If an American sitcom stays on the air long enough, there will inevitably be Very Special Episodes. You know the ones. All sitcoms are schmaltzy and kitschy at turns, but they only cross the line into Very Special territory when there’s a looming “MESSAGE!” the writers/director want to clobber you with, by giving the cast pointed, expository lines (often laced with statistics and history on the social issue or controversial topic being broached) or materializing new characters from thin air (usually popular celebrities) and trying to pass them off to regular viewers as an “old friend” or “close family member” of the regular cast.
A Different World, which aired for six seasons between the years of 1987-1993, is no exception. We thought it might be fun to amass some of the most memorable and/or “effective” (or affecting, as it were) of those Very Special Episodes and provide for our readership, many of whom found A Different World on their family TV sets on countless Thursday nights during their childhoods, a wry little trip down memory lane.
We came up with twelve selections and here they are:
1. “Radio-Free Hillman,” Season 2, Episode 32
A Different World eased into Very Special Episode territory with this one, where Dwayne insists on playing a bootlegged CD by a popular artist, sound unheard, on his radio show. The dean (Rosalind Cash) pulls the plug after the first obscenity and Dwayne, feeling that his, the students’, and the artist’s first amendment rights are being violated, stages a sit-in. Students lock themselves in the administration building overnight, where Dwayne finally listens to the song he aired in its entirety. He realizes his error in judgment and is suspended from the air for a month. This ill-advised protest happens to coincide with MLK day and the dean allows Dwayne to host a special show for the occasion, despite his suspension. The final scene fades on the “I Have a Dream Speech” and/or Dawnn Lewis’ rendition of “You Will Never Walk Alone.” See what they did there? They trivialized the students’ protest by juxtaposing it with the much more legitimate and significant protests of the civil rights movement.
2. “No Means No,” Season 2, Episode 42
Guest star Taimak plays Garth Parks, a dashing college baseball star who takes an interest in Freddie. Dwayne discovers he’s a date rapist and crashes their date, just in time to save Freddie from Garth’s forceful advances. In the episode’s most memorable scene, Dwayne dives through the sun roof of Garth’s car and starts yelling, “Go, Freddie, go! Go, Freddie, go!… Wait, Freddie, wait!” as his legs kick out of the top of the vehicle.
3. “Pride and Prejudice,” Season 3, Ep. 58
Whitley experiences racial profiling at the jewelry store, while looking for a gift for her father and his girlfriend, Monica. She overcompensates by racking up a huge bill and charging it to her credit card, to prove to the saleswoman that she can, in fact, easily, breezily afford the store’s pricier merchandise. Both Kim and Freddie tagged along on the shopping trip and each attempts to convince an in-denial Whitley that the saleswoman was racist. Whitley eventually sees reason and returns the the hefty sack full of swag, but not before pointing out that by doing so, the saleswoman is losing her large commission. She also reports the woman to the store manager.
4. “Success, Lies, and Videotape,” Season 3, Ep. 58
While Claire Huxtable visits Hillman to videotape students’ interviews about their futures (and offers a little sage Huxtable advice in the process), Freddie discovers part of the Underground Railroad behind a wall in the Gilbert Hall laundry room. How convenient. She didn’t even have to leave campus.
5. “A World Alike,” Season 3, Ep. 60
Kim’s financial-woes-ending scholarship is in jeopardy when new Georgetown transfer student Julian’s (Dominic Hoffman) anti-apartheid group informs her that the company financially backing the prize refuses to divest its ties to South Africa. A South African student named Kobie tries to advocate for Kim taking the scholarship by asserting that the academic successes of American blacks provide hope for African blacks, but Kim turns it down, anyway. She’s too principled for all that.
6. “Blues for Nobody’s Child,” Season 4, Ep. 72
Freddie tries to get her professor (guest star Roger Guenvuer Smith) to adopt Alex, an eight-year-old foster child from “the community center” where Walter serves as director. She’s appalled at the “adoption fair” concept, as it creates false hope for the older kids who are constantly passed over for infants and toddlers. Someone mildly alludes to the fact that black kids are overall less likely to be adopted than other races. Walter (Sinbad), Mr. Gaines, and Col. Taylor (Glynn Turman) all apply to adopt Alex but none succeed. Eventually, the professor comes around and he and his wife, who initially wanted an infant, begin proceedings to adopt Alex. We love how the professor points out to Freddie that she was inappropriate and out of line for criticizing he and his wife’s reluctance to take on an older child *after* divulging he and his wife’s personal infertility woes to a random sophomore. If he was worried about impropriety, he probably should’ve told her it was none of her business in the first place.
