I'll tell ya, I was waiting and waiting to write this page. This was a crossover with two parts to it and I only managed to catch the Parkers half of it. I figured I'd wait till I saw the Hughleys half. The Hughleys was a show that seemed pretty decent. It surely would show up in syndication or on cable somewhere, right? Or maybe on some internet streaming video site. I mean you can find anything online! Yeah, not so much. Apparently there is no love for The Hughleys. So I'll have to settle with just the Parker half.

   The Hughleys was an ABC sitcom starring black comic D.L. Hughley as upwardly mobile businessman Darryl Hughley. He made his money in vending machines. Darryl moved his family to the burbs and soon found himself with some black/white culture shock.

   The Parkers was a UPN spin off of the popular sitcom Moesha following the adventures of a black mother daughter team named, duh, The Parker. It found Moesha's, uh, "big and beautiful" friend Kim Parker heading off to college. But instead of going to school solo, Kim and her mother Nikki (also a… well proportioned lady) both enrolled in college. The plots dealt with Kim, Nikki and their friends. Also a major plot point was Nikki's endless romantic pursuit of Professor Stanley Oglevee. Classic sitcom setup where at the start Oglevee wanted nothing to do with Nikki but by the end they hooked up.

   In 2000, The Hughelys moved from ABC to UPN. At that point in time UPN had sort of cornered the market on black sitcoms. Seriously, there were so many that it became a running joke for standup comics, late night talk show hosts, etc… Anyway, bringing The Hughleys over, before the end of it's first season on UPN, they decided to do a crossover night with The Hughley's and The Parkers. Hey, two shows both set in Southern California featuring black families, why not?

   The first half of the crossover had Darryl Hughley visiting Santa Monica College to find out why his vending machines were losing so much money. Turns out the reason was Nikki Parker. She had figured out a way to cheat the vending machines of their snacks without paying. Probably wasn't a good idea to demonstrate the technique to the guy who owns the machines. But not like SHE knew that. Anyway, the whole crossover took place in the opening tease. Then Darryl Hughley was gone and it was onto the real plot of the show.

   Later that night, Nikki popped up on The Hughleys. Now, as I've said, I haven't been able to watch that episode but given the descriptions I've read of it, it sure sounds like the same sort of crossover as on The Parkers: a quick cameo having little to do with the rest of the show.

   But here's a weird thing. Even though the shows didn't hook up in any serious way, both episodes oddly shared similar plots. The Parkers main plot had Nikki and Kim discovering they might not actually be mother and daughter, that Kim might have been switched with another baby at the hospital. Kim's possible "real mom" showed up and dropped this bomb on them. Over on The Hughleys, Darryl's biological father also popped up out of the blue. What der hey?!?!?

Other The Parker Crossover Links
The Parkers and Moesha

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