Parker Lewis Can’t Lose! No, Really! - EclipseMagazine
21 June 2009
The late summer of 1990 found two high school sitcoms premiering: the TV adaptation of Ferris Bueller's Day Off [simply entitled Ferris Bueller] for NBC; and - ten days later - Fox's Parker Lewis Can't Lose. Bueller lasted one season [with its finale held back ‘til just over a year after its premiere] and Parker Lewis [which some had though to be an inferior version of Ferris Bueller] went on to run for three wacked out seasons [and 73 episodes]. Not the longest run for a sitcom, maybe, but years ahead of its time.
Parker Lewis Can't Lose: The Complete First Season, in stores Tuesday, is - after Quark and Sports Night - the sitcom I've most wanted to see released on DVD. Why? It's smart, funny, innovative and had a very "take no prisoners" attitude that not only helped Fox establish itself as the edgier, more inventive network of the early nineties, but provided elements that have become highly influential to many of the sitcoms that came after it [Malcolm in the Middle and Scrubs come immediately to mind...].
With its sound effects; mosaic transitions; innovative use of dolly shots [giving certain characters the feeling of being inexorably - and far too quickly - drawn to some hideous fate]; slo-mo, fast mo and all kinds of other techniques, Parker Lewis Can't Lose was a live action high school show that Tex Avery and Chuck Jones might have created.
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