The first season of
Mob Wives was well received by some entertainment critics. ''
Entertainment Weekly's'' television critic
Ken Tucker praised the show in his review, stating, "As someone who's watched at least a few episodes of every version of the
Real Housewives franchise and feels a bit nauseous about it, I didn't come to
Mob Wives with high hopes. But this floridly funny, vicariously vicious reality series exerts a vulgar charm." He noted the fascination of watching excessively made-up people living in apparent luxury and the authenticity of the drama among the women. "By turns funny, appalling, and frightening,
Mob Wives is swiftly paced, reality-TV at its most effusively dismaying."
The Hollywood Reporter critic David Knowles felt the show was significantly better than typical reality TV. He found the women's internal conflict between their mob past and their desire to break free from that lifestyle to be the underlying question of the series. Knowles noted that the women's storylines are so tense and engrossing that the surveillance-style effect used to introduce them seemed unnecessarily cliché. "As we learned from
The Sopranos, the wives and children of mafiosos can be every bit as compelling as the gangsters themselves... As for those other real housewives franchises, their endless squabbles and social climbing antics are rendered rather trivial after you watch the first five minutes of
Mob Wives." Some New York critics were less enthusiastic about the show. David Hinckley's
New York Daily News review complained the "tired concept, is so bad it should sleep with fishes", and observed "these are unpleasant people in an unwatchable show". On the other hand, he wrote: "Now it could be added that if this is what you want on TV,
Mob Wives is an all-you-can-eat buffet. Imagine the angriest of the "Real Housewives" ratcheted up into overdrive". ''
Staten Island Advance's'' SILive.com "Entertainment Comment of the Day" in April 2011 said, "Out of interest we only watched about twenty minutes of the first episode and couldn't stomach watching the second. We don't know what's so interesting about a bunch of low-life women (the one pictured is a real piece of work) who think that husbands that go off to prison is like spending a year at college. I bet their kids are real proud of them. Any glorification of a life of crime is pathetic. They all deserve whatever misery that comes along". The Mafia theme of the show was a concern for some non-journalists, as well. Staten Island Borough President
James Molinaro stated; "I've seen it – It's disgraceful. It paints Staten Island and Italian-Americans in a bad light. It's detrimental because people will think this is what Staten Island is made of. I'm Italian – and this is bad for our doctors, our lawyers, the people who came from Italy to build their lives". UNICO National, an Italian advocacy group, said the show is tantamount to "trash TV like
Jersey Shore. I hope it dies because no one watches it. We were mobsters and mafiosos with
The Sopranos, bimbos and buffoons with
Jersey Shore, and now we're back where we started. It's a disgrace".
Gawker.com said, "This seems like a terrible idea for a reality show! Would anyone watch a show called Mass Murderers' Wives?" Relatives of murder victims killed by the cast members' relatives are also disturbed by the show. Jackie Colucci, whose brother
Joseph was murdered by
Sammy "The Bull" Gravano in 1970, stated about
Karen Gravano: "She should be ashamed that her father is a murderer and a drug dealer. I would be ashamed and crawling in a hole and staying out of the limelight". ==References==