Category: Cinema 31
Hi all!
While watching the Olympics, nbc keeps showing previews for this new show called growing up fisher. From what I've gathered, the show's about a dad whose blind and raising his kids. Some of the lines look pretty funny like the guy gets denyed into entering a place b/c they think his guide dog is a pet dog and they ask him if he's seen the sign and in this flat tone of voice he's like, "No, I did not." I think it's more of a jab at the way the public can react to things rather than a jab at the blind. :)
I'm carefully hopeful about this show because I have laughed at a lot of the previews and it does look interesting. I hope it does well! We'll see...
Oh, one of my coworkers keeps mentioning this show but he can never remember the title of it!
Thanks.
Oh, he also insists that the actor playing Auggie on Covert Affairsis really blind. Anyone know if this is true?
no problem you're welcome!
I actually don't know the answer to your question... But I'm going to say that it isn't true that he's blind because I'm sure there are ways to tell. But, maybe he does have a visual impairment?
Answered my own question link below
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Gorham
I don't know why I thought for even a second he might be right!
I've seen the previews, and I'm going to watch the show. The clips they've shown really do seem funny.
Yah it sounds like its pretty funny from the previews and i read a review of the first episode that is on tonight after the olympics and it sounds promising. I will check it out and see if it is good.
Has anyone seen this yet? Curious!
Kate
Yep, Hubs, Kidlet and I all watched it together last night. We all enjoyed it. Of course there was more emphasis put on the dad relying on the kid than I would have liked but it's a sitcom, not a documentary. Sure, that propetuates the stereotype but in a way, it was sort of necessary for the theme of the show. Basically, yes, there were plenty of inaccuracies but take it for what it is, a tv show,, and it was actually pretty cute. We'll watch it again.
I second the previous poster. Some of the dog behaviors were pretty inaccurate, like all the barking, but I would watch it again. It's up on Hulu if you can stand the ads. I laughed a lot through it. I'm mostly just interested in the fact that a mainstream show is hopefully making the public more aware or curious about guide dogs.
I read it is based on someone's real life experiences growing up with a blind father. I'm sure the writers take liberties to make it funnier, but at least I hope there is some truth in the episodes. I plan to watch tonight and hope I like it.
I liked it; sure, there were some inaccuracies, but it's a sitcom and meant to be funny. I plan on watching it again.
So my thoughts on this show.. Since I saw the episode earlier tonight.
It was funny! Overall I really enjoyed it and will be watching it again for sure! I thought the dog was so cute, but it did bark kind of a lot for a guide dog.
I really liked the father-son relationship and how the 2 of them played off one another. That was so great and cute!
The only kind of bad thing I have to say on it is whenever the fact was brought up that the guy could hide his blindness so well that no one outside the family knew that he was blind. I honestly don't find that possible. Sure, maybe you can hide it for a few minutes, during a conversation or 2 but for all the time? Very Unlikely! The show creator makes it known that the dad can't see anything at all so... I find that him being able to hide his blindness so well that only close people know about it really isn't possible when you think about it.
However, I'm glad that this show is out there because it is making the topic of blindness more mainstream and that's really very good!
The other negative that I read (from someone on youtube) is that they said the show was way over the top. I can actually agree with this, although I think it's great! It's over the top that it is really funny to watch! Kind of like that show Everyone Loves Raymond. That show was so exadrated with the whole family's behavior and whatnot and it was a total hit for years.
I just thought I'd write in and say what I thought of it since I'm the one who started the topic. I'd love to hear about what others think of it!
I saw whichever episode they ran last night, I hope it was the pilot. Anyhow, was it the greatest thing to exist? No, but it was fun or at least had some fun moments. I dunno any totally blind guys who'd go chopping down a tree with a chain saw though. I think I've been more amused by people's reactions to the show, least the ones who had really high hopes. They're like "OK, this is it. This is the one that's going to show the world what blind people are really like and just zap ignorance away" and they got disappointed when things were not quite as real as they could be or otherwise did not meet expectations. Guys, it's a TV show. Any sighted person who is going to use a TV show to find out what blind people are really like instead of doing something completely stupid like getting to know real blind people are just silly and not worth bothering about, they probably won't ever get it.
Putting aside that the dad is blind, it was a cute sitcom. I liked the fact that in spite of the parents getting divorced, they all seemed to truly care about one another. I got burned out on hateful families such as Married With Children and Rosanne years ago and am glad to see a family sitcom with a mom and dad and two kids who are supportive of each other.
Blue velvet you're right totally 100 percent!
And yes, those people who watch this show and think, "this's what blind people are like cool!" prob. won't ever get it.
I did think the scene of the guy chopping down the tree was funny! Also the one where he's test driving the car..or maybe he was just driving it who knows but I laughed at it because I've actually done it with my sister's car though it wasn't as funny as the show portrayed. My sister let me drive it though, and whenever I had to stop the car she's yell, "break! break!" Haha! I almost crashed in to a fense but almost doesn't count lol!
Maybe I should chop down a tree next? XD!
