From 1989 to 1998, Family Matters was a primetime staple for the entire family. An anchor of ABC’s popular TGIF Friday-night lineup (with a final season on CBS), the sitcom was conceived as a family-oriented spinoff of Perfect Strangers, focusing on Balki and Larry’s coworker Harriet Winslow (Jo Marie Payton). Family Matters followed Winslow’s off-the-clock life as matriarch of an extended household that included her husband Carl (Reginald VelJohnson) and their three kids Eddie, Laura and Judy (Darius McCrary, Kellie Shanygne Williams, Jaimee Foxworth), plus Harriet’s mother-in-law Estelle (Rosetta LeNoire), sister Rachel (Telma Hopkins) and nephew Richie (Julius and Joseph Wright, then Bryton James).

The aforementioned cast of characters should have been more than enough to carry the show for many seasons. But everything changed after the show’s twelfth episode, which saw the very first appearance of a soon-to-be iconic character called Steve Urkel, played by Jaleel White.