This could have been an outstanding show had it not been designed to be some sort of "example" of how to still live the normal society expected lifestyle while still being a genius.A kid with this level of mind would not function at home with parents telling him what to do. He was able to work as a doctor with a healthy income and should have left home soon as he started working as a doctor. It was a joke seeing his parents trying to help guide his life. Most parents suck with that part of the job in the first place. Parents always try and hold their kids back based on their own generational and society expectations from 30 years ago when they were kids. Parents have no damn clue how to raise kids in the current time period. Doogie would have better off on his own, but they just had to find a way to restrain him and make him some society expected kid who obeyed his parents and restrained his lifestyle even though he was wealthy and extremely capable of handling his own life. They had him make all the normal mistakes any kid would make when we know that wouldn't be the case being he is above his years in his thought process.The show just had too much sugar, not enough spice.

I suppose it must be different when you first watched this, but I only started watching this in 2013 when there were suddenly a few cultural references to Doogie Howser on TV and in the movies.It was fun watching it at first - a boy genius who is a doctor. It's a show about growing up pains, with the quirk that the growing boy is smarter than his father and is an accomplished and respected doctor. I enjoyed the episodes where he is saving lives and learning adult perspectives in a medical setting, but the normal growing pains part are too normal to be interesting. I actually liked Vinny better as the normal kid with the genius friend - if you think it is easy being a genius, try being his friend!By the second half of the second season, the show did not interest me as much as it initially did. I would have given it a 5, but thought 6 was more appropriate for the excellent first season.

i love this show, even though i was born after it ended, and now its only on at two a.m. but i still love it!the plot is great because it combines a normal teenage life with the life of a hospital worker, both lines sticking extremely close to the truth.oh, and of course, i love the characters! my favorite is Vinnie Delpino, Doogie's best friend and neighbor. he is the more typical teen, who is obsessed with girls, sex, and other more normal... hobbies, i guess? he brings a sense of balance to Doogie's hectic life, though he succeeds at getting the both of them in trouble on numerous occasions.i was disappointed how the last season came to a end the way it did, but otherwise, i give this series a 10. *Racetrack*(abby)

When it first came out, "Doogie Howser M.D." was one of the more unique shows to grace the airwaves. It centered around a 16-year old child prodigy, Douglas "Doogie" Howser, who was a doctor at a Los Angeles area hospital. He lived with his parents and had a girlfriend, Wanda, and an obnoxious best friend who often came into his house via a window. Each episode ended with Doogie typing up an entry in his personal computer diary. The entry was usually a wise proverb from a lesson learned in the episode.The show was developed by Steven Bochco who created ground-breaking shows like "L.A. Law" and "Hill Street Blues". Although not nearly as acclaimed as those two shows (the only Emmy awards it was nominated for were for Sound Mixing and Cinematography), it had a satisfying blend of comedy and drama that kept the show interesting but not too serious. Since the two main characters were both teenagers, this lead many people to dismiss it as a kid's show. However, it was much deeper than a kid's show as most of the episodes centered on adult themes such as AIDS, death, and racism. The acting was also very solid. Long before he gained recognition for the show "How I Met Your Mother", I always felt that Neil Patrick Harris was a very underrated actor. Very few teenage actors could have pulled off playing a child prodigy the way he did. It would be hard to imagine anyone else playing the Doogie Howser role.The first and second season were terrific as they focused around Doogie's struggles to be a normal teenager despite the demands of his job. A common theme was discrimination as he was often discriminated based on his age by patients and even other doctors. He was not afraid, though, to express his views, even if it meant clashing with more seasoned and respected doctors. By the third or fourth season, the show had lost some of its novelty as Doogie was no longer a child prodigy but just a very smart adult. This must have really made it hard for the writers to come up with interesting story lines and it showed. The show began to focus more on Doogie's personal life and Vinnie quirky adventures and less on the hospital. By this time, Doogie had moved out of his parent's house to live in an apartment which meant that less time was devoted to his parents who were an integral part of the show. The ratings declined and a show that seemed like it would be on the air for many years was canceled after only four.