Sunday, May 15, 2016

Saturtainment: Histeria! (1998)

One of Kids' WB!'s more ambitious projects was Histeria!, which ran for 2 seasons (1998-2000), and was given the heave-ho, the story goes, due to budget issues.

Histeria! was formatted much like a sketch comedy series, and, as such, it made sense to bring in two Saturday Night Live alumni in Laraine Newman Nora Dunn to join WB regulars Rob Paulsen, Maurice LaMarche, Frank Welker, Paul Rugg, and Tress MacNeille in the cast. Series creator Tom Ruegger made it a family affair, as sons Cody & Nathan were also cast. The series actually aired six days a week at one point, as some other WB shows did during this period.

I can't say I watched the show, so there won't be a rating. We'll leave you with a sample episode that spoofs the Civil War, including a parody of Family Feud hosted by Lydia Karaoke (Dunn).


3 comments:

Goldstar said...

All three of Tom Ruegger's sons voiced characters in "Histeria!". Tom's son Luke provided the vocals for Big Fat Baby.

"Histeria!" was hit and miss for the most part. Some bits were entertaining and clever, while others were lame and were padded to obesity, not unlike "Saturday Night Live", where WB clearly drew some of it's inspiration from.

Interesting that you found a sketch from H! on Dailymotion. Since H!'s cancellation, I've found very little of this shows' existence online. WB has yet to release the series on DVD. "Road Rovers" got a DVD release, but not H!.

Silverstar said...

"Histeria!" appears to be one of those latter-day Kids' WB! shows that Warner Brothers has basically swept under the rug and nowadays doesn't acknowledge its' existence. Other victims of this treatment include "Legion of Super Heroes", "Coconut Fred's Fruit Salad Island", "Shaggy & Scooby-Doo Get a Clue!" and "Loonatics Unleashed". The latter 2 shows at least received DVD releases.

hobbyfan said...

@Silverstar: Of the shows you mentioned, IIRC, Legion also got a DVD release. Being a DC cartoon, you'd think it would anyway. Coconut Fred, as we know, was a poor man's ripoff of SpongeBob, and, as such, should be consigned to the vaults to be permanently forgotten.

@Goldstar: Dailymotion has a good chunk of Histeria! episodes, if not the entire series. They don't deal with the copyright issues as much as YouTube does, as I've discovered the last several months, which is why I've been using Dailymotion more often.

Considering WB produced MadTV for Fox (w/a revival coming to CW this summer), you'd think that would've been an inspiration, too.