In billiards sitcoms (yet, ironically, not in billiards movies), the high-school student who thinks s/he can play pool only to subsequently get hustled has become a trope as stale as last week’s bread.   Consider:   Steve Harvey Show – “Pool Sharks Git Bit” (1996); Fresh Prince of Bel-Air – “Bank Shots” (1991).  But, it turns out this particular trope may have a relatively recent genesis, starting with the 1990 episode of Family Matters called “Fast Eddie Winslow.” 

Family Matters was a CBS sitcom about the Winslows, a middle-class African-American family living in Chicago.  Among the show’s claims-to-fame was that it featured one of the most annoying characters ever to appear in television – the nerdy, flood-pants and suspender-wearing, nasal-voiced neighbor Steve Urkel (Jaleel White).

In the second-season episode “Fast Eddie Winslow” (a reference, of course, to Paul Newman’s character Fast Eddie Felson in The Hustler), the oldest Winslow son Eddie (Darius McCrary) believes that he is a pool shark when he beats his friend Rodney in ten straight games.  Mistaking cockiness for ability, Eddie goes to the Corner Pocket, an adult pool hall, where he challenges a seemingly friendly and innocent Texan named Boyd Higgins to a game of eight-ball.  While he initially wins when the stakes are $5/game, he quickly loses ten games when the stakes are raised to $25/game.  Moreover, it turns out that with $250 now owed, Boyd is neither friendly nor Texan, but a local hustler, who frightens with menacing ultimatums, such as “When I play, it’s cash or carry.  Give me the cash or get carried out,” or “show up with the money tomorrow or stay home for a month and watch your body heal.”

Now, Eddie needs a savior, or at least someone to loan him the $250.  Initially, that savior appears to be Urkel, who after lecturing Eddie for getting “hustled, taken, fleeced, and conned,” not only loans him the money, but also steps in for Eddie, challenging Boyd to a one-game, double-or-nothing bet.   Turns out Urkel “plays a plethora of pool when [he has] time to [himself], which for some reason is quite often.”   Urkel then geeks out, pulling out tape measures, and proclaiming, “Pool is a game of angles.  One must cue at an angle to the object ball so that it travels in the same angle to the impact point.  An 82 degree angle intersected by a 42 degree vector, cue ball velocity, Jupiter in retrograde, Harvest Moon…”

(No one really know what Urkel is talking about, but then again, did anyone understand the similar pseudo-babble from the billiards scene in the 1990 movie Lambada when the main character pulled out a protractor and started waxing about the rectangular coordinate system while he shot pool?)

Urkel’s rescue effort fails, however, when Boyd crushes his thick-rimmed glasses beneath his boot.  Fortunately, new saviors step in, this time in the form of Eddie’s father, Carl Winslow (Reginald VelJohnson) and his grandmother Estelle (Rosetta LeNoire).  Reliving his youth, Carl makes a shot on Eddie’s behalf, and then hands over the cue to Estelle, who sinks the eight-ball on a quadruple bank shot (of course!).

So, what’s the lesson here?  If you’re a dumb enough chump to get fleeced in billiards by a guy with a terrible fake accent, then there better be a bad-ass grandma in the family, otherwise you’re going to be staying home for a month and “watching your body heal.”

“Fast Eddie Winslow” is available to rent or purchase as part of Season 2 of Family Matters.