Critic Reviews

Not that BrainDead isn't bleakly hilarious, to a pee-your-pants-laughing degree, and drive-in-movie creepy. It sooooo is, and it's the show of the summer and possibly of the year. But not since The Werewolf Of Washington popped up during the 1973 summer of Watergate has Hollywood captured the moment's political gestalt with such deadly accuracy.

The Kings’ clever summer horror thriller.

Character, not concept, drives BrainDead. The Kings have always stacked their deck with talented, scene-stealing stage actors, and that serves both the bombastic, egoistic orators of D.C. and the everyday eccentrics.

A political satire built on such a wacky conceit, it practically demands to be mocked. And yet the show is clever, brisk, and compelling, and it succeeds not by dancing around its inherent weirdness, but by zealously embracing it.

BrainDead is a whole lot of surprising, straight-up-entertaining things over the course of its opening hours but, this summer, it also feels like a no-brainer.

Beneath all of the insanity, BrainDead again and again demonstrates it has a brain in its head. It's goofy-good-time stuff, all right, yet it has a point.

I’m not sure the whole thing gels perfectly just yet. But BrainDead is still engaging, deliciously weird, and well worth adding to your DVR rotation.

Ridiculous, yes, but also engaging--and maybe some relief for viewers who are preoccupied with politics but could still use a break from cable news. BrainDead is no “Good Wife,” but it does have the Kings’ sense of wit and momentum. It also, to some degree, displays their knack for timely social commentary.

The genius of BrainDead, an enjoyably offbeat sci-fi/political satire hybrid, is in reminding us that it's possible to have fun without leaving one's brain at the door. [20-26 Jun 2016, p.17]

BrainDead comments better than a Sunday morning pundit, moves faster than a New York to D.C. train and never pauses to filibuster.