While I would argue that Hamlet has a better plot than Romeo and Juliet, I’m grading on what we actually see of the production in each of these sitcoms. And based on that alone, Family Matters is the clear winner. (If we were judging on episode plot it would be all about Boy Meets World though. Cory squanders the lead in Hamlet because he doesn’t want to wear tights and it’s all a very good insight into gender roles and insecurities whereas FM is about Laura and Steve kissing as the leads in R&J).
But now back to the shows within the shows. We get to see most of the balcony scene uninterrupted in Family Matters. And Steve’s undying love for Laura makes him a pretty good Romeo…that is until he accidentally destroys the entire set which appears to be all interconnected by a pulley system.
Flying in set pieces is all well and good. But connecting each and every joint with string? That’s a lawsuit waiting to happen! However, I have to imagine that this makes strike a lot easier.
It’s major flaws aside, the set really is beautiful. It has a lot of levels, uses the full stage, and showcases a fairly interesting lighting design. In the screenshot for this episode, you can see Laura and Steve lit from behind the curtains of Juliet’s bedroom and from the front by “the moon.”
However, if the set was built with a kill switch, then the staging should have been such that Steve Urkel was NO WHERE NEAR IT. Point to Boy Meets World for staging because they have a whole cast visible and nothing breaks.
The costumes for both productions are really strong. However, I’m going to give the point to BMW because there’s just a little more going on with them. Shawn has a prosthetic belly, Minkus is sporting a monochromatic ensemble as the replacement for Cory in the title role, and there’s more diversity in the fabrics and color palettes.
Very Special Winner: Family Matters
Sabrina starts with Madonna’s “Sky Fits Heaven” so I’d say this is a lock on the music category. Sabrina is headed to Rome to release “the power trapped within” a locket she’s received from her father. All she knows is that “the secret lies in Rome.” Oooooh so mysterious! Sabrina ends up with a roommate in Rome. But she turns out to be a witch too. Only she’s not a very good witch, so that’s kind of the comedic relief here.
Jennifer Page’s “Crush” is in this as well during a montage! So 1998! Finally, Sabrina decides to just go back in time and ask her Aunt Sophia to open the locket. (Omg, seriously. All this and that’s her freaking solution??) While back in time, Sabrina realizes that it wasn’t Sophia’s boyfriend who betrayed her but rather some lame courtier. Sabrina isn’t supposed to interfere because maybe she’ll mess up history and never be born. But when she figures all of this out, she can’t help but tell Sophia. So then Sophia puts her power (or herself?) in the locket and disappears. Sabrina and Sophia’s boyfriend run away from the evil courtier but leave the locket behind. Then Sabrina gets into a massive sword fight. Okay, so yeah Sophia is stuck in the locket.
Vacation Attire: Stefon is looking fine in some 90’s couture suits. But Carl is hurting the Family Matters camp with all of his 90’s tourist dad outfits. And Steve matches his suspenders to his beret, so I really want to give him points for that. But honestly, I cannot give this point to Family Matters because Laura wears one too many ugly-ass floral print shirts for my liking. Plus Sabrina goes shopping at Armani AND travels back in time to the 18th century. So there’s that.
Overall Plot: This is a particularly hard one. I absolutely love that Steve accidentally gets involved with some gangsters. But the Laura/Stefon romance has always been boring to me. Then there’s Sabrina’s cool locket-solving thing. But honestly she spent some much time figuring out that locket only to decide to just travel back in time and ask the original owner how to open it…so really we could have skipped the entire movie if she’d done that in the first five minutes. That is some poor writing I just can’t get behind, so points to Family Matters on this one.
Blossom: Blossom goes to Paris to find her mother, who is a singer in a night club. Her mom thinks it’s just a visit, but Blossom pretty much plans to live there permanently. Her brothers want an inexpensive trip to Paris, so they decide to become couriers. They accept a job at a sketch office and both carry one package together to Paris. They’ve unknowingly accepted a job from the mob and even their dad isn’t skeptical of this arrangement. Meanwhile, Six tries to find an interim best-friend while Blossom is away. OMG BRITTANY MURHPY IS IN THIS EPISODE. But only for 3 seconds. She’s one of Six’s potential friends.
Family Matters: Steve accidentally sends Carl to his pen-pal, Nicole, in Paris. (Well, Carl accidentally stood on Steve’s Urk-Pad, a teleportation device.) But Nicole sends him back safe and sound. Carl had such a good time that he decides to go back with Harriet and Eddie. Steve decides to visit Nicole at the same time that the Winslows take their trip. Also, Laura and Stefon go to Paris on one super-long date.
This episode is terrifying. It’s so abnormal for Family Matters to pull something like this that they had to have Steve warn the audience that this episode is “a little scary” (a.k.a. get the kids out of the room, or they will all have nightmares forever). Well, I was a kid that was not removed from the room, and thus ventriloquist dummies have been horrifying to me ever since. Today, I conquer that fear.
He sneaks down the chimney and tricks poor, dumb Eddie into thinking he’s Santa. Then he straight up kills him. One of the Winslows is already dead! Then Stevil chops Laura up into pieces and puts her body in all of the kitchen cabinets. It’s horrible, but she can still talk and quip and I guess that’s somehow supposed to make us feel better. But it doesn’t make us feel better! It makes us think that we could be chopped into pieces and live to tell about it as a decapitated person. Ugh!
And Carl laughs. He doesn’t believe him. It’s all so ridiculous. He tells Steve to lighten up. AND THEN IT TURNS OUT THAT CARL IS STEVIL’S VENTRILOQUIST DUMMY. The only thing left to do is for Steve to physically fight Stevil, which is surprisingly hard. I mean Steve doesn’t have the best hand-eye coordinator, and for a while it seems like Stevil will probably win this fight.
But then Steve rips off Stevil’s head and dismembers him like Stevil did to the Winslows. But then Stevil’s body parts find all of their missing pieces and reconnect. And like basically at this point, if I were Steve, I’d pretty much decide I was doomed. But then Steve wakes up and it’s just a dream. (Ah, yes. The dream trope.) And then Eddie threatens to lobotomize Steve with a hand-mixer. But that’s just a dream too! So then Steve wakes up for real and he and Eddie go off to have a nice day and the dummy is just a dummy.
Harriet finds a love note that fell out of Eddie’s pants pocket and she shares it with Carl. It says “Eddie, we were foolish to wait. Last night was so special, and now I want us to share this experience as often as possible.” This is literally the worst thing I could ever think of my parents finding and reading. Even now, as an adult and non-teenage person, I would gouge my eyes out if they found a love note in my pants pocket. Well, actually I would be like “what are you doing in my pants pocket and why did you read that?”
Carl get electrocuted by a lamp (after Urkel tells him it’s unsafe). Steve gives him CPR (while also walking the television viewers through the steps, but you should probably take a class before trying this yourself). Also, Steve’s chest compressions are noticeably too shallow, but I’m assuming that’s because he’s doing “CPR” on someone who is definitely not in cardiac arrest in real life. Carl wakes up and feels just fine, except for the fact that he now owes his life to Urkel.
This leads Steve to realize that he doesn’t want their friendship if it isn’t genuine. So he tells Carl to just go ahead and be mad at him for all of the stupid stuff he does (i.e. sit down on a freshly varnished chair, break the whole house, etc.) This leads Carl to berate Steve in a full-on verbally abusive onslaught, to Steve’s glee. That’s pretty awful. Luckily, for Steve, Laura is still happy to have him as a friend. She acknowledges that he’s nerdy and annoying, but he’s still a good friend. And then she kisses him on the cheek!
The Very Special Blog 
