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Before
Michael Cera and "The Big Bang Theory," Steve Urkel made
it cool to be a geek. And not just an uber-geek but a
mega-geek, someone so unashamed to be himself that he
was hip, and we loved him. I won't deny it. When I was a
kid watching this series, everyone including me loved
Urkel, and we thought of him as the supreme nerd to
idolize even prompting the Urkel Dance to be imitated
over and over. As I've said before: kids are stupid and
we were. Watching "Family Matters" many years later, it
was interesting to see the evolution of this series that
started out its life in "Perfect Strangers." While the
show does begin as a sort of new age "The Cosby Show"
with a middle class, honest, loving African American
family, its premiere on TGIF on the ABC network here in
America was pretty boring. And I think after a while
even ABC began to realize that deep down this was just a
lackluster and forgettable retread of "The Cosby Show"
that tried its best to muster up interesting characters
and storylines and bombed big time. The series begins
without the presence of Urkel and derives little to no
laughs and severe eye rolls to the point where there
should be a warning for viewers. I mean what was so
interesting about these characters? We had the
obligatory wise old grandparent, the spunky daughter,
the spunky older daughter, the obvious baby for cute
points, the sassy aunt (who happens to have once been a
part of an R&B group to pander to the older audience
members), the horny--but not overly sexual older
brother, and the mom and dad who were wise beyond their
years.
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| The series today has no
value other than that of the nostalgic, and for people
willing to recollect the hazy days of the early nineties
they may enjoy this on some level. As the writers soon
began to realize that the show is very bland and dull,
they brought aboard the classic sitcom cliché: the
annoying neighbor. And comedy history was made in a near
instance. Steve Urkel is a happy accident, a character
who was a hybrid of Skippy from "Family Ties" and Ed
Norton from "The Honeymooners." Urkel went from annoying
plot element, to supporting character, to gimmicky
supporting character, to main character, to just an all
around go to for ridiculous storylines over the course
of the show's run and soon every individual in the
series relied on storylines revolving around Urkel and
his mission to... do something involving science and to
win Laura Winslow over for purposes that aren't
explained either. Did he want to sleep with her? Did he
want to marry her? Who knows? He's just a plot device
that found life through these one dimensional sitcom
clichés who stumbled around doing nothing interesting,
and even on the box for the DVD of the first season,
Urkel takes center stage, because there's nothing else
about this show that you'll enjoy. What we learn in the
first part of season one is that Laura is having a hard
time in school, Eddie has a politically correct white
best friend, the youngest daughter is only around to
react to other people in the show and eventually
disappears, and the dad is a spastic police officer.
Talented character actor Reginald VelJohnson relied on
his cop motif (from "Die Hard") to take the reigns of
Carl Winslow who eventually became the Ralph Kramden to
Urkel's Norton. So whenever Urkel wrecked something,
Carl was just there to react in over the top ways like
throwing him out and screaming angrily at his insanity.
Like Jackie Gleason, sans the brilliance. Ultimately
"Family Matters" is only relevant because it's now a
passing joke from the nineties, and if you're in to
relics of a sub-par family sitcom starring a walking
aneurysm than this set is for you. |
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