The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air - Season 1

Aunt Vivian tries to mediate between her husband Philip and the newly arrived Will.

Will persuades Ashley to pawn her violin for a drum set.

Will wants to go out with a beautiful girl he meets at the country club, but first he must figure out how to impress her extremely snobbish and very protective father.

Will tries to smooth things between Philip and his very rural parents when they visit to see him receive an award.

Will gets a visit from an old pal named Ice Tray, who, to Vivian and Philip's dismay, warms up to Hilary.

While Philip and Vivian go on a trip to Palm Springs in Mrs. Furth's helicopter, Will and Carlton are paid to drive Mr. Furth's Mercedes-Benz there as well. They get pulled over by a police officer for "stealing" the car. Luckily, Will is able to get Philip and Vivian's attention by making a phony confession on TV and he and Carlton are acquitted, Phillip even going so far as to lambaste the officers on duty for immediately writing the two off as criminals instead of going through the proper procedures. This turns into an argument between Will and Carlton about racial profiling after they get home with Carlton insisting that the justice system is not flawed, but when Philip recounts a similar experience, Carlton thinks it over with himself. Meanwhile, Hilary babysits Ashley and proves to be an unhealthy influence on the young girl when she gives her too much coffee.

The family pressures Will to join an after school club. Following the girls into a poetry class, he spontaneously makes up a poem on the spot to impress them and claims it was written by a reclusive poet named "Raphael de la Ghetto", a name he made up there and then. Impressed, Christina asks to bring him to Poetry Night and after Jazz doesn't come through with an impostor, Will turns to Geoffrey to masquerade.

The family heads to the mall to pick up costumes for Hilary's Halloween party, while Will and Carlton place a bet to see who can find a date for the party. Philip gets held up at a gadget store. Vivian sings in a recording booth, where she receives positive feedback and a large audience standing outside listening to her. When Hilary forgets to take a hat off of Ashley and walks out of the store with it, they are accused of shoplifting. Will and Carlton both spot a woman, Melinda, and run to her, ending the episode on a cliffhanger.

Will and Carlton both try to win Melinda over by making up stories about themselves. Carlton successfully wins her over, much to Will's surprise. Will goes and drowns his sorrows in croissants, where he asks the nerdy waitress, Cindy, out to Hilary's party. Hilary's party starts off great until Carlton's date turns out to be a thief, and the shoplifter Hilary was accused of being.

It is Geoffrey's birthday and Will decides to set him up on a blind date with an English woman named Helen as a gift. Will, thinking she is better for him, figures she will be turned off by his stodgy attitude. However, Geoffrey ends up having a great time with her. Geoffrey also gives Will an insight about prejudging others and that some men view birthdays as a time to reflect on one's life, not party.

Will joins the school basketball team, of which Carlton is already a member. Will becomes the star player of the team, causing Carlton to become jealous and Will to take practices lightly and treat games as forums for tricks. At the peak of his jealousy, Carlton decides to steal the ball from Will and take the game's winning shot, though he misses, costing the team the game. Both Will and Carlton learn their lessons back at the house.

Will's mom, Vy, comes to the Banks household for Thanksgiving. She gets angry that the kids leave all of the work to Geoffrey and criticizes her sister that she wanted Will to be in a safe environment, but not a pampered one. Vivian then decides to make the kids cook Thanksgiving dinner to show how hard other people work to provide for them. Carlton also invites his English teacher to the dinner. However, when the kids make multiple errors, Vy laughs maybe that lesson was not ideal.

In order to get the family car instead of Will, Hilary tells Phil that Will has been disobeying curfew, subcontracting his chores to Ashley and renting out the family car. He is consequently grounded for a month. Will plans revenge; while going to find out where Hilary is shopping, he learns that she dropped out of college three months ago. Will uses this in order to get Hilary to slave for him during his punishment. Hilary tries to get Carlton to go against Will, but instead he blackmails her too. Carlton and Will both have lists of embarrassing tasks that Hilary must do at the dinner table. When this proves too much pressure for Hilary, she admits she dropped out. Her parents have a long talk with her about her path in life, but also come down on Will and Carlton for their blackmail, giving Will another month of confinement. In the end, Will admits to Hilary that he wasn't planning to tell her parents about dropping out of college as he was trying to teach her a lesson about ratting him out, which she gets and learned from it.

Ashley and her friends ask Will to tell a scary story at their slumber party before they go to sleep. Will tells the tale of his first day at Bel-Air Academy and how he carved his name into a desk that the first students of the school carved into.

