I proposed an idea a few years ago that is gaining traction in my circle: What if you could set your television to only show programs made within a certain time period?

With this in mind, I grabbed the remote the other night, determined to watch something all of us would enjoy and that actually had some substance.

But I needed a hook. Despite Sam’s (8) and James’ (6), eclectic tastes, A-Team is too violent, Full House lacks the slapstick humor to keep their attention, and Golden Girls is at least a decade out.

I needed a goofy, cartoon-ish character who could reel them in.

Enter Steve Urkel.

I flipped on HBO Max and went straight to Episode 1 of Family Matters, convinced that everyone’s favorite 90s nerd would close the deal.

But unfortunately, Steve didn’t show up in the pilot. Well, this certainly wasn’t going to work. Deflated, I reached for the remote.

Then a funny thing happened. My kids were transfixed. They didn’t budge for a full 24 minutes. They laughed, they furrowed their brows, and they looked at me and Andrea for affirmation. They had that giddiness of a kid who was having fun and learning something.

Whether it was Harriet’s good-natured ribbing of Carl for eating too many donuts, Mama Winslow’s cheeky humor, or Laura picking on Eddie for his lack of common sense, this was what they call “good clean family fun”. Here we were, a white suburban family in 2023 watching a black family in 1996 Chicago and it felt more familiar to me than today’s shows and, more importantly, today’s reality.

Underneath the humor are poignant messages about family, doing the right thing, managing your money, and the importance of hard work–everything we preach to our kids and our students.

In Episode 5 Carl holds his annual report card ceremony where he awards each child five dollars for every A. Eddie gets straight As but later finds out his friend sent a fraudulent report card to the house, but not before Carl buys him a computer and brings over a recruiter from Yale.. After expressing his disappointment in his son, Carl apologizes and acknowledges that his real report card (Bs and Cs) is actually the best he’s ever received. This one in particular hit home considering my job as a college counselor.

We’re up to Episode 14 (the one where the family bakes 12,000 of Carl’s signature tarts and only profits $24) and with every episode the show becomes more ingenious. It teaches lessons, it’s innocent, it teaches kids what is funny (the laugh track), what is emotional (the “Awwwww” track), and how to behave in a family.

There was a time when families sat down and watched the same show at the same time on the same night every week. These days they’re strewn about the house, eyes glazed over on their own device – consider the phrase “left to our own devices” – consuming content that has been curated by an algorithm to suit their specific demographics, tastes, and spending habits.

If we can agree that inputs impact outputs, consider that our students average five hours a day on social media. What if just one of those hours were spent with the Winslow family? Or some other proxy from the ’80s or ’90s?

Someday someone will invent the TV filter I mentioned earlier, and maybe we’ll all be better as a result. In the meantime, I’m taking “matters” into my own hands, one episode at a time.

If you were wondering, Urkel is now an integral part of the show. And the boys cannot stop laughing.