Series / Sister, Sister

"That girl has my face!"

"I got my own mind!

I do my own style in my own time!"

The most famous show to feature a set of twin girls not named Mary-Kate and Ashley, Sister, Sister features Tia and Tamera Mowry as Tia Landry and Tamera Campbell, identical twins separated at birth and reunited 14 years later in a Detroit shopping mall. Their adoptive parents, aspiring fashion designer Lisa Landry (Jackée Harry of 227 fame) and wealthy entrepreneur Ray Campbell (Tim Reid, Venus Flytrap from WKRP in Cincinnati), decide that for the good of the kids they should move in together—quickly becoming a close family unit.

The girls themselves are, of course, two sides of the same coin: Tia is a studious girl, somewhat shy and bookish. Tamera is a wild and crazy girl, prone to wild displays of emotion. Each one is quite the opposite of her adoptive parent: Tia under wacky Lisa, and Tamera under prudish Ray.

A frequent Drop-In Character was the family's next-door neighbor Roger Evans (actor/R&B singer Marques Houston), who of course had a mad crush on both girls, and wasn't afraid to show it. He was frequently told, "Go home, Roger!" whenever someone was annoyed with him (which was practically all the time).

For the first four seasons, the girls experienced wacky hijinks and twin switches galore. Starting in the fifth season, the show was re-tooled to separate the girls more: Each got her own style, Tia stopped wearing a fake mole to look exactly identical to Tamera, etc. The girls also got boyfriends that season: Tia had Tyreke (RonReaco Lee), while Tamera took Jordan (Deon Richmond). Both young men served as replacements of sorts for Roger, who had begun to appear less often and was retired from the show altogether at the end of the season (though he returned in the Grand Finale). Essentially by this point in the show, the girls had grown up and the situations they got into followed suit. Even the theme song reflected that with a more relaxed R&B sound, compared to the hyperactive New Jack Swing tune heard in the first four seasons.

The show ran for six seasons, the first two on ABC, the rest on The WB. The show has lived on in perpetual reruns on networks such as ABC Family, The Hub, BET, and most notably, Disney Channel where it ran from 2002 until 2007. The Disney reruns helped give the show a huge boost in popularity, becoming a favorite among a new generation of kids and played a role in greenlighting the channel's original movie T*Witches and its sequel.

On October 5, 2020, the show began streaming on Netflix where, once again, it's been discovered and adored by another new generation. It was later added to Paramount+ in 2021 (as a carryover title from predecessor CBS All Access), and as of 2024, airs in reruns on MTV2, BET Her and Dabl (all of which are owned by Paramount Global, whose namesake studio division produced the series), in addition to streaming on Hulu (via its CBS hub) and Netflix.

Not to be confused with the 1987 Southern Gothic film Sister, Sister starring Jennifer Jason Leigh, or the Maya Angelou-written 1982 made-for-TV drama film of the same name starring Diahann Carroll.

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Sister, sister! Talk about a troping twister!

