SFK

The studio's when Krystle confronts her about causing her miscarriage (the gunshot when the horse dragged her) so I guess yes. But the "empty-armed Madonna" line is definitely at the lily pond.

Did they ever have any plans to put Erika Alexander on ADW? I liked her a lot on The Cosby Show, although I know some didn't. She seemed like she might have fit in on ADW.

At least she got to play that hilarious role on Living Single.

I'm guessing she and TPTB were uninterested in that, of course we got Charmaine instead. But I also think that coming off of TCS, there wasn't really room for her on ADW, she would have been expected to have a pretty large role on the show and we already had Whitley, Jaleesa, Kim, Freddie, I don't know if Pam would have been bunched with all of those other new generation girls like Lena and Gina who got the supporting stuff.

Okay, another favorite episode is when Jasmine Guy played the dual role of her buck-toothed cousin. I always crack the bleep up when Ron says affectionately to her, "Oh Bucky... "

Gosh, Bumper Robinson was in so much stuff during the '80s. I didn't really like Dorian. Wasn't he very religious or something? That's not why I didn't like him, I'm a church boy myself, but I found his character a little annoying, something about his line delivery. Felt the same way when he was on Amen. Going OT for a split second, but when he was still a kid, he was in this TV movie we watched one Sunday night, it was about freed slaves. I don't remember much about it, but I remember that when he and his family were at some white family's house he was offered some food on a tray and when he went to reach for it the bratty little bitch daughter shrieked, "Gitchore dirty black hands off! " That has stuck with me all these years. And at the end of the movie, he and his family were trying to board an all white train or something so they could make it up north (? details foggy) and their white charge made them all up in white foundation so they could "pass". This was before Phil Morris on Y&R and Ingrid Rogers on AMC.

I think it's the whole idea of the women fighting in the water which gets notice. The studio fight was very, very good. Made even better because of the horrible remark Alexis made to her right before the fight, the one about the "fallen madonna," I can't remember the rest. Joan Collins was so charismatic you almost forgot what a nasty person Alexis could be. It's too bad Krystal became so dull and narcotized. I did like that at the end of that, she punched Alexis. Even today there's often this idea that women only slap each other.

You beat me to it, I was just going to say it was totally the water element, not unlike the mud wrestling catfight that came later. Of course both women were far too clothed for it to be that erotic. But also at the lily pond, Alexis was wearing one of her iconic black and white w/picture hat ensembles, so visually it's the video time capsule example.

Perhaps she had a Madonna line in the studio too, but Alexis calls Krystle "the empty-armed Madonna" at the lily pond.

But the studio fight is the one that'll make women cheer and shout "Go 'head Krystle!" because she just wore Alexis' tail out. "If you want a rematch, just whistle. If you can."

I went to college and shared dorms/on-campus apartments with people in their thirties, I get it and think it all depends on where you are mentally/emotioanlly in life, but yeah, Jaleesa always seemed like the type who was "over it." So did Whitley for that matter, from like day one. Whitley reminds me more of my friends who lived off-campus but of course she had a family connection to the school and her dorm in particular.

Yes indeed, she was the professor when Tisha Arnold's character revealed in a class assignment that she was HIV+ (and Gina quickly added that she was gonna request a room change as Tisha's character lived on her floor... the audience responded accordingly).

Yeah, I love that Jenifer Lewis, please tell me someone here has seen Jackie's Back! I read Susan Fales-Hill's (ADW's EP, and daughter of Josephine Premice) autobio and she and Whoopi pitched a sitcom pilot about a fading black diva. They pegged Jenifer Lewis for the lead. Of course Susan had worked with Jenifer on ADW and Whoopi had worked with her in the Sister Act films. Well, whatever IIC shot down the idea and in her book Susan recalls a conference call where execs were like, "See, when we think of 'divas' we think of someone like Bette Midler..." They totally shot down the idea, they just would not go for the idea of a sitcom about a black diva, the kind who Whoopi and Susan knew all their lives, the kind who BIRTHED and RAISED Susan. Anyway... Jenifer got to play it out in Jackie's Back!

Did you guys know that Cree Summer was the voice of Penny in Inspector Gadget and Elmira in Tiny Toons? I still hear her all the time doing commercial voiceovers.

I loved the scenes between Freddie and Whitley on Whitley's wedding day. Those two could never be friends, and mainly just tolerated each other, but you could tell deep down there was some mutual respect and understanding there. That scene was so tender, and the way Freddie told Whitley, "You look beautiful, my sister."

