


But there’s something fundamentally false about it as well. Growing Up Fisher, about a blind lawyer is much better, in the sense that it does not make you want to pull your own eyeballs out in protest. However well-executed, shows like this one and Fox’s Rake are propaganda on behalf of douchebags. To be clear, the problem isn’t that Will is in some general sense unlikable, it’s that About a Boy rigs the show so that you have no choice but to think of him as a liberating life force who’s adorable and ultimately admirable. I seem to recall that this same character was more tolerable in the Hugh Grant film version, probably because he was played by Hugh Grant at least he didn’t act like a manipulative drug addict who keeps getting his friends into terribly compromised positions and then skates away from real consequences by being off-the-cuff funny and bagging hot babes. By cute I mean “cute,” and by “cute” I mean “TV cute,” which translates as, “is theoretically a sweet elementary schooler, but talks like an emotionally arrested adult man who’s taking an improv class in L.A.” The first three episodes are all variations on the same formula: Selfish bastard Will somehow ends up squiring the kid around in “adult” circumstances (such as a flashy record industry pool party thronged by gyrating babes) and getting him into deeply mortifying trouble and then apologizing to the kid/his mother/tacitly to the viewer, but being let off the hook, sort of, because he’s helping loosen up the kid, whose mother is raising him as a gluten-free, lactose-intolerant vegetarian and otherwise refusing to let him have any fun, man, and dear God, no, just no. Whatever happens, I’m in no rush to watch either show again, because I’m tired of sitcoms in which everybody acts and sounds like a network sitcom character, talking very quickly and in a peppy and “bright” tone to make you think they aren’t irritating, even outright horrible people.Ībout a Boy - based loosely on Nick Hornby’s novel and the same-named Hugh Grant film adaptation - is about one such horrible person, a smarmy compulsive womanizer named Will Freeman (David Walton, star of many sitcoms that for whatever reason didn’t last long) who moves in next door to a single mom named Fiona Brewer (Minnie Driver) and her cute son Marcus (Benjamin Stockham). They might catch on with audiences or they might not, and they might improve drastically or they might not.
Growing up fisher professional#
That’s not to say they’re incompetent or otherwise unwatchable they’re professional bits of work, acted and written and directed with energy. Two new NBC sitcoms, Growing Up Fisher and About a Boy, fall into the second category. On May 9, 2014, NBC canceled the show after one season.Most sitcoms are populated either by characters you’d meet in life or characters that only exist on sitcoms. On January 10, 2014, NBC announced that "Growing Up Fisher" would premiere following the 2014 Olympics on Sunday, February 23, 2014, at 10:30 pm, and then move to its regular timeslot on Tuesday, March 4, at 9:30 pm following " About a Boy". In July of 2013, Jenna Elfman replaced Parker Posey in the role of Joyce Fisher.
Growing up fisher series#
In May of 2013, NBC placed a series order for the comedy under the new title "The Family Guide" and in June, it underwent another name change to "Growing Up Fisher". Shortly after, Eli Baker and Ava Deluca-Verley were then added to the cast, with Baker cast in the lead role of Henry Fisher and Deluca-Verley to the role of Katie Fisher, Henry's older sister, who Joyce desperately wants to be close to. Simmons was the second actor cast, in the series regular role of the blind family patriarch, Mel Fisher. The casting announcements began in February of 2013, with Parker Posey first cast in the role of Joyce Fisher, Henry's mother who attempts to reclaim her youth, post-divorce. "Growing Up Fisher" first appeared on the development slate at NBC in October of 2012 under the title ".Then Came Elvis." The network placed a pilot order in January of 2013. Jason Bateman (voice only) as Future Henry Fisher.The series follows everyday situations the family goes through, often involving Henry's sister Katie and normal situations the parents handle, usually in a comical way.

The family of 11-year-old Henry Fisher begins to function after the divorce of his blind father and lawyer Mel & his mother Joyce.