#-B

• The '90s
• Actor Allusion:
  • Jimmy "Soupy" Campbell, played by Sherman Hemsley, makes a couple of Title Theme Drops referencing Hemsley's most famous television role as George Jefferson in two of his Season 3 appearances:
    • The first was during a scene in “Grandpa Campbell”, in which Soupy compliments Ray about his upper-middle-class lifestyle:
    Jimmy: "Looks like you're doing pretty good in your limousine business, son. Hmm? (Soupy playfully nudges Ray): Movin' on up."
    • The second occurs during the end credit scene of Season 3’s “Christmas”:
    Lisa: "Y'know, playing Santa Claus might be your true calling Jimmy!
    Jimmy: "Yeah, maybe I'll finally get a piece of that pie!"
  • Season 3’s “Double Double Date” features Roger mockingly suggesting to Rhonda, while standing up to her over her poor treatment of him at a party days earlier, that he’ll become “the lead singer in a rock group.” Marques Houston, who played Roger, is the lead vocalist of the R&B group Immature (since renamed IMx), which he joined four years before the series’ debut in 1990.
  • In Season 4’s “Inherit the Twin”, Kenan Thompson and Kel Mitchell guest star: Kenan plays a schemer who schmoozes a lot, while Kel plays his partner in crime who's an enormous ham. They're basically reprising their roles from Kenan & Kel, with the exception that their characters here are the antagonists.
  • Season 5’s “A Friend in Need” has Alexis Fields' character, Diavian, sarcastically claiming she’s the sister of “TV’s Tootie”, in response to Roger revealing his cousin is “Batman” (Marques Houston’s stage persona) from Immature. Fields is, in fact, the younger sister of Kim Fields, who played Tootie. (Their mother, Chip Hurd, directed the show's penultimate episode, Season 6's "The Road Less Traveled".)
• Actually, That's My Assistant: "Child's Play": The girls hire an SAT tutor, and the man who knocks on their door is much older than they expected. He says he's just the district coordinator, and introduces them to T.J. Henderson...who's much younger than they expected.
• All Work vs. All Play: Tia is all work; Tamera is all play. Their adoptive parents are reversed: Ray is all work, Lisa is all play.
• Alpha Bitch: Cruelly snobbish rich-girl Rhonda all throughout in season three, who was always around any time the plot called for the girls to have a rival. Her last appearance early season four reveals she had a freak growth spurt and now looks like a man in a wig (as skillfully played by a man in a wig).
• Always Identical Twins
• And Starring: Tim Reid as Ray. Justified, as Reid was the most prolific actor in the main cast.
• Animated Credits Opening: This was used for the first four seasons before seasons five and six dropped it completely.
• Annoying Laugh: Lisa's best friend Patrice.
• Artistic License: In “It’s a Party Thang”, Ray comes up with reasons why Tia and Tamera’s classmates are late to their party, his last being “Urkel’s on,” remarking afterward, “Hey, Urkel’s 32 years old and he’s still funny.” Jaleel White was actually a Dawson Casting aversion, as Steve Urkel’s in-canon age roughly matched White’s age in real life: White was 13 when he made his Family Matters debut as Urkel in 1990 and was 18 at the time the Season 2 episode originally aired in February 1995.
• Back for the Finale: Roger.
• Bad Liar: Tia didn't even try to hide the fact that she and Tamera cheated on a history exam from Lisa in "Cheater, Cheater", blurting out the admission as soon as her mom came home... just seconds after she and Tamera finished intercepting a call from their principal (with the latter impersonating Lisa), so that neither Lisa nor Ray would find out what happened.
• Big Eater: Lisa by far. This character trait becomes less prominent starting in Season 3, and is dropped by Season 5.
• Black and Nerdy: Jordan and recurring character Elliott. At times arguably Tia.
• Book Ends: Roger delivers the last line of dialogue in both the pilot and the series finale.
  • When Lisa urgently needs shoes for her wedding, they go to the same shop where the girls met in the first place, including the obnoxious French salesman.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: The girls often speak directly to the viewers providing recaps and describing events that take place off screen in the early seasons. This plot device was scaled back in Season 3 (appearing in the teaser scene or the scene following the opening credits during that season, and then—except for Season 4's "Ch-ch-ch-changes", which has two wall break scenes—exclusively in the opening scene thereafter), before being dropped midway through Season 5.
• Butt-Monkey:
  • Ray quite often. Roger even more often.
  • Roger gets a measure of revenge in Season 5's "You Had to be There", when he tells Tyreke and Jordan all sorts of embarrassing stories about the twins' past. This annoys Tia and Tamera to the point where they tell him he's no longer welcome at their house ("Go home, Roger... for good", said Tamera), only to eventually apologize after realizing they miss him, not realizing Roger didn't take it personally since he's used to them treating him that way and he put off a date with his new girlfriend (whom he introduces to them, and was the reason why he hadn't been at their house for a few days after the confrontation) just to hang out with the twins. The twins, Lisa and Ray (whose B-plot involved the latter trying to take camera-shy Lisa's picture) get this at the end as they accidentally get locked out of the house.

