Matt Zoller Seitz, New York Magazine (Vulture)
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For 139 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 41% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 56% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 0.4 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Matt Zoller Seitz's Scores

  • TV
Average review score: 63
Highest review score:
Archer: Season 2
Critic Score 100
Lowest review score:
Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior: Season 1
Critic Score 0
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 71 out of 139
  2. Mixed: 54 out of 139
  3. Negative: 14 out of 139
139 tv reviews
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    • Metascore: 70
    • Matt Zoller Seitz 100
    Oz: Season 1
    For the most part, Oz is an awesome achievement - an alternately crude and elegant attempt to expand the boundaries of the one-hour drama. If it can avoid an over reliance on prison movie clichs, stay focused on the redemption theme and give its powerhouse cast more room to breathe, it could be one of the most important works ever aired on American television. [12 July 1997, p.29]
    Posted May 15, 2013
    • Metascore: 73
    • Matt Zoller Seitz 100
    Episodes (US): Season 1
    LeBlanc is brilliant; the writing and direction are brilliant; the show is brilliant.
    • Metascore: 88
    • Matt Zoller Seitz 100
    Archer: Season 2
    Archer is the next generation version of "Get Smart," with a similarly thickheaded, overconfident, horny hero whose petulant deadpan lines are funnier than they have any right to be.
    • Metascore: 69
    • Matt Zoller Seitz 100
    Mildred Pierce: Season 1
    Mildred Pierce is a masterpiece.
    • Metascore: 88
    • Matt Zoller Seitz 100
    Game of Thrones: Season 2
    Is Game of Thrones one of the great HBO series? It's too early to tell, though judged purely as an immense yet improbably graceful narrative machine, I'd have to say yes.
    • Metascore: 91
    • Matt Zoller Seitz 100
    Homeland: Season 1
    [Homeland] sounds as though it could have been pitched as "The Manchurian Candidate: The Series." But set that aside, if you can, and look at what's on-screen, because it'll reward your attention.
    • Metascore: 94
    • Matt Zoller Seitz 100
    Louie: Season 3
    Louie is the anti–Anger Management: bizarre, inventive, and bold.
    • Metascore: 86
    • Matt Zoller Seitz 100
    Top Of The Lake: Season 1
    A triumph of writing, directing, and acting.
    • Metascore: 82
    • Matt Zoller Seitz 100
    Behind the Candelabra: Season 1
    There’s a solid, patient, confident quality to this movie that’s rarely seen in modern mainstream cinema. It’s better than most American films playing in theaters, and better than most of HBO’s films, too.
    • Metascore: 81
    • Matt Zoller Seitz 90
    Sons of Anarchy: Season 4
    It believes in the story it's telling and expects everyone watching the series not just to have a good time, but to commit. If every drama series had a tenth as much passion, TV would be a far more interesting place.
    • Metascore: 91
    • Matt Zoller Seitz 90
    Sherlock: Season 2
    Sherlock is a wonderful series. Just thinking about it makes me smile.
    • Metascore: 78
    • Matt Zoller Seitz 90
    Boss: Season 1
    Even at its worst, Boss radiates intelligence and toughness, and an appreciation of politics as a nonstop performance in an unscripted drama.
    • Metascore: 84
    • Matt Zoller Seitz 90
    Girls: Season 2
    It lets you simultaneously laugh at and with the characters, and feel justified for laughing, then ashamed, and then the pendulum swings back again; this is a much messier and more fascinating set of reactions than what sitcoms typically evoke.
    • Metascore: 90
    • Matt Zoller Seitz 90
    Game of Thrones: Season 3
    The physicality of the visuals and the performances helps power Game of Thrones past any rough patches--not that there have been that many.
    • Metascore: 83
    • Matt Zoller Seitz 90
    The Dust Bowl: Season 1
    This series is Burns doing Guthrie, bringing a lifetime of experience and craft to bear on a story of people struggling through hard times. He's picking up a guitar and telling us a story--a great one.
    • Metascore: 90
    • Matt Zoller Seitz 90
    Justified: Season 4
    For all its gore, gunfire, and criminal nastiness, it's a joyous show; even when the characters are scowling, the show seems to be grinning at you.
