This Article Originally Ran On Blumhouse.com
Welcome to A Very Spooky… where we take a look at and review a classic TV series that is not known for horror but would, on occasion, dip its toes into the waters of terror…
This week we’ll be discussing Family Matters season 9, episode 7: “Stevil II: This Time He’s Not Alone”
Few things scare me… well, a lot of things scare me, but few movies or TV shows do. This morning, I woke knowing that my day, in part, would include that which I have been terrified of for a while now; watching another episode of Family Matters. I put it off as long as I could, and even considered doing a different show, but I decided it was best to just get this piece of garbage show out of the way once and for all. So here we are. Here we are…
The episode opens with Steve Urkel, the “genius” manchild of the show, doing all he can to stay awake. It is 3AM on October 31st, Halloween, and Steve fears that if he falls asleep, he will have a nightmare about Stevil, the evil puppet he dreamt of the year before. In the course of trying to stay up, Steve wakes up the rest of the Winslow house, who tell him to shut the hell up.
Steve falls asleep, and the nightmare, both for him and for us, begins. Stevil crawls out of a toilet and attacks Steve, trying to take his soul. Steve wakes up screaming. The nightmare is over, but the episode still has another fifteen minutes.
The day continues, and Steve is overdosing on sugar to stay awake when Carl, the paterfamilias of the Winslow clan, comes home from work. Steve tells Carl of his nightmare and Carl, being of sound body and mind, tells Steve to go to hell and heads upstairs for a nap. You can see where this is going…
Carl, following what I can only imagine is a format to how people sleep on Family Matters, gets into bed still wearing his police uniform, including his shoes, tie, and badge. Steve did a similar thing in the first Stevil episode, sleeping in his clothes, shoes and all. These people are weird.
Not even bothering to try and hide that the whole episode from this point on will be a dream, we cut to Carl coming downstairs and opening a box. In the box is a Carl puppet, which Carl is super excited about. When Steve sees it, he loses his shit, knowing that this must mean Stevil is near. Sure enough, the door to the house breaks down and Stevil enters. Using evil Stevil powers, Stevil brings the Carl puppet to life. In a joke that really only works for people in California, the Carl puppet takes the name Carlsbad.
The two evil puppets then explain that they want Carl and Urkel’s souls so they can go to Vegas. Then they dance for two minutes because, I’m guessing, the script was short and they needed to fill some time. Seriously, they dance for no reason. It has no purpose and it starts mid conversation.
Carl and Urkel run away from the demonic puppets and hide in Carl’s bedroom. Sure enough, the puppets get in. The lights go out and when they come back on, Carl is alone. The evil dummies have taken Urkel. Instead of seeing this as a win for humanity - the death of Steve Urkel can only be a good thing - Carl decides to save his… friend? I don’t know what their relationship is.
Carl finds Urkel in the kitchen, his soul gone. The evil puppets attack, and Carl beats the crap out of them. He grabs Urkel and makes a break for it. Urkel, it turns out, is now possessed by Stevil. Screaming, Carl wakes up. Then he apologizes to Urkel because it was wrong to make fun of him for having a nightmare I guess. It was terrible.
The really amazing part is that this episode is even worse than the previous Stevil episode. At least the first one, aptly titled “Stevil”, played on horror concepts and used some fun dream logic, including decapitated heads talking. This one feels like they wrote it in an hour, having forgotten that they had to film an episode that week. They do a quick Shining reference with the axe and head through the door bit, so you get an idea of how original the jokes in the episode are. Oh, they also make a joke about Nell Carter and her not being attractive. Cutting edge humor all around.
When they have Josh Ryan Evans and Ed Gale running around in the Stevil and Carlsbad costumes, it isn’t as creepy as it was in the original episode, mainly because they hold on the shots too long, and they have them do a TWO MINUTE DANCE SEQUENCE. Ed Gale, by the way, started his acting career as Howard T. Duck in the box office disaster Howard the Duck. He was also a Chucky stunt double in Child’s Play. We discussed Josh Ryan Evans in the previous Family Matters entry, so I won’t repeat his tragic story here.
The episode was written by Jim Geohan, who has spent most of his career writing for family friendly TV, though he also wrote for It’s Garry Shandling’s Show, which is one of the greatest sitcoms of all time. He also wrote Fangs, a movie about genetically altered bats that start killing people.
I’m begging you not to watch this. Stay away from Family Matters. Stay far away. Still, if you, for some terrible reason, want to watch it, you can buy the episode digitally through Amazon.