C-G

• Call-Back:
  • In Season 1's "Wedding Bells and Box Boys", during a conversation with Tia, Lisa mentions having carried her daughter for nine months; after Tia reminds Lisa she (Tia) was adopted, Lisa explains she literally carried Tia in her arms when taking her daughter out in public as a baby because Lisa couldn't afford a stroller. This joke is referenced in Season 3's "The Break-Up", when Terrence reminds Lisa (who had turned down his second proposal) that she adopted Tia, after Lisa explains she doesn't want another kid because she doesn't want to have to "spend another nine months carrying a child".
  • The series finale, "Fly Away Home", makes a callback to the pilot episode, "The Meeting", as Tia, Lisa, Ray and Tamera visit the same clothing store where they first met six years earlier, complete with the snooty French store manager, Claude (David Coburn, reprising his character from that episode), mistaking Tia and Tamera as the same customer. The clip^note (sourced from a take of that scene different than the version used in the actual episode) in which Tia and Tamera meet for the first time after their run-ins with Claude (who gave Tamera the sweatshirt Tia asked for and Tia the sweater Tamera asked for in the pilot, not realizing they were separate requests from identical twins, only to shoo them off when they keep telling Claude he gave them the wrong clothes), following their realization they wound up in the place where their blended family began.
• Catchphrase: Tamera's "Awww, maaaan!" whenever things aren't going her way.
• Celebrity Star: Quite a few times: Lisa Leslie twice; quite a few musical groups, including Marques Houston's own group, Immature, and of course, the Olsen twins.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: After Marques Houston's departure, Roger is inexplicably absent in Season 6. He makes his long-awaited return in the series finale, albeit in a small role.
• Clark Kent Outfit: The few times you see Jordan's arms, you realise he is actually fairly muscular.
• Classically-Trained Extra: Tia's acting teacher in college, whose only acting credit seems to have been in a pizza place commercial.
• Clip Show: Season 5’s “You Had to Be There” was this, principally involving clips of the twins and Roger.
• Closer to Earth: A rare gender flipped example, with Ray being the more sensible one, and Lisa being more out there and reckless.
  • Then, of course, there's Tia to Tamera, though as time goes on she gets more and more Not So Above It All moments.
  • Gender flipped again in the last two seasons, where the girls' steady boyfriends, especially Tamera's boyfriend Jordan, tended to be the more levelheaded straight men to their misadventures.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Denise, one of the Token White girls, had traces of this. In her debut episode ("Single White Teenager"),^note (which actually aired Out of Order; the episode in which Denise's first appears, "It's a Party Thang", aired nine episodes before the original broadcast of "Single White Teenager") she freaks Tia and Tamera out with her borderline Stalker with a Crush behavior towards them, and in a later episode she makes a documentary about a day in the life of her feet.
• Continuity Snarl: Tia and Tamera's ages and birthplace aren't consistent throughout the series:
  • Age: In the pilot episode, Tia and Tamera state their birthdate as November 28, 1979, making them 14 at the time, which should technically make them 19 by the time the series ends. Season 1's "The Birthday" centers on their 15th birthday (although the fact that the episode aired in June 1994, given the series debuted as a midseason replacement, resulted in the show already effectively breaking continuity with respect to their birthdate), while the plot of Season 2's "Two for a Road" involves the twins learning how to drive, presumably putting them closer to 16; however, the plot of Season 3's "The Natural" begins with the twins' first day as high school sophomores, effectively retconning Seasons 1 and 2 by establishing that the events of both seasons took place during their freshman year. After Tamera confirms she (and Tia) is/are 16 in Season 3's "Big Twin on Campus", the twins' age is not explicitly stated again until Season 5's "It's My Party", which centers on their 17th birthday, meaning that they effectively were 16 canonically for at least two years, with that season taking place during their senior year. (Their grade level isn't mentioned at all in Season 4, though this implies Tia and Tamera were juniors during that season.) Tia and Tamera graduate high school at the end of Season 5, and become college freshmen in Season 6's "Home Sweet Dorm", with no mention of whether they're 17 or 18 at the time of the latter episode.^note If Tia and Tamera were still 17 at the time during the events of "Home Sweet Dorm", their suggestion to Ray and Lisa that they get an off-campus apartment (to which their parents object out of concern for their safety), in an attempt to convince them to live in the room above the garage that Lisa used for her clothing business, would not be possible as most landlords don't rent to minors, unless they are emancipated and/or co-signed by a parent or guardian. (Both milestones should have occurred at the end of Season 4 and the start of Season 5 had the girls' ages remained consistent with their original canonical birth year of 1979.)
  • Birthplace: Season 2's "Operation: Deja View" initially establishes that Tia and Tamera were born in Detroit, as the plot involves them trying to find their birth records at the hospital where they were born (where they are being treated for appendicitis) to discover the identity of their birth parents. However, Tia and Tamera's birthplace is changed to Florida in Season 4's "You Are So Beautiful", which reveals they were born in Sarasota (located about 60 miles south of Tampa). Tia and Tamera's birth father Matt reveals in "Father's Day" that they were born in Pensacola (520 miles northwest of Sarasota). The change in the state where they were born leaves unanswered questions about how Tia and Tamera ended up with Ray and Lisa in Detroit, as the original explanation in "Operation: Deja View" meant they ended up with adoptive parents living in the same city, and while out-of-state adoptions do occur, given that Lisa wasn't as well off as Ray was, Tia would have had to have already been moved in the adoption system from Florida to Detroit for Lisa to even be able to adopt her, especially given the explanation (a clerk at the adoption agency finding Lisa, wearing a spaghetti-strap dress and high heels at the time, attractive) as to how Lisa ended up with Tia in the first place.
