Top 10 '90s Shows That Feel Like a Fever Dream
#10: “Cousin Skeeter” (1998-2001)
“Cousin Skeeter” is a children’s show that aired on Nickelodeon from 1998 to 2001. It’s about a young boy named Bobby and his cousin Skeeter who comes to live with his family in New York City. Most of the episodes revolve around these two main characters as Skeeter helps his cousin deal with the highs and lows of growing up. Sounds like a pretty standard kid sitcom right? Oh, that must be because we forgot to mention that cousin Skeeter is a puppet! Even crazier is the fact that the show never addressed it, but instead treated him like he was a regular - albeit rather short - human being.
#9: “VR.5” (1995)
Top 10 Childhood Shows That Feel Like a Fever Dream
Sydney Bloom lost her father and sister in a car accident when she was a young girl. At the time, her computer scientist father and neurochemist mother had been working on virtual reality, and almost 20 years later, Sydney also plays around with VR in her spare time. One day, she stumbles upon a more advanced VR world in which she can connect with other people. The kicker is that her actions in the simulation directly affect the real world. With this newfound ability, she agrees to work with a secret organization known as ‘The Committee’. “VR.5” was meant to tap into that same sci-fi creepiness that made “The X-Files” so popular. But, far from the fame of the former, Fox only aired 10 of the original 13 episodes.
#8: “Sliders” (1995-2000)
This wasn’t a show about small, delicious hamburgers. But honestly, that might have been more promising than the five seasons of “Sliders” we actually got. The show’s premise sounds like an ode to “Quantum Leap” with Jerry O'Connell’s protagonist and his crew “sliding” through wormholes into parallel universes. While the first two seasons focus on social and political issues on the various Earths, the third season brought in a sexy military captain to up interest and viewers’ heart rates. But that wasn’t the end of the changes. By the fifth and final season, most of the original cast had left, including O’Connell who was replaced by Robert Floyd as an alternate version of the same character. Makes you want a small hamburger, doesn’t it?
#7: “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes” (1990-91)
In 1978, a satirical film was made about sentient tomatoes who turn on humans. It was called “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes,” and that’s probably where it should have met its end. But, in 1990, a kids’ television show of the same name was made, continuing on from the events of the movie. In the show, two men named Dr. Putrid T. Gangreen and Igor Smith are turning tomatoes into monsters in the town of San Zucchini. Fighting them are quite the unconventional group composed of Chad Finletter, Tara Boumdeay and F.T. We should probably mention that Tara is a tomato who became human thanks to Dr. Gangreen, and F.T. stands for Fuzzy Tomato - so we’ll let you work that one out.
#6: “Hi Honey, I'm Home!” (1991-92)
Top 10 SNL Sketches That Feel Like a Fever Dream
“Hi Honey, I'm Home!” was a sitcom about a sitcom family - the Nielsens - whose show gets canceled. They end up moving into the “real world” next door to Mike Duff - one of their show’s biggest fans. While there, the Nielsens learn to deal with the reality of life outside of a sitcom and Mike has to keep their secret in order for the family to potentially find their way back on television. A sitcom family in the real world of a sitcom, “Hi Honey, I'm Home!” was the Russian doll of the TGIF lineup - at least for the first 6-episode season. The second season’s episodes aired only on Nickelodeon.
#5: “Baywatch Nights” (1995-97)
Baywatch Stars: Where Are They Now?
With a weekly audience estimated to be around 1.1 billion people, “Baywatch” was the most watched television show in the world for much of its 11 season run. Given those numbers, it makes sense that they would want to spin off other shows from the main series. Unfortunately, what they came up with was a basic detective agency show called “Baywatch Nights” - or at least season one was basic. You see, for some reason the standard detective agency show didn’t get great ratings (not enough scantily clad people running in slo-mo along the beach, we assume). So, for season two - inspired by the success of “The X-Files” - they went full sci-fi. Needless to say, it didn’t help!
#4: “Dinosaurs” (1991-95)
In the early ‘90s, Jim Henson and Disney teamed up to bring a family of anthropomorphic dinosaurs to our TGIF nights on ABC. Henson passed away in 1990, but had conceived of the show two years prior. While a show featuring a family of domesticated dinosaur puppets might seem a little weird, that isn’t what landed the series a spot on our list. That was earned with its final episode, an episode in which the dinosaurs’ careless treatment of the environment culminates in the protagonist's family having no other options but to sit and wait for death. Absolutely no chill, ABC.
#3: “Baby Talk” (1991-92)
Top 20 Baby Yoda Moments
In 1989, “Look Who's Talking” taught us that it was hysterical when babies had grown-up thoughts voiced by famous people. You probably remember the 1990 sequel, “Look Who's Talking Too”, but many of us have little memory of the short-lived ABC series, “Baby Talk” - loosely based on the first film. This version once again features Tony Danza. And as it turns out, the whole babies-voiced-by-grown-ups can get tired pretty quickly. What will really throw some for a loop, though, is a young George Clooney in the first season. Even that’s not really enough to redeem it.
#2: “Cop Rock” (1990)
Top 10 Shows That Will Instantly Boost Your Mood
If you’ve ever watched a cop show on TV and felt that it would be so much better if the characters broke out into song every now and then, well “Cop Rock” is the show for you. Co-created by Steven Bochco - the man who just a few years later would help give us one of the greatest cop shows of all time, “NYPD Blue” - “Cop Rock” was the police procedural musical no one was waiting for. In the end, the dichotomy of the gritty police drama with the various musical numbers didn’t really work for critics or fans - and the show ended after just 11 episodes.
#1: “Teletubbies” (1997-2001; 2015-18)
Tinky Winky, Dipsy, Laa-Laa and Po have antennas on their heads, televisions on their bellies and live in an earth home in a hilly, grass covered field. Other members of the community include a voice trumpet, an anthropomorphic vacuum cleaner and who can forget that sun with the face of a baby. If you didn’t know any better, you’d be more likely to think we were describing a literal fever dream we had and not one of the most popular kids shows of all time. But alas, it’s the latter and it doesn’t look any less trippy now than it did over two decades ago.
