Warning spoiler within: Great show, fresh idea, relatable characters, family show and a lighthearted comedy.The Dad is a blind lawyer who has a seeing eye dog and is dealing with normal family challenges, recent separation from his wife, raising teenagers and re-entering the dating world. The characters have that quirkiness that makes you root for them. You know you can watch this show and feel good afterwards.It is just too bad that NBC could not see it's potential and cancelled it. That's the spoiler. Hoping another network will pick it up. If About a Boy was renewed, which is not as good as Growing Up Fisher one really hopes that another network can see the potential.

Mel Fisher (J.K. Simmons) is a blind lawyer who often tries to pass. He is divorcing his wife Joyce (Jenna Elfman). Their kids Henry (Eli Baker) and Katie (Ava Deluca-Verley) have to deal with the divorce and their unique family. The show also gets into Henry's best friend Runyen (Lance Lim).This show started awkwardly with blind Mel passing for seeing. It's filled with stories from writer's life with his blind dad. Even though it may be real, it just sounds fake without being funny. Then there is Jenna Elfman. I don't want to be mean but she's too young and hot for Simmons. I love the guy but Jenna looks 30s even although she's in her 40s. Also the divorce is possibly the nicest one around. It feels like a lot of rough edges got rounded out. The kids are fine and the best character has to be the best friend Runyen. He's the funniest one in the whole cast. This is a functional network TV family sitcom. It's a mid season replacement show that got canceled after its half season run.

"Are you sure you should be driving?" NBC is currently trying a couple of new family centered series of which this is one and the other being About A Boy. Unfortunately, the premise is relatively thin and the show quickly abuses the abilities of the protagonist, Mel Fisher. The premise revolves around Mel Fisher, a blind lawyer, who goes about his life fooling everyone into believing he can see. The protagonist can apparently chop down trees with a chainsaw, teach his daughter to parallel park, leap over other lawyers with a simple bound. The comedy would need to be irreverent and edu for this to have the slightest shot at success. 'instead, it goes for a sappy, feel-good vibe with a voice-over by Jason Bateman. Despite it being based on the creator's actual childhood, the element of truth doesn't make it any less absurd or any more worthy of being a TV show. Just as it's hard to keep up with how many failed sitcoms there have been during mid-seasons, I'm losing track of how many mawkish, barely funny sitcoms these days are drawn from the writer's own family experience 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 so table-poundingly hilarious are difficult to convey to any audience larger than a dinner party. Network execs need to stop indulging this strange habit and ask writers and producers to look for pilot pitches someplace other than their home movies and photo albums: it just isn't funny. For these reasons Growing Up Fisher gets a 2/10.

I like Bateman's narrative voice, am a fan of J.K. Simmons, and enjoy the acting and banter of Eli Baker and Lance Lim; however, the premise is a bit thin and the show quickly overdoes the abilities of Mel Fisher the main character, a blind lawyer who could give Matt Murdock, aka Daredevil, a run for the money. He chops down trees with a chainsaw; he teaches his daughter to parallel park: and he leaps over other lawyers with a simple bound. And yet despite all of his abilities he somehow married Jenna Elfman who is playing the same character she did in Dharma & Greg. And I guess that might be believable given the 20 year difference in the age between Simmons and ELfman which would explain that his child bride has just always stayed a child. Why you ask? Because Simmons' character intimidates everyone with his accomplishments being blind and all thus sending his wife off to a divorce so she can find herself. Yawn.