The Wayans Bros.


The Wayans Bros. is an American sitcom television series that aired on The WB from January 11, 1995, to May 20, 1999. The series starred real life brothers Shawn and Marlon Wayans. The series also starred John Witherspoon and Anna Maria Horsford.

Premise

Shawn and Marlon Williams are brothers who live in an apartment on 117th 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, 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, where Dee Baxter works as a security guard.

Season 2 transitions

Many transitions were made in season 2:

Main

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. 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 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 did not end on a cliffhanger, in the film Scary Movie, 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 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. In the first two seasons, the show's theme song was A Tribe Called Quest's "Electric Relaxation".
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. In Brazilian reruns of seasons one and two episodes that have aired in SBT in 2015, this version replaced the seasons one and two sequence with the season three sequence.

Syndication

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 based national cable superstation WGN began airing reruns of the series, airing the series until 2002 ; WGN aired The Wayans Bros. in first run form from 1995 to 1999, when WGN carried WB programming nationally to make The WB available to markets where a local affiliate did not exist.
In 2006, reruns began airing on BET, after a four-year absence, where it ran until 2007. In 2007, reruns of the series aired on Ion Television, where it ran until 2008. Since then, several Viacom networks, including MTV2, VH1 and BET Her have run the series in continuous rotation.

Home media

released Season 1 of The Wayans Bros. on DVD in Region 1. Warner Archive subsequently released Seasons 2 to 5 on DVD in Region 1.
DVD NameEp #Release Date
The Complete First Season13February 8, 2005
The Complete Second Season22May 9, 2017
The Complete Third Season22November 7, 2017
The Complete Fourth Season22January 22, 2019
The Complete Fifth Season22March 26, 2019