Critic Reviews

Schooled at its goofiest recognizes the value of teachers.

Rough edges are quickly sanded, and yet the players are good.

As it stands, Schooled doesn’t offer any convincing reasons to watch other than the crossovers from an already familiar world, and the requisite ‘90s references are too lightweight to be a true vehicle for nostalgia.

Schooled contains none of the mother ship’s bellows and whistles, thus laying bare its own conventionality.

There’s possibly some potential here. But the only episode of Schooled made available for review neither rings the bell--or answers it.

The pilot lacks the snap and vigorous, unruly wit of ABC’s most successful recent sitcoms, from “Black-ish” to “Speechless,” saddling more than one actor with painfully earnest dialogue about what it means to be a teacher and Michalka with a less-than-credible arc. Her story, indeed, resolves so tidily by pilot’s end as to raise the question of where the rest of the show can still go.

[The Goldbergs is] a good show because beneath that very superficial hook it's deeply personal. Schooled, at least thus far, is not, and it's that lack of center that still needs tinkering.