As a child of the 1990s, there was only one place I needed to be every Friday night: planted in front of the television for “TGIF”. The best lineup in “TGIF” history was the un-fuck-witable quadruple play of Family Matters, Boy Meets World, Step By Step and Hangin’ With Mr. Cooper — if you want to argue this fact, I’ll fight you to the death. The glorious 1993-94 “TGIF” season coincided with Season 5 of Family Matters, which included my favorite crossover television moment of all time (non-Law & Order edition), when a friend of nephew Richie (Lil’ G) admitted that the Winslow Family patriarch (Carl) resembled the “Father on Fresh Prince”.
Even as a ten-year-old, I remember it as a humorous and very self-aware joke during the episode, but I vividly remembered the closing credits that consisted of an outtake of the same scene. Except this time, James Avery (Uncle Phil) comes barging through the door. Reginald VelJohnson (Carl Winslow) looks legitimately surprised — at least, that’s what I’ve kept telling myself for twenty years — and embraces the much larger Avery.
No lie, I’ve been searching for this scene for years, as I have friends who don’t believe it happened. I downloaded countless torrents that stalled out, and eventually gave up. The upload date on the video above is April 8th, 2013 (damn, that was an excellent birthday present I didn’t know about), which means I clearly stopped searching too soon. Still, please enjoy one of my favorite scenes in sitcom history, when a star of an NBC sitcom made a cameo on a rival sitcom on a rival network — something you’ll probably never see again.
Bonus video time! My favorite scene in Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air history:
[YouTube]
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