Get ready for a whole lot of lessons we can remember for the rest of our lives (mainly in season five, it’s heavy with life lessons, especially for anyone who is a minority), a few familiar faces, more moments to fall in love with our favorite Hillman graduates as they return to their beloved college and even the chance to meet even more students enrolling into the school who you’ll soon come to love.
Season 5.
Episode 2. The D’Wayne Mutiny.
D’Wayne returns to his alma mater as a teacher, being extremely tough on his class from the first day, when Lena (played by Jada Pinkett before she got the Smith added to her name) calls him out for holding them to impossible standards, D’Wayne realizes what he’s been doing wrong. In the beginning of the episode you kind of wonder what happened to the goofy, funny D’Wayne with the flip glasses whose idea of flirting was telling everybody about his SAT scores from the first season, but his reason behind his extra tough teaching will make you love him more, flip glasses or no flip glasses.
episode 11. mammy dearest
Old stigmas and stereotypes can hit heavy within the black community, so when Whitley is planning an art exhibit and wants to contribute a section of it to “Mammy” Kim is offended. You see her come close to breaking down when Ron and D’Wayne exchange yo mama jokes, and finally the tears come when she talks to Mr. Gaines about her failed Nubian princess costume in elementary school. The end of the episode includes her reciting an amazing poem and embracing her heritage, and believe it or not, thanking Whitley for opening her eyes and making her realize that anything that is apart of her culture is nothing to be ashamed of.
episode 14. The Cat’s In The Cradle
Let’s clear up something quickly before I go on, this is not one of my top five favorite episodes of season five, it is my favorite episode the show has ever made, and is possibly my favorite episode from any show. Certain parts of this episode may make you a little mad, but you will have a deep appreciation for D’Wayne and Ron and the show. There’s a football game going on between a rival school which happens to be a predominantly white school, when Ron makes a bet on Hillman against some students from the other school. When they return to the parking lot to give him the money they owed him, a small comment from Ron that they need a few more brothers on their team, they go to spray paint that not so friendly N-word we’re all familiar with on the hood of his car, and I’m not talking about the slang way of using it the way rappers do, but with that hard E-R on the end. The conflict turns physical at the same time D’Wayne comes out, and being that Ron is his best friend he jumps into help. When they all get arrested, D’Wayne gives one of the boys a reality check while they’re all stuck in the cell together and honestly you just have to watch the episode to give D’Wayne a round of applause (I’m serious, I watched this episode with someone and they literally started clapping for D’Wayne).
episode 15. A Prisoner of Love
Freddie has a prison pen pal, and when he gets out he comes to visit her at Hillman. Only thing is, he’s not actually an ex-convict, he was actually a journalist doing a paper on how hard it is for people after being released from jail and everyone automatically puts a target on their back, labeling them as dangerous and untrustworthy when in reality they’re just trying to turn their life around. This episode tells audiences that people can change, when someone is already down you don’t keep kicking them.
Episode 22. Love Taps
Gina, who is a new character to the show, has this cute new boyfriend who is an upcoming rapper. He buys her nice gifts, and shows her off which is nice, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that he was verbally, mentally and physically abusive. He’s already left a mark on her, promising that he loved her and he wouldn’t do it again and he was only stressed about the show and mistakenly took it out on her, unfortunately Gina bought into this and stuck around long enough to get a black eye to match the shoes he got her. If it weren’t for Lena, Whitley and the rest of her friends, she probably would have stayed. They weren’t together for long, but staying after the first hit was long enough. If something like this happens to you, do not stay. If someone who claims they love you puts their hands on you, they will do it again. This isn’t a subject that anyone likes to talk about, especially not a light hearted sitcom, so again, thank you to everyone apart of A Different World.
Episode 25. Save The Best For Last
I know I only planned to do five episodes for every season, but a lot happens in season five, a lot that I don’t even have the chance to mention, but I had to squeeze in kinda D’Wayne and Whitley and kinda Byron and Whitley’s wedding. Because I didn’t exactly dedicate the five best episodes of this season to D’Wayne and Whitley, I’ll give you a quick rundown: D’Wayne and Whitley were engaged and then he started getting cold feet and she was starting to feel a little overwhelmed by their families and they called their engagement off. Whitley started dating a politician, Byron, they get engaged and during their wedding D’Wayne hits her with a lot ending with a “BABY, PLEASE!”
Season 6.
Episode 1 & 2. Honeymoon in L.A.
A lot has changed. The theme song is now being performed by Boyz II Men, D’Wayne and Whitley are married, Ron and Kim are dating, Freddiy decided she wants to be a lawyer, but don’t worry there’s more time to catch up with what the cast is doing this season. In the first episode D’Wayne and Whitley are back at Hillman sharing the events from their honeymoon in L.A. which happened to be during some pretty violent riots after the Rodney King verdict. D’Wayne and Whitley get separated after they want to do different things, so Whitley decides to go to the mall while D’Wayne goes to pick up some basketball tickets and he is supposed to pick her up. Somewhere in between these two events, D’Wayne gets pulled over by cops and later on gets his car stolen and Whitley gets locked in the mall dealing with a few rioters (including Roseanne) stealing from stores
Episode 21. Homie, Don’t Ya Know Me?
Lena’s (Jada Pinkett before she got the Smith) friends from home come to visit her, including her ex-boyfriend who happened to be played by Tupac. She’s hopeful that her friends from home and her friends from school coexist, but after seeing that Lena has matured and isn’t exactly as entertained by the same things anymore, they see Lena as a sellout who went off to college and forgot where she came from. It’s possible that a few college kids can relate when they look back on how they were before attending school and realize that they have grown.
Episode 22. A Rock, a River, a Lena
The legendary Lena Horne comes to Hillman, Whitley teaches her class about all she has done for the culture and prepares for them to perform for her. In the midst of trying to make the event being held in the icons honor, Whitley (being herself) overdoes it, and Lena goes off with Kim to Mr. Gaines to get some food, where they reminisce about her performing for the black soldiers when Mr. Gaines was in the war.
Episode 24 & 25. When One Door Closes
A lot happens in the last two episodes. D’Wayne and Ron’s friendship is almost over when Ron threatens to sue D’Wayne for stealing his idea for a video game, Whitley is worried she’s pregnant (which she is) and doesn’t know how to tell D’Wayne because of their current financial struggles and just the fear of being a bad mom, Kim finally agrees to marry her boyfriend after him asking a thousand times, D’Wayne gets a job that will do more than fix their financial issues, but Hillman’s favorite couple has to move to Japan, unfortunately bringing the show to a close and after all this, what happens to the characters is up to the imagination, but I imagine because it was like home to all of them, everyone finds themselves back at Hillman every now and again.