Kathy Garver and Johnny Whitaker from the original series guest starred as Beverly and Kevin in the Christmas episode, "Holiday Fever".
[5] Family Affair earned a full season, when The WB gave the series a back-nine episode order in October 2002,[6] but suffered low viewership soon after.
[14] Variety critic Michael Speier reviewed the series premiere of Family Affair negatively, describing it as "a dog of a debut", adding that it "wreaks of manufactured happiness and warm-and-fuzzy plotlines", though Speier praised production designer Scott Heineman for the set design.
[19] But subsequent episodes declined against competition on Thursdays, and by December 2002 Variety stated that the series "barely register[s] on Nielsen’s charts".
[7] For the season, Family Affair ranked 148th out of 159 U.S. broadcast network series (155th in the 18–49 demographic), averaging 2.6 million viewers.