Only Urkel Matters, Episode 1.22
“Rock Video”
Original Air Date: April 27, 1990
Last week, the Winslows all went bowling, so of course Steve threw himself all the way down a lane. Also, Eddie and Laura learned a valuable lesson about competing against each other that they promptly forgot four seconds later.
We made it gang. This is the season finale of “Only Urkel Matters.” We’ll be taking a week off next week, so use that time to get yourself in the right mindset for season two!
Cold Open:
Carl and Laura are packing away items from that weekend’s camping trip, and Carl is listing all of the reasons why the trip was a success. Laura mentions one more: no surprise visits from Steve Urkel. Urkel, who is a huge fan of comedic entrances, picks that time to show up and say, “Surprise!” He accidentally pulls the ripcord on the raft that Carl is packing up, causing it to inflate and Carl to flop around on it. It does no damage to The Magical Porch That Fixes everything (which might actually be impervious to Urkel’s magical damage powers), but it does cause Carl to make this sad face:
“I’m really going to miss this show being about my family.” (Family Matters)
The Story:
Carl is sitting at the kitchen table with stacks of paper sitting in front of him (actual pieces of paper, not dollar-dollar bills, y’all). Laura asks him if he’s paying bills, which is a nice call-back to episodes 1.2 and 1.3. He tells her that no, he’s not paying bills, but he is paying taxes. Laura and Judy seem to think that this is an even worse situation, so they scatter. Harriet comes in through the back door, and Carl asks her how her day went. Harriet tells him that it went terrible, and that even though one of the main functions of her job is to have all of the keys for the rooms at The Chicago Chronicle, she locked herself out of her office. It’s almost as if she’s NOT QUALIFIED FOR THE POSITION. Am I the only one concerned for Larry Appleton’s safety? Anyway, when Harriet finds out that Carl is doing taxes, she’s rightfully worried. After all, this man has tried his hand at both plumbing and carpentry, and he only ended up costing them more money. Carl tells her that he fired their accountant because “the man is a crook.” Harriet replies, “The man is your brother!” That’s right, Carl’s cheap-ass brother Calvin gets name-dropped again. I’m with Harriet that Carl shouldn’t be doing their taxes (especially back then, when it was wayyy more complicated), but trusting a man who charged poor Mother Winslow to make phone calls from his house to do your taxes seems like you’re asking for him to be skimming something off the top. Carl tells Harriet that can do their taxes just as well as Cheap-Ass Calvin can, and that all he needs is some peace and quiet. Harriet tells him that isn’t very likely to happen, because she told Eddie his band could practice there that afternoon. Just then, we hear some not-so-terrible rock music coming from the living room.
Eddie’s band is rocking out, and Mother Winslow is dancing to it, but her dance is a hula for some reason(?):
(Family Matters)
Carl comes rushing in with Harriet and tells them that they’re too loud. Estelle, who just showed how “hip” she was by dancing incorrectly, tells him that “If it’s not loud, then it’s not rock and roll!” She runs off to get a tambourine so she can “jam” with the boys. Rachel comes in through the front door and asks what’s going on. Before we get to anything else, let’s immediately cover Eddie’s friend Jerry, who is a VERY white boy wearing a “Free James Brown” t-shirt and what appears to be the top of a very large hacky sack on top of his head.
(Family Matters)
For those of you who weren’t born yet, James Brown was arrested in 1988 for driving like a goddamn lunatic. Eddie tells Rachel that they’re rehearsing, because they’re entering a music video contest. Carl says that they’re not, because they have to leave immediately. Rachel interrupts Carl’s parenting to tell Eddie that she’d love to write them a script for their music video. Eddie accepts her offer, and she runs off to get started. Shitty Rodney, who plays keyboard in the band, reasonably asks Eddie why he’s letting his middle-aged aunt write the script for their music video, and Eddie tells him that since he wrote all of the music, he calls the shots. Carl replies that since this is his house, he calls the shots, and tells them that they have to leave. In the end, the kids convince him to let them practice in the garage.