• Credit Card Plot: "Mo' Credit, Mo' Problems"
• Crossover: With their little brother, Tahj Mowry's, show, Smart Guy.
• Demoted to Extra:
  • Roger, in the latter half of Season 5 where Tyreke and Jordan are featured more prominently. This is justified as Marques Houston was set to star in a new show then under development (which never got picked up), but he also took time off because his mother had been diagnosed with cancer. After Season 5, Roger isn't seen or mentioned again until the series finale.
  • Season 6 episode "The Domino Effect" doesn't feature the twins much, focusing much more both on Ray and Lisa having their home gatherings on the one hand, and Tyreke and Jordan escorting two women to a Homecoming dance on the other.
• Department of Child Disservices: Type 2. It's pretty clear the orphanage that adopted the twins out is completely incompetent, since they adopted identical twin girls separately, didn't keep any records of them or their parents, and season six reveals they wouldn't let their birth father see them (true, he was white and not married to their mother, but they still couldn't even run a DNA test just to be sure?) before adopting them out. Lisa also reveals that they gave Tia to an impoverished single mother (which goes against all kinds of protocol, as Ray points out) because the guy behind the desk found Lisa sexy in her spaghetti straps and high heels. While it mostly worked out since the girls went to loving homes anyway, it's no thanks to the orphanage's frankly criminal negligence, and still a miracle they all managed to find each other at all.
• Digging Yourself Deeper: On Lisa's birthday she feels depressed, so Ray tries to comfort her, only making her feel worse by saying things "you look nasty in the morning".
• Disaster Dominoes:
  • Lisa causes this twice in Season 2:
    • In "Joey's Choice", after a few misfires trying to make a good impression on Food Boy manager Terrence (even managing to get her scarf caught in a rotisserie oven at the supermarket, yanking out a chicken when she gets the scarf out), Lisa gets the courage to ask him out near the end of the episode. After he accepts her date offer, she picks an apple from a produce display, causing the other apples to fall out and roll on the floor. One shopper slips on the fallen apples and causes some other shoppers and Food Boy employees to trip; an employee standing on a ladder is forced to cling to a banner he was hanging, which rips and sends him landing back-first... hard into a produce display on the other side of the store (behind where Lisa and Terrence are standing) as the rest of the produce falls around him. Cleanup on aisle... everywhere.
    • In "Scrambled Eggs", Lisa attempts to impress Terrence's parents (a pastor and church first lady), but embarrasses herself during dinner at Ray's house by inadvertently admitting that she's seen Terrence naked when they bring out his baby photos ("anybody for some nice black-bottom pie?"^note Said by Lisa, after trying to cover up the aforementioned accidental admission by unconvincingly claiming the only reason she saw Terrence's naked butt out of wedlock was because he mooned her.). Her chance at a second first impression goes wrong while attending Terrence's father's church service. After taking her heels off to dance to a lively gospel chorus, Lisa accidentally tosses one of her shoes, hitting a choir singer who knocks over several of his fellow choir members, an usher and several parishioners. One parishioner trying to catch the monetary tithes knocked out of a collection plate clings to one of the church's window curtains, crashing into an altar wall and in a daze, grabs onto a rope attached to a chandelier, sending him into the church's ceiling and the chandelier into the floor. For the cherry on top, the stained glass window behind the altar inexplicably shatters.
  • Tamera also causes one in "Big Twin on Campus", when while using two cinnamon buns to mimic Princess Leia's signature double-bun hairstyle, she bumps her arm into a waitress at the coffee shop carrying a full tray who knocks over four other patrons (including one woman who falls backwards onto a table in a flying leap, destroying it).
• "Do It Yourself" Theme Tune: During the final two seasons.
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: Subverted in Season 2's "Field Trip". As he deals with losing his newfound Chick Magnet status after returning a love statue he accidentally stole during the titular museum field trip (which he mistook for the juice bottle he placed next to the statue's pedestal while rushing to get on the bus), the twins act nice towards Roger. He asks if they're doing it out of pity; they matter-of-factly confirm they are, and he says he has absolutely no problem with that:
  Roger: "I should have thought of this years ago!"
• Doom It Yourself: A running gag with Ray—every time he tries to build or fix something it goes horribly, horribly wrong.
  Tamera: (horrorstruck at the sight of Ray with an IKEA package) What's going on dad? You're not gonna build something, are you?^note The episode where this quote comes from, Season 4’s “Inherit the Twin”, is one such example. The subplot featured Ray building an entertainment center — which he gets stuck in at one point after building it incorrectly; even with Lisa helping him, it doesn’t turn out as planned: the completed entertainment center’s top shelves promptly collapse once Ray and Lisa sit down to watch TV.
• "Double, Double" Title: Sister, Sister
• Double Entendre: In "Big Twin on Campus", Lisa utters this whopper after her ex-boyfriend Terrence, who came over to the house to go through a box of items from their relationship, rings the doorbell (though it sounds a lot like a shot at his "manhood"):

