YES, URKEL STILL LIVES

By GINIA BELLAFANTE

If a tree falls in the forest and no one in the media pays attention, did the tree really make a sound? This, roughly put, is the dilemma posed by Walker, Texas Ranger, the square-jawed CBS detective show that stars Chuck Norris. You are unlikely to find much about Walker in the pages of ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY or any other bible of what is, and isn't, hot. And yet, as sure as there are 10-gallon hats filling the Lone Star State, there are Americans forfeiting a good time out on Saturday night to stay in and catch another not very nuanced performance by the anachronistically masculine Norris. Now in its fifth season, Walker is regularly ranked among the nation's 20 most popular shows, and last week it drew more viewers than the much higher-profile NYPD Blue or Frasier. Conspiracy-minded fans of The X-Files, Fox's mercilessly hyped ode to paranoia, might want to note that each week Walker claims about 2.5 million more viewers than their show. Is there a reason that Walker gets no respect?

The show belongs to a breed of prime-time series that pumps along year after year without the benefit of buzz, or even hum. Like a Kraft casserole your in-laws just won't stop serving, Fox has offered up the tasteless Married...with Children for close to 10 years now. Meanwhile, even though the media stopped paying attention back when the cast was taking its PSATs, the kids on Fox's Beverly Hills 90210 have been slogging--in real time--through high school and four years of college. ABC's Family Matters and its alien-voiced, freak man-child Steve Urkel have been with us for eight seasons--and yet the show remains the highest rated in its time period. The same network's Coach (on hiatus until midwinter) is in its ninth season with a star, Craig T. Nelson, who isn't even as charismatic and with-it as Steve Guttenberg. NBC's competent Wings has maintained a loyal following for six years, but even people who use the phrase Must-See TV without irony would be hard-pressed to name Wings' stars.

Why have these series managed to last through a couple of presidential administrations while shows like Fox's Lush Life--just as appallingly written as Married...with Children--disappear after just two episodes? Closer inspection reveals that most long-running shows offer entertainments utterly unlike the majority of dramas and comedies on television. On no other cop show but Walker, for instance, does the fight between good and evil get so primal as to involve face-offs between man and grizzly bear in the Utah mountains. Moreover, while most sitcoms in the '90s strive for some semblance of urbanity, Married...with Children has worked hard at maintaining a level of crassness unparalleled in prime time. Where else on TV will a character awaken from a coma thanks to a whiff of smelly feet?

Family Matters is a more clean-cut comedy but is, in its own way, equally outre. Steve Urkel, the Winslow family's gadget-obsessed neighbor, has grown from prepubescence to college age on the show but still dresses and talks like a four-year-old. Watching Urkel--played by the twentysomething and seemingly 6-ft.-tall Jaleel White--comport himself as though he should be in a play group is more disconcerting than anything that ever went on in The Twilight Zone.

For the writers who work on longevity-blessed series, the most difficult part of the job is coming up with plot lines that haven't been done before. "The show is always a work in progress," notes Michael Warren, executive producer of Family Matters. "It's a real challenge to keep the writers and actors excited." Warren and others like him also face the frustration of toiling away for series that reap little glory. "We opened up Must-See TV on Tuesday nights," laments Wings' executive producer Mark Reisman. "At the end of this season we will have 175 episodes--that's a lot. But this show didn't create a lot of buzz in the beginning, and that just stuck. This is a happy set too, so it doesn't generate the press some other shows get for the wrong reasons. We are victims of normalcy." But at least not victims of cancellation.