Metacritic TV

In Case Of Emergency

SERIES: ABC, Wednesday 9:30p (30 minutes)

Starring Jonathan Silverman, Kelly Hu, David Arquette, Greg Germann, Lori Loughlin, Jackson Bond, and Lee Reherman

Created by Howard Morris

Genre(s): Comedy

FIRST AIR DATE: January 3, 2007

Overall Metascore

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

27 / 100

Critic Reviews

60 Hollywood Reporter Barry Garron
You get the feeling that if this show is given enough time to find its strengths and understand its characters, it could be around for quite some time.
50 People Weekly Tom Gliatto
It's a good cast, and Arquette's peculiar charm is always welcome. But I'm tired of comedies about the desperate infantilism of panicked adults. [8 Jan 2007, p.35]
50 The New York Times Alessandra Stanley
"In Case of Emergency" is uneven, more antic than witty.
50 Detroit Free Press Mike Duffy
A haphazard farce that fails to find a consistently funny groove.
40 Orlando Sentinel Hal Boedeker
In Case of Emergency puts these characters through sadistic slapstick.
37 USA Today Robert Bianco
It's kind of like Friends if every character had been outlandishly contrived, every situation had been stripped of every humorous moment, and every attempt at sentiment had felt cheap and unearned.
30 Chicago Tribune Maureen Ryan
Its writers are clearly addicted to the tired conceit of giving us three jokes per script page, no matter how played-out the jokes, no matter how predictable the pratfalls.
30 Philadelphia Daily News Ellen Gray
Lori Loughlin co-stars as an emergency room doctor who's dragged into their lives in ways so sitcommy they make robbing Mick Jagger look like a halfway decent idea.
30 Philadelphia Inquirer Jonathan Storm
Germann [is] the only good thing in the show.
30 Miami Herald Glenn Garvin
Where The Class is warm and charming, Emergency is crude and overdrawn.
25 San Francisco Chronicle Tim Goodman
It becomes clear rather quickly that there's nothing funny going on here and, by the second episode, the show seems out of ideas for its paper-thin premise.
20 Salon Heather Havrilesky
There doesn't seem to be a point to the madness here, and that gives this one the expected life span (and the charms) of a housefly.
20 Kansas City Star Aaron Barnhart
It’s not well-cast.... It’s not well-written.
20 Variety Brian Lowry
Somewhere trapped inside this shrill, irritating comedy is a better show that emerges only in fleeting glimpses, amid the manic tone and Catskills-comic humor.
20 Boston Globe Matthew Gilbert
A peculiar piece of work that's a whole lot creepier than it means to be.
20 Los Angeles Times Paul Brownfield
[It] instantly displays a commitment to slapstick in direct proportion to a state of comedic denial.
20 Newark Star-Ledger 
There's a desperation to the whole affair, a sense that if the creators just keep the pace fast and the jokes tasteless, everything will be fine.
20 Newsday Verne Gay
"Emergency" is sodden, forbidding, a waste of 22 good minutes.
20 Seattle Post-Intelligencer Melanie McFarland
"The Class," not a terrific sitcom by any stretch of the imagination, trades in this quarterlife crisis nonsense each week far better than "Emergency" does.
10 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Rob Owen
Never thought a TV comedy would leave me wistful for Silverman's NBC bomb "The Single Guy," but "In Case of Emergency" manages to do just that.
10 TV Guide Matt Roush
[A] shapeless, pointlessly annoying comedy.
10 Washington Post Tom Shales
Dreadful... unwatchable... There's nothing unlikable about the rest of the cast [other than Arquette], but their attempts at farce make you just want to get away from them.
0 San Jose Mercury News Charlie McCollum
[It] may be the worst, most annoying comedy to turn up on the networks this season.

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