10. The Vegas Dance Competition - Viva Lost Wages
In the 6th and final season Will and Carlton go to Vegas for Carlton's 21st birthday and poor naive Carlton becomes addicted to gambling. He loses all their money and even pawned their plane tickets home. Will decides to enter them into a dance competition to recoup their losses. A lot of the better episodes drew strength from the natural chemistry between Smith and Ribeiro, and this is a fine example of that chemistry. Smith garnered a lot of laughs from his gangly, naturally comedic frame in the early years of his career, and his physicality worked splendidly for him here, as he bodypopped away with the stockier Carlton doing the hustle alongside him. The clip here works fantastically as a slapstick farce, especially as the two actors pl ay it completely deadpan. Ribeiro was always underrated as a straight-man comic foil, and moments like this remind us just how good at it he was. The late seasons of The Fresh Prince definitely began to show some signs of becoming tired as Aunt Viv was mysteriously replaced from Janet Hubert-Whitten to Daphne Maxwell Reid and the new addition of 'Little Nicky' seemed to be a desperate attempt to revive the flatlining show which ultimately ended up cursing it, much like The Cosby Show before it. However, there were still trademark gems that couldn't fail to raise a laugh and this certainly was one of them.
Barry Marshall
Contributor
I am a freelance writer, currently residing in Newcastle Upon Tyne, England. I was raised by wolves in the woodlands of Northumberland, but am still posher than Colin Firth having dinner with The Queen. I write all of my pieces by swallowing a cocktail of scrabble tiles and vodka, then regurgitating them over my jotter. Hope this explains the typos.
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