Fish

Fish was a spin-off of the Barney Miller TV series, with Abe Vigoda as the star. His incredibly whiny and annoying nag wife was played by Florence Stanley.

The kids were played by a repulsive cast of odd characters. The only exception was Todd Bridges as Loomis. Eventually he would be traded to the Different Strokes TV series, where he teamed up with Gary Coleman and made TV history.

John Cassissi, who played Victor, the big obnoxious kid, was later convicted of fraud and sentenced to 2-6 years in prison. When I saw this show as a kid, I thought Victor was a mentally handicapped character. He was always bouncing around and putting his face into people.

Len Bari and Sarah Natoli both disappeared from the acting profession by 1981, never to be seen again. This was one of those shows which had no young stars except for Todd Bridges. The rest of them are in the witness protection program.

I found this show on Crackle app, and tried to watch the first episode, and it reminded me of how incredibly lame this show was. I could not get past when all the annoying kids arrive and start yelling at Fish and his wife. The fact that Victor (Cassisi) and Len Bari are much older than the other kids is very creepy. Len Bari was 22 in 1977, and he looked it. Cassisi was a big fat 15 and he looked 25.

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.

Barney Miller had it's good points - and Det. Fish was one of them. Abe Vigoda is the perfect downtrodden "Sad Sack". The popularity of the character led some network genius (of which there were many in the 70's) to decide to spin him off into his own series. And "Fish" was it.

Fish and his wife Bernice (Florence Stanley - the female equivalent of Vigoda) were quite plausible as a long-married couple. The kicker was that they had a houseful of adopted children - that looked like the Rainbow Coalition. They could have named it "Ethnic Mismatch Comedy #644". The kids were "intensely annoying". The worst of the bunch was "Victor" - his character made me want to punch my TV set. The plots were the standard "kids get in trouble but family warmth solves it all in 30 minutes" dreck. In short, the long-suffering Fish character turned into a knowing father figure. It was just too far a departure, typical idiot TV Exec thinking - take a popular character, try to mine his popularity but forget completely about why he was popular in the first place.

As far as I can tell, everybody seemed relatively plausible, but it was just such a bad idea it got deservedly cancelled after one season. It sure isn't the worst sitcom ever (Heck, it's *a lot better* than "My Big Fat Greek Life" - but then again, most things are) but it's definitely towards the bottom of the list.

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.

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.