I liked Freddie but didn't care for her when she tamed the hair to go all professional lawyer (Message! [/Keenen Ivory Wayans]) and got with Ron. Didn't like her with Ron at all. Actually, she lost her V to Ron during the storm in the radio station, as a matter of fact I think people "heard" because he'd left the mic on.

Gina: Oh win da sainnnnts, Go marchin' eeeenn, Go marchin' eeeenn, Not OUT but eeeenn, oh right on eeeenn!!

And of course there was the episode where her boyfriend beat her ass. There were lots of "Very Special" episodes.

Lena was rather strident. She was never my favorite, though I love this fake laugh take she does when Ron is giving a group of folks some dozens, "Yo momma so dumb, she sold the car for gas money!"

Y&R, I totally remember that Mammy episode, I can't remember who it was who was setting all of those glass Mammy figurines out though, was it Nettie? They were "celebrating" their cultural heritage in America or something, I dunno, if memory serves they were trying too hard to sell folks on the idea that the Mammy memorabilia was okay when it's perfectly legitimate to take issue with that stuff.

Remember that hilarious episode where she started singing at a local club and became this horrific diva?

This is one of my and my friends' favorite episodes!

Whitley: Look at Kim lookin' like Millie Jackson!

Kim: Sha-ka-ka-ka-KA-KA!

Freddie:

I didnt mind because they had to keep the focus on Hillman, but the new characters sucked and the show just began to push this anti white, pro black agenda that also think turned alot of people off.

I dunno, I think the show was always very good at taking characters down a notch when they got too extreme, like Carl's earlier example with Shazza. Even the racism ep I mentioned earlier tried to be fair and balanced, I mean, the black boys weren't racist like the white boys were which automatically gave them the leg up in the ep, but the show pointed out how Ron's ethnic jokes for example (white men being bad at sports) inflamed the situation. And having Ernie Sabella's character, the good ol' southern sheriff, married to a black woman only further drove home the point that young black males can't automatically assume that the white man is out to get them, that the actions of the authorities can in fact be motivated by the law and not personal prejudices.

I liked Jaleesa, but that relationship was very random and not ever developed. I do think they probably should have written her off, which is a shame, because I thought she added a lot to the show, she was a very strong presence. I think she was by far the best thing about the show's first season, along with the various house mothers, Stevie, and the woman Mary Alice played.

I think she was just supposed to be offcamera, still married to Col. Taylor and raising their son (?), in the last season.

Yeah, didn't she have the baby during a snow storm or something? A hurricane? Was it the episode where they had to plug the hole at The Pit with Whitley's coat? Terrence was so painfully geeky, oh my gahhd, that little rat tail on the back of his head.

Ah yes, Mary Alice, Nettie and her obligatory snood. I really liked Walter (Sinbad), I liked his own sitcom too as a matter of fact, and I'll try to forget that Ray-J was on it. I can't stand that guy.

Wow, Phylicia was really buff then! I love the disco atmosphere, I think that music still works so well today.

Did Debbie or Phyl have anything with the Josephine TV movie Lynn Whitfield was in? I watched that over and over when it first aired, her performance hooked me.

Thanks for the Showtime at Hillman clip. I wish they had stopped acting like Whitney couldn't sing, Jasmine Guy had a great voice.

I loved Kim, but her performance of my favorite Natalie Cole song would probably make me do the hand-waving get off the stage motion if I'd been there...

I don't think they had anything to do with the HBO Josephine Baker movie which my family also loved, but why can I totally imagine Phyl being a little perturbed that she wasn't cast? Okay, maybe not though because apparently she's not too keen on people bringing up that disco album. EricMontreal could chime in on that.

And LMAO @you doing the Appollo get off the stage hand wave! Those kids are so creepy the way they're looking at her.

Alisa Gyse (Kinu) played Deena, the Sheryl Lee Ralph (okay, and Beyonce ) role in the big '87 revival of Dreamgirls. I'm sure that's what lead to her casting on ADW. Of course Loretta Devine was in the first season of ADW, and she was in the original Broadway production (Lorell).

Jasmine Guy has aged terribly...

Yeah, I think she has Lupus (?) or something.

Was anyone else annoyed by how they threw Jaleesa and Col. Taylor together? That relationship was so forced, the character of Jaleesa should have just disappeared after Season 3 when she graduated.

