''The Wayans Bros.'' is an American

sitcom A sitcom, a portmanteau of situation comedy, or situational comedy, is a genre of comedy centered on a fixed set of characters who mostly carry over from episode to episode. Sitcoms can be contrasted with sketch comedy, where a troupe may use ...

television series that aired on

The WB The WB Television Network (for Warner Bros., or the "Frog Network", for its former mascot, Michigan J. Frog) was an American television network launched on broadcast television on January 11, 1995, as a joint venture between the Warner Bros. ...

from January 11, 1995, to May 20, 1999. The series starred real life brothers

Shawn Shawn may refer to: *Shawn (given name) *Shawn (surname) See also * Sean * Shaun Shaun is an anglicized spelling of the Irish name Seán. Alternative spellings include Shawn, Sean and Shawne. Notable persons with the given name include: Peo ...

and

Marlon Wayans Marlon Lamont Wayans (born July 23, 1972) is an American actor, comedian, writer, and producer. Wayans began his career portraying a pedestrian in '' I'm Gonna Git You Sucka'' (1988). He went on to regularly collaborate with his brother Shawn W ...

. The series also starred

John Witherspoon John Witherspoon (February 5, 1723 – November 15, 1794) was a Scottish-American Presbyterian minister, educator, farmer, slaveholder, and a Founding Father of the United States. Witherspoon embraced the concepts of Scottish common sense real ...

and

Anna Maria Horsford Anna Maria Horsford is an American actress, known for her performances in television comedies. Horsford is best known for her roles as Thelma Frye on the NBC sitcom ''Amen'' (1986–91), and as Dee Baxter on the WB sitcom '' The Wayans Bros.'' ( ...

(season 2 onward).

Premise

Shawn and Marlon Williams (

Shawn Wayans Shawn Mathis Wayans (born January 19, 1971) is an American actor, comedian, writer, and producer. Along with his brother Marlon Wayans, he wrote and starred in The WB's sitcom ''The Wayans Bros.''(1995–1999) and in the comedy films '' Don't Be a ...

and

) are brothers who live in an apartment on 117th street in

Harlem Harlem is a neighborhood in Upper Manhattan, New York City. It is bounded roughly by the Hudson River on the west; the Harlem River and 155th Street on the north; Fifth Avenue on the east; and Central Park North on the south. The greater Ha ...

. Shawn owns a local newsstand, where he and his brother Marlon work on a daily basis. In the show's second season (in 1995), the newsstand and Pops' Joint, the restaurant owned by their father, John "Pops" Williams (

) were moved downtown into the fictional Neidermeyer Building, in

Rockefeller Center Rockefeller Center is a large complex consisting of 19 commercial buildings covering between 48th Street and 51st Street in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. The 14 original Art Deco buildings, commissioned by the Rockefeller family, span th ...

, where Dee Baxter (

(onwards from Season 2) works as a security guard.

Season 2 transitions

Many transitions were made in season 2: * Shawn's former girlfriend, Lisa Saunders (

Lela Rochon Lela Rochon Staples (born April 17, 1964) is an American actress, best known for her starring role as Robin Stokes in the 1995 romantic drama film ''Waiting to Exhale''. She also had notable roles in the films ''Harlem Nights'' (1989), ''Boomerang ...

), did not return for the rest of the series. * Monique ( Paula Jai Parker), a local shopkeeper and Marlon's love interest, did not return after the eleventh episode. Parker first appeared as a love interest of Marlon's in the Season 1 episode "Pulp Marlon". She was only a guest star for the one episode. * Lou ( Jill Tasker), the former security guard, left after the seventh episode and was replaced by Dee Baxter (

). * White Mike (

Mitch Mullany Mitchell Paul Mullany (September 20, 1968 – May 25, 2008) was an American stand-up comedian, actor, screenwriter, and author. Mullany was best known for his portrayal of White Mike in the 1990s comedy sitcom '' The Wayans Bros'' and as Nick Fr ...

), Shawn and Marlon's ghetto white neighbour, appeared for six episodes of Season 2. He was slated to appear as a recurring character for the rest of the series. But the actor Mitch Mullany ended up getting his own show '' Nick Freno: Licensed Teacher''. * Shawn formerly worked for APS, yet in Season 2, he works at his newsstand. * Marlon was working with Pops at the diner, but in Season 2, he worked at the newsstand with Shawn. * Pops' Joint was a standalone restaurant, and he hired Marlon and Benny, the cook, during Season 1. However, in Season 2, the eatery was moved into the Neidermeyer Building, in

. It also revealed that Pops' Joint was a historical landmark for the nation's leaders and activists of the

Civil Rights Movement The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement throughout the Unite ...

