In an attempt to give up addiction, Maddie, a young smart and ambitious part girl, who after having many challenges, makes her mind and joins a rehab facility, where she lives with other recovered addicts, while dealing with her life challenges as a teenager.
With a complex heroine and snappy dialogue, Recovery Road manages to push past its hokey demeanor to become a solid drama capable of depicting addiction in an innovative manner.
Recovery Road does a good job of capturing the complex web of both emotions and actions that are taken in the journey to sobriety suggested by the show title.
Kyle Fowle
AV Club
January 25, 2016
The premise here is very after-school special. Fortunately... Recovery Road avoids the overwrought trappings by dealing with addiction and recovery in a nuanced and compelling way.
Teen-alcoholic redemption tales were 1970s afterschool special staples, but this wise, realistic drama is too smart to try to wrap up its main character's issues in a two-hour-with-commercials movie.
If Recovery Road continues to progress on the trajectory it lays out in its first three installments, it may leave both teens and those in recovery feeling that, for once, a TV drama hasn't patronized them.
The show is earnest and well intentioned, as it shows us a young woman grappling with denial and working to get her life on track. It's not a cynical venture. But it does make happily-ever-after into a distinct possibility.
