After CBS acquired Step by Step & Family Matters from ABC for the purpose of creating their own Friday comedy block, the producers added a new series that borrowed concepts from three other shows.
Meego, however, ran into trouble almost from the beginning. Bronson Pinchot (ex-Perfect Strangers) had the lead as a shape-changing alien who takes on the job of acting as a babysitter/housekeeper for a single dad (Ed Begley, Jr., ex-St. Elsewhere) and his three children.
The familiar factors?
1. Alien crashes his spaceship in the backyard of a common Earth family, and moves in (think ALF).
2. The domestic job (similar to another Miller-Boyett bomb, Out of The Blue, which the producers developed for Paramount & ABC 18 years earlier, though the lead there was an angel).
3. Miller-Boyett tried to duplicate the success of Mork & Mindy, but they did not give Meego a love interest. Robin Williams would've known what to do with the character of Meego. We think.
Erik von Detten ("Toy Story") appears in the pilot, but was replaced by Will Estes in the next episode. Not sure why. Michelle Trachtenberg (ex-The Adventures of Pete & Pete) & Jonathan Lipnicki are the other children. Family Matters co-star Jaleel White made a pair of uncredited cameos early on, not as Steve Urkel, but as other characters. It was almost as if the producers were reluctant to add Meego to the same shared universe as Matters & Perfect Strangers.
Check the opener:
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