While the Rest of the World Was Riveted by the Super Bowl, I Watched and Wrote About a Jaleel White Special from 1992
When Jaleel White mugged his way through his eponymous special in 1992, variety shows were a dead format rooted in even older forms of entertainment like vaudeville.
To contemporary sensibilities, variety shows aren’t just outdated and anachronistic and more than a little cheesy: they’re insane, televisual acid trips that seem utterly bonkers outside of their original context.
As someone who writes about the worst and cheesiest pop culture has to offer, I’ve experienced the very worst variety shows/specials. I’ve probably seen the Star Wars Holiday Special more often than I’ve seen Star Wars.
I keep trying to convince my Star Wars-obsessed ten-year-old to watch it with me, but he nurses this strange conviction that it’s somehow “bad” and “unwatchable” and “not something anyone should subject them to unless they have to.”
I have no idea where he got that idea.
I’ve watched the most gloriously off-brand element of George Lucas’ space opera probably six or seven times, but I’ve also written up The Brady Bunch Hour for my My World of Flops column along with other nadirs like Pink Lady and Jeff, which paired a Japanese pop duo who did not speak English with dependable stand-up comedian and television personality Jeff Altman, and The Mary Tyler Moore Hour, which lasted a mere eleven episodes despite a cast that included Michael Keaton and David Letterman.
Variety shows were anachronistic when The Jaleel White Special aired in 1992, but the format was intermittently resurrected for stand-alone specials under very special circumstances, like the explosive popularity of Steve Urkel, the iconic nerd character Jaleel White played on Family Matters.
Urkel was famously supposed to appear in only a single episode of Family Matters, but he slayed with focus group audiences who suggested that every other character die a horrible death so that Urkel could be the show's star.
ABC wasn’t ready to have the entire Winslow family die in a horrific multiple-murder-suicide scenario as audiences insisted, but they did change the show ever so slightly so that White wasn’t just a regular on Family Matters; he was the whole damn show.
White’s character transcended Family Matters. More people knew Steve Urkel than Family Matters. Urkel was huge. He had his breakfast cereal, Urkel-Os. He had his own novelty dance, “Do the Urkel,” performed alongside Bea Arthur at the 1991 Comedy Awards. It’s a performance that answers the timeless query, “Is it possible for Bea Arthur to appear on something more embarrassing than Star Wars Holiday Special with, “shockingly, yes.”
If the collaboration wasn’t painfully dated enough, it ends with an excessively game Arthur quipping, “Hey, MC Hammer, try and touch this!”
In 2021, White launched his own strain of cannabis called, of course, Purple Urkel, though Jaleel White Widow would have been a good name as well.
White was fucking huge in the early 1990s. He inspired controversy by saying that Urkel was bigger than Jesus, as well as more popular, more important, and more beloved, and also the one true messiah, but even religious zealots had to concede the truth of that claim.
As far as ABC was concerned, White could do no wrong. He could walk on water. He was the network’s savior. He was god-like in his powers.
White was a horny teenager typecast as a sexless cartoon dweeb. He felt trapped and frustrated. There was so much more to him than being a nerd, but nobody wanted Jaleel no more; they wanted Urkel; White was chopped liver.
In a desperate bid to keep White from leaving the show that made him arguably our most beloved entertainer for a film career, ABC agreed to give White his own special.
White was popular enough to get his own variety special while still in his mid-teens, but he wasn’t popular enough to completely opt out of playing Steve Urkel.
The Jaleel White Special focuses on Jaleel White, the performer and man. This oddly sleepy one-off posits White as moderately dissimilar from the character that made him a household name.
Steve Urkel is a cartoonish super-nerd with an iconically geeky wardrobe and a high-pitched nasal squeal of a voice. Jaleel White, in sharp contrast, is a more subdued nerd who favors shapeless sweatshirts.
The Jaleel White Special opens with its titular star sitting at a word processor where he’s writing the screenplay for Don’t Diss My Heart, a short film that takes up much of the special’s running time.
