Comments on: I, Fresh Prince

Question: I, Fresh Prince

Falconetti — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 06:30:22 -0800

I noticed last night that many of the final episodes of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air have strange titles and I was wondering if anyone knew why. Many of the episodes in the sixth and final season begin with the word "I" and then are followed by sometimes nonsensical phrases or words.

The episodes titles I am talking about can be viewed here, the Wikipedia page for all Fresh Prince episodes. You have to scroll down a bit, but once you do, you will see there are episodes with titles like "I, Stank Horse" and "I, Stank Hole in One." The titles are somewhat related to the content of the episode and sometimes there is an obvious pun (like "I, Clownius" being a pun of "I, Claudius"), but otherwise I feel like I don't quite get what is going on. Is it something obvious I am missing?

By: zachxman

zachxman — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 07:23:27 -0800

I really want this to be a pun off of Will Smith's lead in the movie I, Robot, but it seems that this is anachronistic by about 8 years... they couldn't have known that he would do this when filming the last (1996) season, could they?

By: skylar

skylar — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 07:46:19 -0800

Could it possibly be that Wikipedia is wrong?

By: skylar

skylar — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 07:47:27 -0800

Whoops, no - it's corroborated by two other sources (TV.com and Epguides.com). Sorry!

By: iwhitney

iwhitney — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 07:53:25 -0800

I've noticed that TV show titles frequently tend to be one or more of the following:

In-jokes
Puns
Long-running in-jokes that are also puns

For example, a whole section of NewsRadio episodes were named after Led Zepplin albums. One was even called "Led Zepplin Boxed Set." Why? Who knows.

Since episode titles are rarely seen by the audience, naming them is both pointless and a fun way to sneak in random jokes. Hence, "I, Stank hole in one".

By: canoehead

canoehead — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 08:09:07 -0800

Rastafarians say "I" a lot , could it have something to do with that?

By: cortex

cortex — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 10:10:23 -0800

Given the relative fame of Graves' I, Claudius (and Asimov's later I, Robot riff on same) as titles, culture-reference-as-running-joke sure seems like the best bet. There's a short list of I, Claudius riffs on Wikipedia.

It's going to be hard to get past speculation here without getting ahold of someone from the late series writing/production staff for the show. If you're feeling saucy, you might hit imdb and check the production credits and go from there.

By: kindall

kindall — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 10:13:51 -0800

Yeah, when that show was originally on the air, there were no PVRs, so titles were basically never seen by audiences. The writers still had to have a name for each episode but could feel free to be as silly as they wanted.

By: WCityMike

WCityMike — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 12:02:39 -0800

Looking at the titles, it looks like two are probably from pop songs: "Ooh, Baby, Baby" and "Whoops There It Is".

Doing a Google search for "Stank Horse" without "Fresh Prince" suggests that In Living Color did a sketch in which a character (the very femme movie reviewers) said, "Consumer alert! The film 'Black Stallion' is not about Denzel Washington. It's about some stank horse." It looks to be roughly contemporary. Can't figure out the next one ("Stank Hole in One") but since they're connected, it probably is an in-joke.

Really reaching, but "Not, I Barbecue" sounds like "Naughty Barbecue", and there is a restaurant in Shanghai by that name.

By: winna

winna — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 01:25:02 -0800

Men on Film IV at 2:50 seconds.