Top 10 WORST Kids Sitcoms

A mockumentary for a sitcom is a great idea on paper but it really just wasn’t well executed. The show and its soundtracks were wildly popular. The premiere was even one of Nickelodeon’s biggest at the time. But, as we all know, popular doesn’t always mean good. Plotlines and conclusions were often obvious and too on-the-nose. Meanwhile, the characters were just a bit too goofy, even for the series’ target audience. While the songs had serious potential, they were actually hindered by the scope of the show. At least we got Alex and Nat Wolff out of this.

The only good thing about this show was the return of Kel Mitchell from “Kenan & Kel”. Even Mitchell was unfortunately not that great on the show, but it offered a nice bit of nostalgia for parents or older siblings watching along. The show is about a group of friends who create a very successful gaming company. But the problem is… their games are kind of lame. There’s no way their lukewarm ideas made them multimillionaires. The performances are decent enough for such young actors. But even that can’t save the generally bad writing and tragically boring storylines.

When the Hathaways move to New Orleans, they discover their new home is already inhabited… by a family of ghosts. The conclusion we hoped to see in “Beetlejuice”, these two families learn to cohabitate. It’s not a completely terrible premise and it feels like there’s a lot to work with. Unfortunately, the delivery is just off. Why do kids shows so often feel like they need to dumb down their dialogue and humor? Young viewers are smarter than adults give them credit for, and appreciate when their media doesn’t talk down to them. “The Haunted Hathaways” could have had potential if not for this fatal flaw.

Hear us out. The best thing this show had going for it was its form. In the first season, each episode would start at the end of the story with all the characters in some crazy predicament. And then things would rewind and we would see how each character ended up in their unique mess. It was an interesting premise. But this format was abandoned in season two and the show largely lost its intrigue because of it. The stories all fell flat and the humor suffered a great deal.

Yes, this show gave us Olivia Rodrigo. And that’s about all it did. The name of the series is incredibly appropriate because it really was just bizarre. It’s about two friends, Paige and Frankie, who become famous internet stars after their comedy music video channel blows up. According to reviews of the show, the two friends’ funny music videos weren’t funny at all. The whole thing screams “boomers trying to pander to Gen Z” with outdated comparisons to YouTube and social media fame in general. The thing about this is… it’s also kind of been done before.

Nickelodeon probably should have learned its lesson with “Fred”. But more on that later. YouTube star Lucas Cruikshank played an alien named Marvin trying to assimilate to life as an Earth teenager. Hm, where have we heard that before? “Mork and Mindy”, “Kyle XY”, “Superman”, or even “ALF” all did it first and they all did it better. The slapstick style comedy of “Marvin Marvin” was difficult to find funny and, while we can appreciate Cruikshank’s talents and what he built on YouTube, this character was just not it. Seeing as it only lasted a season, it seems audiences agreed.

This show was so bad Cartoon Network doesn’t even have it on its own streaming service. It’s like they want to forget it ever existed just as much as the rest of us. One of the network’s few live action shows, “Out of Jimmy’s Head” actually had an interesting premise, it was just trying to do too much. Jimmy gets a brain transplant and ends up with the brain of a famous cartoonist. This allows him to see his world in cartoon form. Unfortunately, the focus stayed on the novelty of the form rather than the quality of the stories. It’s also hard to suspend your disbelief enough to really get into the show.

This one’s going to ruffle some feathers. Whether you loved or hated the Jonas Brothers back then, there is no doubt that this show was a low point for them. Nick Jonas even admitted in their documentary that the series prevented them from growing as a band and as people. It was designed with a specific audience in mind and ended up being little more than another dumbed-down kids show. The music only sort of saved it. If the show did one thing, though, it was make us beg our parents to install a fire pole in the house.

The title of this show alone tells you why it deserves a spot on this list. With a concept this terrible, nothing could save this show. Not good writing. Not fun storylines. Not decent acting performances. Oh wait, this show didn’t have any of that either. It’s literally about a talking dog – a concept that is not executed super well, we might add – who writes blog posts about his rather mundane family. This is one of those things you just know was stitched together painfully around the title alone. Unfortunately, even the title is really not that clever. Plus, it aired long after blogs were popular to an audience that probably learned what a vlog was before ever knowing it was derived from the former word.

How that purposefully-annoying voice ever got an actual show on a network is beyond us. For short form funny videos online, it worked, as evidenced by its staggering popularity. “Fred” was even the first channel to hit a million subscribers on YouTube – so credit where it’s due. With that said, the internet and cable TV are two completely different worlds. We’re not sure how big a hand Lucas Cruikshank actually had in the writing, but we feel like it was very little. The jokes that made it meme-worthy online did not translate into the show, and none of the stories were ever anything of substance. It just read as overall really immature instead of a fun, silly time.