MEEGO: Was This The Worst Show of the '90s?

[TMC]

http://zvbxrpl.blogspot.com/2009/03/...ow-of-90s.html

While looking at the Spinoff/Crossover site, I came across this page about a 1997 show called Meego, which the author provocatively calls "The worst show of all time." I thought I had seen or at least heard of all the cheesy shows from the Miller-Boyett factory, but I missed this one, which ran after Family Matters when it moved to CBS in 1997-8 (and started, of course, with two crossover appearances by Urkel). He makes a pretty convincing case for its horribleness:

It was a cross between Alf and Charles In Charge. Start crying now. But allow me to expand on that description. Meego starred Perfect Stranger's Bronson Pinchot as Meego, a nanny who was really a space alien with magical powers watching over a family of kids that included Jerry Maguire's Jonathan Lipnicki.
....
If you are a fan of Meego and I have grossly offended you I am very sor... oh heck I can say it. I'm NOT sorry. IT WAS MEEGO FOOL!!!


By this point, Miller-Boyett had actually changed its name to Miller-Boyett-Warren, having absorbed half of the Bill Bickley/Michael Warren team that wrote and produced most of its shows. (Bill Bickley, apparently sensing that the bottom was about to fall out of the cheesy family comedy market, had retired.) CBS picked up the M-B shows that ABC had dropped, plus this new one, and tried to go head to head with TGIF.

I remember at the time I was still watching Sabrina (in its second season) and would sometimes check out the other supernatural comedies ABC ordered in a desperate attempt to cash in on the success of Sabrina, Al Jean and Mike Reiss's Teen Angel and Michael Jacobs' You Wish, but I never watched a moment of Meego, presumably because I wasn't watching Family Matters either.

Anyway, Meego was clearly a CBS attempt to pull a Sabrina by doing a supernatural comedy of their own, and M-B did their usual thing, borrowing heavily from previous shows they'd been involved with (Mork and Mindy, Perfect Strangers). As always, they put together a decent supporting cast (including Michelle Trachtenberg, available after the cancellation of The Adventures of Pete & Pete). But the title sequence is terrible, and the theme song kind of sounds like a Mork knockoff too.

I phrased the subject heading as a question because, having never seen a full episode of this series, I have no idea if it really was the worst show of its era. It seems like a good candidate, though, based on the few clips I've seen. One clip appears to be from an episode where the teenage boy uses some kind of alien gizmo to force a girl to like him. And then the Valuable Lesson is that people should like you for who you are, whereas the Valuable Lesson should be that this character is basically a rapist.

I'm so disgusted by that clip that I will stop there. So I have no desire to see more of this to find out if it's truly the worst show of the '90s, but at the very least, I think it's clearly worse than You Wish or Teen Angel or any of the other Sabrina ripoffs.

[gilligan fanatic]

Bob Denver, Russell Johnson, and Dawn Wells made a cameo on it so it can't be the worst-lol

[catlover79]

To be honest, I'd never even heard of it until now.

[howierules86]

^Meego was one of CBS' attempts to compete with ABC at having a Friday night sitcom block in the fall of 1997 after having "rescued" both Family Matters and Step By Step for another season (why?), and the other new sitcom that bombed was a self-titled one for the late Gregory Hines. Personally, I thought ABC still had the better TGIF shows at that time (Sabrina & Boy Meets World were still decent to watch, and Teen Angel at least had some potential to it, unlike You Wish).

[zachattack12]

I saw one episode, it wasn't THAT bad. Sure it was bad, and rather creepy. But Bronson Pinchot was pretty funny, and Ed Begley, Jr. had some moments. Granted he was barely onscreen, but he was amusingly doofy when he was on. The kids were mediocre at best, as pretty much every sitcom kid is. And the writing was horrendous. But I've seen worse.

[TVFactFan]

Originally Posted by catlover79

To be honest, I'd never even heard of it until now.

Probably because it was on during the weak era of TGIF lol


ANd on top of that it came on at 9:30pm I think

[ThomasE]

Originally Posted by TVFactFan

Probably because it was on during the weak era of TGIF lol


ANd on top of that it came on at 9:30pm I think

It was 8:30 E/T. I have the CBS Friday block party from 1997 on tape. I never took the time to watch the show. I think I will. I saw one tag scene where Bronson Pinchot goes "Okey dokey, Alex". LOL. I wanna see more.

[TVFactFan]

Originally Posted by ThomasE

It was 8:30 E/T. I have the CBS Friday block party from 1997 on tape. I never took the time to watch the show. I think I will. I saw one tag scene where Bronson Pinchot goes "Okey dokey, Alex". LOL. I wanna see more.

At that time I had stopped recording Family matters on Fridays nights when I went out on Friday nights on my college campus LOL

[JO Sweet Heart]

Can any of this show be seen anywhere at the You Tube website at all? I LOVE Bronson Pinchot!!!

God bless you and him always!!!

Holly

[funky-rat]

I don't know....."On Our Own" was pretty bad. Another TGIF Miller-Boyett stinker, and one season wonder from the mid-90's.

Mrs. Doubtfire premise rip-off type thing. All of the Smollet kids (they were all pretty little) with a big brother played by another actor - not one of the family. Their parents die, and he dresses up like an "aunt" to keep CPS off of their backs.

Terrible, IMO. I don't even remember Meego, so that must say something.

[TMC]

Episode 297--The CBS Friday Night Block Party (Meego and The Gregory Hines Show)

Monday Aug 15, 2022

In 1997, CBS took the bold steps of putting together a 2-hour comedy block on Friday nights versus ABC's TGIF, and even took two of TGIF's stalwarts in the process. The two former TGIF shows were on its last legs. We're here to talk about the two original shows to the Block Party--Meego and The Gregory Hines Show.

[TMC]

Join me as we take a trip down memory lane and revisit the infamous TV show MEEGO, which aired in 1997. Often regarded by many as one of the worst shows of the year, MEEGO has become a nostalgic reminder of the television landscape of the 90s. In this video, I'll be discussing what made MEEGO so bad, from its poorly developed characters to its cringe-worthy storylines. If you're feeling nostalgic for the TV of yesteryear or just want to see what all the fuss is about, be sure to watch until the end for my thoughts on whether MEEGO truly deserves its reputation as the worst show of 1997.

• 0:00 Meego clip 1 Halloween
• 0:34 Meego clip 2 Cereal Whistle
• 1:34 Side by Side comparison
• 1:56 Meego open
• 2:35 Meego clip 3 dog
• 3:10 Meego clip 4 Breakfast
• 4:30 Meego clip 5 Urkel
• 5:29 Meego clip 6 Overdrawn
• 6:04 Meego clip 7 Special effects: Dragon
• 7:46 Meego clip 8 Gilligan's Island Crossover
• 9:49 Meego clip 9 Dog Date Discussion
• 10:32 Award Winner?
• 11:04 Wrap Up