Yeah, Will and the Banks spent 80% of an episode roasting each other, but there was no doubt the central cast of The Fresh Prince loved each other. Will and Jazz’s handshake may go down into buddy folklore, but The Fresh Prince’s best friendships came from the Banks family at large. As J.Cole once rapped, Uncle Phil was the sort of father figure many people wished for. Black father figures are a fraught archetype and a generation wept when the actor who played Uncle Phil, James Avery, died in 2013. But where Lou shows us what a bad father can be, Uncle Phil showed us the loving, open-minded kind. Watch the episode back and you can hear members of studio audience crying over the final credits. By the time Will does see the light, he’s sobbing “How come he don't want me, man?” into Uncle Phil’s arms. It was heartbreaking to see everyone but Will know that his returning dad, Lou, would eventually disappoint and for Will to refuse it until the final moments. The most memorable episode of The Fresh Prince has to be season four’s “Papa's Got a Brand New Excuse” aka “The Episode Where Will’s Father Finally Comes Back”. The women of the Banks family spent many an episode fighting off dinosaur notions of sexuality too, and, by the end of season four, Hilary had posed for Playboy and Ashley had “The Talk” with both Will and her Dad. Carlton would eventually lose his virginity, to a married woman no less in one of the all-time “Oooooh!” live studio audience moments. Even Uncle Phil and Aunt Viv’s sex life got put under the microscope, most notably in season two episode “The Big Four-Oh” where Phil gave one of the most romantic speeches a husband can give to his wife.įast forward to season three - in “Mama's Baby, Carlton's Maybe”, and Carlton tearfully confided in Will that he was a virgin, only for his cousin to calm him down. Carlton and Will were always trying to hook up with the hot character actress who turned up that week. Twenty years may have passed since The Fresh Prince ending, but there are still few shows that can match it for talking on racial issues in such an accessible way.Īll members of the Banks’ family wrestled with sex and relationship problems throughout the series. For many young black viewers, it’d be their first time they’d see these problems depicted onscreen, and for many more viewers, The Fresh Prince just might have been the first time you saw a black family on the television. The Fresh Prince was a guide on everything from racial profiling and police brutality, to interracial dating and racially-biased hiring policies. One of the very first times you see Will in his new Bel Air digs, he’s dancing in front of a Malcolm X poster, and he only starts paying attention to his Aunt and Uncle after he finds out Uncle Phil and Viv both attended Civil Rights protest at Selma in 1965. The Fresh Prince was, in capital letters, a Black Show. Here’s a look at some of the biggest lessons The Fresh Prince imparted on us because, oh, what a glorious winter bounty we are about to be bestowed… To use the Twitter parlance, The Fresh Prince of Bel Air was a (mostly) Woke Television Show. The show became a big ol’ televisual Trojan Horse: sneaking in deep musings on love, on acceptance, on sex, on race relations. Because, The Fresh Prince of Bel Air was more than a sitcom in fact, it was more than just another black sitcom. While nearly 25 years may have passed since the series finale, the life lessons that Will, Jazz and the rest of the Banks family shared with us remain as relevant as ever. Going gritty might come as a surprise for some, as you will read below, there was a hell of a lot more going on with The Fresh Prince than just comedy. It caught the attention of Will Smith and now he is on board to remake the show. The reboot is all down to a viral video made by filmmaker Morgan Cooper, whose fantastic re-imagining of the show for modern times wen viral in 2019. The Fresh Prince of Bel Air is set for a reboot and this time it's going to be more grounded in realism, offering a grittier version of the show.
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