I thought Jaleesa was annoying on gp, I guess what I'm really saying is that I find DWTN (Dawnn with two n's) Lewis annoying. I never really cared for her and two annoying points for me in particular are her awful stuffed up nose voice when Jaleesa has the flu in one ep, and her rendition of The National Anthem in the racial Roshomon ep.

...the HIV episode with Whoopie Goldberg and Tisha Campbell.

The moment she read that part in her obituary made my stomach sink to the floor, there were so many dramatic AIDS-related moments like that on TV when I was growing up. It's weird because at that point I think I only knew Tisha from Little Shop, not sure if she'd done School Daze yet.

I have some memory of an episode where Miles talked about riding a dolphin with a gorgeous man...I think I would have preferred that to Corky/Miles...

That was a hilarious episode. I think that's the same one where they're trying to figure out if their new co-worker is gay and Corky says they can find out by telling him that there's something on his shoe. If he lifts his foot in front of him, he's straight, if he goes like *this* (raises hands and kicks pointed toe behind him looking over shoulder), he's gay.

One thing that I loved in particular about ADW and TCS was their use of New York theatre actors. For TCS, that was the audition pool as it taped in New York, but Debbie Allen had had a Broadway career of her own and she continued the TCS tradition by often recruiting talented NY theatre personalities like Anita Morris, Alisa Gyse, Jenifer Lewis, Roscoe Lee Brown, and the mother of ADW's executibe producer Susan Fales-Hill, the late great Josephine Premice. I caught an ep the other week where they did a talent show and Whitley performed a Josephine Baker number "J'ai Deux Amours" that Debbie is credited as choreographing in the credits. I couldn't help but see the additional connection as her sister Phylicia Rashad released a Joephine Baker disco album back in the '70s where she covered that song.

Whitley around the 6:00 mark (embedding disabled by request): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orTj3s-9tNk

Phyl:

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Oh my God, my avatar is so next level with that blaring!

I think that's one of the things which still stands out when you watch the show now, they had a lot of strong black characters and a strong black couple. You don't see that on most shows. At the time it was a little more commonplace but already just about done by the time ADW was winding down. These days, good luck finding that anywhere on network TV.

And people may kind of when Debbie Allen says it, but I think she's right that ADW made going to college "in" for a lot of young black people who hadn't seen it in their future. She has data that kind of supports this. The show made the culture of predominantly black schools known on a national level and a lot of people were drawn to that, as well as the promise of becoming educated professionals with a step ahead.

I don't think it was about ratings losses so much as The Simpsons airing against what had been a big show and managing to eke out some success of its own, and being seen as fresh compared to the stale Cosby Show. Bill Cosby chose to the end show, didn't he? That may have played some part.

I wonder if the ratings went down because people knew it was the last season. A lot of people got tired of Murphy Brown, Mad About You, and Roseanne some years before they went off, but their ratings didn't crash until their last seasons, when people knew the show was ending.

I don't know what exactly accounted for it, schedule change/I got into another show, but I know that Murphy went from weekly must-see TV to me barely seeing a full ep during the final season. I remember the ep where cancer-stricken Murphy had insomnia or something and was up all night with Lily Tomlin's character on the phone as Murphy frantically baked in the kitchen (???), but I did not care for Tomlin's character, I really enjoyed Miles Silverberg. I didn't really mind it actually, but I know that a LOT of people took issue with the final fantasy season of Roseanne. Yes, it got REALLY silly sometimes, but wow, what a downer of an ending. Geesh. Never watched MAY.

I hate it when I get in on a thread like this late. SO much to comment on, don't know where to start.

DOH, my bad, "The Vintage Years", confusing it with Y&R. Yeah, I watched about half of it, and LOL @Dorcas, yup, just how it looks, as in Malorcas.

I don't know why they decided to put La Wyman in a wig, and I'm surprised she even went along with it. Rarely do you see PTB trying to age women on TV, especially ones who are already beyond "a certain age". My how times have changed. Kinda like the grey streaks they put in Stephanie Beacham's hair on "The Colbys".

Wow, I can't believe I've totally forgotten about it, that's what happens when you're spoiled out of the blue with just loads of classic TV, but does AOL still have its video channel? They were airing Falcon Crest, complete with the The Innocent Years pilot with Angela in the white wig, Richard as her son played by Duncan from ATWT, Clu Gulagher as Chase, Samantha Eggar as Maggie, Julia here called Dorcas (LOVE that).

I swear I remember a scene on AMC where Edmund and Maria were about to bone and the camera went out wide and out of focus and Eva La Rue was nude.