There's something I used to say about Batlestar Galactica, and I think now, with that show long departed, the mantle has been passed to Black-Ish. "I don't know whether this is the best bad show on TV, or the worst good show on TV."

It's definitely one of the two. The production is slick, the core adult cast (though they were sadly Fishburne-less again this week) is fantastic, and the joke writing it often competent. On the other hand, most of the child actors stink, the joke writing is never stellar, the show's laboriously over-narrated and broad, and the office segments often feel more like a Key and Peele sketch than a part of an actual sitcom. The show is either well made crap or poorly made gold, but either way there's a lot of room for improvement here, but very little momentum in that direction.

There's also been an astonishingly lack of utilization of some very funny supporting actors; we've watched for weeks as Charlie Murphy does the best with minimal material, and now we've got Nicole Sullivan basically back to playing a bougie Mad TV caricature of a rich white woman. These guest stars- and for that matter, the very funny main actors- deserve better, and Black-Ish refuses to give it to them. This is the show I least look forward to each week, as even inferior shows- like the god awful A to Z- are interesting failures; whether or not Black-Ish is a failure is an open question, but it's only very rarely interesting.