Family Matters was once a part of the essential 90s Friday night that consisted of T.G.I.F., the lineup of kid shows that included Full House, Step By Step, Dinosaurs, Sister Sister, Hangin’ With Mr. Cooper, and more.
It was a major good time for kids who didn’t have streaming content at their fingertips, and could count on a new batch of their favorite series on Friday night to kick off their weekend.
Family Matters followed Chicago cop Carl Winslow and his family, and their annoying nerd of a next-door neighbor, Steve Urkel, played by Jaleel White. He was the main source of the show’s comic relief, and if you ask anyone who grew up watching, they can tell you his catchphrase, “Did I do thaaat?” in the nasal tone we all know and love.
But the writers didn’t come up with that on the first try. White sat down with the Pod Meets World podcast, and he revealed that there were other catchphrases he was given to try out first before they landed on his now iconic line:
“They tried a million darn catchphrases. And the first one that they ever tried really was Steve would just bump into an end table or a lamp, knock it over and say, ‘Excuse me.’ That was it, he’d just say ‘Excuse me.’
Then they tried to borrow one that was already in existence, ‘I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.’ We did about three of them, and ‘Did I do that’ just stuck. And it’s one of those things you lob them out to the audience.”
He did use those other phrases as well, but as he explained, none got a better reaction from the live studio audience than “Did I do that?”. He explained:
“Back then, [it] was completely about the immediate audience reaction. You had that live studio audience to tell you in real time what was working.
There was no social media. I think that’s the thing I miss most about our era, though, of television. We didn’t have to hear from the haters.”
It really was like a golden age of TV. It wasn’t always the greatest storytelling, but it was good TV that kids loved, and that we still enjoy quoting today.
via: CinemaBlend
