Ahead of its time, but not as good as you remember Grade: n\g As Grown’ish was winding down, I wondered to myself whether it was the new G.O.A.T. when it comes to “the university experience shows”. But you ain’t the champ until you beat the champ and in my books, the best of this genre was 80s classic, A Different World. The question is, does it hold up and stand the test of time. The easy answer…no, but I only made it 11 episodes deep into my re-watch. It was a treat to hear the fantastic theme song and great opening credit sequence. A whole lot less of a treat to see “Created by William H. Cosby PhD” in the credits. But once into the show, it was pretty remarkable…by 1987 standards. A primetime show on NBC about life at an HBCU..? That was beyond progressive. And for the time, is was pretty well executed. Sure, many of the jokes feel a little juvenile now and there are a few moments that are pretty cringy, but by and large, it ain’t bad. What was especially impressive is that this show lost its two main leads, Lisa Bonet and Marisa Tomei after year one and still ran for 5 more seasons after promoting Kadeem Hardison and Jasmine Guy then introducing Cree Summer. But ultimately, it became clear pretty early on that while this show was amazing to 25 year old Marcus, old man Marcus wasn’t nearly as invested. I was hoping to get to the Heavy D episode, but that wasn’t until S3 and I simply wasn’t going to make through 50 episodes. I got to the “Rockin’ Robin” episode and made it a few beyond that and realized there was no point. I’d rather have rose coloured memories of this show than come face to face with the reality that it isn’t as good as I remember. So, for now, Grown’ish is my new college G.O.A.T., but as I’ve come to discover…it’s not finished. The show is cutting 75% of its cast and carrying on with Zoe Johnson’s life after graduation. We’ll see how that goes.