LOS ANGELES: At a press conference for his series Family Matters, Jaleel White had a question of his own for reporters.

"Am I the only person that looks at Kramer and sees myself in so many ways?"

White, who plays the weird, likable Steve Urkel on Family Matters, which moves from ABC to CBS for its ninth season in the fall, later expanded on the similarities between Urkel and the Seinfeld character.

"Both burst into the room," he said. "Both of their dress is completely out of normal society. He does his 'aaaaahhh' thing and I've got to laugh and snort or whatever. If somebody were smart enough, like an Entertainment Weekly (magazine), to parallel both their similarities, you'd go, 'This is the same character, only one is black and one is white.' "

Still, Kramer is treated as one of TV's beloved eccentrics, while Urkel is often reduced to a clown in a show for kids.

That bothers the 20-year-old actor, who has literally grown up on Family Matters. Five feet tall when he first appeared on the series, White is now 5 feet 10 1/2 inches, studying at UCLA and finally out of those tight, high-water pants Urkel favored because "they were giving me a problem, personally."

He talked about playing Elvis Presley on the show, in addition to his roles as Steve's cousin, Myrtle Urkel, and his suave alter ego, Stefan Urquelle. But much of that effort went unnoticed because of where he did it -- in a show that was one of the early building blocks in ABC's "TGIF" lineup of family shows.

"We've gotten the stigma over the years of being a kids' show," White said. "The TGIF motto was supposed to be for families with their kids to sit down, adults and kids alike, to watch the show.

"I don't want to network-bash, but over the years . . . they started putting Winnie the Pooh around us and Dinosaurs and kidlike attractions."

The result, says White, is that "our show is like Frosted Flakes. Adults love 'em and they just don't like to admit they like the darn show. They always come up to me and say, 'Oh, I've got this autograph for my kid.' . . . And sometimes I'm convinced it's for them."

Bronson Pinchot co-starred in Perfect Strangers, one of the first TGIF shows, and one with no children other than his childlike character, Balki. And Pinchot did not see his show as designed for children, either. "I was shocked, I was really freaked out when people said it's for kids. . . . I was like, 'It is?' I didn't know what it really was," he said.

After a while, maybe ABC didn't know, either. But Leslie Moonves, the head of CBS Entertainment, thinks he does.

He's putting his own version of TGIF against ABC's this fall, having taken both Family Matters and Step by Step from ABC, added a new Pinchot series (Meego, about a nanny from outer space) and completed the block with The Gregory Hines Show. There was no grand vision at work here. Moonves said the network did not even think of such a direct assault on ABC until a contractual window made Family Matters available. Even then, he said, "it wasn't decided until the last week of scheduling that we would go with a four-block on Friday nights." And he won't predict how CBS will do, if only because ABC still has Sabrina, The Teenage Witch leading off Fridays, and he considers that strong competition.

Which makes Family Matters, leading CBS Fridays, all the more important.

White admitted that working on the show has lost some of its appeal.

"I fight with (a producer) about getting out to go to UCLA basketball games every Thursday night," he said. "I love my job . . . (but) I don't like to rehearse as much anymore." His contract is over at the end of the coming season, and he has not decided if he will come back.

But the move to CBS may renew his interest. He hopes that, if nothing else, it will remove the kid-show stigma attached in the ABC years. And White said the show still appealed to him when it finally came time to tape.

"Naturally, things get monotonous," he said. "But I really love performing in front of an audience."

Still, growing up on television has had its painful moments. "The first time I did Myrtle, I hated it," he said. "I was probably about 14 years old, and I cried in my dressing room. . . . I thought everybody was going to make fun of me, or whatever, at school."

White's father told the producers there'd be no more Myrtle. But White brought up playing her again when he was 18 or 19. "I had just seen (drag comedy) To Wong Foo with Wesley Snipes and Patrick Swayze; you know, these guys who are considered ultimate hunks. It helped me with my manhood a little bit, and I said let's go ahead and do Myrtle."

And Urkel has made changes, too.

"Last year, nobody noticed but Steve stopped wearing those tight jeans," Whites said. Executive producer David Duclon "came in and said, 'We're going to move to khakis and corduroys and, you know, loosen 'em up a little bit for you.' . . .

"I think we just need to put Steve in some more mature situations," said White. "Ditch the high school sweaters that they used to wear on Happy Days." How mature will it get? "When you do family programming, there are rules to play by," White said. "Hey, I'm a big fan of Seinfeld. I would love to do that stuff. I've got all kinds of idiotic ideas about life. But we have rules to play by, and sometimes you wish you could just get respect for playing by those rules. . . .

"It gets frustrating sometimes when you don't get credit for doing those things, but in one way, though, I am getting credit. The fans are still tuning in. We haven't lost our time slot in eight years."

But would Steve Urkel ever grow up so much, he'll catch up to Stefan Urquelle? "Stefan is always going to be cooler than Steve," White said.

Click here for the Original Copy of This Article