Single Parents doesn't break new ground with its easily predictable jokes

The Hollywood Reporter

The ABC comedy that New Girl's Liz Meriwether created with her colleague JJ Phlbin has a whiff of overfamiliarity, like all network shows, says Tim Goodman. "Very few series know how to really be great in this genre — Amazon's Catastrophe is a brilliant example of how to do it with originality — but Single Parents feels like a comedy that goes for simple snark and believes it's a little more clever than it really is, but then had a bunch of network notes stuck to it about softening those right angles," he says. "The result is a kind of paint-by-numbers approach meant to be, uh, different? All the parents here are single — how they got that way isn't really confusing but neither is it really interesting."

ALSO:

• Two things work to Single Parents' advantage: Its formula and characters, despite an imperfect pilot
• The pilot is bogged down in haggard-parenting gags that are older than Hulu and Netflix lifespans combined
• It’s refreshing to see a comedy that acknowledges a different experience than most hangout sitcoms do
• Taran Killam immediately has the great sitcom dad thing locked down
• Leighton Meester says playing a mom gives her "room to have a little bit more depth"
• Creators Liz Meriwether and writer JJ Philbin explain how Single Parents came out of the New Girl writers' room
• Why did it take Killam so long to star in a TV show after leaving SNL?