| 90 |
Philadelphia Inquirer Jonathan Storm
The best sitcom this year, and one of the best in a lot of years. |
| 88 |
USA Today Robert Bianco
Juggling such a large ensemble won't be easy, and the producers have to guard against crowding too many stories together at the cost of depth and development.... If they can get the balance right, though, Class should be an ideal fit for CBS' successful Monday lineup. |
| 80 |
Orlando Sentinel Hal Boedeker
Not since Friends has a comedy been blessed with so many appealing performers matched to sharply drawn characters. |
| 80 |
Hollywood Reporter Barry Garron
In addition to some screwball comedy, it also has a lot of heart. |
| 80 |
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Rob Owen
Cute but not cloying, funny but not overflowing with gratuitous sex jokes, "The Class" earns a B+, which easily puts it in contention for valedictorian among fall 2006's freshman comedies. |
| 75 |
Detroit Free Press Mike Duffy
It arrives fresh, charming and consistently funny. |
| 75 |
Chicago Sun-Times Doug Elfman
"The Class" is a good example of how any premise can be turned into good fiction, even if it's cluttered with tired cliches. |
| 75 |
People Weekly Tom Gliatto
The Class doesn't necessarily generate more laughs than other sitcoms, but it has more charm--like a kinder, gentler How I Met Your Mother--and that's incentive enough to stick with it. [16 Oct 2006, p.39] |
| 70 |
San Jose Mercury News Charlie McCollum
The writing has picked up considerably since the pilot. But the real reason to try this show is the cast. |
| 70 |
Baltimore Sun David Zurawik
A comedy with lots of charm. |
| 70 |
Newsday Diane Werts
Watch the first few minutes of "The Class" in its CBS sitcom debut tonight, and you may not believe me when I say this, but here goes. I think they might have something here. |
| 70 |
Philadelphia Daily News Ellen Gray
And though there are a few clunkers along the way... the largely theater-trained cast is as solid as the writing, which only grows stronger in two subsequent episodes. |
| 70 |
Miami Herald Glenn Garvin
Poignantly funny. |
| 70 |
Variety Brian Lowry
In the mostly undistinguished roll call of new comedies, it goes to the head of the class. |
| 67 |
Entertainment Weekly Gillian Flynn
While [Lizzy Caplan's] pretty great, the show remains merely somewhere on the edge of good. [3 Nov 2006, p.67] |
| 60 |
The New York Times Alessandra Stanley
“The Class” has appealing characters and funny lines, but it has some problems. The jokes move along slowly, and at times the acting turns very broad and very loud, as if it were dinner theater. |
| 50 |
New York Daily News David Hinckley
The best thing to say about "The Class" is that it improves by quite a few notches as it goes along.... The worst thing to say about "The Class" is that requiring viewers to come back and try, try again is asking a lot. |
| 50 |
Newark Star-Ledger Alan Sepinwall
A sometimes-promising, sometimes-frustrating, always-overpopulated new sitcom that kicks off this season's odd new trend of shows about relative strangers who become best pals in a hurry. |
| 50 |
New York Post Adam Buckman
There's a nice idea in there somewhere. Now, if CBS and the show's producers can get together on changing most of it, they might have something. |
| 50 |
Los Angeles Times Robert Lloyd
If "The Class" feels calculated, unrelated to life outside sitcoms, and encased in amber, it's a competent American product, ultimately, no harder to watch than, say, a Dodge is to drive. |
| 40 |
Chicago Tribune Maureen Ryan
The crass elements of “The Class” threaten to drag the whole show down. |
| 40 |
Boston Globe Matthew Gilbert
"The Class" will never be smart, or clever, or original, but it does have a chance of becoming inoffensive and diverting. |
| 30 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer Melanie McFarland
Hang out for a while... and you may quickly realize why you didn't stay in touch with most of your fellow third-graders. People like these suck the life out of you. |
| 30 |
Kansas City Star Aaron Barnhart
The punchlines fell flat more often than not. |
| 30 |
Time James Poniewozik
Almost none of [the characters] shows signs of becoming an actual person rather than a high-concept joke. |
| 25 |
San Francisco Chronicle Tim Goodman
The best that "The Class" can muster is a kind of cookie-cutter familiarity (also known as lameness) that gets prodded by the laugh track to make everyone at home feel like a good time is being had. It's not. |
| 10 |
Washington Post Tom Shales
"The Class" has very little. Considerably worse than being classless, however, is being laughless, at least if you happen to be a sitcom, and "The Class" does, albeit one that's about as rib-tickling as a migraine. |
