Saturday Night Live debuts the trailer for the next gritty 90s TV reboot
With Bel-Air in the pipeline, it's really only a matter of time
TV News Saturday Night Live
Many were a little skeptical when Peacock premiered its trailer for the upcoming, Will Smith-produced reboot of day-glo 1990s fish-out-of-water sitcom The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air. (Rechristened Bel-Air, for new millennium grittiness.) But at least the original was wont to occasionally tackle some pressing issues of the day, as Smith’s titular West Philadelphia transplant grappled with being a young Black man in America. (Watch this if you want to see why Will Smith is an acting icon these days.)
But not every fondly remembered TV institution is ripe for the updated and realistic rehash treatment. After all, for every Perry Mason, there’s a Powerpuff Girls. (And then there’s Riverdale—where did we land on Riverdale?) Regardless, common sense and leaving well enough alone has never stopped TV executives before, and, on last night’s Ariana DeBose-hosted Saturday Night Live, it seems there’s another Fresh Prince-esque do-over in the works.
“Chicago—people from outside call it Chi-raq,” intones Chris Redd’s half-seen character as he dons oversized glasses, a multicolored striped hoodie, and bright yellow vest. “Out here, you gotta make your own name,” Redd’s protagonist states, before walking past a battered and bullet-holed mailbox emblazoned with the single name, Urkel.
In the proposed reboot of the same name, Redd’s Steve Urkel is still a nerdy genius inventor, but this time he’s got to contend with a drunken mother (“I raised a damn nerd!,” scoffs DeBose’s mother, shattering her booze-glass against Steve’s Einstein poster), a questionable mentor in Kenan Thompson’s tormented, strong-arming Chicago cop Carl Winslow, and a penchant for violent lashing-out. Especially at the worthless suitor to longtime crush, Laura (Ego Nwodim), who cowers as the furious Urkel asks a singsong, Joker-style, “Should I do that?” while holding his romantic rival at gunpoint.
With reviews calling this Family Matters re-imagining a really, horrifically terrible idea (Entertainment Weekly’s take is simply that GIF of Kevin Hart blinking in disbelief), the series’ prospects might seem as bleak as the robot-building Steve Urkel’s future. Still, Steve’s always got Carl, here dispensing the tough love that “family fucking matters.” Coming soon, probably.
62 Comments
That ‘did I do that’ scene is one of those uniquely weird moments where it’d unironically work for a scene in a show that both could and should never exist.This trailer also made me realize I’m curious if Bel-Air keeps Uncle Phil having some pretty serious civil rights cred, but not enough to actually check.
I also thought of this as soon as I heard about the Fresh Prince reboot although I imagined it as more of a horror series with Urkel serving as the tragic villain. Being rebuffed in his amorous and social pursuits turns Steve inward, desperate to fix those parts of himself he sees as holding him back. Using his genius he manages to change himself but in his single-minded pursuit he loses his empathy, his compassion, his very humanity and becomes the amoral psychopath known as Stefan Urkelle. This deranged stalker will stop at nothing to make Laura his…forever.Can the real Steve, a horrified passenger for Stefan’s reign of terror, eventually learn to accept his darkside and regain control of his body and life? Or are he and Stefan truly one and the same, nothing but the monster and its mask?Kind of a Jekyll and Hyde thing with a bit of Fatal Attraction and Cape Fear mixed in. Maybe Urkelle could play some cat and mouse game with the Winslow patriarch via his police radio before killing him in some way where the department just sees an accident but the family knows the real truth. Stefan, always Stefan.And now I have to stop because I’m talking myself into liking this idea.
Not gonna lie; there were a few scenes from this bit where I seriously thought, “Uhhh…this looks better than the Fresh Prince reboot?”Will’s character was just a cookie-cuttier facsimile of a problematic orphan, whereas Urkel was a deep character-study of a latchkey kid growing-up in 90’s Chicago. There seems to be a lot more to mine there, especially when you throw in the factor that Urkel’s an intelligent young man who’s smart enough to be pushing rock, but also trying to fuck a cop’s daughter.
“Did … did I do that?”“Yes, Steven. It’s been you doing that all along.”
He really went off the rails when Mother Winslow passed. She was the only one who understood him.
I’ve personally been campaigning for a remake of The Facts of Life as a one hour dramedy for years!
I’ve been campaigning to make it a porno. It’s got something for everyone: blonde, brunette, ebony, BBW, and GILF
been done, a decade ago
You take the good! I’ll take the bad!
SNL really just lifting entire sketches from Key and Peele now? https://youtu.be/A5Zdp1RfoyI
I love how Key’s character is basically Hart Bochner’s Ellis.