    • Metascore: 71
    • Matt Zoller Seitz 90
    Arrested Development: Season 4
    I suspect it might be a classic that deserves a spot in the pantheon of great, long-delayed follow-ups, though I need to watch the whole thing again and live with it and then write about it again to be sure. That I’d want to rewatch the whole season immediately is, of course, another, possibly higher compliment.
    • Metascore: 90
    • Matt Zoller Seitz 90
    Louis C.K.: Oh My God: Season 1
    Oh My God is animated by deep skepticism and an appreciation of joy, qualities that don’t normally mix in comedy and that might seem, in a different context, incompatible. But they aren’t incompatible--not here, anyway.
    • Metascore: 86
    • Matt Zoller Seitz 80
    Ed: Season 1
    NBC's half-hour slice of small-town life isn't perfect right out of the gate; few shows are. But it's so sure-footed and engaging that it would be a pleasure to see how it turns out. [7 Oct 2000, p.43]
    Posted Jun 13, 2013
    • Metascore: 88
    • Matt Zoller Seitz 80
    The Sopranos: Season 1
    It's an absurdist comedy about criminal behavior and suburban life that gently mocks its targets while taking its characters and their emotions seriously. [9 Jan 1999, p.23]
    Posted Apr 1, 2013
    • Metascore: 68
    • Matt Zoller Seitz 80
    Sons of Anarchy: Season 1
    It's grindhouse and art house, and it carries itself as if it doesn't give a damn what you think of it. And its infuriating push-pull quality is still fascinating.
    • Metascore: 71
    • Matt Zoller Seitz 80
    Portlandia: Season 1
    Armisen and Browstein's masterstroke is showing how certain flavors of modern leftist sensitivity/engagement can seem (to outsiders) like passive-aggressive self-absorption laced with contempt for the unenlightened.
    • Metascore: 79
    • Matt Zoller Seitz 80
    Game of Thrones: Season 1
    You can't just watch this series. You have to commit to it, the way you had to commit to "The Wire" or "Deadwood" to appreciate them as something other than impenetrable fetish objects. Bear in mind I'm not saying that Game of Thrones is a creative achievement on the same level as those other masterful HBO series, which looked, moved and felt like nothing that had come before.
    • Metascore: 84
    • Matt Zoller Seitz 80
    The Killing: Season 1
    As adapted, produced and written for the screen by Veena Sud (creator of "Cold Case"), it's a subtle piece of work.
    • Metascore: 78
    • Matt Zoller Seitz 80
    Thurgood: Season 1
    Students of Marshall's life and times won't find any new information here, but the personal shadings are crucial because they humanize what might otherwise have been dry textbook details. Stevens and Fishburne find a strong emotional through-line for Marshall's greatest triumphs: the desire to right injustices visited upon Marshall, his family and his people.
    • Metascore: 70
    • Matt Zoller Seitz 80
    Taking on Tyson: Season 1
    The process of self-discovery is right upfront in Taking on Tyson, and it's fascinating.
    • Metascore: 66
    • Matt Zoller Seitz 80
    The Borgias: Season 1
    I expected it to be yet another R-rated historical soap with an overqualified cast. It's that. (The series is co-executive produced by ... wait a second ... Michael Hirst? Not him again!) But it's also good. And addictive--not just because of the blood-and-boobs aspects, but because it takes you inside an unfamiliar world and shows you how it works.
    • Metascore: 73
    • Matt Zoller Seitz 80
    Upstairs, Downstairs: Season 1
    These three new episodes, which premiered in Britain last year, are engaging, tasteful and very well-made.
    • Metascore: 84
    • Matt Zoller Seitz 80
    Treme: Season 2
    From scene to scene, Treme is novelistic in the best sense--a long, complex, involving story that takes a while to settle into, but that you can't put down and don't want to end.
    • Metascore: 67
    • Matt Zoller Seitz 80
    Pan Am: Season 1
    Pan Am is nostalgic bonbons for the mind, made with the finest ingredients.
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