Out of This World Boned the Fish When...

[TMC]

http://www.bonethefish.com/viewtopics.php?2525

Out of This World was a first-run syndicated sitcom that ran from 1987-1991, starring Maureen Flannigan as a half-alien teenage girl with special powers and Donna Pescow ("Angie") as her human mother.

https://web.archive.org/web/20070225...ptheshark.com/

• Other Thoughts:
  
  At first when I was really young, I thought that this show was really cool, but the fact that the half alien/half human girl could stop time by just touching the tips of her fingers made me sick. The fat guy as her uncle was pretty bad too.
  This show was a little cheezy to begin with but it didn't jump. What I liked about it was the fact the mother was in Saturday Night Fever.
  I liked that she talked to her alien father through a cube. Am I the only one that noticed most of the people on the show had a lisp?
  I remember this show fondly. when it started on NBC's 'primetime before primetime' then it left to syndication heaven. It wasn't great, it wasn't funny through and through but it had moments, it had its charm. It never tried to be anything more than it was. a cheesy little sitcom (like one episode was set on the backlot of universal, duh!) but in accepting what it was, it made it more enjoyable. it was a quaint little show and steve burton...MMMMMMhhMMMMM, he was cuter when he was playing the dumb jock.
  This show was so stupid, cheesy and lame that it does not fit the jump the shark category because it was so bad that it was actually enjoyable to watch.
  There is one reason why this show was so crap, yet so good. Forget "Evie Ethyl..." Forget the fact that the mum (I'm English) had'nt seen the dad for about 15 years (sheesh, as he wasn't dead I'd have gotten a divorce by now) - there was only one real treat - the late, great Doug McClure. What would we have done without the oscar winning performances ? (and the theme tune.)
  Charming little show, produced by Burt Reynolds (the voice of the "cube" father). In some ways a 1980s precursor to the live-action "Sabrina, the Teenage Witch," though it wasn't quite as clever.
  Never jumped. This was just the perfect sitcom to come home from school to. I, like, totally related to Evie's half-and-half problem, being biracial myself. Hee! One thing I never got, though, was that whenever she froze time, her dad would never freeze too. So if she were to go back to her home planet and try to freeze time, what's the point if no one gets affected by it?
  The show's fourth (and final) season suffered tremendously from the absence of Joe Alaskey, the actor/comedian who played Evie's Uncle Beano in seasons 1-3 (and is perhaps best known for doing the voice of Plucky Duck in Tiny Toon Adventures). It apparently was hard to write good shows without Beano, much in the same way that it is hard to make a good pizza without cheese.
  I remember one specific episode when she went through the "I have-etta have taffetta" (spelling?) campaign to get her mom to buy her an expensive prom dress. Only her mom couldn't afford it, so she "gleeped"...put a lampshade on her head and did some sort of magic to turn her pajamas into a dress. But something happened at the dance and her dress turned back into pajamas, so she froze time and ran home before anyone could see her. Actually, that's the only episode I really remember...maybe I only watched the show once.
  This was a pretty good show. Maureen Flanigan (the girl that played Evie) was a babe in her time. The cliffhanger last episode where the mother gets zapped to outer space was dumb though. You could tell that the producers had given up by this time.
  I don't remember this show too well but I do know that it must have been pretty good cause I used to rush home to watch it. And it's one of my first memories of tv. I do remember that it was on in syn right after charles in charge...
  In one surreal episode, Doug McClure and Charles Nelson Reilly try do out do each other by having an "act off." Possibly the worst two actors in television history showing off their chops. Great television!!!!! Maureen Flannigan did a topless scene in some grad Z thriller called "Teenage Bonnie and Klepto Clyde." Yes, I probably am a pervert.
  As a kid, it always bothered me that Evie had all these awesome powers yet spent so much time whining about how she just wanted to be a normal teenager and all that crap. I mean, c'mon, you have the power to freeze time! That's a million times cooler than having the latest pair of GAP jeans or whatever.
  The show's first three seasons revolved around Evie discovering she was half-alien and had special powers, and her getting used to those powers, making mistakes (as young people will do) along the way. The show had a discrete charm to it, and the recurring theme was that time, teleportation and transmutation powers will not solve everything. (I liked the episode where Evie, trying to make herself older to impress a boy, made herself eighty-something, and when she tried to correct it, she made herself a toddler!) By the final episode, the writers had given her too many powers. One episode had her turning the police chief into a statue and turning her mother into a man (no kidding!) Instead of making honest "test the waters" goofs, the only thing that slowed Evie down were incredible plot quirks (e.g., Evie's dad messes up a command to change the tune of a music box and shrinks Evie to three inches tall.) The show lost a lot for me when Evie got so powerful she could have given Superman a run for his money. PS: It galls me that it wasn't until 1997 that I learned Burt Reynolds was the voice of Troy!
  I thought this show as a pre-teen was pretty good but one episode really made me think that the writers thought its viewers were stupid. If I remember right, Evie was trying out for gymnastics and as it turned out she wasn't really good. She was going to use her powers but we all know what happens. Now the big competition. It showed some girls who were definitely professionals, show off what they are good at on the uneven bars. Evie turn and for some reason why the director decided to leave it in the show, showed Evie climb the uneven bars like a jungle gym and spring off the top like a cat. It only showed her do one rotation and she landed perfectly. Of course, Evie wins! As a kid, I thought this move was really cheezy because she really didn't do anything remotely what you seen in the olympics and in real life, I think her competitors would have been really pissed at the judges. Maybe some would have quit. Anyhow, I still think to this day as to why the director choose to leave Evie in this shot and not use a double. I think I only watched this show because at 12, I thought Evie was hot.
  I voted for "Never Jumped," just because I didn't think it was ever great to start with. Even in elementary school I remember thinking what a cheesy show it was, but I usually watched it when it was on (we didn't have cable, and Network TV was slim pickins' pre- Fox, WB and UPN). I always thought it was kind of lame when Evie would freeze time and they'd do a close up of something that had been frozen mid-action, like an egg cracking into a bowl or a pancake flipping in mid-air. But I remember often wishing I had the power to freeze time so I could sleep in, get my homework done, goof off, or get out of a tricky situation.
  I have to say this show never jumped the shark. It was what it was. I had the worlds biggest crush on Evie she was so hot. I remember being pre teenager and having an awesome dream with her in it. I couldn't wait to watch the show again. Maybe if everyone had a naughty dream with her in it the show might still be on today
  I've only seen a handful of episodes of Out of This World, so I can't truly say exactly when this show jumped the shark, but I did see a few things they did wrong. First, any show where the main character has awesome powers but spends a third of the time whining about wanting to be normal is automatically lame. Second, there were some episodes where Evie didn't use her powers at all, which is a cardinal sin on a sci-fi/fantasy show. Third, the writers gave Evie FAR too many powers. She was competing with Superman or Martian Manhunter (comics version) in the overabundance of powers. IMO, the 'gleeping' thing had to go; I can see how it opened the door for a wide variety of story ideas, but a power like that was just too easy to abuse, resulting in a character who was ridiculously powerful. OK, so Evie could create things out of thin air, change people's ages and genders, reverse people's ages and rearrange molecules? Jeez, why didn't they just make her God? If it were me, I would have just given her the time-freezing power and maybe 1 or 2 other powers, such as telepathy and telekinesis, and left it at that. Finally, the idea that the mom would stay alone and celibate while the dad was off in space for 16 plus years was also a bit of a stretch.