The Fresh Prince Of Bel Air – Second Season

The Fresh Prince of Bel Air
The Complete Second Season (1991-92)
Will Smith, James Avery, Joseph Marcell
24 episodes plus 2 extras
4 DVDs
552 minutes
Warner Home Video

The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air ran for six seasons on NBC. The complete second season features the episodes from 1991-92 when the show cracked the top 20 in the ratings and feature the original Vivian Banks, Janet Hubert-Whitten. Although The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air got a bit long in the tooth story and character wise in the last couple of years, season two finds this great sitcom in fine shape with many excellent episodes.

By the time a sitcom reaches, if it does, its second season all the kinks are out, the characters are well-established and not yet cardboard parodies of themselves -think of Alfonzo Ribeiro as Carlton and Karyn Parsons in the last couple of seasons-and the writers are not stuck bringing in a new kid character or throwing a wedding for a main character just to get the ratings to stop plummeting or to actually get fresh story ideas. The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air, The Complete Second Season, finds the Banks family and the writers in fine form.

Although this was a very funny and hip sitcom, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air did not only do sitcom style relationship and parents versus kids comedy. It occasionally strayed into somewhat more serious topics such as mixed marriages (episode 6) and discrimination towards large people such as episode 8 which features the second appearance on the series by Queen Latifah and the first of many by Nia Long (this time as someone called Claudia) who would go on to become Will’s girlfriend in the show. It also features many scenes of its best running gag of Uncle Phil tossing out Will’s friend Jazz (Jeffrey A. Townes).

Personal favorites include the episode with Malcolm Jamal-Warner (The Cosby Show) a young lawyer who battles Uncle Phil (James Avery) in small claims court. The first thing he does on the show is take a dig at The Cosby Show. This set also includes the episode “Ill Will” with small screen legend Milton Berle as Will Smith’s hospital room companion and Bernie Kopell of Love Boat fame as the doctor. Dietrich Bader of The Drew Carey Show fame appears as Frank, the white husband of one of Viv’s sisters in a couple of shows.

Not all shows are brilliant of course, the Christmas show being rather banal for example. Still, if you like a good sitcom, The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air, The Complete Second Season is a good bet, a large majority of the shows here are quite good and fresh.

Episode list:

DVD 1

Did The Earth Move For You?

The Mother Of All Battles

Will Gets A Job

PSAT Pstory

Granny Gets Busy

Guess Who’s Coming To Marry?

DVD 2

The Big Four-Oh

She Ain’t Heavy

Cased Up

Hi-Ho Silver

The Butler Did It

Something For Nothing

DVD 3

Christmas Show

Hillary Gets A Life

My Brother’s Keeper

Geoffrey Cleans Up

Community Action

Ill Will

DVD 4

Eye On The Prize

Those Were The Days

Vying For Attention

The Aunt Who Came For Dinner

Be My Baby Tonight

Striptease For Two

Extras:

Best Bits Of Bel Air

Bel-Air Bloopers

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