Will realizes that Ashley has never experienced a real Christmas before (since back in Philadelphia, there would be carolers, lights and neat decorations, while in Bel-Air there are only a few decorations, no carolers, and hardly anything in the Christmas spirit) and goes out of his way to let her have one. He decorates the inside of the house and also the outside with hundreds of lights, decor, and colors; upsetting some of the neighbors, to include Evander Holyfield.

Due to a couple of coincidences, one of Philip's clients, a very superstitious businessman, thinks Will is his good luck charm. He befriends Will, who is allowed to decide on some of his major decisions in the stock market. Will does not seem to mind, especially when given corporate perks, but Philip warns this could take a turn for the worse.

Will proposes a black history class be instituted at Bel-Air Academy, and expects an easy A when Vivian volunteers to teach it. Many of the students enjoy her ways of teaching, except Will and Carlton when she gives them extra homework to do. At the end of the course, Vivian explains that she gave the two extra homework because as the only two black students in class she thought they'd get more from the course. When Will says he has read The Autobiography of Malcolm X, to which Vivian retorts there is more and unless he learns the full history behind the struggle for equal rights, then he all he has done is trivialize it. The show closes with a Malcolm X quote which reads: "Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs for those who prepare for it today."

When Uncle Phil's mother comes for a visit after recovering from a bout with the flu, Will talks her into rebelling against Phil's wishes of taking it easy in order to go to a rap concert.

Jazz asks Will the favor of taking his sister Janet out on a date after she moves into town. Will does so reluctantly, until Jazz introduces the two. Will takes Janet on a date, but learns that she's extremely bossy and has her whole life planned out for the pair already. Janet tells Will what to do, where to go and how to look, and criticizes Will for every little thing. Jazz recommends that if Will doesn't like her he should introduce her to someone else. He does so to Carlton at a club. When Janet displays her rudeness, Carlton sternly tells her he expects his dates to be courteous and respectful to others, which surprisingly causes her and Carlton to become a nice couple.

Geoffrey's old employer Lord Fowler and his daughter Lady Penelope come to the Banks' house for the weekend. Will wants to use the car to go to a Ziggy Marley concert in Nevada, but Philip and Vivian make it conditional on the basis he not cause any trouble while they are hosting their guests. Will is going to have his hands full when Penelope sneaks out to a rough club in L.A. and cavorts with bikers.

One of Vivian's students, Kayla Samuels comes over for dinner and Will tries to impress her but fails. Eventually, Will wins her over and inadvertently starts taking time away from her studies so Vivian tells him to cut back on their relationship so Kayla can have a good future. Vivian winds up lecturing Kayla and revealing things about her own struggles to be successful.

Vivian goes away to Berkeley for the weekend, leaving Hilary in charge. When Will steals the car keys to go to the pool hall, and winds up losing his money and the car to a hustler, Philip must go down to rescue him. There he acts like he's never played pool before and lets the hustlers win. They then play again with Philip's signature cue named Lucille for $100 a ball in which Geoffrey gives to him. He then greatly wins over the hustlers (totalling to $900) and gets the car back. Hilary acts as a tyrant to Carlton and Ashley when she is left in charge.

Will makes a bet that Carlton wouldn't last a weekend in Jazz's neighborhood, Compton, because of the way he is. Carlton takes the bet too far by becoming very thug-like, wearing colorful clothing, shades, and bandanas (like Will), and Will has to find a way to stop him from going to MacArthur Park at night. He then rats on him to the parents, and they go to rescue him before going to the park. At the house, Carlton wins the bet, and the reason he won is because Will cared about him and didn't want him to possibly die at the park that night.

Ashley's birthday is nearing and when the family asks her what she would like for her birthday, she shows them a picture of Little T, the popular teen singer. Hilary knows T's agent so she has him come to Ashley's birthday party to perform a song for her. They hit it off and set up a date for the next day. Will and Carlton disagree with the date, so they decide to follow them on their date. They find out that all the things they heard about him were false and let them continue on with their date. At the house, as Ashley is adjusting her hair, Will thinks back to the time he taught her how to rap and how she is already growing up fast.

Hilary lands a new job as an assistant to an actress, Marissa Redman who turns out to be completely disrespectful. Will surprises Hilary with Jazz in the office and Marissa takes a liking to Will, wanting to bring him to a restaurant opening and threatens Hilary with being fired in order to set up the date. Will agrees, but only if Hilary goes on a date with Jazz. Marissa gets mad at Hilary for not giving someone champagne when Jazz acts up and gets mad at Marissa for talking to Hilary like that. At home, Hilary thanks Jazz by kissing him.