Critic Reviews

It's an upbeat, glass-half-full hour with some tough love from Tony, who also dispenses sound couples therapy advice. But the hour also feels facile, and rushed.

Breakthrough fulfills the fantasy that a team of miracle workers--with limitless budgets and resources--can come through for a stranger with a dramatic rescue package.

The inspiration can be heavy-handed, but how can you not feel for the couple?

Though my tolerance for tear jerking in-your-face, feel-good makeover shows is comparatively limited, I don't want to come down too hard on Breakthrough, however much it commodifies misfortune or stage-manages reality.

I'm probably not the best judge of NBC's Breakthrough with Tony Robbins, which struck me as way more Tony Robbins than breakthrough.

Although Robbins delivers on his promise in one feel-good scene after another, there's little here to indicate that the joy and freedom will remain after the production crew packs up.

These situations are undeniably emotional, and the Stegners' situation is certainly relatable. Yet that very authenticity is what makes Breakthrough aggravating--presenting, as it does, serious hardships before addressing them with the depth of a Hallmark card.

At first these actions, which feel extreme, seem to have little relation to the problems at hand. It soon becomes clear, however, that they do. As he promises, Robbins is attacking deeper problems, not symptoms, and as with any good infomercial, the results look compelling on the screen.

Among the many irritating things about today's Exhibit A--Breakthrough With Tony Robbins, yet more trash television from NBC--is that it's another daytime-caliber show that somehow crashed the prime-time schedule.

Easily the worst of the bunch--in fact, there's a good argument to be made that it's one of the most atrocious TV shows of all time--is NBC's Breakthrough with Tony Robbins.