  Lisa (to Ray): "That's Terrence. I can always recognize his little ding-dong."

• Drop-In Character: Roger.
• Embarrassing Hospital Gown: In "Operation: Deja View," Tia and Tamera end up having their appendixes removed at the hospital where they were born and decide to sneak out of their hospital room to find their birth records with Roger's help. Roger says he'll "cover them from behind" hoping this trope is in effect, but the twins inform him that their hospital gowns aren't open in the back.
• Estranged Soap Family: None of Lisa's relatives who guest-starred over the years came to her wedding in the Grand Finale.
• Everyone Has Standards: Roger, who often behaves like a lech to the twins himself, nevertheless doesn't trust Tia's childhood friend Darnell and helps rescue them from him.
  • Similarly, Lisa is no prude, but she has no time for the highly promiscuous and untrustworthy Vivica.
• Evolving Credits: The first four seasons' opening credits have stop motion effects and animation sequences as the original version of the theme song is played in the background. For the final two seasons to mark the twins' maturity, the opening credits for seasons 5 and 6 abandon the stop motion/animation sequence to make room for a music video sequence.
• Expository Theme Tune:
  • "Sister Sister! Never knew how much I missed ya! Now that everybody knows, I ain't ever gonna let, you, go!" Unfortunately, no one knows who performed the version that was heard from seasons 1-4.
  • The fifth and sixth season theme has Tia and Tamera embracing their individuality as well as each other.
• Expy: Roger is clearly a Steve Urkel clone in the earlier seasons. The obnoxious and socially inept neighbor boy who is obsessed/infatuated with the teen girl character, constantly shows up unannounced, and all of his scenes end with the main cast telling him to "go home!"
• Fanservice: Strongly averted most of the time. Even seeing the male or female characters' arms sleeveless is not that common, let alone characters shirtless.
• Fashion-Shop Fashion Show: Most notably in "Mo' Credit, Mo' Problems".
• Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: Tia is serious and studious, Tamera is wild and impulsive.
• Fly-at-the-Camera Ending: The season 1 intro ends with the second "Sister" part of the logo flying at the camera covering the entire screen black.
• French Jerk: Claude, the obnoxious clothing salesman who appears in both the first and last ever episodes.
• The Glasses Gotta Go: Tamera and Roger give nerdy Elliott a makeover to impress Tia, and a major part of it involved this.
• The Glorious War of Sisterly Rivalry: Rares its ugly head from time to time, especially in later seasons.
• Gonky Femme: Former Alpha Bitch Rhonda was a beautiful, fashion-savvy girly girl. She showed up again in a later episode and, as a result of puberty, had the appearance of a huge, thug-looking woman (her character was played by a man). She still acted feminine, and her physical change made her sweeter, probably to compensate.
• Group Picture Ending: The closing shot of the series finale features the extended family posing for a picture at Lisa’s wedding. This includes the Landrys, the Campbells, Tyreke, Jordan, Lisa’s new husband Victor, Matt—the twins’ birth father, and last but not least: Roger.