White begins by blandly assuring us via narration, “For those of you who don’t know what “diss” means, it’s the latest term for disrespect. Now, I didn’t mean to “diss” you by suggesting that you didn’t know what “diss” means, but I like to keep everyone informed.”
I hope y’all didn’t feel too “dissed” by that exposition. Then the star, who is also ostensibly also the writer and director, fantasizes about asking Ramona (Tatyana Ali), the cutest girl in his class, to a party.
Alas, even in White’s fantasy world, he still gets ‘dissed’ by a dream girl who chooses Leander, a popular, good-looking jock who continually threatens our hero.
“I already have a boyfriend who makes you look like Steve Urkel,” are the words White puts in Ramona’s mouth.
White has the confidence to ask the most beautiful, popular girl in school out on a date.
When she replies that she has a boyfriend and isn’t interested in him romantically, our hero says he understands and apologizes for wasting her time.
Just kidding! The Jaleel White Show is a product of an era where if a woman rejected a man, that just meant he needed to try harder and resort to unethical or even illegal methods if circumstances called for them.
The special is devoted to our hero trying to find a way around his crush’s clear-cut no.
We’re then treated to the first of many rap set pieces that find Steve Urkel rapping about the action while a trio of green-clad male backup dancers boogie behind him. Let’s just say that the Fly Girls had nothing to worry about.
White then raps, in character as Urkel, “Welcome everybody to Don’t Diss My Heart, a film in which Urkel has a very small part. I’ll be dropping by to analyze what’s going on for us, kind of like a geek chorus. Now, here’s the first scene before Jaleel and Ramona/He’s the new kid in town, and he’s kind of a loner. He saw her in class, and he just couldn’t wait/To ask her to a party for his very first date.”
He’s not kidding about being a geek chorus. He returns throughout the special to update us on the action through rhyme.
You have to give White credit: he somehow managed to film the entire special without dying from embarrassment.
In the one semi-clever joke in the special, White writes a food fight scene, then decides that it would be too expensive to film, so they immediately skip to the messy skirmish's aftermath.
White needs advice on the ways of love. He first receives it from a principal played by Nell Carter, who performs a bawdy number that’s weirdly sexual for a scene pairing Nell Carter and the guy who played Urkel.
Jaleel then seeks romantic counsel from a fortune teller played by Little Richard as The Great Rimaldi. Little Richard curiously does NOT sing here. Instead, he performs broad comedy. There’s something decidedly perverse about a special with Jaleel White and Little Richard where White performs what can very generously be deemed music, but the rock and roll pioneer does not.
The guest stars and musical numbers continue when White fantasizes about having an older sister and Vannessa Williams shows up to sing “Pure Imagination” from Willie Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.
The Jaleel White Special was designed to illustrate that there was more to White than Urkel. In addition to playing a fictionalized version of himself, he also recites classic dialogue from Gone With the Wind, Casablanca and pratfalls his way through a tribute to Charlie Chaplin’s Little Tramp.
Children who loved Urkel also famously loved classic movies from before their parents were born.
Through persistence and baking delicious cookies, White gets the girl in time for a climactic appearance from Kid N’ Play, who were hipper and more contemporary than variety show veteran and crossdressing enthusiast Flip Wilson, who appears as both a tuxedo salesman and his drag alter-ego Geraldine.
The Jaleel White Special closes by having White and Urkel interact through the magic of split-screen and tease a sequel, Son of Don’t Diss My Heart.
It was not to be.
White seems to have made it through the unholy crucible of child stardom with his sanity and sense of humor intact but struggled to convince a world that saw him only as a famous nerd that he was capable of other things.
The sitcom scene stealer is likable and sympathetic, but I suspect he looks back on the special bearing of his name the way others look at embarrassing old yearbook photos, with a combination of shame and pride.
Nathan needed expensive, life-saving dental implants, and his dental plan doesn’t cover them, so he started a GoFundMe at https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-nathans-journey-to-dental-implants. Give if you can!
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