Only Urkel Matters, Episode 2.25: Charles Mallory Dies Hard
“I Should Have Done Something”
Original Air Date: April 26, 1991
Last time on OUM: Carl had a dream about killing Urkel, and Rachel sang a song about how she’ll fuck you until Mr. Right gets here.
If you missed the last recap, you can read it here. Any “Only Urkel Matters” that you may have missed can be found here.
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(Family Matters)
Cold Open:
Hurricane Urkel blows in through the front door, and dances his way to Laura, who’s sitting on the couch. It turns out that he’s listening to polka-rap. That may sound terrible, but sometimes putting popular songs into polka form isn’t the worst thing. Urkel asks Laura if she’d like to take a listen, and predictably, she says no. He asks if her she meant “no thank you,” but what she actually meant was “no, go home.” If a girl already doesn’t like you, lecturing her on manners won’t likely win her over. Laura tells Steve that she’s tired, because she got up at 3 AM to stand in line for Johnny Gill tickets. Even worse, she failed to acquire said tickets! Having to wait in a line for anything is a prime example of #ninetiesgirlproblems. As it turns out, Urkel has a pair of tickets to the show. He’s willing to give one to Laura if she agrees to go as his date. Laura balks at this, so Steve says, “Suit yourself. I’ll just have to take somebody else. But next Friday night you’ll be stuck here with your principles while Johnny Gill sweats all over my mother.” I know Urkel is supposed to be annoying, but I can’t in good conscious like a human being who says the words, “sweats all over my mother” in such a casual manner. After a couple of failed attempts to say that she’ll go, Laura finally accepts, and Steve celebrates by singing MC Hammer’s “Can’t Touch This” as he heads out the door. Funny, I thought that was the opposite of what he wanted from Laura.
The Story:
We’re in the kitchen, and Carl is venting to Harriette about how his children don’t listen to him. Eddie was supposed to empty the incinerator, but didn’t. I honestly didn’t think I would ever think about an incinerator again, but since we’re talking about defunct nineties shit, here’s a picture of the sweater Harriette was wearing in this scene. Every single person who grew up in the nineties had a sweater that looked precisely like this, and they looked good on exactly no one. Harriette informs Carl that Eddie said to inform him that something came up, and he’d empty it tomorrow. Carl goes into a long soliloquy about how everything with Eddie is “Tomorrow, Dad!” At this point, I was saying to myself, “Here we go. Yet another episode where Carl and Eddie have to learn to appreciate each other,” but this one is going take a huge swerve left. In fact, Eddie isn’t in this episode at all! To further cement the “Carl is irritated with his family” bit they’re going for right now, Carl goes into the fridge and finds that both his first and second choice of beverages are missing. After bitching about that for a spell (including an admittedly hilarious bit in which he holds up an empty milk carton and says, “Which one of our gangster children did this?*”), Carl spots a pickle jar with one pickle left in it on the counter. If he were to ask why these weren’t being refrigerated, I’d have backed him so hard, but the man just wants a pickle. Because this isn’t his day, he has an extremely difficult time with it, but Carl is nothing if not a problem solver:
(Family Matters)
Harriette asks if he had a bad day, which at this point is a perfectly reasonable question. Carl has every right to be annoyed at the shitty children things that his children have been doing (shout-out to the pickle jar only having one pickle in it, which used to be my older brother’s calling card), but if he’s so angry that he’s willing to smash a pickle jar, this is probably about something else. Carl tells her that his mood is “fair,” but he talks about his mood being fair for far too long for it to be true. Rachel comes downstairs during this most recent tirade, and once Carl realizes that she’s watching him, he glares her down. Rachel calmly grabs the last pickle, and that’s the straw that broke the camel’s back for Carl, who storms off into the living room. Once he’s gone, Rachel asks Harriette, “Who put a flapjack in his shorts?” What a weird expression. I can think of a lot of things that could be in my shorts that would upset me, and a delicious pancake would be pretty low on the list. I’d honestly just be torn on whether or not it would still be acceptable to eat said flapjack. (My decision, by the way, would likely come down to what the flapjack made contact with while it was in my shorts)
*I know what you’re thinking, but I checked the closed captioning, and it definitely said “gangster” with a hard R.
Later, (after waiting a bit for him to calm down, what a great woman) Harriette asks Carl what’s really bothering him. Carl says that it’s been a year to the day since “it happened.” “It” was a big enough deal that Harriette knows exactly what he’s talking about. She tells him that he’s got to let “it” go, because everyone agrees that it wasn’t his fault. In fact, Carl was even given an accommodation for whatever “it” pertains to. Carl tells her that he doesn’t care about any of that, because an innocent person died, and he just can’t accept that. He walks glumly up the stairs, and Harriette watches him go, wishing there was anything she could do for the man she loves most, and knowing that she can’t. Jo Marie Peyton (hence known as JMP, I’m abbreviating all these three name combos) absolutely nails all of these emotions just by using her face, and it’s a great bit of acting.