Lol that reminds me of when, at about age 18 or 19, my dad let me drive his truck, and I almost took out his garage door. Fast-forward a few years later, on his zero-turn lawn mower, I almost took out a section of his fence. Guess that explains why he doesn't let me drive anything anymore. :P
Never cut down a tree with a chainsaw but have done so with an axe or a hand saw.
Becky that's great about parents supporting each other. I really hate the sit coms with the dads always painted as the villin goofball and the catty shriek woman mom.
Trust me, I love strong women. I'm married to one. But strong women are usually not the ones trying to out-shriek everybody and demean everyone. they're just strong and independent and good at a lot of things that mystify the rest of us. Lol.
Most these sit-coms aren't portraying dads fairly, and aren't portraying real strong women fairly either.
Nice to see in this case they're supportive.
I got sick of shows like Coach, Home Improvement, Everybody Loves Raymond, and such.
I decided to take a quick look around on Google to see how sighted TV critics reviewed the show and most of what I saw seemed to also indicate the show lacked promise because either the show was too sappy and not edgy enough or it was just a little too hard to believe or the characters not well executed. I figured the one character's blindness would be mentioned but people didn't seem to come away with the idea that real blind people were like how this guy was portrayed on the show. So my impression is, just looking at it as a sitcom amongst sitcoms, nobody really thinks it's going to go much of anywhere.
I thought it was ok but could be better, Maybe over time it will get better.
Where are you guys seeing it at? I had a friend send me a copy of the first part, where can I watch it online?
Thanks
I don't know about online, but I would imagine nbc.com would have it. It's on NBC on Tuesday nights at 9:30 Eastern time. I didn't think the second episode was as cute as the first. I don't use a guide dog, but even though I didn't see any problems with the dog in the first episode, I'm betting there are some dog users pissed off about the way the dog was used in the second episode.
Blue Velvet, fill me in! I don't have cable, and some shows are not streamable in Canada...
Kate
Well in the most recent episode, the father, I think his name is Mel, was told by his boss that even though he is now using a guide dog and most of their clients now know he is blind he wanted him to not use the dog and pretend to still be sighted when they met with one particular client. The boss felt that this client spends a lot of money with them and that if he realized Mel had been lying to him all these years they might lose him as a client. So Mel left the dog with his son and asked him to take care of him for the day. So while the boy was walking the guide dog, people who saw him assumed he was blind, and this one particular cute girl offered to help him. The kid got a crush on her and asked his dad if he could keep walking with the dog and pretend to be blind when he saw the girl again. Like I said, I don't use a dog so really had no personal objections to this storyline, but I know plenty of dog users who would probably be offended by the idea of a person pretending to be blind to get attention. It all worked out in the show though since it turned out the girl was about three years older than the boy and had never thought of him as boyfriend material. In fact, she was going to offer to babysit him if his father ever needed a sitter for him. And the father wasn't really crazy about the idea of his son pretending to be blind in front of the girl but did go along with it anyway.
Hey Kate, I have a suggestion for you and anyone else who can't get the show. I have never tried this with a sitcom, but with dramas that I either missed watching one week or which have plots that are hard to follow if you can't see, I google the show and try to find sites that feature text recaps. So you could just go on google and type in growing up fisher recaps and see what comes up. I have actually gotten more out of some well written recaps than I have an actual viewing of a show. Most of these recaps seem to be written by people who feel the need to include their own comments in with the description of the show, but still they can be helpful.
Great idea, Blue Velvet! Will check it out!
Even Wikipedia can have some pretty detailed recaps. I'm not sure if that's the case with this show, but I've had success with that in the past.
Agreed!
Well, after the few episodes of the show I think it is a pretty funny show. I like how in that one episode the dad was pretending to see and his son was right there pretending to be blind lol. Its good as a family sitcom and there have been some funny moments with the guide dog like when he said "move oh not you" or something like that.
That is a good idea about searching for show recaps for the show I do that sometimes with some dramas I like because sometimes I miss visual things in the shows.
Having only watched the first two episodes, I'm really not seeing why people are up in arms about this show. I mean sure, there are some misrepresentations to be found, but so far, it has funny moments and is generally a pretty feel-good show. The fact that this man doesn't let his blindness interfere with daily life is - though at times a little unrealistic, still very positive and inspiring.
I watched last night'sepisode, and it made me laugh several times. Mel (the father) was having problems trusting his teenage daughter, and his ex-wife suggested he had trust issues in general. That proved to be true when he didn't trust his guide dog. Twice in the show he kept saying forwward to the dog, and the dog whined and refused to go forward. I couldn't tell what happened in the first instance, but in the second, he forced the dog to let him keep walking and ended up falling in a hole. It was pretty funny. It showed him that he needed to trust the dog.
oh haha that does sound pretty funny. Sounds like he has trust issues even with his guide dog.
Lol I want to know the app he was using that was not only voice over friendly but that told him where his daughter (and, turns out his wife as well...) were going! Lol! But, that's another topic...Looking forward to tonight's episode in just a few moments!! :)
Catching up on these through the NBC app. Not impressed with the first two, but it's improving as the shows go on.
I haven't found it especially funny, because I just don't think constant references to blindness are funny. It strikes me as being the product of sighted people who are a bit uneasy about this fact, making jokes and calling attention to it, at every opportunity.
