ADVANCE REVIEW: grown-ish Has a Little Growing to Do
College is all about firsts. For most, it is their first time being away from home and being away from their parents. It is about finding yourself and who you may want to be. It is a time to experiment and take risks, but also a time to prove that you can handle being on your own and can handle making your own choices. It is during this learning that Freeform hopes to earn some laughs from their new series, grown-ish, but the black-ish spin-off may not be able to handle its first chance at being alone.
Grown-ish follows the oldest Johnson child, Zoey as she heads off to college. The show is set to follow Zoey as she faces her first year at college and the firsts many people experience during their first year. Unlike black-ish, which features an all star cast and numerous laugh out loud moments, the first three episodes of grown-ish feature a number of newcomers and little to no laugh out loud moments. Now, with that being said, it does do a nice job of showing that not everything is going to come easy for the once popular leading lady, but it does it in a way that lacks the spark found in black-ish.
The secondary characters are also a little underdeveloped as most of the story is told from Yara Shahidi’s (Zoey) point of view. The characters are introduced in a rushed manner and then pushed to the side after the first episode. They pop up in the next two episodes, but more as side pieces to help push Zoey’s story along. Hopefully, as the season progresses we learn more about her new friends and they begin to get their own storylines.
Don’t get me wrong, Yara is great in this role and does a great job leading the story, but the laughs just aren’t there in the first three episodes. The storylines are decent, touching on some pretty interesting topics, which will be fun to explore as the season progresses, but fingers crossed the show finds its comedy footing before season’s end.
The show will premiere tonight, December 3, on Freeform, so make sure to give it a watch and let us know what you think.
Grade: B-
Source: Freeform/Andrew Eccles