The lead comment was that this show was a low point for ABC. I didn't see it that way back in September of 1996. We'd lost cable 8 months earlier and I was really missing the Nick version of "Doug". I was more the extatic to find out they were bring the show to a channel I still got. Then I saw the Trailer, and yes the show's plot, theme song, and everything else about it get turned upside-down. I maintain however the basic theme of the show was still the same. Doug still lived in Bluffington and still wrote in his Journal. That's all I needed to know.
This show depends a lot on seeing the Nick series but before long really becomes its own force as we are introduced to life at a Junior High-School that is under-construction. My favorite episode was the one where they were trapped in the school by a blizzard, and one of the kids goes off to find a secret paradise room, hidden in the Principal's Office. I've yet to find other shows that come close to story lines like that. The theme of my life for a long, long time. In fact, to this day, in my ENG classes at TCC I still will write my Narrative Stories in the "Doug" format of normal life adventures gone wrong. It works!
