photographed, but "Head Cases" is a mess even as a piece of storytelling.

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