Here’s what the (bad) reviews are saying about Alec Baldwin’s family reality series

The Baldwins debuted on February 23 on TLC, offering an “intimate, behind-the-scenes look into the lives of Alec and Hilaria Baldwin and their seven children, with the challenges and humor that come while raising a large family in the public eye.” According to reviews the reality show has received thus far, if you haven’t gotten the chance to check it out, you’ve done yourself a favor. “What hideous people! Now I really have no sympathy for has-been Alec Baldwin,” runs the headline of its coverage in the Daily Mail. “This fly-on-the-wall series about the actor’s family in the lead-up to the Rust trial feels in extremely poor taste. It’s entirely unnecessary television,” declares a subtitle in The Guardian. The Telegraph (since these are all British publications, it might be worth noting that the series is available on Discovery+ in the UK) gave the show its lowest rating, a single star. “Alec Baldwin was once a rival of Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt for the title of Hollywood’s pre-eminent heartthrob,” begins the article, before pegging his new project as a humiliation.

The eight-episode series presents Alec, 66, and Hilaria, 41, along with their extensive brood: Carmen (11), Rafael (9), Leonardo (8), Eduardo (4), Lucia (4) — born via surrogacy just five months after her brother following Hilaria’s 2019 miscarriage — and Ilaria (2). “The show follows them between their New York City apartment and palatial pad in the Hamptons. There are also two nannies (who deserve medals for valor), four dogs and four cats — despite Baldwin being decidedly allergic to the last,” explains The Times.

TLC advertises the program as a demonstration of “what life is really like for the Baldwins — chaotic, funny, exhausting and filled with love.” But the actor’s attempt to clean up his image, the gamble he took on exposing his world to the public in a light-hearted fashion in order to connect with viewers (how could they not empathize with parents who deal with the daily madness of seven mischievous imps?) achieves the complete opposite. “The Baldwins supplies textbook guidance for raising a pack of undisciplined tearaways. The only thing to be said in defense of the seven children, aged two to ten, is that their parents are even more appalling,” writes Daily Mail’s Christopher Stevens. “The Baldwin brood are not only spoilt rotten but encouraged to whinge, bicker, fight, sulk, and insult their parents.” The commentary on social media has not been any more positive. “It’s just children screaming and running all over the house, her trying to convince the masses that she’s not fake and him organizing things with his OCD,” says one of the internet’s many critics.

Alec Baldwin has always guarded his private life jealously, and in the past has had various incidents with paparazzi during moments when he’s felt incapable of maintaining that distance. The first of these took place in 1995, when he and his wife at the time, actress Kim Basinger, returned home with their newborn daughter and encountered a photographer. The actor insisted there be no photos taken of the baby, and when the paparazzo declined to comply, Baldwin wound up delivering him a blow that broke the guy’s nose, for which the performer was arrested. In 2013, a similar situation happened, this time when Baldwin was with Hilaria. Several media outlets published photos of the actor shoving a photographer up against a car while angrily trying to snatch his camera. In 2016, a video went viral of Baldwin screaming at another paparazzo who was trying to take a photo of his wife. Given this history, the timing of the actor opening the door to his homes is somewhat suspicious, particularly in light of the show’s mandate to not only point cameras at Baldwin, but his entire family, who he has always fought to keep out of the spotlight (though Hilaria does has a penchant for showing them off on social media.)

The Telegraph’s critic Ed Power describes The Baldwins as a saccharine pity party in which the actor oscillates between spending time with his children and staring off into the distance as he reflects on charges of involuntary manslaughter. On July 13, 2024, those charges were dismissed after Baldwin’s lawyers argued that the police in Santa Fe [where Rust was being filmed] had withheld important evidence that would have benefited the defendant, who was facing a possible 18-month prison sentence. The family didn’t know this would be the outcome when they filmed The Baldwins shortly before the actor went to trial. “This has been just surreal. I mean, I can’t even believe that we’re going through this,” the actor confesses in the first episode. “This past year was just terrible. There were times I’d lay in bed. I’d go, ‘Wow, my kids. I can’t get up.’ That’s not like me.” Meanwhile, Hilaria says her husband’s mental health has deteriorated and that he has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. “He says, in his darkest moments, ‘If an accident had to have happened on this day, why am I still here? Why couldn’t it be me?,’” the yoga teacher shares.

Be that as it may, reviewers are in agreement that the actor’s desperate attempt to clean up his image after the accident and even victimize himself in so doing, appear forced, unnecessary and even obscene. For Lucy Mangan of The Guardian, there are only three ways to justify the show. “The first is that a secret cell of revolutionary communists has successfully infiltrated the commissioning corridors of the Discovery channel and created its new reality show The Baldwins as a weapon to bring down western capitalism,” she writes, noting that viewing the show for 20 minutes would be enough to convince many to join their movement. The second, she continues, is that it’s actually a parody written by comic genius Tina Fey, a reference to Fey’s program 30 Rock in which Baldwin starred as the obnoxious Jack Donaghy. “Otherwise we are left with a third option; The Baldwins is just a reality show designed and timed to ease the actor’s way back into public life and affection in the wake of his trial. And that really would be a rare thing — a new low for television.”

The Baldwins marks the actor’s most definitive return to the public sphere since the tragedy of Rust, of which he was both producer and star. Baldwin also made a brief appearance on February 16 at the 50th anniversary celebration of Saturday Night Live, where he holds the record for most times hosting the program and is best-known for his Donald Trump imitation. He attended with Hilaria, with whom he kissed and cuddled in front of the cameras in a sharp departure from his past public protocol. “Honestly, from the bottom of my soul, I don’t know where I’d be if I didn’t have you and these kids,” the actor says in one moment from the series. “Sometimes I say, ‘Why do we have seven kids?’ and it’s to help carry me and you through this situation,” he tells Hilaria.

The problem with the show, say critics, is that its stars are trying for authenticity, yet are doing so in the falsest way possible. “What we are watching is a father of seven minor children anticipating the potential end of his life as a parent as he’s known it; as such, the canned, stock reality-show instrumentals feel extra-tinny, the moments of gaiety extra-forced,” holds Variety. They only thing that comes across as believable is their presumptuous, arrogant lifestyle. “Last week, Alec Baldwin was just a has-been actor to me. Now I know exactly who he and his wife are,” concludes Stevens. “What hideous people.”

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