The Beautiful Life: TBL

Miami HeraldGlenn Garvin

The Beautiful Life, in short, is hopelessly trashy melodrama about hopelessly trashy people. But Paxton, as a tougher-than-she-looks kid with a dark past, and Hollingsworth, as a callow Iowa farmboy trying to make it in the big city, are so unexpectedly affecting that you may find yourself sucked into the show against your will.

Chicago Sun-TimesPaige Wiser

Most of the characters are about as distinctive as mannequins. You won't mind, though, because they're awfully nice to look at. But the disgraced supermodel is played by Mischa Barton, and this is where the show may achieve inadvertent poignancy.

Los Angeles TimesRobert Lloyd

The series is not so different from, or significantly worse--or better--than the network's other two season premieres, "Melrose Place" and "The Vampire Diaries," which also affix stock characters, played mostly by good-looking young folk, to standard plot lines sexed up with pop songs and different flavors of visual glamour. Because they do not aim particularly high, they pretty much hit what they aim at.

USA TodayRobert Bianco

It may lack Melrose Place's flashy production values and trashy pedigree, but it makes up for that by being marginally better written, though admittedly, we're not talking about a particularly high bar here.

Boston GlobeMatthew Gilbert

The pilot is clearly half-baked. Whether that’s due to Barton or deeper creative problems is unclear.

VarietyBrian Lowry

The cast and writing (the showrunner is Mike Kelley, coming off CBS' vastly superior "Swingtown") are efficient enough, but nothing really pops--other than perhaps the desire to run out and eat a nice, heavy, carbo-laden meal.

Hollywood ReporterRandee Dawn

For all its well-designed moves, TBL is made of some pretty chintzy material.

New York Daily NewsDavid Hinckley

The Beautiful Life is designed to fit alongside CW anchors like "90210," except that even by those standards, it's pretty predictable and stilted.

Philadelphia Daily NewsEllen Gray

A model-thin depiction of the glamorous and not-so-glamorous lives of fashion mannequins that was co-created by Ashton Kutcher.

Philadelphia InquirerJonathan Storm

Laughable plot, wooden dialogue, cutout characters; stupid title appendage to make it more textable; usual cynical CW glorification of teen sexuality and substance abuse; mediocre acting.

The New York TimesGinia Bellafante

“Inside the Mind of Mischa Barton” would have been a much better bet than The Beautiful Life.

New York PostLinda Stasi

It keeps the proud tradition alive with dialogue so bad, it'll make you laugh out loud; acting so shallow, it could make a model look brainy; and actors so unbelievable, they can't even get the runway stomp right.

San Francisco ChronicleTim Goodman

Speaking from outside the target demo but from long-suffering experience watching bad television, go with "unwatchable."