Cast

Main

as Shawn Williams, a womanizing, stylish and responsible young bachelor and Marlon's older brother. He is an owner of his own local newsstand. *

as Marlon Williams, Shawn's dimwitted, immature, sex crazed, unsanitary and lazy younger brother who also works at the newsstand *

as John "Pops" Williams, Shawn and Marlon's dysfunctional tacky father who owns his locally famed diner right by Shawn and Marlon's newsstand *

as Deirdre "Dee" Baxter (seasons 2–5), the tough security guard and Shawn, Marlon and Pops' close friend *

as Lisa Saunders (season 1) * Paula Jai Parker as Monique (season 2, episodes 1–11) * Jill Tasker as Lou Malino (season 2, episodes 1–7)

Recurring

Phill Lewis Phillip David Lewis (born February 14, 1968) is an American actor, comedian and director who is best known for his role as hotel manager Mr. Moseby on the Disney Channel series ''The Suite Life of Zack & Cody'' and its spin-off, ''The Suite Lif ...

as Thelonious "T.C." Capricornio (seasons 2–5) *

as White Mike (season 2) *

Ja'Net DuBois Jeannette Theresa Dubois (August 5 – February 17, 2020), known professionally as Ja'Net DuBois, Ja'net DuBois, and Ja'Net Du Bois (), was an American actress and singer. She was best known for her portrayal of Willona Woods, the neighborhood g ...

as Grandma Ellington (seasons 3–4) * Jermaine 'Huggy' Hopkins as Dupree (seasons 3–5)

Episodes

Production

''The Wayans Bros.'' was the first of the four sitcoms that aired as part of the original Wednesday night two hour lineup that helped launch the network (along with ''

Unhappily Ever After ''Unhappily Ever After'' is an American sitcom television series that aired for 100 episodes on The WB from January 11, 1995, to May 23, 1999, for a total of five seasons. The series was produced by Touchstone Television. Synopsis The series fo ...

'', ''

The Parent 'Hood ''The Parent 'Hood'' is an American sitcom television series that aired on The WB from January 18, 1995, to July 25, 1999. The series starred Robert Townsend and Suzzanne Douglas. Originally to be titled ''Father Knows Nothing'' (a parody of t ...

'' and the short-lived ''

Muscle Skeletal muscles (commonly referred to as muscles) are organs of the vertebrate muscular system and typically are attached by tendons to bones of a skeleton. The muscle cells of skeletal muscles are much longer than in the other types of mus ...

''). While in development, the series' working title was initially supposed to have been ''Brother to Brother'', before the name of the series changed to ''The Wayans Bros.'' In the show's second season, in 1995 Pops' Joint (the restaurant owned by Shawn and Marlon's father, John "Pops" Williams) was moved into the Neidermeyer Building, where the location was changed from Harlem to Rockefeller Center, Manhattan. The series was cancelled in 1999 due to declining ratings and was not given a proper finale. While the series at least did not end on a

cliffhanger A cliffhanger or cliffhanger ending is a plot device in fiction which features a main character in a precarious or difficult dilemma or confronted with a shocking revelation at the end of an episode or a film of serialized fiction. A cliffhang ...

ending, in the film ''

Scary Movie ''Scary Movie'' is a 2000 American slasher parody film directed by Keenen Ivory Wayans and written by Marlon and Shawn Wayans (who both also star), alongside Buddy Johnson, Phil Beauman, Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer. Starring Anna Far ...

'' (2000), Shawn Wayans' character says: "And ''The Wayans Bros''. was a good show, man. It was a good-ass show, and we didn't even get a final episode."

Theme music and opening sequence

The show's official opening title began with Shawn and Marlon on the steps of a brownstone apartment building, donning afros and wearing 1970s preppy attire, moving in rhythm to an accompanying

satirical Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of shaming or ...

music piece that's supposed to have a 1970s style "urban" sitcom theme song feel. Marlon forcefully smacks the camera, and then segues into "the real opening" of ''The Wayans Bros.'' The scene then cuts to them with their normal clothes and trying to help an old woman who gets hit by a bus. The camera then shows the brothers inside the bus with the title of the show underneath them. The "second half" part of ''The Wayans Bros.'' theme song was changed twice throughout its four-year run (

1995 File:1995 Events Collage V2.png, From left, clockwise: O.J. Simpson is acquitted of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman from the year prior in "The Trial of the Century" in the United States; The Great Hanshin earthquake str ...

–

1999 File:1999 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The funeral procession of King Hussein of Jordan in Amman; the 1999 İzmit earthquake kills over 17,000 people in Turkey; the Columbine High School massacre, one of the first major school shoot ...

