Very few TV shows enjoy the level of untouchable nostalgia that surrounds The fresh prince of Bel-Air. While it only hit a streaming platform for the first time this year, almost everything about the Nineties sitcom – from its theme song to Will Smith’s Air Jordan rotation – was already flourishing in the collective consciousness. Then, on August 11, several stores reported that Smith would master a reboot of the series, with several companies declared to be in the middle of a bidding war for the rights to air it. Based on a viral trailer directed by Morgan Cooper in 2019, Bel-Air is a “dramatic take … [that] will delve deeper into the inherent conflicts, emotions, and benefits of what it means to be a Black man in America today, “he said. The Hollywood Reporter.
Does anyone really need this? It’s easy to see why the idea might appeal to a studio or a streaming company. In 2020, the revival of an established piece of intellectual property with a slight twist is seen as a sure bet. That’s why the list of reboot, reunion and reimagining that has been rumored in recent years as already produced is so depressingly long – from Save by the clock no Perry Mason, Beavis and Butt-Head no Animaniacs, Punky Brewster no Clueless. Creating something new is a risk; repaying something with a built-in fan base is less, or so it seems to go.
But there is a more desperate undertone to the perspective of Bel-Air become a reality. Reinventing The fresh prince of Bel-Air as a realistic, grizzly drama not only suggests that existing alone as a favorite sitcom is no longer enough – it is also unrecognizable that the show has always been part of drama that worked in the structure of a family-friendly sitcom.
Fresh Prince flourished during a boom time for black television. In the ’90s, your average black sitcom (Martin, Another world, The Jamie Foxx Show) was dealing with fears with blue collar as the ultimate reality of a middle class existence. These shows were colorful and jagged disruptors at a time when network TV advertisers were finally realizing that black people had disposable income just like their white peers. One crucial outcome of having so many black shows to choose from is that very few of those shows had to build their runes to justify a single vision of black. Instead, they gave a new generation of characters the opportunity to occupy a space where their trauma was often implicit, but not the first or even most important trait about them. (Kenan and Kel, to take just one example, would have been a lot less funny if it included a crushing seasonal arc about the ways multinational soft drinks companies market to black communities.)
Many of the most memorable and critically adored moments from the original Fresh Prince – Will and Carlton were rationally profiled by the police, Carlton overdosed on amphetamines, Will was shot – were also the most intense. Will’s thrilling monologue about his father in the show that left him in “Papa’s Got a Brand New Excuse” was so effective that fans believed that Smith’s real father was a deadbeat. Part of what made Will defiantly on Uncle Phil’s shoulder was so visceral was the way the scene played out against the context of those two characters roaring each other season after season. The comedy that defines The fresh prince made their moments of drama real, and those moments of drama made the jokes around them funnier. It was all rooted in Smith’s supernatural ability to inspire intense joy and deep pain in his audience. As his next career has shown, we are just as sure to believe he can save the world from rapping aliens, as we are to see him portray the greatest boxer of all time.
Smith’s Fresh Prince reboot occurs when TV is in the middle of another black prestige boom. Shown both about and created by black people (Atlanta, Uncertain, Black-ish, I with you destroy, Watchmen) are at the center of the critical conversation. Many viewers did not know they wanted ‘Woke Watchmen’ or ‘Twin Peaks: The Atlanta Years’ until they were here and celebrating a lot. Aesthetic and narrative, Cooper’s original Bel-Air trailer is tired of the signifiers of these more original shows. There is the muted color palette, the unholy music, the dramatic cuts – all meant to signal serious issues. And now, instead of Will’s trauma being one sliver of his personality, it’s the driving force. Learning about his troubled backstory in a catchy theme song is not enough in 2020. Now, we have to strike through the realization that Dark Will was hiding a gun and arrested by the police, not just one too many times spun by neighborhood polls.
Last year, Smith spent a day with Cooper and envied the possibilities of Bel-Air on his YouTube channel. “As funny as the episodes are, there was a whole other layer you can’t do,” Smith said. “In a one-hour drama, you can do arcs of eight episodes. The dramatic version of these ideas means you can use existing storylines, but it will not look like you are re-doing an episode because the storyline is glowing from the dramatic perspective. ‘
But Smith underscores the value of his old show, which already had layers of suspense and complexity in its best episodes. The original Fresh Prince was not perfect. In those early seasons, Smith still found his footing as an actor, and the respectability policy was rampant. However Fresh Prince at its best synthesized a moment when black people dominated commercially over TV, movies, music and sports. Will Smith proved that a rapper could not only move to the rigors of a half-hour network comedy, but also work his way up to become one of the most successful actors of his generation. And it’s all streaming on HBO Max. The world does not need a new one Fresh Prince – just spend a little more time with the old.
