Review Roundup: Critics Say Out Comic Jerrod Carmichael Pushes Reality TV's Boundaries with New HBO Series

The Daily Beast

Daily Beast critic Allegra Frank writes: "The half-hour series – which errs more toward documentary than pure reality show – captures the comedian's effort to poke veins adjacent to the one he burst open in 'Rothaniel.' But Carmichael's intimacy here is more playful, building a narrative over the course of its eight episodes that requires both performativity and painful honesty. While 'Reality Show' is not quite as revelatory as his career-defining special, it's a fascinating, affecting, and valuable experiment in how honest one can really be when you're writing, directing, and filming your own life...

"To call 'Carmichael Reality Show' a powerful watch makes it sound a lot more haughty and less fun than it actually is; there's a lot of wit, irony, and jokes to be found here. (And the humor isn't always intentional; Carmichael's successfully selling everyone in his life on seeing a therapist is a darkly funny recurring bit, even if it's in earnest.) But just like with 'Rothaniel,' Carmichael's latest project nails that tricky, incredibly watchable balance of revealing yourself without giving too much away. There's nothing else on TV like it."

The Hollywood Reporter

"HBO's 'Jerrod Carmichael Reality Show,' created by Carmichael, Eli Despres and director Ari Katcher, isn't precisely a sequel to 'Rothaniel,' but it's an extension of its genre-blurring tone and therapeutic approach," writes THR critic Daniel Fienberg. "With eight half-hour episodes, 'Jerrod Carmichael Reality Show' is a more expansive and confrontational thing, in which that inherent Carmichael likability is pushed into a much less comfortable place. It may not provoke quite as much self-examination from the viewer as it's intended to provoke from Carmichael, but the show, its formal inventiveness, its choices and its agendas are hard to shake...

"I imagine that the most common question for Carmichael in the editing room was, 'Are you SURE you want to leave this in?' But in subjecting himself to a warts-and-all treatment that's almost all warts, Carmichael is attempting something that's possibly more fascinating than 'Rothaniel ' – a roller coaster of identification and rejection that's sure to alienate some viewers, leaving the rest to contemplate a frequently funny, just as frequently uneasy intersection of truth and artifice...

"It's hard to call 'Jerrod Carmichael Reality Show' a 'fun' or 'conventionally enjoyable' show to watch, but I laughed and covered my eyes in mortification in equal measure – and since I finished my screeners, I haven't stopped thinking about it."

Star Tribune

"'Jerrod Carmichael Reality Show' is something else entirely. Over the course of eight episodes, we watch the Emmy-winning comedian as he chastises his parents for not fully embracing his homosexuality, cheats on his boyfriends with a rotating door of Grindr dates and alienates friends," writes Neal Justin.

"... Like he did in his excellent NBC sitcom 'The Jerrod Carmichael Show' and various stand-up specials, the comic treats the screen like a confessional booth, as if the only time he can truly be honest with himself is when the cameras are rolling. It may not be the healthiest form of therapy, but it does make for an enlightening viewing experience."

Time Magazine

"As its utilitarian title suggests, 'Jerrod Carmichael Reality Show' continues his experiment in radical honesty. Framed – and deepened as much as it's leavened – by co-creator Carmichael's onstage monologues, the perceptive eight-part HBO series, which premieres March 29, is disarmingly frank about not only his personal life, but also about its own constructedness," writes critic Judy Berman. "We watch the comedian produce as the camera rolls, persuading family and friends to discuss hard topics on camera as crew members swarm. By making us privy to these contrivances, he establishes authenticity within a notoriously artificial genre...

"Yet Carmichael is hardest on himself, constantly questioning whether he can become a good friend, a faithful boyfriend, a person who doesn't need cameras in the room to hold himself accountable. Which is not to say that 'Reality Show' is a self-serious slog; the half-hour episodes are funny, if often darkly so, because their protagonist and the people around him are funny. At a moment when most comedians brand themselves as either iconoclastic truth tellers or righteous arbiters of virtue, it's refreshing to see Carmichael take such pains to be perceived precisely as he is."

Vulture

"Comedian Jerrod Carmichael's new show is obnoxiously compelling," writes critic Kathryn VanArendonk. "It's compelling because Carmichael cannot seem to help being electrically charismatic, and because the series moves through stories and ideas with an ease that belies the challenge of good pacing. It's obnoxious because the only thing more trying than a vanity project is a vanity project that cannot stop examining itself as a vanity project...

"There's an appeal in a total cynical deconstruction of all of this – sexuality, the private self, performance, the enormous obsession with voyeuristic lifestyle-reality programming. You don't have to really care about any of it if it's all just a performance. But in its most moving scenes, 'Jerrod Carmichael Reality Show' depicts how vitally important it is to care about things – so Carmichael's mother could care enough to give up her religious convictions, neighbors can care about his own personal growth, and Carmichael can care about anyone other than himself. And occasionally, those scenes – regardless of the 'truth' of them – are transcendentally powerful. But it only pulls this off when the show gets its head out of its own very charismatic ass."