Parker Lewis Can't Lose (TV Series)

The series depicts the tribulations of the title character Parker Lewis, a Santo Domingo High School student, for whom nothing is impossible. Parker often narrates in shows. Just like his best friends, Jerry Steiner and Mikey Randall and his girlfriend Annie Sloan, his prime concern is achieving and maintaining "coolness" during the turbulent years of puberty. However, their efforts are often thwarted by Parker's little sister, Shelly, and principal Grace Musso. Apart from various aspects of teenage life, embedded in a surreal, living-cartoon-like quality and the clever camera angles and filming techniques (dissolves from one scene to the next were done by ever larger pixels), an episode regularly contains more or less subtle references to movies, politics, and celebrities. The surrealism was toned down in the series' final season. The 3,100 students are called "Flamingos", after their football team. The TV spinoff Ferris Bueller, which was directly based on Ferris Bueller's Day Off, debuted on NBC during the same month, but it only lasted 13 episodes. Parker Lewis Can't Lose actually had lower ratings, but the FOX Network was still in its early years and thus had lower expectations.