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My Own Worst Enemy
SERIES: NBC, Monday 10:00p (60 minutes)
Starring
Christian Slater,
Mike O'Malley,
Saffron Burrows,
Alfre Woodard,
and
Madchen Amick
Harry lives the stereotypical suburban life, but he also is Edward, a trained spy. The worlds start to merge as the carefully constructed wall between the two breaks down.
| GENRE(S): |
Action / Adventure,
Drama
|
| CREATED BY: |
Jason Smilovic
|
| FIRST AIR DATE: |
October 13, 2008 |
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
100
Newsday Verne Gay
Far, far, far and away NBC's best new pilot of the season and one of the best new shows of the season, on any network -- commercial or cable.
90
Miami Herald Glenn Garvin
My Own Worst Enemy is by far the best drama of the fall season, a bold and brainy spy thriller that practices a sort of armed existentialism.
75
New York Post Linda Stasi
The action is pretty non-stop, the stars terrific and, if you're willing to do the work to follow the complicated plot, the show can be lots of fun.
75
Chicago Sun-Times Andrew Herrmann
If you can buy into the fantasy, Slater delivers on his part of the deal, playing both characters with just enough unique quirks so viewers can tell them apart. Usually.
70
Kansas City Star Aaron Barnhart
Surprise! It’s not nearly as bad as I thought.
70
Hollywood Reporter Ray Richmond
My Own Worst Enemy holds our interest despite its utter preposterousness because if there is anything Slater knows how to do, it's present a believable head case.
70
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Rob Owen
My Own Worst Enemy sets up what could be an overly complicated premise and miraculously makes it all seem perfectly acceptable and clear by the end of the first hour.
70
The New York Times Alessandra Stanley
Worst Enemy has a convoluted premise that is cleverly wrought and holds up well, and Mr. Slater does a remarkable job of only subtly signaling each personality
70
Los Angeles Times Mary McNamara
[Christian] is in rare form here. Which is a good thing since the show's success or failure rests solely on his dramatic agility and general appeal.
70
Salon Heather Havrilesky
While you do have to wonder where the show will go from here, since it has the plot of a two-hour movie, not a 20-hour series, it has the benefit of being far more original and unpredictable than 90 percent of the new shows to hit the airwaves this fall.
70
LA Weekly Robert Abele
The show’s biotechnological twist on the double life of spies--or any superhero/alter ego construct--certainly satisfies the popcorn-thriller needs of My Own Worst Enemy, but I wasn’t expecting it to be as thematically resonant as it was.
70
New York Magazine John Leonard
Slater, whose career has gone pretty much downhill since "Heathers" (1989) and "Pump Up the Volume" (1990), is surprisingly perfect as both of them, adjusting not much more than the brow of an eye, the curl of a lip, and the hiss of a sibilant to indicate the seismic shift from James Bond to Willy Loman.
63
Chicago Tribune Maureen Ryan
The first episode of Enemy ended up being a relatively compelling hour of television. As competent as it is, though, it’s hard not to think that the premise contains some holes.
60
Variety Brian Lowry
The pilot gingerly lays out most of the elements My Own Worst Enemy will need to survive--leaving it to the show to either make its strange case or live down to its name.
60
PopMatters Marisa LaScala
My Own Worst Enemy looks like it’s been assembled from the leftovers of other pop-culture heavyweights.
58
Entertainment Weekly Ken Tucker
Slater plays out spy-story clichés that were campy on "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." 40 years ago.
50
Philadelphia Daily News Ellen Gray
It's a subject that was explored more deeply, and even a touch more believably, in BBC America's "Jekyll," a nail-biter of an update in which James Nesbitt inhabited both personalities so completely they barely even looked alike. Slater, by contrast, just seems like a guy in need of a good night's sleep.
50
Slate Troy Patterson
The show's success may depend on whether the public's fascination with Slater trumps its collective attention-deficit disorders.
50
San Francisco Chronicle Tim Goodman
Bad, then decent, then confusing. That's not exactly the trajectory you're looking for in a pilot.
50
Orlando Sentinel Hal Boedeker
The two halves don't add up to an engrossing whole. The show's worst enemy? The perplexing, cynical writing.
50
TV Guide Matt Roush
Reminiscent at times of "The Bourne Identity" or "Face/Off," to name a few movie influences it does not improve upon, the beyond-high-concept Enemy asks us to believe Christian Slater as a cold-blooded assassin named Edward who doubles, when a switch in his brain is flipped, as a milquetoast family man named Henry.
40
Philadelphia Inquirer Jonathan Storm
My Own Worst Enemy's worst enemy is all the murky mumbo-jumbo mechanics the writers have introduced to support their stupid split-personality thesis.
37
USA Today Robert Bianco
You might be able to forgive the sloppiness of the premise if something else in the episode worked, but it's all a contrived, derivative mess.
30
Washington Post Tom Shales
My Own Worst Enemy can be recommended only to people who can imagine themselves saying, "I'm in the mood for a mediocre version of a fairly good spy movie."
30
Newark Star-Ledger Alan Sepinwall
There isn't a series here; just the pitch meeting for a very expensive, very loud, very dopey action movie.
 The average user rating for this tv show is 8.8 (out of 10) based on 24 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
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