Family Matters/Trivia

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• Acting for Two: Jaleel White played Steve Urkel, Myrtle Urkel, and Stefan Urquelle (when Steve accidentally clones himself and have one be permanently Stefan). He even got to be a one-off criminal cousin. All of that, in addition to the transformation chamber, was to allow Jaleel White some opportunity to not keep up the squeaky Steve voice, which got harder and harder as he grew up. This was also done because White was a talented character actor and impressionist. His Bruce Lee is actually quite good, and reportedly one of his favorite roles.
• Channel Hop: From ABC to CBS for its last season.
• Contest Winner Cameo: The four children picked to be Steve and Laura's children for one of Carl Winslow's nightmares.
• The Danza: Maxine Johnson was played by Cherie Johnson.
• Dawson Casting: The late Michelle Thomas was in her mid twenties when cast as Myra Monkhouse. She was actually 7-8 years older than the other teen actors.
• Hey, It's That Guy!:
  • One episode features Urkel facing off against a group of bullies lead by Jason David Frank, whom most children of the 90s know as Tommy Oliver, the breakout star of the Power Rangers franchise.
  • Baby Santana has a crush on Richie.
  • Richie and Eddie are on The Young and the Restless.
  • Harriette is Suga Mama.
    • With Grandma Winslow's personality.
  • Orlando Brown would later play another Eddie...
  • A young Charles Gunn hits on Maxine before getting chased away by Waldo.
  • Angela got shot by female thugs over a pair of new sneakers.
  • Maxine (Laura's friend and Waldo's girlfriend) was Punky Brewster's Black Best Friend.
• I Am Not Urkel: This series pretty much killed any shot at Jaleel being taken seriously as an actor, outside voicework. This is slightly subverted as White doesn't resent his most famous role and has fond memories of the series.
• Jossed: It is widely believed that Jo Marie Payton left the show midway through the final season because she was disgusted that Steve had took over as the star of the show. It is also believed that she reappeared in the series finale in an uncredited role. In an 2010 interview, however, Payton revealed that she had been wanting to leave the show for years to do other projects, and had finally left on good terms midway through the final season. She also revealed that contrary to popular belief, she didn't appear in the series finale.
• Nice Character, Mean Actor: The Buddy Goodrich character. On screen, Goodrich (possibly a Bill Cosby Captain Ersatz) is a loving father. Off screen, he's a manipulative jerk who hassles Carl (only there to get him to move his car out of a handicapped spot), reveals he's only at a charity event for the money, shoves (and later tries to punch) Carl, twists the event to look like the victim to the press, then threatens to have his assistant commit perjury and finally attempts to bribe Carl with a job as a "technical assistant" for his show.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Jo Marie Payton, the original star of the show, left halfway through the show's final season and the role of Harriet was recast with Judyann Elder.
  • Much less dramatically, the actor playing Richie was originally a pair of twins, since he was a baby during the first season. The character went through Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome after this and he was recast with four-year-old Bryton McClure.
  • Judy was played by a different actress, Valerie Jones, in the pilot.
• Recycled Script: As with all Miller-Boyett sitcoms, the producers weren't shy about recycling ideas from other sitcoms. The Season 2 opener, where Steve burns down the Local Hangout and it's rebuilt as the cooler "Rachel's Place", was virtually identical to a story involving Arnold's on Happy Days, which several of the writers had worked on.
• Screwed by the Network: After ratings dropped during the sixth, seventh and eighth seasons, ABC was almost ready to cancel the series, before CBS silently picked it up for one last season. Ratings during the final season were so bad that CBS didn't even air the final seven (six, if you count the two-part finale as a single episode) episodes until the mid-Summer of 1998! And the series finale (Lost In Space Parts 1 and 2) was given little promotion or hype.
  • Family Matters is also an example of an actor/actress being screwed by the network. Jaimee Foxworth was given very little screen time and, after Season 4, her character was inexplicably written off the show. It was later revealed that this was due to Foxworth demanding more money and a bigger role in the series, which the producers would have none of. We all know what happened to her afterwards...
• Typecasting: When hasn't Reginald VelJohnson been cast as a police officer?
• Written-In Infirmity: Myra appeared sporadically in the last season after actress Michelle Thomas was diagnosed with cancer, from which she died five months after the show was cancelled.