Great Scott!

One of the most creative sit-coms in existence; a cross-between the Wonder Years, Malcolm in the Middle and Family Guy (did you think Seth was in any way original with the cut-aways? Nah...he's just hoping we didn't notice). Not having a laugh-track and the dead-pan delivery of the characters seemed to underscore the comedic writing; sometimes the humor built and built until one final punch-line just made one bust-out hysterically. An example being one episode where Scott (Toby MacGuire) is in art-class fantasizing he's a sultan being showered with gifts of crafts from his "popular" class-mates, who now happen to now be subservient to his will; as the gifts get more and more outlandish and the entire situation builds to a point where we're expecting some huge ending; the entire sketch stops with us realizing it was all a feverish hallucination to his reaction to the clay. The unfortunate reality is, at in an era when toilet-humor and race-baiting was the norm for success on FOX, this show never had a chance for success-- and we as a society are all the poorer for it.

This quirky and enjoyable sitcom had a shelf life of about 5 weeks on the Fox network, proving Fox's reputation for being alternative and a "risk taker" was all hype. Great Scott should have been given a chance. The show centered around a kid who was perceived as a bit of a loser (Toby Maguire of Spiderman fame in his first lead roll) and relied heavily on cutaways to his fertile imagination. Created by the powerful comedy duo of Tom Gammill and Max Pross, who went on to be writer/producers on Seinfeld and The Simpsons, the show had an originality and silliness that was either too far ahead of it's time or just over the heads of Fox viewers and executives. Great supporting cast including Scott's best friend played by Kevin Connolly and his unqualified math teacher hilariously played by comedian Brian Haley.

This show demonstrates Hunter S. Thompson's observation that "The TV business is uglier than most things... some kind of cruel and shallow money trench ... a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs, for no good reason."