H-O

• Happily Adopted: There are a couple of episodes where the girls try to find out about their biological parents, but there's never any doubt that they still love their adoptive parents.
• He Is All Grown Up: During the fourth season, Roger goes "from as if to all that" and even has Tia and Tamera fighting over him in the season premiere.
• Holiday Episode:
  • All but one of the series' holiday-themed episodes aired in Season 3:
    • "Halloween", in which Tia, Tamera and their friends try to get to a Wild Teen Party despite the twins being grounded for the night, while Ray goes to a black-tie party dressed as a rabbit after Lisa wrongly believes it was a costume party;
    • "Thanksgiving in Hawaii" (also the show's only two-parter), in which Tia, Tamera, Lisa and Ray spend the holiday vacationing in Hawaii (with the latter two's exes, Terrence and Tonya, unexpectedly arriving together at the same time), while Roger invites a homeless friend and his buddies to Ray's house after Roger inadvertly housesits after everyone forgets to tell him about the vacation);
    • "Christmas", in which Soupy is forced to work as a mall Santa to pay back a loan shark (whom Tia, Tamera, Ray and Lisa each pay their share of their gift money to help pay off his debt) on a bad tea room investment.
    • "Valentine's Day", in which Tia (who is studying a psychology book) meddles in Tamera's attempts to win back her boyfriend from their rival Rhonda, and Ray and Lisa's relationship as they try to figure out whether they could work as a couple.
  • The series' last holiday episode was Season 4's "Three the Heart Way" (which also takes place on Valentine's Day), centering on Tamera grappling with becoming the third wheel after Tia and Roger fall for each other (thanks to an arrow strike from Cupid, played by Marques Houston in a dual role), while Ray participates in a charity bachelor auction that goes awry when a senior citizen (also hit by Cupid's arrow) outbids Lisa for a date.
• How We Got Here: The first episode starts with Tia and Tamera in their bedroom together under one roof for the first time. The rest of the episode has them explaining how all of this happened.
• In One Ear, Out The Other: In "Boy from the Hood", Ray is in the middle of chastising Tamera about planning to go to a house party with a boy from Tia and Lisa's old neighborhood, notices she isn't paying any attention and adds "Why do I get the feeling that everything I say is going IN ONE EAR AND OUT THE OTHER?!". The camera cuts to Tamera daydreaming while Ray's suddenly visible dialogue goes in her left ear and out her right.
• I Want You to Meet an Old Friend of Mine: The girls' brother, Tahj, appeared three times...
  • ...as three different characters...
    • ...including one from his own show, Smart Guy.
• Identical Twin ID Tag: Tamera's mole (though in early seasons, Tia was given a fake mole to play up the identical-ness).
• Initiation Ceremony: The Rose president in "Rosebud" puts Tamera and her friends through the "humiliating" kind (Among the gags was going to Tia's coffee shop in their pajamas and forcing them to moo whenever anyone orders a milk product). Tamera can't take it and quits, forcing Tia (who was already vice president of the Roses) to oust the president.
• Jacob and Esau: Adoptive makeshift blended family variation. Ray's personality is more closely aligned with Tia's (as they're both serious) while Lisa's personality is more aligned with Tamera's (as they're both reckless). This is despite, or because of, Ray raising Tamera and Lisa raising Tia.
• Jerkass: Tia's boss, Clark, in Season 5. Jordan acts as one in his debut episode, but he considerably softens once he and Tamera start dating.
• Large Ham: Lisa.
• Laughing Gas: Lisa Landry was breaking out into a fit of laughter during a funeral as just beforehand, she went to the dentist, and was exposed to a large, almost lethal dose of laughing gas due to the dentist ranting about the person the funeral was for.
• Least Rhymable Word: A parody of The Brady Bunch theme song in “Model Tia” tries to rhyme Ray's name with "groovy chick" by calling him "Dick". The singers admit immediately afterwards that his real name is "Raymond", but they couldn't find a way to make it rhyme.
• Love at First Sight: Matt Sullivan and Racelle Gavin the twins' birth parents got together very quickly. He fell for her as soon as he saw her.
  Matt: Luckily, she felt the same way. And within weeks we were living together!
  (Tia and Tamera glare at him)
  Matt: Hey, it was the 70s, what can I say?
• Mistaken For An Impostor: Roger claims to know the lead singer of Immature and can get them to play a school party. When he can't get the band, he impersonates Batman (the lead singer)...badly. Then the real Batman shows up (played by Marques Houston As Himself)...and everyone naturally thinks he's Roger.
• Mistaken for Gay: In "The Break-Up", Ray decides to end his friendship with Terrence, after sneaking around to hang out with him behind Lisa's back, after she tells Ray not to see Terrence again after he rebounds hours after their breakup (on a double date with another woman and her friend whom Terrence set Ray up with). Ray and Terrence's friendship breakup plays out, at first, a lot like a couple breaking up, much to the chagrin of Tonya (a waitress at the sports bar who gave Terrence her number and overhears their conversation) and to a muscle-bound man sitting at the next table (who offers to buy Ray a drink after Terrence leaves, without Tonya's number, as she wipes it from his hand, believing she hit up a gay guy for a date).
• Model Scam: Occurs in one episode when one of the girls goes to a "photographer's" apartment for a shoot. Luckily, the girls' parents arrive in time to save her.
• Open Mouth, Insert Foot: Ray gets this fairly often, especially when trying to cheer up Lisa.
• Opinion-Changing Dream: The episode "I Had A Dream" (1998) features Tamera ridiculing the deeds of her African-American ancestors and feeling reluctant to carry on with her own miserable life. In her dream she is visited by several historical Afro-American figures who all claim they want to give up and do something else. She convinces them to do otherwise and do the historical deed that they are famous for. When she wakes up, she respects her ancestors, and realizes that ambition can also help her make important contributions to history.

