How Rotten Tomatoes' Tomatometer Ranks The New Fall TV Shows

By Dustin Rowles | Lists | October 10, 2013 |

By Dustin Rowles | Lists | October 10, 2013 |

Rotten Tomatoes, the service which aggregates movie reviews and gives them a percentage score, recently unleashed its service for television shows. Of course, the same problems that plague the movie review scores mar the TV percentages, too, namely that there is no room for nuance. The services takes into account whether a critic likes a show, or doesn’t like a show, and leaves no room for in-between, which is why something like Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull sports a 78% on Rotten Tomatoes, which is the same score as Iron Man 3.

Still, the Tomatometer does a fairly decent job with the new falls shows, although it severely over-inflates the dreadful The Michael F. Fox Show, while Agents of SHIELD — which was just picked up for a full season — ridiculously ends up with the same percentage as Boardwalk Empire. There’s your flaw in the system.

However, I do find some amusing irony in the fact that the best reviewed new show of the season has as its lead-in the worst reviewed new show of the season.

1. Brooklyn Nine-Nine — 90%
2. Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD — 88%
3. The Blacklist — 84%
4. Sleepy Hollow — 76%
5. Trophy Wife — 74%
6. The Michael J. Fox Show — 71%
7. Mom — 67%
8. Hostages — 55%
9. Back in the Game — 52%
10. The Goldbergs — 51%
11. The Crazy Ones — 51%
12. Welcome to the Family — 41%
13. The Millers — 47%
14. Super Fun Night — 33%
15. Lucky 7 — 30% (cancelled)
16. Ironside — 15%
17. Sean Saves the World — 24%
18. Betrayal — 9%
19. We Are Men — 5% (cancelled)
20. Dads — 0%

After sampling all the new fall shows for the last two (grueling) weeks, I am personally quitting everything from The Michael J. Fox down, save for The Goldbergs (though, I may give Mom one more week to see if it improves). Time is too valuable to waste it on mediocrity.