‘SNL’ Parodied ‘Bel-Air’ With A Dark And Gritty Reboot About Steve Urkel From ‘Family Matters’

Last week, a lot of people on social media lost their minds over a new trailer. It’s for Bel-Air, Peacock’s forthcoming dark and gritty reimagining of the ‘90s sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, which made the already popular Will Smith an even bigger star than he was. That show was fun, albeit with the occasional “very special episode.” This new one, co-developed by Smith himself, is…well, it looks like it’s all “very special episodes.” To drive home how potentially silly this new revival is, SNL applied the same idea to another fun ‘90s sitcom.

That show is Family Matters, the Perfect Strangers spin-off about a middle-class Black family living in Chicago that ran for nine seasons, making it the longest-running U.S. sitcom with a predominantly Black cast. One reason it was popular: Steve Urkel, the scene-stealing, catchphrase-deploying nerd played by Jaleel White, who took what was supposed to be a one-off character and made him the thing that effectively made the show.

In SNL’s Urkel, though, he’s the main attraction. The parody stars Chris Redd — who also spent the episode lampooning New York City’s new mayor Eric Adams — doing the Urkel bit in a grittier depiction of Chicago. There are guns. There are alcoholic moms. There’s Kenan Thompson as Reginald VelJohnson’s Carl Winslow, looking sad and angry. There’s a sharp deployment of Urkel’s most famous line. And considering how serious Bel-Air looks, it’s really not that unlikely that a new and darker Family Matters could one day hit Peacock’s coffers.

You can watch the parody in the video above.