Smart Guy
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Smart Guy is an American sitcom that aired on The WB for three seasons from 1997 to 1999. The show is about the misadventures of a grade school student who skips to the tenth grade, along with those of his siblings and best friend.
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About the show
The show's main character is T.J. Henderson (played by Tahj Mowry), a 10-year-old genius who is promoted from the fifth grade to the tenth grade. T.J.'s older brother Marcus (Jason Weaver) and his friend Morris "Mo" Tibbs (Omar Gooding) befriend T.J. and sometimes use his genius to their advantage while looking out for him. T.J.'s older sister Yvette (Essence Atkins) is a senior at the high school her two brothers and Mo attend; she is a vocal women's rights activist. Their widowed father Floyd (John Marshall Jones) is a contracter who only wants the best for his kids. The show begins with TJ's first day in high school and ends with Yvette's graduation.
The series didn't attract a large audience but remained on The WB for three short seasons. Some critics panned it due to the laugh track occurring too frequently. It is filmed without an audience with a laugh track from previous WB shows. Cast members weren't happy about this. However, a few episodes did have scenes filmed with what appeared to be a live studio audience.
The jokes mainly pertain to the environment,one-liners, and a character's situation. Most of the humorous pop culture-laden dialogue refers to things based on celebrities. The characters mostly deliver humor with a deadpan expression. Other jokes relate to African-American culture, which may leave viewers outside of America confused.
One episode was initially omitted from Disney Channel broadcasts. "Strangers on the Net," from the show's second season, featured T.J. and his friend Karen (Cerita Monet Bickelmann) getting an Internet connection in order to buy bootleg games from a guy Karen met online. It turned out, however, that "Marky412" wanted to do more than just give them CD-Rom games. T.J. eventually picked up on the guy's suspicious demeanor, which got Marky (Jim Fyfe) sent back to prison. The episode had educational value — so much so, in fact, that Disney Educational Productions released the episode on video in order for teachers to show students about the dangers of being online. Yet Disney mysteriously didn't air the episode until only a year after Smart Guy began airing on the channel. Disney aired nearly all of the Smart Guy episodes in their entirety, not editing for adult content.
Unusual for a series produced by Disney, some episodes featured mild adult language. In "Get a Job," Marcus and Mo volunteer to become late night DJs at a radio station. When Floyd angrily calls into the show, and after Marcus asks if he can pick them up, Floyd replies "Oh, hell ... " Mo points out later that "I know you can't say the H word [on the radio]". Mo also thought you couldn't say "butt" on the radio.
In the final episode, "The Graduate", Coach Gerber (Dann Florek) is the guest speaker at graduation. He mentions his brother in his speech and adds that "[he's] got a full head of hair, looks like freakin Fabio".
There were even a couple of closed caption errors (at least in the Disney Channel broadcasts), in which the caption denoted a character as having said "damn," when in fact he or she said something else entirely.
Disney Channel would normally edit these words, but they were left in these episodes.
As of February 2006, Smart Guy was the last series produced by Walt Disney Television for a broadcast television network in primetime.
Confusion
Many Smart Guy fans thought the series was a spin-off of Sister, Sister, both of which aired on The WB. However, this can be dissolutioned by the fact that Smart Guy and Sister, Sister are set about 600 miles apart from each other. Smart Guy is set in Washington, D.C., while Sister, Sister is set in Detroit.
Also, despite the fact that Tahj Mowry appeared on Sister, Sister three times, he played different characters. Also, none of the actors from Smart Guy who appeared in Sister Sister did so as their characters (Jason Weaver, in fact, is the only other Smart Guy cast member to appear on Sister, Sister).
In turn, Tahj Mowry's sisters Tia and Tamera appeared in a Smart Guy episode titled "Brother, Brother" (an obvious play on the name of Tia and Tamera's series). The only cross-over episode ever filmed, titled "Child's Play," involved Tahj as T.J. Henderson being sent to tutor Tia, Tamera and their friends for the SATs.
Reruns
Three months after Smart Guy was cancelled on The WB, reruns began airing on the Disney Channel from September 1999 to September 2003 — and again in a Back to School themed marathon of the show on August 2004. The show can still be seen on the Canada-based Family Channel.