Only Urkel Matters, Episode 1.6
“Basketball Blues”
Original Air Date: November 3, 1989
Last week, Eddie’s shitty white friend Rodney convinced the entire Winslow family that Eddie got straight A’s, and Carl learned a valuable lesson about pushing his kids too hard. Or did he? Spoiler Alert: he did not.
If you’d like to catch up on the episode before you read the recap, you can watch every Family Matters on Hulu. If you missed last week’s recap, you can read it here. Any “Only Urkel Matters” that you may have missed can be found here.
After two solid episodes of Family Matters, I was a bit disappointed in them this week, but it still wasn’t as bad as “Short Story” was. Now, I present to you a very well written review of a very average episode of Family Matters.
(Photo Credit: IMDB)
Cold Open:
Laura is at the kitchen doing homework, and the adults make baby sounds at Little Ritchie while they say goodnight to him. Laura thinks they sound like Roger Rabbit (a topical reference at the time, since “Who Framed Roger Rabbit was released in 1988). This is all that happens in the Cold Open.
Carl and Eddie’s Story:
Carl comes home exhausted from a long day of helping kill Hans Gruber, and Harriet hands him a stack of papers from Eddie’s school that she found in the trash. Carl freaks out, because there is a flyer in that stack that says that basketball tryouts are only three weeks away, and Eddie hasn’t even started training. Harriet thinks that’s plenty of time to train, but Carl says it’s not, not if Eddie wants to be a star. That’s right, this will be a second straight episode of Carl pushing Eddie too hard. Eddie walks in, and Carl orders him to go upstairs and change into sweats, because they’re headed to the gym. Eddie objects, but Carl tells him, “Edward, your father has spoken,” and this works for some reason. Later, Carl comes back from the gym, raving about how skilled Eddie is. Harriet asks where Eddie is, and Carl tells her that he made Eddie dribble the ball home behind the car, which is an extremely safe thing to do. Harriet can remember all the way back to last week, so she tells Carl that he might be pushing Eddie too hard again. Carl tells her that he just doesn’t want Eddie’s talent and height to go to waste; after all, Carl wasn’t blessed with height himself. Laura tells him that it’s okay, because he was blessed with plenty of width. Pretty good joke right there. I hope the writers didn’t pull a muscle writing it. Eddie comes in bouncing the ball, and Harriet tells him that he can’t play ball in the house. Carl, however, has other ideas. From now on, Eddie will carry the ball wherever he goes, and he is also required to name the ball. When Eddie doesn’t want to do this, Carl uses the “Your father has spoken” line again. And it works, again. Eddie names the ball “Fred.” The next morning, Carl has Eddie up at five A.M. so that he can make Eddie drink raw eggs. Harriet is not about to let Eddie get that salmonella, so she hands the cup of eggs to Aunt Rachel and tells her to cook them. Guess what? Aunt Rachel cooking is going to be our “B” Story for today. Carl tells her not to worry about the eggs, and hustles Eddie out the door to the gym. Later in the day, Eddie is playing terribly because he’s exhausted. He lets Carl know that he is being pushed too hard, and that he needs a rest. Carl tells him that he can have two hours off later in the day. Eddie has had it, and tells his old man that he quits. Carl tries the “Your father has spoken” line again, but he’s gone to the well once too many times, and it’s dry as a bone. Eddie leaves Carl at the gym alone.
Aunt Rachel’s Story:
The egg incident has inspired Aunt Rachel, and she’s spent the four hours since making brioches (sounds wrong, but I looked it up, and brioches is the plural of brioche; I’ll never find a use for this information again). She can’t wait for Harriet and Mother Winslow to try one. They’re hard as a rock, however, so they don’t really want to. Mother Winslow volunteers as tribute, since she’s likeliest to die soon anyway. Those are her words, not mine. Dark, Mother Winslow, dark. They’re shitty, just like she expected.
Conclusion:
Carl comes home, and asks Mother Winslow if Eddie is there. She hasn’t seen him, but hands him the rest of Aunt Harriet’s brioche. He also thinks it sucks. Harriet comes in, and after asking her where Eddie is as well (and getting the same answer), Carl tells her that he’s arranged for professional basketball player Will “The Thrill” Morgan to speak with Eddie about basketball. If you’re wondering why you’ve never heard of him, it’s because The Thrill doesn’t exist. They couldn’t get any actual Chicago Bulls players to appear on the show this early into its run (makes sense, since the show started at the beginning of the Jordan years), so they invented one. Will asks Carl if he’s still interested in buying his Porsche, revealing Carl to be a liar. Harriet asks to speak to Carl in the kitchen and Carl obliges, but not before warning Morgan to not eat Aunt Rachel’s bullshit brioche.