Later, in the garage, Eddie is annoyed, because Shitty Rodney was supposed to be there with the video camera by now. In walks Urkel, and this kid might have been the funniest person on the planet at the time, because look at this:
(Family Matters)
Some things can be written about, and some things have to be seen, and this is definitely the latter. Urkel is demonstrating his accordion chops because he’d like to be in Eddie’s video. Eddie is skeptical, so Steve plays a bit more, and the song he chooses is “Roll Out the Barrel.” This won’t be the last time we hear this song played, but the next time will be a bit more…explosive. Eddie implies that Urkel isn’t hip enough to be in the video. When you see the final result, remember this, because it’s dripping with accidental irony. Rodney finally shows up (sans camera), and Eddie asks him where he’s been. Shitty Rodney explains that he was just doing Shitty Rodney stuff: he was shooting a video on unsafe conditions in the women’s locker room, so they kicked his ass and threw him into the shower. Now his and Eddie’s relationship finally makes sense. They obviously bonded over their shared love of peeping on girls. During the ass kicking, Rodney’s camera was broken, so now the band doesn’t have a camera with which to shoot their music video. Urkel casually lets slip that since he’s in the AV club, he can get his hands on any video equipment they may need, and Eddie tells him that he can shoot their video. Shitty Rodney wants to put it to a vote, and Jerry, (who looks like this right now:)
(Family Matters)
votes no, on the grounds that Urkel is a dweeb. If that isn’t the pot calling the kettle black, I don’t know what is. Eddie, as the leader of the band, vetoes that vote and congratulates Urkel on being their new cameraman. Urkel tells them that they won’t be sorry, and promptly knocks over a microphone. The feedback hurts their ears, but the mic appears to be okay, so no updates to the SUB count.
Later that day, Carl is sitting at a desk in the front left portion of the kitchen, a desk that has not been used before (or seen, for that matter). Harriet comes downstairs and checks on how the taxes are going, and of course it’s not going well. In fact, he has the completely wrong form. How embarrassing! Harriet begs Carl once more to let his brother do his taxes for him, but Estelle, who walks into the kitchen at the exactly right time, tells her that once Carl has made up his mind, the best thing to do is to stand back and watch him fall. She and Harriet take a dramatic step backwards, and Carl rolls his eyes at them.
Back in the garage, Urkel has set up all of the equipment that he borrowed from the AV club. Aunt Rachel comes in and tells them that she’s finished the script. She starts to describe an opening scene in which the band is shrouded in fog, but Eddie cuts her off and tells her that their total budget is twenty dollars. Unfortunately, the Urkman has already spent all of their money on video tapes and cheese, so Aunt Rachel heads off to rewrite her script to fit her new zero-dollar budget. Eddie tells the band that they’ll just wing it in the meantime, and the band members all give Urkel instructions on when to zoom in on them while they play. Eddie tells them that he loves their ideas, but to take five so he can talk to Steve for a bit. He directs Steve to only shoot him during the video, and, despite Steve’s warning that the rest of the band won’t like this, Urkel agrees to do this. Steve mutters to himself that this video is going to be a bigger bomb than Howard the Duck, which was topical at the time, I guess. All I know about Howard the Duck is that he was in the Guardians of the Galaxy.
Later, the entire band (and the whole Winslow Family) gather around to watch the video that Urkel shot. Aunt Rachel is annoyed that they shot the video without telling her to stop working, which is totally understandable, especially since that decision was made three seconds after she left to go re-write the script. Eddie could have just loudly yelled her name. They watch the video, which is predictably a piece of garbage entirely centered around Eddie. The video is so ridiculous that you desperately need to see it:
Here's the lyrics, or at least as much as we see of it:
My name’s Eddie and I’m a hip, cool guy. The girls come running when I give them the eye.
My name’s Eddie and I’m headed for fame, partying and fun is the name of my game.
I am the Winslow king. So come on you girls, and hear me sing.
Cuz I’m the new king.
It must’ve taken him six, maybe seven seconds to write this song. As you might expect, the rest of the band is none too pleased with how much air time Eddie received, or more accurately the amount of air time they didn’t receive, which was any at all. The two guys who we’ll probably never see again quit first, leaving Shitty Rodney to have an emotional moment with Eddie. After all, Eddie and Rodney have been best friends since they first discovered their mutual love of disrespecting a woman’s privacy. Unfortunately, that moment falls flat for me, and whether this was the fault of the actor who played Rodney (Randy Josselyn, who went on to have one-episode arcs on Full House, Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Blossom, Sister-Sister, and 7th Heaven before ultimately leaving the business) or the director, Rich Corell, you can tell even now that he’s not long for this show. Shitty Rodney leaves for what I hope is the last time in this series, and he’s followed closely by the rest of the family, who is disgusted at Eddie for his selfishness, and not his utter lack of talent at song-writing, as they should be.
