Round Two: Growing Up Fisher

Growing Up Fisher: Season 1, Episode 2 “Blind Man’s Bluff” (C-)

While I didn’t find the pilot episode of this show as unfortunate as its new time slot companion, I think that their second installments are pretty much comparable with each other. This show in particular fails to expand upon the concepts introduced in its debut effort, instead dwelling consistently on the same characteristics of its family members. Patriarch Mel’s blindness is clearly going to define him, and I suspect each episode will find him trying to alternately hide or reveal his blindness to little avail. I suppose it was somewhat entertaining to see him ruin his unexpectedly smooth meeting by putting a dent in the hood of the client who didn’t bother to stop for him in a crosswalk. I found his son Henry’s activities to be far less endearing, and I was shocked that it took this show so little time to have its main seeing character pretend that he couldn’t see to earn a bit of sympathy and try to get a girl who, in the end, just wanted to be his babysitter. Runyen is extremely irritating, and hearing about his early-morning beauty routine was entirely unnecessary. On the female side of things, I was proud that my fiancée recognized guest star Ginger Gonzaga, who played Joyce and Katie’s new friend Amelie, as Maya from ABC’s new series “Mixology.” I’m really not convinced that Jenna Elfman was right for this role, and would have a much easier time believing the original choice, Parker Posey, as the insecure and zany mother who can’t quite accept the fact that her daughter doesn’t want to be her best friend.