- “He's got my vote!”
- —Robertson's final words before his death
Judge Carl Robertson is an antagonist in The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air, serving as the main antagonist of Season 3. He is portrayed by the late Sherman Hemsley.
Character[]
Carl Robertson is the former mentor of Philip Banks and Banks' rival in competing for the judicial seat. Robertson is corrupt, stingy, misogynistic, cantankerous, accountable, roguish, loquacious, relentless, egotistical, resentful, thoughtless, shrewd, obstinate and callous.
Series arc[]
In "Here Comes the Judge" he revealed that when he was checking out the police files to find any dirt on Philip, he discovered what he thought was Will's enormous parking ticket violation and called the police, making sure Phil would lose the vote. While not appearing in "A Night at the Oprah", it's heard on a news report that he adopted 12 ghetto kids in order to compete with Phillip taking in Will.
In "Asses to Ashes", Carl launches a smear campaign against Philip by claiming he endorses criminals instead of throwing them in jail and ultimately wins the election due to Philip's refusal to fight back. Congratulating Carl on his victory, Carl's arrogant attitude causes Philip and his family to leave as he calls Philip a stooge and the biggest sap who ever lived. Will comes back and defends his uncle on how much more honorable and more of a man he is than Carl and tells the corrupt Judge to "drop dead", which he does from having a fatal heart attack or stroke.
Will feels guilt-ridden about this but to the family's surprise, they find out at the funeral that many of the attendees hated Carl, including:
- A man Carl sentenced to 6 months in jail for a crime he didn't commit and is only attending the funeral to make sure he's dead.
- His Gardener, on whom he called immigration when it was time to pay him.
- His mistress, who doesn't have any good memories of him and recalls the time he asked if her sister would come around.
After hearing what the people said, Will approached the podium and told the people off for bad-mouthing the deceased; when he was asked who he is, Will responded he was the one who killed him, resulting in everybody clapping for him.
Trivia[]
- Hemsley also made two later appearances as George Jefferson (the character he famously portrayed in All in the Family and its' spin-off The Jeffersons).