). In the first two seasons, the show's theme song was

A Tribe Called Quest A Tribe Called Quest was an American hip hop group formed in Queens, New York City, in 1985,Q-Tip

's "

Electric Relaxation "Electric Relaxation" is the second single from A Tribe Called Quest's third album ''Midnight Marauders''. It contains a sample of the song " Mystic Brew" by jazz organist Ronnie Foster. The track was featured as the opening theme song for The WB ...

". In the third season, the theme song changed to a four-second hip hop beat. In the final two seasons, the show's theme song was changed again to a regular hip hop instrumental beat (which was produced by the Wayans Bros. &

Omar Epps Omar Hashim Epps (born July 20, 1973) is an American actor, rapper, and producer. He has been awarded nine NAACP Image Awards, two Teen Choice Awards, one MTV Movie Award, one Black Reel Award, and one Screen Actors Guild Award. Epps's film r ...

). In Brazilian reruns of seasons one and two episodes that have aired in

SBT sbt is an open-source build tool for Scala and Java projects, similar to Apache's Maven and Gradle. Its main features are: *Native support for compiling Scala code and integrating with many Scala test frameworks *Continuous compilation, te ...

in 2015, this version replaced the seasons one and two sequence with the season three sequence.

Syndication

Warner Bros. Domestic Television Distribution Warner Bros. Television Studios (operating under the name Warner Bros. Television; formerly known as Warner Bros. Television Division) is an American television production and distribution studio of the Warner Bros. Television Group division of ...

handles syndication distribution of the series. In September 1999, after the series was cancelled by The WB, the series began airing in off network syndication nationwide. At that same time,

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...

based national cable

superstation ''Superstation'' (alternatively rendered as "super station" or informally as "SuperStation") is a term in North American broadcasting that has several meanings. Commonly, a "superstation" is a form of distant signal, a broadcast television sign ...

WGN began airing reruns of the series, airing the series until 2002 (when its broadcast syndication run also ended); WGN (both the local Chicago feed and the national superstation feed) aired ''The Wayans Bros.'' in first run form from 1995 to 1999, when WGN (whose local Chicago feed was an affiliate of the network) carried WB programming nationally to make The WB available to markets where a local affiliate did not exist (''The Wayans Bros.'' is one of three WB series to have aired on WGN in both first run and syndication form; ''

'', '' 7th Heaven'' and '' Sister, Sister'' being the others). In 2006, reruns began airing on

BET Black Entertainment Television (acronym BET) is an American basic cable channel targeting African-American audiences. It is owned by the CBS Entertainment Group unit of Paramount Global via BET Networks and has offices in New York City, Los ...

, after a four-year absence, where it ran until 2007. In 2007, reruns of the series aired on

Ion Television Ion Television is an American broadcast television network owned by the Katz Broadcasting subsidiary of the E. W. Scripps Company. The network first began broadcasting on August 31, 1998, as Pax TV, focusing primarily on family-oriented en ...

, where it ran until 2008. Since then, several Viacom networks, including

MTV2 MTV2 (formerly M2) is an American pay television channel owned by the Paramount Media Networks division of Paramount Global. The channel launched initially as an all-music video service, once the original MTV had started to shift its programm ...

, VH1 and

BET Her BET Her (formerly Centric) is an American basic cable television network owned by Paramount Media Networks. The network is a spin-off of BET with a focus on general entertainment targeting African-American women. The channel originally launched ...

have run the series in continuous rotation. As of 2021 all five seasons of the show air on

HBO Max HBO Max is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. Launched in the United States on May 27, 2020, the service is built around the libraries of HBO, Warner Bros., Cartoon Ne ...

and

BET+ A bet is a gambling wager. Bet or BET may also refer to: Arts and entertainment * Bet Lynch, a fictional character from the British ITV soap opera ''Coronation Street'' * Elizabeth "Bet" Yeager, protagonist of '' Rimrunners'', a science fiction ...

Home media

Warner Home Video Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Inc. (formerly known as Warner Home Video and WCI Home Video and sometimes credited as Warner Home Entertainment) is the home video distribution division of Warner Bros. It was founded in 1978 as WCI Home Vide ...

released Season 1 of ''The Wayans Bros.'' on DVD in Region 1.

Warner Archive The Warner Archive Collection is a home video division for releasing classic and cult films from Warner Bros.' library. It started as a manufactured-on-demand (MOD) DVD series by Warner Bros. Home Entertainment on March 23, 2009, with the inten ...

subsequently released Seasons 2 to 5 on DVD in Region 1.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Wayans Bros., The 1990s American black sitcoms 1990s American sitcoms 1995 American television series debuts 1999 American television series endings English-language television shows Hip hop television Television series by Warner Bros. Television Studios Television shows set in New York City Television series about brothers The WB original programming