| 80 |
Time James Poniewozik
It's also, judging by the pilot, flawlessly art-directed, full of well-chosen period music and--for a drama about a country searching for its bearings in its bicentennial year--a lot of fun. |
| 80 |
Variety Brian Lowry
This series about suburban angst circa 1976 exhibits rare depth for the procedural-packed web, and includes plenty of nifty touches, from the pop-song score and "Boogie Nights" fashions to the first-rate cast. |
| 70 |
Washington Post Tom Shales
It's rather a bold, retro step for CBS to attempt this kind of show in the era of reality television and domestic fights that appear to be actual and spontaneous rather than cooked up by a writer. But the airwaves are so choked with reality that a return to fantasy seems strangely refreshing and, ironically, even more realistic. |
| 70 |
Kansas City Star Aaron Barnhart
Once you get beyond the show’s homages, both to 1970s style and “Desperate Housewives,” this proves to be a groovy little summer soap opera. |
| 70 |
Slate Troy Patterson
The relative tameness of Swingtown makes the unease it provokes more inviting: You tune in to see the bodies and stick around for the minds. |
| 63 |
USA Today Robert Bianco
The show itself, sad to say, is not done well enough to work. But it's not dull, and it's worth watching if only to try to figure out what CBS could have been thinking--beyond, "No one's going to confuse this with NCIS." |
| 60 |
The New York Times Alessandra Stanley
Swingtown has ’70s mystique, but not much mystery. |
| 50 |
Los Angeles Times Mary McNamara
Swingtown walks a fine line between being a period piece, down to the pudding cups, baseball shirts and snatches of the old "$10,000 Pyramid," and parody. |
| 50 |
Boston Globe Matthew Gilbert
Kelley's fascinating concept--the personal and sexual politics of an open marriage--is stifled by CBS prime-time superficiality and an inability to intimately explore intimate subject matter. |
| 50 |
New York Post Linda Stasi
Swingtown could have been great. Instead it's a hit-you-over-the-head production--with product placement and wardrobe so obvious it begs us to scream, "That's so authentic!"--best forgotten. |
| 50 |
Newark Star-Ledger Alan Sepinwall
The sex is all implied rather than shown, as is much of the drug use. It's a very PG-13 approach to potentially R-rated subject matter--and that's the problem. |
| 50 |
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Rob Owen
Swingtown isn't just misguided because it's on the wrong network. The show's bigger problem is that the resident "squares" are much more interesting characters than the swingers at the core. |
| 50 |
San Francisco Chronicle Tim Goodman
Swingtown was created to portray a broad but nuanced picture of '70s suburban America, but it might be too ambitious. |
| 50 |
LA Weekly Robert Abele
Swingtown is far from a great show, but until it feels obligated to give killjoy lip service to the downside of sexual freedom--note the transformation on Molly Parker’s postcoital face at the end of the pilot--here’s hoping it has its chance to be rompish and fun and a pain in the side of standards and practices. |
| 50 |
New York Magazine John Leonard
Since Swingtown isn’t even peekaboo, much less dirty, I wish I could say that it’s played for laughs. But I don’t know what it’s played for. |
| 50 |
Newsday Verne Gay
Swingtown can't decide whether the '70s were transformative or deformative; there's a distinct ironic edge, applied mostly through the use of music.... But that edge isn't nearly sharp or funny enough (unlike "Weeds"), which tends to muddle the point of view. |
| 40 |
Philadelphia Daily News Ellen Gray
Sadly, though, there's nothing quite that earthshaking going on in Swingtown, which boasts the same eye for detail that characterizes AMC's early-'60s drama "Mad Men"--from a woman smoking on an airplane to another sipping a Tab--but none of its style. |
| 40 |
Salon Heather Havrilesky
Basically, the whole thing is stylish and '70s-sexy but also shallow enough to feel like a less funny, hollowed-out combination of "The Wonder Years" and "Boogie Nights." |
| 40 |
Hollywood Reporter Barry Garron
Even skillful performances by its largely unknown cast aren't able to hide the lack of character development and the sense that the people in this series are almost self-parodies. |
| 40 |
TV Guide Matt Roush
No one is more than skin-deep, so there’s little in the way of irony or metaphor to disguise the fact that Swingtown is so determined to be shocking it seems a little quaint. |
| 40 |
PopMatters Michael Abernethy
With so much going on, one would expect Swingtown to be exciting, but it’s not. Behavior that was scandalous in the ‘70s isn’t today. |
| 40 |
Wall Street Journal Dorothy Rabinowitz
It has one thing going for it--the essential thing. That is, deft writing that yields the kind of suspense that causes people to want to know what comes next. That's no small achievement for a series whose characters are so entirely devoid of, yes, character--or anything resembling an interesting thought. |
| 30 |
The New Yorker Nancy Franklin
Swingtown is a little too fond of the seventies to reveal anything about them that we don’t already know. |
| 30 |
Philadelphia Inquirer Jonathan Storm
It's ugly and bloated, too, bringing back memories of tawdry times, tasteless fashion and terrible music. |
| 20 |
Orlando Sentinel Hal Boedeker
There are vivid reminders of the era's ugly clothes and hairstyles. But the writing is obvious and ham-handed. |
| 10 |
Miami Herald Glenn Garvin
Kelley's compulsive fascination with erratic eroticism turns everything in Swingtown into hypersexualized sleaze. |
