The Fresh Prince of Bel Air
This was a sitcom that was in syndication throughout much of my teenage years, so it was part of the background, like Cheers. I realized on this watch through that I had only watched the first two seasons of it. On rewatching it, a bunch of thoughts flowed through my mind. The most frequent was that this is a very bizarre sitcom. It begins as a typical fish out of water comedy-the ghetto vs the successful black family. But it often strays deep into the area of civil rights and what it means to be a black person in America. Carleton gets rejected by a fraternity because he’s not the ‘right’ sort of black person. The relationship between Carleton and Will eventually becomes the emotional heart of the series. There are a bunch of wacky sitcom hijinx- at one point Will jumps out of a plane as it is about to crash, and somehow survives. Will is portrayed as somehow goofy and yet irresistible for the ladies. That doesn’t make any sense. I don’t doubt he’d find a girlfriend,...