Brother's Keeper is an Americantelevision sitcom that ran for one season on ABC from September 25, 1998 to May 14, 1999. Created by Donald Todd, the series chronicles the rocky coexistence of Porter Waide and his irresponsible pro-football player brother Bobby Waide, who is contractually forced to move into his brother's house, where Bobby's lifestyle often clashes with that of Porter's, and becomes an unwitting second parent to Porter's son Oscar.
Premise
The series centers around Porter Waide, a milquetoast college History professor and widowed single father, raising his son, Oscar, by himself until his brother, Bobby, a footballplacekicker who had just been signed to play with the San Francisco 49ers and has a reputation for being a bad boy, moves in with his brother and nephew, as part of a stipulation in his new multimillion-dollar contract in which Bobby has to live with someone who is more responsible than him, in order to change his troublemaking ways. This situation proves incredibly challenging as Bobby continues to exhibit childish behavior in his adult years, which often aggravates Porter, as well as Bobby's smart, sarcastic and harried sports agent Dena Draeger, who has the unenviable task of "babysitting" Bobby to ensure he stays out of trouble and keep him from violating the terms of his new NFL contract. Although Porter is reluctant to let Bobby stay with him and his son, he realizes that Oscar is thrilled with the fact that he now gets spend time with his famous uncle, with Bobby becoming an unlikely second parent to his nephew and making attempts to try to get his brother to have fun and loosen up, while Porter tries teaching Bobby how to be a responsible person.
The series aired as part of ABC's TGIF comedy lineup on Friday evenings; despite this, some of the show's episodes featured decidedly more adult humor than the rest of the TGIF lineup, which otherwise targeted pre-teens and teenagers ; as such, the series was aired at 9:30 p.m. ET on Friday evenings and was one of two freshman series added to the block that season, along with the Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsenstarring vehicleTwo of a Kind.
Online streaming
Since October 12, 2007, 22 of the series' 23 episodes are available through Hulu though its distribution agreement with part-owner NBCUniversal. The series is among a handful of program titles that do not require a subscription to the Hulu Plus service to access all of the episodes online, though a Hulu Plus subscription is required to view the episodes on internet-enabled television sets and mobile devices.
Reception
Ratings
Despite respectable ratings, often winning the 9:30 p.m. timeslot in most demographics and averaging 10.7 million total viewers during its run, the series was cancelled by ABC in May 1999.
