Metacritic TV

Winner, The

SERIES: Fox, Sunday 9:30p (30 minutes)

Starring Rob Corddry, Keir Gilchrist, Erinn Hayes, Linda Hart, and Lenny Clarke

Created by Ricky Blitt

Genre(s): Comedy

FIRST AIR DATE: March 4, 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).

44 / 100

Critic Reviews

100 New York Post Linda Stasi
Not only the funniest new show this season, but the strangest one since "Get A Life."
83 Entertainment Weekly Gillian Flynn
Even at its yuk-yuk-kiest, the show is elevated by Corddry. [9 Mar 2007, p.96]
75 Detroit Free Press Mike Duffy
Thanks to Corddry's social misfit charisma, Ricky Blitt's affable lowbrow lunacy flashes with a sharp, dizzy wit.
75 USA Today Robert Bianco
Funnier and unexpectedly sweeter than the current norm.
70 Kansas City Star Aaron Barnhart
It’s a hoot.
70 Philadelphia Daily News Ellen Gray
It's surprisingly charming, not to mention funny.
70 Newsday Diane Werts
The emotional reality is so true here that not only do they get away with an assortment of gags about condoms, massage parlors and other juvenile fixations, but they make them resonate endearingly.
70 TV Guide Matt Roush
Deeply silly, endearingly sweet, a little creepy and undeniably weird.
60 Chicago Tribune Maureen Ryan
Overall, the new Fox sitcom is surprisingly winning, and the skilled Corddry is the main reason.
60 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Rob Owen
"The Winner" may not be able to go the distance, but it's a fun little show in the here and now.
50 Chicago Sun-Times Doug Elfman
"The Winner" quickly metastasizes into a routine sitcom with laugh tracks and Ye Olde Storylines.
40 Hollywood Reporter 
There's something ominous about running out of fresh ideas in the second or third episode.
40 San Jose Mercury News Charlie McCollum
Corddry manages to make scenes work that otherwise would have viewers reaching for the remote.
30 Salon Heather Havrilesky
The overall feeling is, "How did Rob Corddry wander onto the set of a shitty sitcom? Quick, someone get him back to 'The Daily Show' before they replace him!"
30 Variety Brian Lowry
The more you see of it, the less there is to like.
30 The New York Times Virginia Heffernan
So far, it’s only abrasive.
25 New York Daily News David Hinckley
It would be obvious and unfunny to dismiss Rob Corddry's new Fox sitcom, "The Winner," by saying it's a loser. But since the alleged humor in this new series is even more lazy and less amusing than that, it seems only fair.
25 People Weekly Tom Gliatto
It's like watching a marionette with one set of strings operated by John Lithgow and the other by Pee-wee Herman. [12 Mar 2007, p.39]
20 Philadelphia Inquirer Jonathan Storm
You can only hope that Blitt, a first-time executive producer, will tire of middle-school humor and move to something a little more satisfying for grown-ups.
20 Slate Troy Patterson
Consider it proof of Corddry's superb resourcefulness that he somehow manages to wring the occasional drop of comedy from these dreary situations.
10 Boston Globe Matthew Gilbert
"The Winner" isn't, by any stretch of the imagination, and it's sad to see Corddry pour his likable comic style -- a form of ironic cluelessness -- into such a feeble and misguided project.
0 Miami Herald Glenn Garvin
Smutty at its best, downright creepy at its worst, this dreadful attempt to mock the coming-of-age genre could well be the first TV show to get an entire day of the week canceled.
0 San Francisco Chronicle Tim Goodman
Insipid, poorly written and saddled with an onerous laugh track, "The Winner" is lame even by Fox's standards.
0 Washington Post Tom Shales
Probably the most mistitled sitcom of the decade.

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