Ah Family Matters, the anchor of the TGIF lineup. Without Family Matters giving them a lead in at eight, would Step By Step have been able to stay on the air for like 20 years? I think not. What makes Family Matters differ from other bland family TGIF shows is that what started out as a simple down to earth sitcom about a middle class African-American family in Chicago later turned into a show about that family’s relationship with a 14 year old nerd that lived next door.
When Family Matters started way back in the year of our lord 1990, the show was a average sitcom about a fat ass cop named Carl Winslow who has to deal with his wacky kids (Eddie, Laura, and Judy,) his bitch of a wife Harriet, (seriously all she did in eight years of the show was make bitchy comments to her husband) Harriet’s sister Rachel and her son, and last but not least Carl’s sassy mom. The average plot would be something along the lines of “Eddie changes his report card so he gets all A’s!! Will he tell his parents?! But later in season one, everything changed. We saw the debut of Steve Urkel (played by Jaleel White), a 12 year old kid with a cartoon 1950’s nerd outfit on and a cartoon sounding voice to match who liked to stalk Laura. The character was a big hit with the kinds of people who makeup sitcom studio audience's and it was clear that the world would be seeing more of Steve Urkel.
Normally in a situation (Not THAT situation) like this you would think that the powers at be at Family Matters would see that Urkel was a interesting character, a foil for Carl/Laura and decide to make Urkel a recurring character who would maybe someday make the opening credits. This was the case for the rest of season one which had Urkel pop up a few more times. However at the start of season two of Family, the direction of the show totally changed. Not only was Jaleel White added to the opening credits, but almost every episode of the show revolved around Steve Urkel somehow (“Urkel burns down the restaurant, Urkel does the “Urkel dance” Urkel builds a fucking Urkelbot that fights crime). With the show revolving around Urkel most of the other characters (except for like Carl, Eddie and Laura) seemed to come and go/change into other people as they please.
As the years went on the show started having many sci-fi based storylines. For example Urkel invented a transformation chamber where the nerd could change into different personalities such as Stefan Urkel (A cool version of himself), Bruce Lee Urkel, and we can not forget Elvis Urkel. Steve also created a time travel device called an “Urkpad” (hey better name than IPad). The strange thing about those inventions is that the other characters on the show did not act like Urkel creating those inventions was a big deal. Nor did Urkel become rich and famous for inventing time travel for fucks sake.
Next time I will go over some of the characters on the show one by one. I will also try to get to the bottom of what the hell happened to Judy Winslow.
