Where Nostalgia is Mistaken for Annoyance
"Are you sure you should be driving?"NBC is currently trying a couple of new family centered series of whichthis is one and the other being About A Boy. Unfortunately, the premiseis relatively thin and the show quickly abuses the abilities of theprotagonist, Mel Fisher.The premise revolves around Mel Fisher, a blind lawyer, who goes abouthis life fooling everyone into believing he can see. The protagonistcan apparently chop down trees with a chainsaw, teach his daughter toparallel park, leap over other lawyers with a simple bound.The comedy would need to be irreverent and edu for this to have theslightest shot at success. 'instead, it goes for a sappy, feel-goodvibe with a voice-over by Jason Bateman. Despite it being based on thecreator's actual childhood, the element of truth doesn't make it anyless absurd or any more worthy of being a TV show.Just as it's hard to keep up with how many failed sitcoms there havebeen during mid-seasons, I'm losing track of how many mawkish, barelyfunny sitcoms these days are drawn from the writer's own familyexperience and upbringing.Creatively, the story of Me is an awfully stifling place to start.Memoir has its place beyond the page, but sitcoms are usually not it -for the same reasons that family stories you think are sotable-poundingly hilarious are difficult to convey to any audiencelarger than a dinner party. Network execs need to stop indulging thisstrange habit and ask writers and producers to look for pilot pitchessomeplace other than their home movies and photo albums: it just isn'tfunny. For these reasons Growing Up Fisher gets a 2/10.score /10
HerbsReviews 1 April 2014
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2991448/14893
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