Step By Step

Step By Step, the hit sitcom which was part of the Murderers' Row of the 90's TGIF ABC programming block was weird. Weird in that it had a cross over episode that featured the most famous black man of all time, Urkel.

I'm here to talk about the one of the weirder cross overs of all time in television history that still on occasion haunts me at night. In this episode titled 'Great Expectations' two of the young daughter characters on this show are set up for a blind date. Two men arrive at the home of the two daughters and they are literally the living embodiment of Beavis and Butthead. Yes, the Beavis and Butthead from the cartoon show on MTV...except they're played by real people and impersonate their laughs and stupidity.

I'm certainly aware of the cultural force that was Beavis and Butt-Head. I'm also aware of the cultural force that was Step By Step. What I'm not aware of is how a lazy writer or two thought this was a good idea. I can't imagine being at a live taping of this show and thinking that this was funny. And as an audience are we to assume that this was literally Beavis and Butthead who have transmorphed from cartoon characters to real people who happen to live in Port Washington, Wisconsin? Or are these two men just so obsessed with Beavis and Butthead that they have assumed similar personas....which also begs the question of how much of an alternate reality does this sitcom exist in? Does other popular culture exist? Urkel appears in the 2nd episode of Step By Step as himself, but not as "URKEL FROM FAMILY MATTERS." He is actually the science fair partner of the nerdy son Mark. So Urkel in this sense exists in the same reality that the Lambert family does...except Urkel lives in Chicago. Its worth noting that Urkel also shows up in San Francisco for an episode of Full House.

Will we ever know the true answer? The answer would appear to be no. What we do know is this: Jaleel White started getting ripped by season 5 and it was obvious that Urkel was actually fucking ripped.