Trivia / Sister, Sister

• Actor Allusion: The series finale "Fly Away Home" has Lisa being called Sondra on two occasions (an in-joke referencing Jackee Harry's Star-Making Role as Sondra Clark on 227).
• Actor-Shared Background:
  • Tia and Tamera are revealed to be of mixed ancestry, with a black mother and white father. This matches the twins' real life parentage.
  • The sisters' personalities also matched their real life ones - and they picked which role they'd prefer to play.
• Approval of God: Tamera Mowry approves of the Ray/Lisa ship, and says she'd do a reunion just to see if they got together.
• Bowdlerise: Reruns of the show on Disney Channel, ABC Family (now Freeform) and GMC (now UpTV) edited the show to an odd extreme. Edits often times muted lines, removed product plugs, sexual innuendo, and inappropriate dialogue. These could be words phrases as minor as "shut up" or flirtatious innuendo (such as the repeated line, "Wear something sexy," being cut out both times it was said in the Disney/ABC Family edit of "Cheater, Cheater") to, in the case of the Disney/ABC Family versions, even references to other corporate brands including competing cable networks (e.g., the first half of Tamera's line "we get Nickelodeon, but we don't get no sans TV"^note (said when Tamera pretends to be Tia, who reluctantly agreed to the plan after having second thoughts about transferring, to help tank her admissions interview with a prestigious academy) in "Private School"). There was even at least one instance of an "Oh, my God" being redubbed to "Oh, my gosh" (made obvious by the original line remaining in the Closed Captioning). "Halloween" is the most egregious, as scenes involving Tia, Tamera, Roger, Steve and Denise picking up a cigar smuggler at the U.S.-Canadian border—a ways away from the Halloween party they were trying to get to—and Steve smoking a cigar given to him by said smuggler (which make up much of the "A" story scenes in Act II) are removed from the Disney/ABC Family edit. Averted with the show's airings in broadcast syndication (as well as Dabl), on other cable networks (such as BET, MTV2, Centric/BET Her and the now-defunct Style Network).
• Clumsy Copyright Censorship:
  • Episode prints made available on streaming services (including Netflix and Paramount+) and on DVD replaced much of the soundtrack music. The licensing rights for the songs used in the original broadcasts and earlier syndicated prints had either expired or had become prohibitively expensive to continue using in perpetuity. Notably, most of the Motown songs featured in the first two seasons (whether they be originals or covers recorded for the episode in which it was used), that were licensed through executive producer Suzanne de Passe's connections with the label as its former CEO, were cut from the accordant episodes. In most cases, this caused Anachronism Stew as the music that substituted the original songs were released at least a decade after Sister, Sister ended (such as Usher and Monica's 1997 duet "Slow Jam" being replaced by Bellringer's 2009 single "Runnin'" in season five's "Shoeless"). Other episodes simply had the songs replaced with generic music. CBS Television Distribution (now CBS Media Ventures) was able to procure the rights to some of the songs originally used in the series for their future airings and DVD releases. Oddly enough, the streaming/DVD versions are sourced from the syndicated prints. This means excerpts of selected scenes included in the original airings and the edited Disney Channel/Freeform versions were removed, and in a few early episodes, even included transition music from later seasons being used in a scene or two.
  • Ironically, despite CBS Television Distribution's taking over the rights, the use of the famous think music from Jeopardy! during the test scene in "Cheater, Cheater" is replaced with a generic Suspiciously Similar Song, despite Jeopardy!'s current distribution rights being under this same company.^note A cover of Linda Ronstadt's "You're No Good", originally heard when the twins are busted for cheating after Tia is found by a teacher to have taken Tamera's exam for her, is also replaced by generic serious instrumental music in that episode.
  • One of the few licensed songs that manages to remain intact on all releases to this day is the (brief) use of Aretha Franklin's "Respect" in season one's "Slumber Party" and season four's "Cafeteria Lady".
  • Episode reprints made for syndication by CBSTD in the early 2010s—after some music rights initially expired—include additional cuts to songs (including some important to specific scenes) that were restored for streaming release. For example, Season 2's "Operation Deja View" omits both of Ray's performances of "Alfie", one of the two songs Ray sings (after being mistaken for the singer hired to perform) for a group of senior citizens at the hospital where Tia and Tamera have their appendectomies.^note "New York, New York", performed by Ray and later by Lisa in the tag scene, was retained in all prints of the episode. This resulted in the scene where the twins leave their hospital room to find information on their birth parents (after Tia and Tamera find out their biological mom gave birth to them in that very hospital) being awkwardly edited, as Tamera's remark that she "wants to get out of [there] before [Ray] hits the chorus" is left in, despite removing the portions where Ray sings the song while sleeping in a chair next to their beds. "Beauty Is Only Skin Deep" by The Temptations is also replaced with a different song irrelevant to the scene in "Hair Today" from that same season, during a scene in which Tia unsuccessfully attempts to give herself a new hairstyle to fit in with Tamera's glamorous new look (the song having meaning as Tia had become insecure over her sister's newfound popularity after her spa makeover), in addition to removing an excerpt of Tia, Tamera and Lisa singing the titular refrain from "My Lovin' (You're Never Gonna Get It)" following their makeover earlier in that episode, after Lisa suggests the trio could be "the next En Vogue".