Later that evening, Carl is back on the couch, watching TV. Having noticed that her husband was not in bed with her, Harriette comes downstairs to check on him, and discovers that he has been watching the news report that had aired on the night that “it” happened. We find out that “it” was a hostage situation during a convenient store robbery that Carl was called to. The culprit had told Officer Winslow that if he stopped him from getting to his car, he would shoot his hostage. Carl acquiesced to those demands because his instincts told him that the man would indeed shoot his hostage if Carl tried to intervene. Unfortunately, after getting to the car, the perpetrator shot the hostage anyway. Carl really could’ve used Bruce Willis’ help on this one. Carl and his fellow officers were able to apprehend the culprit (the reason for his accommodation), and Carl was interviewed about the affair on the news. When the reporter asked him if he wished he had done things differently, Carl could only muster the strength to say, “I don’t know.” It was an extremely emotional scene. Harriette turns off the television, and pleads with Carl to listen to her, saying, “That was a year ago. It was not your fault!” Carl tells her that he comprehends that fact in his head, but he’s not sure he understands it in his heart.
The next day, Urkel walks into the Winslow kitchen looking for Laura, but finds Estelle instead. She’s carrying a package, which turns out to be the “Hunk of the Month” calendar. Steve explains to Estelle that he feels guilty about having persuaded Laura into going to the concert with him. You’ll notice that I chose to use the word “persuade” and not “blackmail,” like Estelle is about to utilize. Urkel’s Johnny Gill gambit, while pathetic (take someone who is actually into you), was not immoral in any way. He asked a girl on a date, and she said no. Then he told her that he was going to take someone else, and she decided that she wanted to see Johnny Gill in concert more than she didn’t want to go on a date with Urkel. If anything, Laura is the only one who did anything immoral here. She’s using Urkel for the tickets, even though she knows she will not develop romantic feelings for him. Estelle tells Steve that she can’t believe that he would ever use blackmail to get the date. Like I said before, this isn’t blackmail, and it isn’t even the most underhanded tactics he’s used to get a date with Laura. Urkel agrees with Estelle that he shouldn’t go on this date with Laura if it’s not what she wants (I agree with this too. I think he should take Myra. I know we don’t know her yet, but he should absolutely take Myra), but hopes that Laura will fall in love with him while he’s still young enough to do something about it. Estelle, who is old as hell, tells Steve that she was just thinking the same thing about Mr. February. When Steve replies with an almost flirty, “Estelle!” she tells him that she might not always be cooking, but that her pilot light is always on. I’m sorry, but did this octogenarian just tell a teenager that she’s always horny? NOT APPROPRIATE, GRANNY.
We go from an incredibly inappropriate scene to an exceptionally poignant one, as we find Carl walking through a graveyard with flowers. He finally comes to a grave marked Charles Mallory, who we know from the earlier report was the elderly man killed in the hostage situation one year earlier. Carl talks to the deceased man, telling him that he relives what happened every single day. In his mind, Carl has been searching for that one moment when he could have taken the criminal down and prevented Mallory’s death. He begins to cry as he tells the gravestone that he is certain that that moment existed, and if he had only seen it, Mr. Mallory might still be alive. Finally, he apologizes, and that’s when he breaks down. As he weeps, Carl is interrupted by Helen Mallory (played exceptionally by veteran actress Beah Richards), the wife of Charles, who coincidentally is also there to lay flowers on her husband’s grave. She guides Officer Winslow to a bench, where she tells him that for a long time, she would spend every day wishing that she hadn’t sent her husband to the store for some ice cream. That trip to the store would result in his murder, and she had been overcome with guilt for a long time. She eventually accepted that it wasn’t her fault, and now she wants Carl to do the same. They lay the flowers at Charles’ graveside, and then break down in each other’s arms. It’s a wonderfully acted scene, and I’ll post it here if you’d like to check it out.
Conclusion:
Harriette has found Estelle’s Hunk of the Month calendar, which she believes to be Laura’s. She tells Estelle that she is going to have to speak to Laura about this, and Estelle (a grown woman) is too embarrassed to admit that it’s hers, and instead lets her granddaughter take the fall. Not a good look for our favorite elderly gal. Carl walks through the door, and he’s in a much better mood. He apologizes to his wife and mother for treating them so poorly, and tells them that he’s taking them to dinner and a movie to make it up to them. While Harriette accompanies Carl to the kitchen, Urkel arrives in a bathrobe:
He hands Laura the tickets, and tells her that she can take Maxine, because he’s too big of a man to take advantage of her lust for a pop star. Who cares where the lust came from, my dude? Lust is lust. Laura senses a trick, so she insists that Steve take her and heads out the door. Steve thanks Estelle for her advice and is so (s)excited that he walks into the wall next to the door. He is so enthusiastic that he brushes it off and heads out on a date with his dream girl. That ends the episode, and Season Two.
Join me next time, when I break down the Season Three premiere, “Boom!”
