Parker Lewis Can't Lose

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Parker Lewis Can't Lose was an early '90s sitcom on the FOX network. It centered around a good-hearted (but low-scrupled) High School wheeler-dealer and his two associates, and the scams, cons and manipulations that they got away with (mostly) day to day. It starred Corin Nemec, now known for playing the former Trope Namer for Suspiciously Similar Substitute on Stargate SG-1.

It was clearly influenced by the classic teen movie Ferris Buellers Day Off—much more so than the movie's TV adaptation; many consider Parker Lewis Can't Lose to be the Spiritual Successor to the Ferris Bueller film. (Parker Lewis Can't Lose actually had lower ratings than Ferris Bueller, but the Fox network was still in its early years and thus had lower expectations.)

In later seasons, the show's title was truncated to simply Parker Lewis. In one episode the title character has such unusual bad luck that the main title credit was changed to Parker Lewis Can't Win.

Tropes used in Parker Lewis Can't Lose include:


Come on, Frank! Everyone knows you have the missing eleven minutes of the Watergate tapes!