P-S

• Painful Rhyme: Lisa and Tamera aren't the best at making up rhymes on the spot:
  • This gag is first used in "The Pimple", when Tamera comes up with a slogan for Lisa's fashion business:
  Tamera: “If you buy dresses from Lisa, your savings increase-a.”
  • Tamera gives one in "Smoking in the Girls' Room", as she and Tia try to come up with a good message for their new phone's answering machine:
  Tamera (rapping): “Yo, yo, yo / This is Tamera and the lookalike, Tia / We're not home, so leave a message-ia.”
  (Tia stops the recording)
  Tia (incredulously): “Message-ia?”
  • In "Playing Hooky", Lisa attempts to help Tia and Tamera remember what they need to learn for their upcoming history test by rapping history tidbits... it quickly runs into issues:
  Lisa (rapping): “In seventeen-hundred and ninety-three [1793], they chopped off the head of this homegirl, Marie.”
  Tia (impressed): “That's great, mom!”
  Lisa (rapping): “In sixteen-hundred and twenty-eight [1628], the Huguenots were destroyed by... Cardinal Richelieu."
  (Tia and Tamera give puzzled expressions)
  Lisa: "That's one of them free verses.”
  • In "Paper or Plastic?", Tamera (one of several scab workers hired by Terrence to substitute for the striking Food Boy employees) unsuccessfully attempts to help a bag boy with a poem she made up to remember proper bagging procedure:
  Tamera (in a sing-song tone): “Eggs and bread are kind of like the head, meat is like the feet / and all the rest go in the chest, except for the really heavy cans, which are kind of like the feet.”
  (The bag boy gives Tamera a puzzled expression)
  Tamera: "Oh, I know. The last verse needs a little work.”
  • Lisa delivers two of these in “Sis-Boom-Bah”:
    • The first occurs when she improvises a slogan to promote the sale of popcorn at her mall cart to bring in customers (a gimmick that later backfires when she spills hot oil over the popcorn machine, setting her cart ablaze):
    Lisa: “Fashions by Lisa / Free snacks to please-a. I gotta work on that.”
    • Another rhyme misfire happens later in the episode when Lisa improvises a cheer while trying to advise Tia and Tamera, after their “twin gimmick” fails to make up for the girls’ lack of coordination when they audition for Roosevelt High’s cheerleading squad:
    Lisa: “Tamera and Tia / We’re really glad to see ya / If you give us a second chance / You’ll have money in your... pants.” (gives look of realization how her cheer came out)
• "Pan Up to the Sky" Ending: The first two seasons’ opening credits end with the camera panning up to the white background as the title logo appears.
• Parental Abandonment: The sisters' biological parents throughout the series. Season 6's "Father Day" explained the circumstances. Their bi-racial parents, Racelle and Matt, were unmarried and in different countries as part of their careers. They intended to get married upon their reunion, but Racelle died before then. Since they weren't married and Matt was white, he couldn't prove he was the girls' father and wasn't allowed near them.
• Phrase Catcher: "Go home, Roger!"
• Platonic Co-Parenting: The show is about a pair of twins who were Separated at Birth and find each other again, has the girls' respective adoptive parents Lisa and Ray move in with each other so the sisters can stay together. Although Lisa and Ray initially clash, they later develop a strong friendship. Although they date for a little while, they are non-romantically co-parenting the twins for much of the show and don't end up together.
• Platonic Life-Partners: Lisa and Ray. They clash A LOT, but they're (usually) good at working together to raise their daughters and eventually form a close friendship.
• Polar Opposite Twins: Of course, it's even highlighted in the theme song. Tia is the smart one; Tamera's the party girl. Each girl is the opposite of the parent that raised her: Tia by Lisa, Tamera by Ray.
• Put on a Bus: Roger at the end of Season 5 following The Twins Graduation. However, he did return for the series finale.
• Promoted to Opening Titles: Roger in Season 2, Tyreke and Jordan in Season 6.
• Rape as Comedy: Disturbingly played with in the episode "Model Tia". Tia is led to believe that she’s earned the chance to become a fashion model. The photographer she meets online seems honest at first but he’s quickly revealed to be a slick-talking pervert posing as someone else that comes dangerously close to assaulting the twins. Thanks to Roger tipping them off, Ray and Lisa rescue the twins in the nick of time.
• Rich Language, Poor Language: Actually pretty downplayed and minor compared to other Black sitcoms such as Moesha and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, which are also characterised by class tensions and differences.
• Right Through the Wall: Lisa's mother doesn't approve of her living with Ray while they're not married, so she lies and says they are—then fakes sex noises at the wall when she stays with them, so she believes they really are newlyweds.
• Roger Rabbit Effect: Done in the Season 1 opening with the cast interacting with the various animations around them, such as Tia and Tamera carrying their names, Lisa and Ray summoning their names by hand waving, and Ray pushing an animated roof.
• Sassy Black Woman: Lisa.
• Separated at Birth: In the series premiere we get a small bit of dialogue from Ray and Lisa that the girls were purposely separated by their orphanage. It was only pure luck that they managed to find each other.
• She Cleans Up Nicely: Tia and Tamera become much more sexy and stylish in their college years than before.
  • Series 6 episode "The Domino Effect" has Tyreke and Jordan escort two girls, Cee Cee and Ginger, to the Homecoming dance, who are initially frumpy but turn out very beautiful.
• Shout-Out:
  • Tia's college friends in "Big Twin on Campus," save for her crush Michael, were named after actors and characters from Friends. Four of them are named after two-thirds of the show's leads, Matthew Perry (although that character's name also doubly references Matt Le Blanc), David Schwimmer, Courteney Cox and Jennifer Aniston... and one is named after Ross' Capuchin monkey, Marcel. Tamera even references the show’s theme song (“I’ll be there for you in a minute!”) when meeting Michael and his friends with Tia at the coffee shop, which is styled similarly to Central Perk.
  • The names of the two surfer airheads in "Thanksgiving in Hawaii", Barney and Baldwin, reference the movie Clueless where the term Barney means a guy who is a loser (as in Barney Rubble) and Baldwin means a guy who is attractive (as in Alec and William Baldwin).
  • In Season 4 episode "Boy From The Hood", Roger calls Tia's childhood friend Darnell "The Fresh Prince of Detroit".
• Showdown at High Noon: On the Valentines Day episode Tamera has one against her rival.
• Skyward Scream
  • Ray's trademark "Tameraaaaaaaa!" Tia does this as well in “The Tutor”, after figuring out Tamera posed as her to get close to the dimwitted star player of Roosevelt High’s football team, causing him to flunk his test and get benched from the team thanks to Tamera’s lack of history knowledge.
  • At the end of the first part of "Thanksgiving in Hawaii", after getting stranded in the middle of the ocean and after a failed attempt to swim back after Tamera remembers the movie Jaws (meaning that they sense there are sharks in the water), Tia and Tamera scream "HEEEEEEELLLLLLLLPPPPP!!!".
• Spoiler Opening: Unless you watched episode 1, the theme song for the first four seasons thoroughly explained how Tia and Tamera got together again after 14 years apart and their respective adoptive parents are forced to live under one roof to keep the two together.
• Standardized Sitcom Housing:
  • Ray’s house mostly followed the layout, but given its affluent style, was somewhat larger. The front door (positioned at stage right) opened to the living room, with quarter-turn stairs (and an under-stairs closet) to the left of the door. A hallway that connects into both the living room and dining room is at the center of the living room between two built-in bookcases on the adjacent walls, while two separate back doors open, respectively, into the dining room (at stage center) and into the kitchen/dining area. The kitchen, however, is at stage left with a wall and door separating it from the living room, and the dining room entryway (at right) and a shorter quarter-turn staircase (at left) on either side of the back door. Upstairs were at least three bedrooms, including Tia and Tamera’s shared room (which was seen in almost every episode) and Ray’s master bedroom (seen only in Season 1’s “Mothers and Other Strangers” and Season 2’s “Free Billy”); the third, Lisa’s bedroom, was never seen, while a hallway that connected all three rooms and a master bathroom was seen only once (in Season 1’s “First Dates”). An attic room that Lisa used to design clothes for her fashion business was occasionally used.
  • The final two seasons saw changes to two of the sets: Season 5 compacted the twins’ bedroom (moving the wall containing the double bookshelf to stage right and placing the door to the right of the shelves on said wall, shifting the window to stage center) to accommodate a spare room (at stage left) that would become Tia’s bedroom, with their previously unused bathroom moving from the back right of what would become Tamera’s room to stage center and connecting both rooms. Season 6 saw the lited back door in the kitchen switch from a double-door to a single-door style, and introduced a room above the garage that would become now-college students Tia and Tamera’s apartment.
• Suck E. Cheese's: In the form of Buck E. Duck.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: Subverted in "Christmas", when Soupy (who was forced to take a job as a mall Santa to pay back a loan shark after a bad investment on a tea room franchise) surprises the Campbell-Landrys with Christmas gifts (including a bike Ray wanted as a child) purchased from an advance on his first paycheck for his new job as an instructor at USC (the University of Santa Claus). Still, he basically gives away what his Plan B for getting the money to pay back the shark, Ray, Lisa and the twins (who each gave their gift money to the loan shark to help pay off Soupy's debt) would have been:
  Ray: "Where did you get the money? Don't tell me the racetrack is open on Christmas Eve."
  Soupy: "First of all, it's not. Second of all, I checked. Third of all, I wish it was... and fourth of all, how dare you?!"