No, it's not plausible, in my mind, that the guy went through law school, and hides his blindness from people! No one could possibly sustain that, for long.
I know all shows take a few eps to get their footing, but so far, I don't feel that this group is really a family.
And in the latest one, the boy said something about having to take care of his dad. I hoped the father would have set him straight, on that, assured his son that he doesn't need to be taken care of, but that he appreciates the occasional help.
Yeah, it's just a sitcom, and I don't expect perfection of it, really, these are just my thoughts as I watched. It is nice that there's some exposure to some of what we deal with...the guy in the hotel insisting that pets weren't allowed, for example. Made me bristle, just hearing it. LOL
Then of course there was the show Blind Justice a few years back. I find it at best very hard to believe that a policeman could lose his sight in an accident and go right back into the exact same line of work. I'd be tempted to suggest that what really needs to happen is for a blind person towrite a script or storyline for a sitcom or other show that deals with blindness and portrays it in a more realistic light. The problem then of course would be geing a network to pick it up since it would probably lack sufficient drama to satisfy them.
I think the guy who wrote the pilot for Growing Up Fisher was writing from his own experience with his blind father. So there was some truth. However, TV sitcoms are all about exaggeration. Real life is pretty boring for most people, so to make people laugh you have to exaggerate.
Besides, I think I heard the show has not been renewed for next year. Anyone know for sure?
the show has been canceled. The final 2 episodes will air this Wednesday at 8 pm Est or 7 cst.
Good! Because I don't think I would ever watch that. Sounds retarded.
I'm not big on SitComs but, let's consider:
We have a rather noriginal plot. Father who is often bumbling about his emotions, or gets controlling, or any other number of characteristics so common to every sit com on the planet. Hot, successful mom has it all together, she just couldn't live with the father anymore. Ok that is a little different: usually the mother suffers loudly about living with the father on sit-coms. See Tim the Tool Man, Coach with Hayden Fox, etc. etc. etc.
The only difference, really, here is that the father is bvlind and so there are a few blind related things on there.
But, I'm not surprised the show is cancelled. Nothing new to see here, folks, moving right along.
I'm beyond jaded when it comes to Christmas movies and sit-coms that have to play down the father and play up the hot, capable, successful, but overtly suffering mother.
Here's an idea. How about some sort of sit-com that has the exaggerations stated in prior posts, only we do this with any number of sets of humans, and the male gender person is not always the complete fool?
I admit, I related to the father's concern for the little boy when he thought he'd be less if he didn't go blind.
My daughter developed an idea in junior high that if she dropped out of Spanish after a couple years, that I would feel disappointed because I went a lot further. how do these things happen, when we as parents strive so hard to do the opposite?
What are you talking about, Leo? I've watched every episode of this show and I can tell you, it was the mom who was the bumbling idiot in this one. She was the fool and it was the blind dad who had it all together. lol.
I admit I didn't watch but a few snippets. So perhaps talking out my ass on this one, just got comments from others who gave me the "nothing new to see here, moving right along" shtick.
What I saw of the mom looked anything but bumbling to me, but again this was just a few snippets.
Nope. she's actually the dumbest, most bumbling character on the show. lol. I dont' know what snippets you watched, but there's a sceen where she asks her ten year old son and his best friends which bra looks good on her. Then there's all those scenes where she tries to fit in with her teenage daughter's friends and her college classmate (she goes back to college during the divorce), and she makes a total fool out of herself each time.) The dad, by contrast, is this cool, calm and collected superhero lawyer type who goes in and makes everything ok with his blind smart superpowers. lol. The son is the wise child who is the voice of reason for both parents, caretaker of both as well, because mom's a nutjob and daddy is blind. lol. The daughter... Well, she's not much of anything. She's a blah character, and she rarely interacts with her blind dad, well, until the episode where she needs to learn to drive, that is. Dad teaches her how to drive, all despite being blind all his life, and even saves her from a big bad bully whom she has a crush on. Superhero dad, again. lol.
I'll admit, the show has some funny moments, and it actually is a lot different from the traditional sitcom where you see the mom take charge and keep the fam together while dad just bumbles along, but it's boring most of the time. You have the awkward asian nerdy friend for the boy, the exaggerated blindness scenarios, and a teaching moment at the end of the show--in most of the episodes anyway. There's nothing to see there, really, but I do admit it was different.
Ah. I admit that for me, the part that really stuck out, though I haven't seen much snippets, was the boy being afraid he was going to go blind, or that he would disappoint his father.
Probably would not have stuck out so much except that the daughter had that Spanish class experience, even though I never said I had any kinds of expectations of her in that department.
I thought the show was pretty good. The dad seemed to want to make things right a lot of the time, like the first episode the woman he liked she got a parking ticket when they were together so he went to court and fixed it for her.
I watched two episodes and found it wasn't something I enjoyed that much, probably because I like darker, more crude humor in contrast to the lighter, more corney humor in this show. If you like that sort of humor then you would enjoy it. I didn't find anything in the ones I saw to be offensive, however it wasn't that funny to me because they were the sorts of jokes I grew up to by my family about blindness and such.