1771: "Debut of the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air"

0:00September 10th, 1990, NBC introduced a brand new sitcom with an unusual opening. And before the first scene really had to explain anything, it star-wrapped the entire setup. A teenager from West Philadelphia gets into trouble. His mother sends him all the way across the country, and he arrives at the home of his wealthy aunt and uncle in Bel Air. By the time Will Smith knocked on the bank's family door, you already knew how he got there. The show was Fresh Prince of Bel Air, and Will Smith was essentially playing a fictional version of himself. He was already known as the Fresh Prince from his recording career with DJ Jazzy Jeff, but television was a brand new territory. The series surrounded him with James Avery's uncle Phil, Janet Hubert's and Vivian Alfonso Rebaro as Carlton. Karen Parsons as Hillary, Tatiana Ali as Ashley, and Joseph Marseille as Jeffrey.

1:04He would eventually run for six seasons, 148 episodes. That opening theme wasn't just attached to the show, it was the show's premise, all compressed into a wrap. Will Smith, he wrote the lyrics after reading material from the pilot while his longtime musical partner, Jeff Fried Towns, DJ Jazzy Jeff, produced the song. The result was, yo, home to Bel Air, better known, simply as the Fresh Prince theme. But there's something people who grew up watching the show in reruns may not remember. The original opening, it was a lot longer. The familiar version gets Will from West Philadelphia to Bel Air very fast. The extended version keeps going. His mother packs his suitcase, it gets his ticket, puts on his walkman, flies first class, wonders what people in Bel Air will be like, encounters a man waiting for him at the airport, and only then gets into that famous cab.

2:05The extended sequence appeared at the beginning of the series before the opening was cut down for TV time. And that's why some people could sing every word of the Fresh Prince theme and still discover that there's an entire verse or more that they've barely ever heard. The version most of us remember preserved the pieces the battered most. West Philadelphia born and raised. The flight, his mother's decision, the cab with the fresh license plate, and finally the arrival in Bel Air. And what disappeared was most of the journey between those two joints. And the song it did something television themes rarely a time to do. It didn't merely introduce the characters or establish a mood. It handled the exposition. The premise of the pilot and the premise described in the opening credits are essentially the same story. That means that the series could begin with Will arriving at the bank's home and get on with what happened next right away.

3:05That's huge because what followed became much larger than the original joke about a streetwise Philadelphia kid living with his rich relatives. The series could be broad and ridiculous, but over six seasons it also dealt with family, class, race, apps and parents, relationships and growing up. Will Smith arrived to the successful rapper, learning how to act on TV. And he left the series in 1996 as a performer whose next chapter was already becoming a major film career. Every week audiences were taken all the way back to the beginning. A playground, one little fight, a frightened mom and a trip all the way across the country and a cat pulling up to a house around seven or eight, more than three decades later, you could say those first few words. Now this is a story all about how my life got flipped turned upside down.

4:05And I'd like to take a minute just to sit right there and tell you I became the prince of a you know how to finish it out and millions of people already know what comes next. The funny part is that some of them just have never heard the whole story. These are interesting things with JC.