Reception
First broadcast in the United States on NBC on April 11, 1991, "The Statue" gained a Nielsen rating of 16.1 and an audience share of 26. This means that 16.1% of American households watched the episode, and that 26% of all televisions in use at the time were tuned into it. Nielsen estimated that over 23 million people watched the episode's initial broadcast, making it the tenth most-watched program of the week it was broadcast in.
The episode received mixed reactions from critics. Writing for Entertainment Weekly, critics Mary Kaye Schilling and Mike Flaherty stated "Even Seinfeld's bit players must have some grounding in reality — you need to love to hate them. Ultimately, there's no redeeming comic payoff to Rava's and Ray's weirdness". Flaherty and Schilling graded the episode with a C-. Colin Jacobson of the DVD Movie Guide called the episode's storyline "fairly pedestrian", but felt the performances of Conway and Koppel saved the episode.
Read more about this topic: The Statue
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“But in the reception of metaphysical formula, all depends, as regards their actual and ulterior result, on the pre-existent qualities of that soil of human nature into which they fall—the company they find already present there, on their admission into the house of thought.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)
“I gave a speech in Omaha. After the speech I went to a reception elsewhere in town. A sweet old lady came up to me, put her gloved hand in mine, and said, “I hear you spoke here tonight.” “Oh, it was nothing,” I replied modestly. “Yes,” the little old lady nodded, “that’s what I heard.””
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)