The Wayans Bros.

This article is about the sitcom starring Shawn and Marlon Wayans. For information about their entire family, see Wayans family.
The Wayans Bros.

Season 3 intertitle
Created by Shawn Wayans
Marlon Wayans
Leslie Ray
David Steven Simon
Starring Marlon Wayans
Shawn Wayans
John Witherspoon
Anna Maria Horsford
Lela Rochon
Paula Jai Parker
Jill Tasker
Theme music composer Tom Rizzo (season 3)
Shawn Wayans, Marlon Wayans, Omar Epps and Alan Cohn (seasons 4-5)
Opening theme "Electric Relaxation" (instrumental) by A Tribe Called Quest
Country of origin United States
Original language(s) English
No. of seasons 5
No. of episodes 101 (list of episodes)
Production
Executive producer(s) Billy Van Zandt &
Jane Milmore (season 1)
Rick Hawkins (season 2)
Phil Kellard & Tom Moore (seasons 3–5)
Location(s) Warner Bros. Studios, Burbank, California (taping location)
Camera setup Videotape; Multi-camera
Running time Approx. 21 minutes
Production company(s) Baby Way Productions
Next to Last Productions
Warner Bros. Television
Distributor Warner Bros. Television Distribution
Release
Original network The WB
Picture format 480i (SDTV)
Original release January 11, 1995 (1995-01-11) – May 20, 1999 (1999-05-20)

The Wayans Bros. is a sitcom that aired from January 1995 to May 1999 on The WB Television Network. The series starred real-life brothers Shawn and Marlon Wayans. The series also starred John Witherspoon and Anna Maria Horsford (season 2 onward).

Premise

Shawn and Marlon Williams (Shawn Wayans and Marlon Wayans) are brothers who live in an apartment on 126th street in Harlem. 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 (John Witherspoon) were moved downtown into the fictional Neidermeyer Building, in Rockefeller Center, where Dee Baxter (Anna Maria Horsford (season 2 onward) works as a security guard.

Season 2 transitions

Many transitions were made in season 2:

Cast

Main cast

Recurring cast

Episodes

Season Episodes First air date Last air date
Season 1 13 January 11, 1995 May 24, 1995
Season 2 22 September 6, 1995 May 15, 1996
Season 3 22 September 4, 1996 May 14, 1997
Season 4 22 September 17, 1997 May 20, 1998
Season 5 22 September 17, 1998 May 20, 1999

Production notes

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, The Parent 'Hood and the short-lived Muscle). 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.[1]

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 due to declining ratings and was not given a proper finale. While the series did not end on a cliffhanger, it was noted in Scary Movie in 2000, Shawn Wayans' character was attacking a monster and in the fight he mentioned 'And the Wayans Brothers was cancelled, we ran for 5 seasons and didn't 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 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 (1995–1999). In the first two seasons, from early 1995, until 1996, the show's theme song was A Tribe Called Quest's "Electric Relaxation" (used both in the 1994-95, and the 1995–96 seasons). In the third season (1996–97), the theme song changed to a 4-second Hip-Hop beat. In the final two seasons (1997–1998 & 1998-1999), the show's theme song was changed again to a regular hip hop instrumental beat (which was produced by the Wayans Bros. & Omar Epps).

Syndication

Warner Bros. Television Distribution 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 to Fox, The WB and UPN affiliates nationwide. From September 6, 1999 until September 15, 2000, WPIX reran the show weeknights 5:00pm EST, followed by reruns of Boy Meets World at 5:30pm.

The first season DVD cover for The Wayans Bros., the DVD release for the series to date

At that same time, Chicago-based national cable superstation WGN began airing reruns of the series, airing the series until 2002 (when its broadcast syndication run also ended); ironically, 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; The Parent 'Hood, 7th Heaven and Sister, Sister being the others).

In 2006, reruns began airing on BET, after a 4-year absence where it ran until 2007. In 2007, reruns of the series aired on Ion Television, where it ran until 2008. As of 2011, reruns currently air on MTV2. On October 3, 2011, the series also began airing on Centric.

References

  1. ↑ It's comedy for WB Network, Broadcasting & Cable (via HighBeam Research), August 15, 1994.
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