Anne Beatts' performance as executive producer

[TMC]

Anne Beatts (RIP) was the showrunner during much of the first season (i.e. the one with Lisa Bonet and Marisa Tomei and Phoebe Snow singing the theme song).

It's generally accepted that once Denise, Marisa Tomei, and Anne Beatts for that matter left, it became a much more interesting show. And when Debbie Allen took over, it definitely became a more Afrocentric show. Her sister, Phylicia Rashad got her the job after appearing on the show the first season and not liking how low quality the production and scripts were. She went back to Bill Cosby to complain and suggested that the show get retooled.



The main accusation that was leveled against the first season is that Beatts was just redoing Square Pegs gags in a college setting. Here's a profile of her from the Square Pegs era. All the cast members make appearances, and a CBS exec speaks frankly.

Other Beatts projects – a TV show based on Titters, a movie update of The Women, a murder-mystery comedy – were all in various holding patterns when Square Pegs was bought by CBS. “There was a point during the filming of the pilot,” LeMasters recalls, “when I would have been perfectly willing to fire Anne Beatts. I began to think Anne was the best of Square Pegs and, simultaneously, the worst of Square Pegs. There are definite problems with her as a producer. She has a desire, for instance, not to tell a story, to just have interesting characters who tell clever jokes.