Right before Carl and Harriet make it into the kitchen, Aunt Rachel accidentally fires off one of her brioches while trying to scrape them out of the muffin tray. These things are bricks, and it crashes through the window. I feel like it was here, at this moment, that the writers fell in love with breaking shit in the Winslow house. It seems like every time they desperately need a laugh in the Family Matters writer’s room, they decide to go for the window break. And they are mere episodes away from creating the ultimate domestic abuser of the object variety, Steve Urkel. Remember, his appearance in last week’s episode doesn’t count because it was designed for an episode later in the season. Anyway, Harriet wants to know what Carl is up to. Carl explains that he feels bad deceiving Will the Thrill, but the most important thing is to get Eddie playing basketball again. Meanwhile, Aunt Rachel notices that there is an NBA player in her living room, and rushes upstairs to get dolled up. I guess neither Alan or Harvard guy can compare to a Jordan era Chicago Bull. Aunt Rachel is always looking for that instant man upgrade, and I FULLY SUPPORT THIS. Girl power.
Carl goes back into the living room, and stalls for a bit until Eddie gets home, wondering whose Porsche is in the driveway. He sees Morgan, and says, “Hey, you’re Will the Thrill. Sweat!” I imagine that sweat” is some sort of slang that meant “cool,” but I couldn’t find any information on it. I consulted my brother, who grew up in the eighties, but he didn’t remember it. This also could have been a race thing, because while it’s true that my brother grew up in the eighties, he did not grow up in the BLACK eighties, which were different, I guess? I digress. Carl says that before he can buy the car, he needs to clear his head, perhaps by shooting the ball around at the local gym? While Eddie goes up to get Fred, Will tells Carl that he sees through his plan. Carl apologizes, but still manages to convince Morgan to talk with Eddie at the gym. After they leave, Aunt Rachel comes downstairs looking like a snack (that’s what the kiddies are calling an attractive lady these days, right?), but sees she’s missed her chance. She says sadly, “The Thrill is gone,” by which I assume she means the tingling in her lady area.
At the gym, Eddie is shooting around while Carl and Will the Thrill discuss his form. Carl asks Will to demonstrate his first step technique for Eddie, and volunteers to play defense. Will blows by Carl easily, and dunks on him to cement the embarrassment of an adult man in front of his child. He then tells Carl to take a hike so that he can talk to Eddie alone. Carl is fine with leaving his kid in the hands of a stranger he just met, and says that he’ll meet them back at the house.
At the house, Carl is going on and on about how his plan worked perfectly, when Thrill and Eddie come in. After a little chit-chat about the Porsche, Will tells the family that it was nice meeting them, and leaves. Carl asks Eddie what he and Morgan talked about, and Eddie says that it was mainly about basketball. According to Will, basketball was the best thing that ever happened to him. Carl wants to get back on the court the very next morning, but Eddie tells him that he’s still not going back to basketball. The Thrill told him that he should do whatever makes him happy, and Eddie is going to figure out what that is. He thanks his father for having him talk to Will, because he was “this close” to going back to basketball. This causes one of Carl’s signature facial reactions. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Reginald VelJohnson is a terrific actor.
Carl is so sad about Eddie quitting basketball that he’s shooting hoops by himself at the gym. You can really tell how sad he is because he doesn’t turn the lights on in the gym despite it being nighttime. Harriet comes in and tells him that it’s obvious that he’s trying to live vicariously through Eddie. She’s kind, and doesn’t remind him that he JUST tried this last week. Carl finally admits to himself that he can’t force Eddie to do something just because it was his dream.
Eddie is back at the house, eating ice cream out of the carton. Carl comes in and grabs a spoon. He tells Eddie that he was wrong to try to force his dream on him, and asks him what he is interested in. Eddie has his focus on the dames. Carl has a good chuckle at that, and asks what else he’d like to occupy his time with. Eddie tells him that he’s into movies, and Carl says that maybe he’ll be a director, and win an Academy Award. Carl is an all or nothing kind of guy. Eddie tells him that no, he’s interested in taking girls to movies, not making them himself. What a little scamp this Eddie Winslow is. Carl tells him that he doesn’t have to have a dream right now, but the important thing is that when he does find his dream, he chases it as hard as he can. He also tells him that he’ll always be there to help him with his dreams, which is a bold statement for a balding, heavyset man. In fairness, RVJ is still alive to this day, so perhaps Carl would have been too. The episode ends with Eddie eating, and enjoying, one of Aunt Rachel’s brioches. Perhaps this is the turning point for Aunt Rachel and her cooking. Stay tuned.
Your Needs Urkel Meter (NUM) rating is: ***
Join me next week, when I’ll break down Episode 1.7, “Body Damage,” which just HAS to be about donuts, right?
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