Smart Guy

Smart Guy was created by Danny Kallis and produced by de Passe Entertainment and Kallis's company with Walt Disney Television, premiering on The WB on April 2, 1997. Its hook was a kid with an IQ of 180, several languages and a photographic memory whose teachers realized fourth grade wasn't challenging him, so he jumped six grades to Piedmont High School in Washington, D.C., the same school as his sister Yvette and brother Marcus. Tahj Mowry, who had played Michelle's friend Teddy on Full House and was the younger brother of Sister, Sister's Tia and Tamera Mowry, starred; Jason Weaver played Marcus, Essence Atkins played Yvette, John Marshall Jones played their widowed father Floyd, and Omar Gooding played Marcus's best friend Mo.

The comedy came from the gap between T.J.'s brain and his size. He became the basketball team's mascot, Pugnacious Pete, the Powerful Piedmont Penguin, and later its equipment manager, and he played keyboard in Marcus's band, Mackadocious, with Mo on bass. Marcus was the popular underachiever who occasionally tried to get his little brother to do his homework; Yvette was the level-headed overachiever who edited the school paper; Floyd ran his own roofing business and dispensed the moral advice; and Mo, dimwitted and good-hearted, all but lived at the Henderson house and greeted everyone with "Hello der!" The show taped at Sunset-Gower Studios in Hollywood, and its establishing shot of Piedmont High later stood in for Cory in the House and for John Adams High on Boy Meets World.

The WB aired 51 episodes over three seasons, the last on May 16, 1999. Disney Channel then reran it from 1999 to 2004, and it has been on Disney+ since the service launched in November 2019, minus one episode held back over music licensing. Mowry went on to voice Wade, the ten-year-old genius of Kim Possible, a part he was given as a nod to T.J., and in September 2020 he said a revival was in the works.