T-Y

• Take That!: When Ray plans to run for Senator, Lisa exclaims "you're far too honest and decent for politics".
• The Un-Reveal: Now who sang the theme song heard from seasons 1-4? Was it Shanice? Was it En Vogue? Or was it...Jackee Harry all along? It's up for you to decide, since no evidence of who sang the original theme song has been revealed for years.
• Those Two Guys: Tyreke and Jordan.
• Title-Only Opening: This is only used for the first episode in season 1. Starting from episode 2 as well into the rest of the series, the theme song/opening credits is seen and heard.
• Token White: One a season.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Jordan, once he and Tamera become a couple.
• Twin Switch: The girls know how to exploit their identical looks—though the switches are much less common than you might think, being most frequent in the earliest episodes. It's still common enough to get Lampshaded on occasion in the third season:
  Tamera: Aaah, wait a minute, Tia! You've got that 'you be me' look in your eye!
  • This comes back to bite the girls in Season 5's "Show Me the Money" when Tamera - posing as Tia behind her back - tries to get Tia's boss to give her a raise (Tia being upset that her boss was paying the male employees more money) only for the gambit to backfire with Tamera's gambit getting Tia fired.
• Twin Test: A downplayed version that also includes a subversion in the season 2 episode, "Joey's Choice." After the same boy, Joey, accidentally asks them both out thinking they were the same person, Tia and Tamera reluctantly share a date with him. Though Joey doesn't mind, the girls do and at the end of the date Tamera asks him to choose between the two. To her surprise, he picks Tia, who at this point in the series has been characterized as the less outgoing and more boy shy of the two. Tamera asks him why and Joey admits that because he didn't really know why himself, he based his decision on the "stupid reason" that he liked the shoes Tia had on. Tamera leaves only to remember that Tia is wearing her shoes.
• Two-Teacher School: It seemed that the only faculty member was Fred Willard unless the plot called for another teacher.
• Uncanny Family Resemblance: Marques Houston has this in "A Friend Indeed", playing Roger and his real-life alter ego "Batman" from the R&B group Immature, who happens to be his identical cousin. Roger even masquerades as "Batman" when he initially fails to get Immature to perform at the school fundraiser, only for the latter to change his mind and help Tia and Tamera and Roger deliver on their promise to have a celebrity perform there.
• Unnecessarily Cruel Rejection: The episode "Inherit The Twin" has two boys (played by guest stars Kenan Thompson and Kel Mitchell) orchestrating a feud between Tia and Tamera with the former's journal as revenge for humiliatingly and loudly rejecting their advances. Granted this itself was only because the two would not take a hint in the first place ("We'd like to break you down gently....BUT WE CAN'T!").
• Uptown Girl: Tyreke, a mechanic who had had trouble with the law in the past, starts going out with Tia in the fifth season and goes through a little bit of this in his first few appearances (though it's all from Tia's point of view, of course).
• Wacky Parent, Serious Child: The serious twin Tia and her wacky adoptive mother Lisa, who is actually more similar to Tamera.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Little Ray, the family cat, is never seen again after the third episode of season 2.
• Wild Take: Tamera does this in the opening scene of Season 4's "Boy from the Hood". Tia opens the front door to greet an old friend of hers with Tamera standing behind her expressing disinterest in meeting him. But when she sees that he's more attractive than she expected, the scene cuts to a reaction shot of Tamera as her eyes stretch out from her head, while she vocally honks like a klaxon horn with her mouth.
• Wild Teen Party: The A-plot of "Halloween" involves Tia, Tamera, Steve and Denise (later accompanied by Roger) trying to find their way to a rave, despite the girls being grounded for the night (thanks to Tamera getting in trouble at a wild street party downtown the previous year). They learn that the party has moved (from the house of the classmate throwing it to the suburb of Farmington), accidentally drive to the U.S.–Canadian border (where they pick up a cigar smuggler they drop off in downtown Detroit, and who gives Steve a cigar, subjecting them to second-hand smoke), and end up driving into a downtown street rave nearby (where Ray's car nearly gets trashed). Turns out the rave they were going to was moved to Tia and Tamera's house last-minute, resulting in them having to clean up the mess before Ray and Lisa get home from a black tie-formal Halloween party (where Ray is dressed as a bunny, mistakenly—thanks to Lisa, who ends up dressed appropriately for the actual theme—believing it was a costumed affair). Shortly after they come home, Ray and Lisa find out the twins snuck out when Tamera appears on the news, and grounds Tia and Tamera for a month.
• Will Not Tell a Lie: Tamera makes this vow in Season 5's "The Best Policy". When she catches Ray's girlfriend Vivica cheating on him, Ray doesn't believe her at first... until they catch Vivica with her other man at a restaurant where Ray and the twins are dining together (thanks to Lisa^note (who arrived at the restaurant with a city councilwoman around the same time to be honest with her about a tight Tina Turner-style dress Lisa designed being too ill-fitting for her) spotting Vivica there).
• Will They or Won't They?: Ray and Lisa. They eventually dated each other in Season 4, but it didn't last long.
• Wrench Wench: Tia briefly becomes one in Season 3's "The Natural" (and is extremely good at it), when she gets a crush on a boy who is in an auto shop class.
• Younger Than He Looks: In "It's a Love Thang", Tamera accepts a party invitation from a cute boy she meets on the bus, who looks very much the same age as her, then discovers it's his 12th birthday party.

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Now that everybody knows all the tropes...

I ain't ever gonna let...you...go!

Sister, sister!

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Statler: Gee, why should everybody know that the girls reunited at a shopping mall?
Waldorf: I don't know? Maybe their reunion got the top story on Nightline!
Both: Do-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho-hoh!

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