Later, Carl has finished doing the taxes, and the Winslow family only owes the government $94,000! That’s totally manageable on a cop’s salary. Luckily for Carl, Harriet comes in and tells him that she went behind his back and had his brother do his taxes. Harriet has finally learned her lesson about letting Carl do things that everybody but her knows he can’t do. Yes, it’s good for his ego, but it’s costing them a butt-ton of money. Carl is furious, until Harriet divulges that they are getting a $700 refund. Carl literally goes down on his knees and kisses her hand thanking her.
BEND THE KNEE. (Family Matters)
Conclusion:
Eddie is in the garage, sadly thumbing at a chair while the Urkman packs up his A/V equipment. It’s weird.
(Family Matters)
Between this and last week’s plate adjustment, it’s pretty clear that Darius McCrary doesn’t know what to do with his hands this early in his acting career. Carl comes in and checks on Eddie, who is pretty bummed out, if you couldn’t tell from that forlorn thumbing he was doing. Carl asks Steve, “Could we be alone?” Steve says sure, and then asks Eddie to step outside for a second. Fantastic joke. Carl explains that he’d actually like to speak to Eddie alone, and Steve wished him good luck with his bonding experience. Steve then tries to quietly leave the room, which obviously ends up like this:
(Family Matters)
I don’t see any actual damage done to any of the things that fell, so there still isn’t any update to the Shit Urkel Broke count. After Urkel yells to them that he’s okay, we arrive at the emotional resolution of the episode, the last moral lesson of season one. Carl tells Eddie, “You know, when a man decides to go on an ego trip, he usually ends up travelling alone.” It’s like Carl is trying to teach me lessons all the way from 1990, but he’s too late, my path is set. Anyway, it’s good advice, and though Eddie learns a valuable lesson, he is still lamenting the loss of his band. It looks like he’ll never be a rock star. Urkel is back, because he forgot his tripod. He tells Carl and Eddie to ignore him, and to just keep bonding, because they “won’t even know (he’s) here.” Of course, this happens:
(Family Matters)
They definitely knew he was there. Again, although the Urkster knocked down an entire shelf, I did not notice any permanent damage.
I hope you stayed with me thus far, folks, because things are about to go off the goddamn deep end. The family is sitting at the kitchen table discussing how bummed Eddie is that he couldn’t become a rock star. They decide to make a video as a family, or at least all of them except Aunt Rachel, who rightfully maintains that Eddie is difficult to work with. Upon being given the opportunity to make a video with his family, however, Eddie will only do so on the condition that Rachel re-write his lyrics. This wins her over, and they hug.
Two weeks later, the family is watching the music video contest result show, and they’ve already shown the numbers five through two spots. This means that the Winslows have either won the contest outright, or not placed at all. Eddie doesn’t think they have a chance, because the bottom four spots have all been metal videos. Carl maintains that it doesn’t matter if they win, because they had fun making the video. Schmuck. It doesn’t matter though, because their video, “The Rappin’ Winslows,” is the grand prize winner! Their video is played, and my god, gang.
It’s somehow more ridiculous than the first video, which is saying something! My favorite parts are Mother Winslow deejaying and the fact that everyone is dressed like an old white man in the 90’s thought cool (black) people dressed like. If you think that’s a generalization, let’s look at what Carl is wearing, and also at what the baby dinosaur from Dinosaurs wore in the music video from THAT show, which was also on TGIF.
(Family Matters)
(Dinosaurs)
I assumed that this rap was written by a very white man, but it was co-written by one of the producers of the show, James O’Keefe, and Darius McCrary’s Grammy nominated father, Howard, who was certainly a black man. Either way, this video is “Scott’s Tots” level of cringe, and it’s the very best thing I could imagine ending season one on.
Thanks for reading, whether this was your first “Only Urkel Matters” or you’ve been with me since day one. As I said before, I’ll be taking a week off next week, so join me in two weeks, when I break down the season two premiere, “Rachel’s Place.” Burn, baby, burn.
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