Only Urkel Matters, Episode 1.11
“The Quilt”
Original Air Date: December 8, 1989
Last week, Carl tried to take the sky from Shepherd Book, and the rest of the family turned on him instantly.
If you’d like to catch up on an 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.
“A saxophone? You know I’m a talented actress, right?” (Photo Credit: IMDB)
Cold Open:
Aunt Rachel is feeding Little Ritchie strained liver with bacon bits in them, which is as terrible as it sounds. Eddie wonders why she doesn’t just give Little Ritchie what he likes, but Rachel tells him that Ritchie needs to try new things. Then she tastes the food herself, and gags. That is the whole cold open. It’s a harbinger of what’s to come for the rest of the episode, which is a nice way to say that this episode of Family Matters is terrible.
Laura’s Story:
The family wants a new VCR (look it up, tweens), so Laura is putting together a garage sale. Most of the family is incredibly unhelpful, seeing things she intends to sell and telling her that she can’t sell them for one reason or another. Eddie keeps a camera, Judy grabs her Barbie, and Carl is claiming shit he doesn’t use anymore left and right. Rachel finds her old saxophone, which they could make a lot of money off of, and decides to keep that as well (if you’re asking yourself, “Will Rachel and the saxophone be this shitty episode’s shitty ‘B’ story?” then you are on the right track, my friend). Mother Winslow, however, tells Laura that she can sell any of her things, as long as she doesn’t sell the quilt on top of the box (gee, I wonder what will happen here).
Unfortunately for Laura, it rains on the day of her garage sale, so she has to have it inside of the house. Speaking of rain, the Family Matters crew did an absolutely TERRIBLE job of making the rain look realistic. I know it was 1989, but damn. Put some effort in. Harriet wants to know why Laura stored her inventory in the living room instead of putting it back into the garage, but Laura wisely tells her that people will spend more money in the warm living room than in the cold, damp garage. Harriet admits that makes sense, but wants to know how much money Laura has made so far. When Laura tells her that she has only made $3.25, Harriet takes it well, telling Laura that they’ll just donate everything that she doesn’t sell. Eddie comes in and takes a closeup picture of Harriet with his “new” camera. Harriet is blinded by the flash, because of course she is. Judy comes in with one of those wands that guides airplanes, and she quits her job, which I guess has been standing out in the rain guiding people towards her living room. Laura tries to get her to keep going, but Judy storms off. Just then, a white woman enters the house without knocking, fulfilling the “every two-to-three episodes white person” stipulation. The woman walks around the living room, purchasing a few things and making general chit-chat before stumbling upon the quilt that Estelle specifically instructed Laura not to sell. Laura tells the woman that the quilt is not for sale, but of course this entitled Caucasian broad does not take no for an answer, repeatedly upping her offer until she eventually reaches $300, which Laura finally accepts.
Later that evening, Laura tells the family that she made $350 from the garage sale. The family is impressed, until she mentions that most of her profits came from selling the quilt. This is when Estelle tells Laura that the quilt had been in the family for 200 years, and that every patch represented a Winslow family member. She is absolutely devastated by the news of its sale. Laura looks sheepish, which she should, because she did the one thing she wasn’t supposed to do. Estelle is too sad to even blame Carl for this, which she LOVES to do.
Days later, Estelle is still deeply depressed at the loss of the quilt. Laura has been putting up flyers, but no one has seen or heard about the quilt. She’s determined to find it, but Carl tells her that in his experience as a police officer, cases don’t get solved if a good lead isn’t found within the first twenty-four hours. Eddie picks that exact moment to stroll in with the now-developed pictures that he took at the garage sale. Luckily, he was trying to take pictures of a hot girl, and accidentally got a picture of the woman who bought the quilt’s license plate. I’ve complained a lot about the quality of this episode, but I have to give the writers credit for figuring out a way for Eddie to help Laura find the quilt that is consistent with his character. As we know from the pilot, Eddie loves to peep on his neighbor’s, so it makes sense that he would graduate from peeping to taking pictures of girls around him. Next stop, serial killing!
Carl and Laura are able to track down the white lady by using the license plate information, and it turns out that she’s selling Mother Winslow’s quilt at an art gallery for $3,000. Laura wants to grab it off the wall and bolt, but Carl (in his Policeman’s uniform) suggests that this would be unwise. Carl explains to the woman that bought the quilt that Laura was not supposed to have sold it, and offers to give her the money back for the return of the quilt. The woman offers to take $200 dollars off of the asking price, and Carl tells her that he doesn’t have $2,800. He should have mentioned that if this went to court, the quilt would certainly be given back to the Winslow’s, and the woman’s money would be refunded. There are laws protecting minors from getting screwed over in transactions until they reach a certain age, and in Illinois that age is eighteen. Anyway, Laura makes an impassioned speech to the woman, crying some serious tears in the process. Again, phenomenal child acting from Kellie Shanygne Williams. If this show had remained about the Winslow family, she would have been the breakout star. Unfortunately for Williams, the Urkman is about to take over.
Rachel’s Story:
Rachel comes downstairs playing the saxophone that she found at the beginning of the episode. She still sucks though, lol! The writers really phoned in this episode.
Later, she decides that the family-still dejected because of a goddamn missing quilt-needs some cheering up, so she starts trying to play the saxophone again, but someone stole the reed that the saxophone requires to make noise. She runs upstairs to grab another one, but Harriet has stolen all of them.
Finally, just after Laura’s impassioned speech to the white lady (whose name is Ms. Nash, if you cared [you didn’t]), we see Aunt Rachel really going to town on that saxophone. It’s still not very good in my opinion, but the family seems impressed. Are you ready for one more hilarious sax joke? She wasn’t really playing it this time. It’s just a recording of someone else playing the sax. Oh, Family Matters writers, you truly crushed this one! That is (mercifully) the end of Aunt Rachel’s saxophone storyline.
Conclusion:
Laura and Carl come home, and guess what? They have the quilt! Didn’t see that one coming. We never see the white woman agree to give it back, but I assume it had something to do with quilt guilt. Estelle is thrilled to have the quilt back, and Carl suggests that she explain its history to the family. Eddie gets in the only good joke of the entire episode, telling Mother Winslow that she better “tell (them) quick before Laura sells it again.” Solid burn.
The last three minutes of the episode is Estelle clarifying how the quilt has been passed down from generation to generation, dating back to before the civil war. She explains that the oldest daughter from each generation puts a patch on the quilt that represents the past generation, and since she doesn’t have any daughters, she is not represented on there yet. She leaves the quilt to Harriet, and they agree to put it in Laura’s room. It’s a nice moment that wasn’t worth watching the previous twenty minutes to get to, and it ends the episode.
Your NUM Rating for this episode is ****
Join me next week for episode 1.12, “Laura’s First Date,” which is the second episode of this season that has the words “first date” in the title. It is also the beginning of the end of this show being about a working class family, because STEVE URKEL is going to be heavily featured next week.
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