Growing Up Fisher

Both shows ["About a Boy" and "Growing Up Fisher"] are well written and actually quite engaging, but what is most interesting is the focus on the brighter side of splitting up. It’s a new genre of heartwarming family show.

The nutty parents in Growing Up Fisher do a good job of playing their extreme characters, instinctually making their eccentricities acceptable and funny rather than far-fetched and excessive. In contrast, the Growing Up Fisher children are so grounded and adult, but play that off with a world-weary-ness that is engaging.

Mel's eccentric independence is admirable and more often than not amusing--which isn't always the case for the show, which uses gentle but forced whimsy to deliver treacly life lessons from the perspective of preteen son Henry (Eli Baker).

Simmons does his usual solid work in this role, and he's got all the physical comedy in the playing blind (and faking sight) bits. Elfman makes another solid statement that she should be in something much better (this coming off her fine work in 1600 Penn; she hasn't lost any comedy chops). Together they're just undermined by, well, syrup.

The show seems a pale imitation of "The Goldbergs," the much funnier ABC show created by Adam F. Goldberg based on his own childhood.

The premise, in other words, lacks heft, which leaves not much more than admiring Simmons--a highly versatile actor — as he does what he can with gags about his character’s insistence on doing things like driving and cutting down trees.

One of the worst comedy pilots of the 2013-14 season relies entirely on two-dimensional character tropes.