SNL Recreates the Fresh Prince Intro with a Wicked Twist
If you grew up in the ’90s, chances are you know the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air intro by heart. All it takes is “from West Philadelphia born and raised…” and most of us can take it from there.
But SNL took that iconic theme song in a dark new direction. In this week’s episode, newcomer Chris Redd stars as SNL’s version of Will Smith, and his story takes a dark turn when his “one little fight” leads to the gang from Philadelphia tracking him all the way to Bel-Air and exacting their revenge.
The gang (led by none other than Method Man himself) bursts into the Banks’ home, making short work of Carlton and Uncle Phil. Will narrowly escapes and goes to hide out in a motel to avoid suffering the same fate, only to be met by an FBI agent (Jessica Chastain, this week’s host). The agent tells him to cut off his hair and take out his teeth to help fabricate a convincing enough corpse to throw the Philly gang off his scent … before she sells him to the Japanese mafia.
If you can’t tell, it’s a weird sketch, if for no other reason than the way it culminates in a firefight between Method Man’s crew, the Yakuza, and Uncle Phil wielding a pump-action shotgun. But sometimes weird works for SNL. What initially seemed like a skit based on the easy gag of contrasting the chipper, brightly colored world of 1990s network sitcoms with the harsher realities of the real world takes a left turn into insanity as the sketch goes bigger and darker the longer it goes, without ever losing Smith’s trademark catchy style of narrating these increasingly grisly events.
It’s high-concept work from SNL as the venerable series manages to replicate the look and feel of the Fresh Prince intro while adding these wild and wicked twists to take the sketch to strange, new places. In a show where the weekly turnaround makes it easy to play it safe, strange is good! But Will Smith’s probably glad he didn’t end up in this version of Bel-Air.
