Fish

Fish was not perfect, but two of the characters: Fish, who had comical mannerisms and hilarious facial expressions that made me laugh out loud, and his lovely and sweet mannered wife made the show watchable.

The kids were kind of annoying, and it was so hard to actually like them. They could have been written better as characters on the show. The show needed more time to develop. It was certainly better than "Different Strokes", which for me is unwatchable. I have the one season of Fish on DVD and love watching the show, which is amazing in itself. I am quite sure the series would have been a classic it it had a few series under it's belt. It deserved more than just one year. I am not quite sure why it was cancelled in the first year. It just needed a chance to grow.

I thought this was a great show, and one of the few comedies that has successfully crossed the Atlantic to the UK. Good casting.

Sure it's a lot of kids doing mildly bad things, but the difference is having a cop for a foster parent. He could have got rid of them at any time, but the kids opened his eyes, and he put morals across in a mild way. Abe's performance was superb.

His reactions every time there was a new problem were truly great, his expressions, and mannerisms. Perhaps a little moralistic, but it gave a good account of accommodating differences, and seeing things from a different point of view.

I watched this show when it was originally broadcast. Although it was cute, it didn't quite have the oomph to be a sustainable series. I love Abe Vigoda's look, especially his long-suffering, sad-eyed expression, but it was hard to hang a whole show around his character. Fish was better as a supporting role.

Although Bernice provided the nurturing for the kids, Fish loudly claimed to dislike them and long for a quieter life. My favorite quote from the show was when he blew out the candles on a birthday cake. The girl asked, "Did ya get ya wish, Mista Fish?" and he replied, "NO, you're ALL STILL HERE!"

Although later shows managed to center a sitcom around a negative character, such as Dabney Coleman ( http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001056 ) in Buffalo Bill ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084992 ), or the puppet alien in ALF ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090390 ), these succeeded because the bad boy was SO extremely bad that you couldn't help laughing. Quietly grumbling Fish with a (well hidden) soft side just didn't go far enough to grab and hold an audience.

This was a pretty decent spin off from "Barney Miller". This show pretty much gave Abe Vigoda a chance to expand his character of Fish from more of a "sad sack" to being more of a grouch with a heart of gold. Also, his interaction with Todd Bridges character of Loomis really made this show very enjoyable.

Also, Abe Vigoda had to be one of the hardest working men in show business. This was due to the fact that for the first few months that this show was on he was still working on "Barney Miller". Kudos to Vigoda for his hard work on both shows and not missing a beat.

Ok, I liked "Barney Miller" back in the '70s (its pretty dated now though). And the character Fish was an amusing grumpy old man, played by Abe Vigoda. But this spinoff may be the WORST SITCOM EVER! Imagine a '70s era sitcom with all bad clothing, lame jokes and canned laughter and just add in five extremely annoying smart-aleck kids: you get this show. If you ever do see it on TV (although I don't know if any station would broadcast reruns of this show), you are bound to be amazed that such an awful train-wreck of a sitcom not only made it on the air, but lasted for over a year! Avoid unless morbid curiosity draws you to it - in that case just be amazed.