| 100 |
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Rob Owen
Eli Stone offers a well-stirred mix of character comedy, relationship drama, legal cases and musical numbers. |
| 83 |
Entertainment Weekly Ken Tucker
With these superb supporting players [Victor Garber, Tom Amandes, and Loretta Devine] helping drain away any potential drippiness from the show's magical-realist trappings, Eli Stone proves as solid as a rock. |
| 80 |
Hollywood Reporter Barry Garron
There's a strong supporting cast, including Loretta Devine as Stone's no-nonsense secretary, but the big attraction is Miller's Stone and his transformation from heartless corporate lawyer to protector of the little guy. |
| 80 |
TV Guide Matt Roush
Adorably quirky and emotionally surprising, Eli Stone is a legal drama the same way Pushing Daisies (how I miss it) is a mere whodunit. |
| 80 |
Miami Herald Glenn Garvin
It's hard to say which is more unlikely: That a corporate legal fang could be God's prophet; or that the Almighty would spread His word through visions of George Michael; or these matters could be blended into a daffily funny and affecting television show. |
| 80 |
San Jose Mercury News Charlie McCollum
Effortlessly mixing drama and wit, mysticism and biting social commentary, there is a real glow to Eli Stone that will brighten your day and lift your spirits. That is a very rare thing on television. |
| 80 |
The New York Times Ginia Bellafante
There’s a cynicism balancing the upbeat goofiness of Eli Stone. |
| 75 |
USA Today Robert Bianco
It's hard not to like a show that extends its warmth even to characters you expect to be unsympathetic and that expands its entertainment vocabulary to music, dancing and flights of fancy. |
| 75 |
New York Post Linda Stasi
Lots of fun. The acting and comic timing, when called for, are tremendous - and Miller's got the heft to carry it off. |
| 70 |
Variety Brian Lowry
It's a formula nevertheless--one that renders Eli Stone engaging but not fully involving, particularly once the vision/trial/puzzled-looks-from-colleagues ground rules are established, based on a sampling of two subsequent hours. |
| 70 |
Los Angeles Times Robert Lloyd
What makes the show worth watching are some old-fashioned character relationships; no single performance tears up the place, but together they make something interesting. |
| 70 |
Newark Star-Ledger Alan Sepinwall
Eli Stone, lightweight and proudly quirky. |
| 70 |
Chicago Tribune Maureen Ryan
Eli Stone is not quite there yet; the characters are pretty thinly drawn in the first few episodes, and the law cases seem heavily tilted toward the "little guy" side. |
| 60 |
Washington Post Tom Shales
Maybe it should be considered substitute programming, until more solid and substantial dramas return. On that level, it doesn't totally blow, bro; it's actually quite tolerable. |
| 60 |
LA Weekly Robert Abele
Eli Stone is another lawyer hour disguised as feel-good rehabilitation fluff, with Eli now compelled to use his sharklike courtroom mojo to take up the causes of wronged underdogs against the kinds of heartless corporate clients his blue-chip firm typically represents. |
| 50 |
San Francisco Chronicle Tim Goodman
Though Berlanti doesn't always get the balance right and there's no telling whether people will glom onto Eli the way they did Ally, having seen three episodes and been entertained through most of them is saying something, at least. |
| 50 |
New York Daily News David Hinckley
Eli Stone is uneven and seems uncertain about what it wants to be when it grows up, it has rather endearing moments. |
| 50 |
Chicago Sun-Times Doug Elfman
The tone of this odd show (created by Greg Berlanti and Marc Guggenheim, and initially directed by Ken Olin) is both sweet and wacky, as if it were made by David E. Kelley, he of "Ally McBeal." But it's missing something. |
| 40 |
Boston Globe Matthew Gilbert
Despite a good cast led by Jonny Lee Miller as Eli, and despite the happy San Francisco setting, Eli Stone is a bag of too-familiar tricks. |
| 40 |
Salon Heather Havrilesky
Sadly, no matter how spunky and weird Eli Stone might be at times, at its heart it's Slick Yuppie Lawyer Makes Good, for the millionth time over. |
| 30 |
Philadelphia Inquirer Jonathan Storm
It's not the worst thing you've ever seen, innocuous entertainment (despite the inoculation controversy) that, like Boston Legal, includes the occasional entertaining musical number. |
| 30 |
Newsday Diane Werts
Eli Stone is fated to flounder. |
| 30 |
Philadelphia Daily News Ellen Gray
Eli/Ally not only isn't the most original character of the season, he's not the most sharply defined, either. |
| 20 |
Wall Street Journal Dorothy Rabinowitz
The main deadly force in Eli Stone is its scripts, which are ever so spritely in tone, ever so dumb in essence. |
