Today, we look at how Dwayne Wayne on A Different World learned about the power of taking a stand while also learning that you should probably be more prepared on what causes you take a stand on.
This is “All the Best Things,” a spotlight on the best TV episodes, movies, albums, etc.
This is a Year of Great TV Episodes, where every day this year, we’ll take a look at great TV episodes. Note that I’m not talking about “Very Special Episodes” or episodes built around gimmicks, but just “normal” episodes of TV shows that are notable only because of how good they are.
All this month, I’ll be spotlighting great Black-centric TV episodes.
A Different World was a spinoff from The Cosby Show that followed Denise Huxtable (Lisa Bonet) to college at Cliff and Claire Huxtable’s alma mater, Hillman College.
Kadeem Hardison played Dwayne Wayne, a nerdy fellow freshman who became friends with Denise but obviously would have liked to be more to her. The issue is that Bonet was kicked off the show after Season 1, so suddenly Hardison was now the co-lead of the show. The other new co’-lead was another original character on the show, Jasmine Guy’s Whitley Gilbert, a Southern girl who came from money who was a bit of a rival to Denise (“frenemy” is probably the most accurate term). The show pivoted in Season 2 to become more of an ensemble show, but the central plot was definitely the somewhat unlikely romance between Dwayne and Whitley (Kadeem Hardison was a charming, good looking guy, so it really shouldn’t have been that surprising of a romance, but he wore GLASSES, you guys! Who would want to date a nerd like that?!)
In 1989’s episode “Radio Free Hillman” in Season 2, Dwayne has a radio show on campus and he hears about a new explicit rap song that has been banned at all of the radio stations in the area. He decides that he will make a statement and play the song. The college then cancels his show over his playing the song. He decides to launch a protest to get his show back.
Rosalind Cash, like a lot of the great Black actors of the 1960s and 1970s, was mostly known for her theater work. She was one of the inaugural members of the Negro Ensemble Company. She did Shakespeare with James Earl Jones, she was all over the place. She broke into film in a big way with her role in The Omega Man, probably still her best known role. However, she did many TV guest spots over the years, and she first appeared on The Cosby Show as one of Denise’s professors at Hillman, but then continued in A Different World as a dean. Her best performance came in “Radio Free Hillman,” where Dean Hughes, while not bending to their demands, has a real dialogue with Dwayne, and I loved when she challengs him on the protest, namely why he chose THIS song to risk his show over. Dwayne is honest, and admits that he didn’t even listen to the song before playing it, and thus he couldn’t really honestly argue that the song was too important NOT to play. He just got caught up in the idea of doing something “edgy.” Hughes is impressed by Dwayne acknowledging this, and she decides to only suspend his show, and she even makes an exception for a tribute special Dwayne had planned for Dr. Martin Luther King (that was part of the reason why Dwayne was so particularly upset at the show getting canceled when it did).
Harsison and Cash were bought excellent, and Guy did a nice job with Whitley getting accidentally caught up in the protest. Debbie Allen, who took control of the show in Season 2 (and really improved the show’s quality) directed the episode, and Jeffrey Duteil wrote it.
Okay, if I’m going to have 309 more of these (and 2 more this month), I could use suggestions, so feel free to email me at brian@poprefs.com!