7. “War and Peace,” Season 4, Ep. 81
Dwayne’s friend Zelmer (guest star Blair Underwood) finds out the Army Reserve is deploying him to the Persian Gulf to serve in Desert Storm. Juleesa, Kim, and Whitley try to make him feel better at a party Dwayne hosts, by donning military wear and singing “The Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy.” Freddie, who’s morally opposed to the war (Oooof *course* she is…), instead sings “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” before self-righteously deciding to confront Zelmer (presumably about the prospect of draft-dodging). But faced with the gorgeous, grinning Blair Underwood whose devastating smile never quite reaches his crestfallen eyes, she backs down. Whose self-righteousness is any match for the Underwood charm? In the end, Col. Taylor tells Zelmer to man up, then looks worried and weary when the boy leaves.
8. “Ms. Understanding,” Season 4, Ep. 86
Shaza Zulu (Gary Dourdan) creates a major gender-based rift with the publication of his self-published diatribe on the sexism of Hillman men. When the Dean brokers a meeting between the sexes to hash out their difference, Zulu turns on Kim with a classic line warning the men that if they don’t get their acts together “their women” will turn to white men: “Kim Reese did.” Kim in turn retorts with the equally classic, “You pseudo-intellectual with a pseudo African name spouting pseudo nonsense about a whole lot of nothing. In fact, the only thing that’s real about you is your green eyes, my brother!”
9. “If I Should Die Before I Wake,” Season 4, Ep. 92
The infamous HIV/AIDS ep. They pulled out all the stops, enlisting both Whoopi Goldberg *and* Tisha Campbell as guest stars. Goldberg plays a public speaking professor who assigns her students the task of writing their own eulogies. Campbell’s eulogy shocks everyone, as it reveals she contracted AIDS through unprotected sex in high school. Everyone is shook, rehashing their past irresponsible behaviors or, in Whitley’s case, deciding she isn’t ready to initiate a sexual relationship with Dwayne. Incidentally, Goldberg was nominated for an Emmy as Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy for this role.
10. “Mammy Dearest,” Season 5, Ep. 105
Whitley organizes the dorm’s “official dedication ceremony,” and includes images of mammies in the art portion of the program. Kim is highly offended, while Freddie and Mr. Gaines back Whitley’s decision. Kim emotionally confides in Mr. Gaines that she’d been teased about her skin color as a child and called Aunt Jemima when she’d dressed in a headwrap for Halloween. He tells her to overcome it by embracing it something like that and she decides to participate in the program, famously reciting Nikki Giovanni’s legendary, “Ego Trippin‘.” Also, Lena (Jada Pinkett) discovers that Whitley’s ancestors were slaveholders, which was one of the show’s many “Hahahaaaa. Awesome.” moments re: Whitley and her above-it-all attitude.
11. “Love Taps,” Season 5, Ep. 116
Edafe Blackmon stars as motormouth Gina’s (Ajai Sanders) new boyfriend, a rapper whose stage name is “I’m Down.” Everyone’s excited to invite him into the fold—especially Ron who takes a job as the man’s promoter—but they soon discover he’s a batterer who’s been systematically beating Gina.
12. “Save the Best for Last, parts 1 and 2,” Season 5, Ep. 118 and 119
No Very Special Social Issue was explored in this arc, but we had to include it as it’s the series’ most talked-about (and likely highest rated) season closer. In what is likely the best acting of his career, Kadeem Hardison as Dwayne breaks up Whitley’s lavish wedding to Senator Byron Douglass III by hollering the traditional wedding vows over the minister’s officiation and adding a desperate, urgent, *awesome*, “Baby, PLEASE! PLEASE!!!” at the end, to which Whitley (of course) excitedly says, “Yes!” Now, this second part of the episode is worth multiple rewinds, if for no other reason than the little leg kick Diahann Carroll as Whitley’s mom gives when she hisses, “Die! Just die!” to Dwayne the wedding-crasher and for Shaza’s totally inappropriately loud outburst: “Blessed is the man who asks the questions, brother.” The live audience’s screams and thunderous applause add to this electric and timeless moment in TV history.
Well, that concludes our picks. An honorable mention is, of course, in order for that episode when Dwayne and Ron get into a scuffle with racist football players on another campus (led by Dean Cain). But check out the embedded A Different World link at the top of the article to take a gander at complete annotated episode list for the series and see if there are any episodes that taught you something Very Special about your history, culture, or the social injustices plaguing our world. Heh.
