Cousin Skeeter
Nickelodeon's live-action sitcom about a well-behaved kid from Inglewood whose loudmouth cousin moves in from Georgia, except the cousin is a puppet voiced by Bill Bellamy and nobody on the show ever mentions it. 52 episodes from 1998 to 2001, a 702 theme song with a Missy Elliott assist, and a young Meagan Good as Nina.
Cousin Skeeter premiered on Nickelodeon on September 1, 1998, in the 8-to-9 p.m. block it shared with The Wild Thornberrys. Phil Beauman, Alonzo Brown and Brian Robbins created it for Tollin/Robbins Productions, and it was shot single-camera on film, then given a laugh track anyway. Skeeter moves from Georgia to New York City to live with his cousin Bobby Walker (Robert Ri'chard), a smart, well-behaved boy originally from Inglewood, California, whose father André (Rondell Sheridan) is a music producer and whose mother Vanessa (Angela Means) is a lawyer. Skeeter makes the mess, Bobby cleans it up, and his best friend and later girlfriend Nina (Meagan Good) is along for all of it. Skeeter himself was a hand puppet performed by Drew Massey with Alice Dinnean assisting, and voiced by comedian Bill Bellamy; within the show he is treated as a regular person and nobody remarks on the obvious. The theme was an alternate version of 702's 1996 single "Steelo," co-written by and featuring Missy Elliott.
The reviews were rough. The Hollywood Reporter called the characters "undeveloped" on premiere day, and Variety's Ray Richmond, a few days earlier, found the show borderline offensive, worrying it would send black culture "careening back to the Stone Age" and describing Skeeter as "a mean-spirited, piggish, jive-screaming, self-flagellating little runt with bushy eyebrows." Kids disagreed. By February 1999 Variety was reporting that Cousin Skeeter was "consistently ranked as the top-rated live-action series" on the network, and Ri'chard picked up Young Artist Award nominations three years running.
The show ran three seasons and 52 episodes. A second puppet, Nicole, performed by Julianne Buescher and voiced by Tisha Campbell, arrived in the three-part season-two story "New Kids on the Planet" in July 2000, Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes of TLC turned up as a character named Brenda, and a nine-episode third season aired in 2001. The reappraisal came later: in 2019 Rotten Tomatoes listed it among five 1990s children's shows that helped pave the way for Black representation on television, singling out "The Bicycle Thief," the episode where Bobby, Nina and Skeeter track down a stolen bike. For the kids who watched it live, though, the lasting memory is simpler: a sitcom family that had a puppet in it and never once explained why.
Similar items
Kenan & Kel
SNICK's buddy-comedy crown jewel: scheming Kenan and his orange-soda-obsessed best friend Kel, forever tangling themselves in grocery-store plots that collapsed with a shared "Awwww, here it goes!" The show taught a generation to love orange soda and made Kenan Thompson a star.
All That
A live-action sketch-comedy show on Nickelodeon that functioned as "Saturday Night Live for kids." Premiering in April 1994, All That launched stars including Kenan Thompson, Kel Mitchell, and Amanda Bynes while anchoring Nickelodeon's beloved "SNICK" Saturday-night block with its irreverent humor and memorable recurring sketches.
Nickelodeon Bumpers
The wacky five-to-thirty-second interstitials wedged between shows — the orange splat that could be anything, the goofy stop-motion and live-action idents, and the sung "Nickelodeon" jingle. There were a million of them, and 90s kids remember them as fondly as the shows.
Clarissa Explains It All
Clarissa Darling talked directly to you from her chaotic 90s bedroom, narrating the endless dramas of school, crushes, and sibling war. Melissa Joan Hart made the fourth-wall break feel like having a best friend's voice in your head — while Sam climbed through the window to a guitar chord and little brother Ferguson schemed downstairs. It proved girls' stories could hook any audience.