Hilary and Aunt Viv are the real stars of Peacock’s Bel-Air
The remake smartly updates the Banks women while developing fresh character arcs
TV Features Viv
Bel-Air, the Peacock drama spawned by Morgan Cooper’s viral short, is filled with nods to the original comedy and keeps its culture-shock premise. But the use of the beloved IP is a double-edged sword. The show has both a built-in audience—and critics. Bel-Air can’t avoid comparisons to the original, nor can the new versions of the members of the Banks family.
In its first three episodes, Bel-Air makes some brave choices that don’t all land. The character of Will Smith is still goofy as hell, but newcomer Jabari Banks shows the vulnerability under the bravado. Adrian Holmes’ Uncle Phil, less Shakespearean than the late James Avery and running for District Attorney, has straight-up boring scenes amongst all the drama. Carlton (Olly Sholotan) is now the villain—no longer the butt of the joke, but an utter asshole that makes you feel sorry that this will be part of his sweet forebear’s legacy. And Ashley (Akira Akbar) is just there, the woke preteen.
The two elder women of the Banks family, Vivian (Cassandra Freeman) and Hilary (Coco Jones), are the breaths of fresh air that a reboot like this needs. Both characters have been updated from the ’90s to 2022 while still keeping the essence of their Fresh Prince predecessors, though one is considerably different from her precursor. While some of Bel-Air’s characters would be weaker on their own, without any viewer knowledge of their TV pedigree, Hilary and Aunt Viv would still be the most compelling even if they were wholly new characters.
Bel-Air’s Aunt Viv is still the voice of reason, bridging the divide between Will and Uncle Phil’s drastically different worldviews. She’s the wealthy family’s biological connection to Will and to Philly, a point that the new series underscores with her use of Philly slang and scenes of her phone calls with her sister, Will’s mother. Her storyline is also expanded to mention more of her past; before she was Mrs. Philip Banks, the professor, Vivian was a talented artist. Seeing her with her own well-defined arc evokes the Aunt Viv dance clip, the brilliant woman filled with determination.
Hilary Banks has undergone far more changes from her Fresh Prince personality, but the ambitious and kind spirit underneath the previous iteration’s vapid exterior is still there. Still unemployed and fabulous, the new Hilary is a low-level Instagram influencer and part-time caterer, a plot point from the original series. (See season two’s “Hilary Gets A Life.”) She’s also more aware of how the world works, but her wokeness feels like a natural extension of her personality. When she calls out a prestigious food magazine for not wanting an “ethnic” audience, it’s not a jarring moment. It matches the uncompromising, idealistic teen presented so far.
Hilary and Aunt Viv’s central conflict involves their views on Hilary getting a job, which also recalls The Fresh Prince. Instead of just making jokes about a parent being exasperated that their child won’t leave the nest, Bel Air shows that the women’s views of work are at odds. Hilary will only do what she wants to do, and she’s grown up seeing creators and influencers who’ve become big thanks to their unique vision. Aunt Viv doesn’t agree, as it’s hinted she had to compromise a lot of herself to get where she is and build a comfortable life for her family.
The tension is very true to life, as young people refuse to comply with the racist, sexist, and/or queerphobic systems that their parents had to, in part because there was no other choice. A similar sentiment is shown in Will and Phil’s conversation on the basketball court, on whether the criminal justice system is broken or doing what it’s built to do, but that talk feels clumsy, while Vivian and Hilary’s argument after the sorority event is a natural conclusion of their actions up to that point. While Bel-Air has a lot to say about Blackness not being a monolith and assimilation versus disruption, Hilary and Aunt Viv’s arguments about the former’s future best establish the generational divide between the parents and children.
Bel-Air builds a lot of potential in the first three episodes, but most of the storylines have a clear path ahead. The series also offers some honest observations about Black life in 2022, ones that are typically unexplored in mainstream television. This Will, Phil, Vivian, Hilary, Carlton, and Ashley still have a long way to go before garnering the love the original Banks did, and there will definitely be massive, dramatic events along the way. But right now, Aunt Viv and Hilary are the only characters whose stories feel like they could branch off into several different directions, each of which would be exciting to follow, thanks to smart updates that maintain the essences of the originals.
8 Comments
They made Carlton as asshole? Huh.
Carlton always had a snide, snobby doucheness about him, along with his good qualities. I’m assuming nu-Carlton is just extra Gritty upfront so they can give him all the usual growing and learning arcs over the course of the show.
Hopefully so. I can definitely see an insecure person put in that situation being a jackass.
Rewatching the Fresh-Prince it’s interesting that Will was the huge douchebag in the early episodes while Carlton was doing his best to be accommodating and reach out to him. It’s only later that the relationship became a rivalry and Carlton started fighting back.This was actually a plot point as Will was generally an asshat in that whole first episode. Will is the character who has to go through the most personal growth early on to be a decent person, not the Banks’s.
I hope the remake doesn’t forget that Carlton and Hilary grew up poor. They were still kids whose parents were struggling to make ends meet when Phil graduated law school. The money that let them live in Bel-Air didn’t come for years. Yes, Carlton dove straight into the pool, but he still knew what it felt like to be hungry. That kind of nuance was what made me like Carlton. He might have talked like a white kid, but he was still real as hell where it counted.
Yeah people forget Carlton was an asshole for most of the first season. Alfonso Riberio just added that endearing goofiness that made the writers change course. Karyn Parsons even confirmed it in an interview.
It’s kind of like how Murray from The Mary Tyler Moore Show was meant to be a catty office nemesis, but after just a few episodes they realized he’d work much better as a friend.
This is fair. It’s like an inverse of the original show’s characters. It’s good to change things up.
I like that they made Carlton lean into his asshole nature rather than cover it with comedic buffoonery. Carlton really did not like Will and I would have liked to have seen Carlton in the original show, develop his character to be a crafty foil of Will rather than a rube and sidekick. But that was a comedy, this reboot is a dramady.