• The Danza: Tia and Tamera share the same first name as their characters.
• Executive Meddling: The original conception of Ray Campbell had him as a millionaire, who had a building in Manhattan with his name on it. The studio however insisted his wealth be toned down to merely upper middle class - saying viewers wouldn't find it realistic that a black man could be that successful.
• Missing Episode: Despite Paramount owning the series, as part of a broader culling of its library amid preparatory cost-cutting efforts for National Amusements' potential sale of Paramount Global that saw portions of the episode catalogs of several 1990s and 2000s Paramount Television series (along with the entirety of several late 2010s–early 2020s Nickelodeon series) removed, Paramount+ dropped all episodes from Seasons 4 through 6 from its library in March 2024, while retaining rights to the first three seasons. (Tubi also held partial streaming rights to the first three seasons from 2022 to 2023.)
• Playing Against Type: Jackeé Harry had previously got fame for playing Ms. Fanservice characters on Another World and the sitcom 227, and this marked her first role as a mother (and she almost didn't want to do it because of this!)
• Production Posse: Recurring guest stars Sherman Hemsley (Jimmy “Soupy” Campbell), Dorien Wilson (Terrence Winningham) and Bianca Lawson (Rhonda Coley), and one-time guest star Alex Datcher (who played Miss Hendricks in Season 3’s “Weird Science“) starred in the 1996-97 UPN sitcom Goode Behavior. Former Sister, Sister writers Mert Rich, Brian Pollack, Robert Illes and Dennis Pollack^note (Rich and B. Pollack first joined the Sister, Sister writing staff for the first half of Season 2, before returning as showrunners for Season 3, while Illes and D. Pollack co-wrote several episodes (including "Grandpa Campbell", the episode that introduced Soupy) and served as creative consultants during Season 3) co-created the series, which featured Hemsley as a character similar to “Soupy” (albeit depicted as an ex-convict trying to reform himself).
• Real-Life Relative:
  • Real life twins Tia and Tamera Mowry play Tia Landry and Tamera Campbell. Their brother Tahj Mowry also appeared in a handful of episodes, one of them as Tia's cousin.
  • Lisa's Season 6 love interest-turned-husband Victor is played by Richard Lawson. His daughter, Bianca Lawson, played the twins' rival Rhonda in Season 3.
• Reality Subtext: Tamera admits to having a crush on Deon Richmond, lending a lot of real-life chemistry between their characters.
• Screwed by the Network: ABC cancelled the series at the end of the second season, despite being one of the highest rated Friday night shows. The WB thankfully picked it up for four more seasons.
• Star-Making Role: Both the Mowry twins were relative unknowns beforehand. The sitcom put them on the map.
• Technology Marches On:
  • The Pilot itself has Lisa and Ray discussing 'taping' various talkshows.
  • "Smoking in the Girls' Room" featured the twins getting excited over getting their own separate phone line for their room, as it meant they could call whoever they wanted and have their own answering machine message. Try explaining the importance of that to the generation that has cell phones. Similarly, cell phones would've made the problem in "Mo' Credit, Mo' Problems" a heck of a lot easier...and safer.
  • Even in the Season 6 episode "The Domino Effect", Jordan calls Tamera using a payphone.
  • In Season 5, Lisa advises a computer specialist to use a floppy disk.
• Throw It In!: Upon Tamera winning the first Casey Kasem award for her stunning performance of "I'm Going Down", from the season 3 finale, this scene earned a standing ovation from the studio audience. There was so much applause that it had to be sweetened or else viewers won't hear the next few lines from Lisa.
• Underage Casting: Ray's father, Jimmy "Soupy" Campbell, is played by Sherman Helmsley, who was only six years older than Tim Reid (who played Ray).
• Wag the Director: Mild example. The twins were never shown kissing their love interests on the show because, to quote Tamera, "we were prudes!"
• What Could Have Been: In 2018; there had been talk of a possible revival, only for complications involving rights issues to lead to the proposed reboot being scrapped.
• You Look Familiar: Tia and Tamera's real life brother Tahj appeared as three different one-episode characters.
  • Brian McKnight guest stars as two different characters in the last season.

---