You laugh, I’ll bet Netflix watched this and went, “How’d they find out…?”
Holy cow, that was so dark and yet so hysterical. 🙂
The only way Family Matters should reboot is if the cast is all white and the name is changed to All Families Matter.
how dare you put that evil into the world
Don’t give Sinclair any ideas.
“Starring Tim Allen!”
“Last Family Mattering,” this Fall on your local Sinclair station!
No, you call it “Family Lives Matter”, and have it center around an older Eddie Winslow following in his dad’s footsteps as a police officer, and his conflicted feelings about what it means to be a Black cop in America. Also, Urkel’s a mad scientist married to Laura, and his clumsiness still brings a slapstick element to the proceedings.
There should be a show called “All In The Family Matters,” with Archie Winslow as a bigoted cop from Queens. He has a somewhat cordial relationship with a newly moved in neighbor, a black man named Lionel Urkel. One evening Lionel is walking past the Winslow’s house. Archie thinks it’s a prowler and shoots him dead, Archie is acquitted of all murder charges. The series ends with that one show.🤣
That could have been great with Bob Saget as the dad
Move it from Chicago to Kenosha, WI for that authentic feel?
I need a full version of the theme song done like this, because that piano riff with the beat just WORKED.
Is it a “banger”?
Here in the States, you call it a sausage in the mouth.
In the most delicious way!
Parker Lewis CAN Lose. It’ll be about the seriousness of gambling addiction. Writes itself.
Punky.
Mr. Fuller…?…hello…?
Honestly the surprise is that there hasn’t been a reboot of this series by now.
I’m still holding out for a brutally violent reimagining of Step By Step (preferably including a backdoor pilot to my dream project, Patrick Duffy The Vampire Slayer).
More like Patrick Duffy The Career Slayer!
Right guys?
a Family Matters reboot would work best as a cartoon. On Rick & Morty.
Rolling Stone Raves “This is the worst idea for a 90s sitcom to reboot in this way.” Had me laughing there, that could easily be a real quote
Smith’s titular South Philadelphia transplantWasn’t he from West Philadelphia?
If you can’t top an existing sketch about Urkel – you shouldn’t write it into your sketch comedy show.
I never saw the show, but I always thought it was the FRENCH prince of Bel-Air, and that he was a French-speaking prince who had to adapt to life in sunny Los Angeles.
So did you think Will Smith was doing a French accent in it?
I guess that was my assumption, insofar as I considered the show at all.
Yo! Any y’all biatches got any ‘dat Grey Poupon? Give it up before I bust a cap!
That’s wild. I thought the same thing about La Law.
You mean you also thought it was set at a Cajun law firm in the bayous of Louisiana? “Yo ‘onna, mah claant done claam heezaone done cawt dat mess o crawdaddies, nawt tis utha fella heah, noway.”
It’s actually a joke from The Golden Girls. Rose didn’t think anyone on L.A. Law sounded French.
No, them Cajun and Creole down on the Maine, talk about Maine Justice.
“…Smith’s titular South Philadelphia…”Really, Perkins? “From West Philadelphia, born and raised…” It’s literally the second word in the theme song.
The second word is “this”.
Fine. Second word of the second verse. Prominent enough for “pop culture obsessives writing for the pop culture obsessed” to know better. He still hasn’t fixed it. If he confused Brooklyn with Washington Heights there’d be an army of mustachioed mercenaries throwing stale cronuts at his door.
They left all the pop culture obsessives back in Chicago. And the writers.
I’ve noticed. It’s a damn shame. Once they kick the few writers I still like at Jalopnik and The TakeOut to the curb I won’t have any reason to come back here. It’s been a sad, slow slide into irrelevant clickbait. I have no idea what they’re thinking.
Reimagined Murder, She Wrote, where Jessica Fletcher is actually the killer.Having this be a movie was my dream, but maybe it works as a limited series. Somebody make this happen, please! Angela Lansbury is not getting any younger.
Perfect Strangers, with Balki as an illegal immigrant and Cousin Larry’s “photography” is a pretty much porn now.
Fine, but not nearly as good as The Grouch one.
Scarecrow and Mrs. King reboot, but Mrs. King is outed by Robert Novak.
But can it beat Key & Peele’s dark send-up of Family Matters Behind-The-Scenes?
Nothing drives home the humor of a three-minute sketch better than a 1,000-word recap of it!“Then this happened! And here’s why THAT was funny…”
This needs to be greenlit asap! Chris Redd is a national treasure.
A reboot of Small Wonder. A cross from the old show and Terminator origins. Vicki is an AI who still can inhabit a body who takes over the new line of robots modeled as children that start killing humans.