The series was produced by de Passe Entertainment and Danny Kallis Productions, in association with Walt Disney Television.

As the show's title suggests, T.J. exhibits exceptional intelligence with an IQ of 180, knows several different languages and has a photographic memory.

He is a fairly popular student at Piedmont High and reacts remarkably well to his younger brother sharing nearly every one of his classes, although tensions do arise from time to time (this is especially true in the pilot episode, to the point where he tells T.J. that he wishes that his younger brother would disappear from his life).

Yvette is intelligent, is usually level-headed, is a women's rights activist and has a passion for art, including drama, photography and dancing.

She is also the editor of the school newspaper, The Penguin (a position that is the partial basis of "Stop the Presses", in which T.J. decides to start his own newspaper – The Weekly Veritas, which he abruptly switches from a hard news to a tabloid publication upon the advice of Marcus and Mo due to flagging sales – after he becomes dissatisfied with repeatedly assigned by Yvette to write puff pieces).

Played by John Marshall Jones, the character of Floyd Henderson is the strict widowed father of Yvette, Marcus, and T.J.

He is typically portrayed in the show as being dimwitted (such as confusing a rasher with a haberdasher) with some signs of gullibility, to the point where in the episode "I Was a Teenage Sports Wife", T.J. makes Mo part of a placebo experiment by giving him sugar-filled pill capsules that T.J. claims will stimulate synapses in the brain (therefore increasing intelligence), in order to better perform on tests, only for Mo to inform other students about the pills and drowning T.J. with offers for the "brain pills".

Despite this, Floyd seems to genuinely care about Mo and, as seen in the episode "Diary of a Mad Schoolgirl", shares with him a passion for a barbecue.

In the season three episode "That's My Momma", Mo accidentally overhears a conversation between his parents Delroy and Verla Mae that they had adopted him as a baby, this leads him to have a falling out with his parents and Marcus and T.J. helping him find his birth mother who is revealed to be a fortune teller in Delaware named Shelia Ecks.

Jason Weaver, Essence Atkins and John Marshall Jones are the only cast members to appear in every episode.

The establishing shot of the fictional Piedmont High School later appeared on another Washington, D.C.–based Disney series, Cory in the House for the Disney Channel, and also as the establishing shot for John Adams High on the ABC series Boy Meets World.

Originally, most of the family scenes took place in the kitchen, with the lack of living room area seen during the first season.

The theme song for Smart Guys' third and final one was performed by Hami and featured cast member Omar Gooding.

The season three opening titles were made to resemble a music video (the sequence was choreographed by Russell Clark).

The entire series (except for the episode "Don't Do That Thing You Do") is available to stream on Disney+ as of its launch date of November 12, 2019.