The Hughleys (1998)
The Hughleys is an American sitcom that aired on ABC from September 22, 1998 to April 28, 2000 and on the UPN network from September 11, 2000 to May 20, 2002. It starred comedian D. L. Hughley as the main character, Darryl Hughley, and Elise Neal as Yvonne, his hard-working wife, who move their family from the inner city to suburban Los Angeles.
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Episode 1 - Young Guns
Release Date: 1999-09-24The school the Hughleys' and Rogers' kids attend is considering putting in metal detectors because kids have been caught bringing guns to school. Both Dave and Darryl are gun owners, and insist on their right to bear arms. Yvonne tries to get Darryl to get rid of his gun, which he refuses to do until Michael is checking it out one night, drops it, and it accidently goes off and breaks a window.
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Episode 2 - Milsap Moves Up
Release Date: 1999-10-01Darryl gets a reputation around work as giving good love advice. When Milsap starts to despair about his long-distance relationship with Regina, Darryl tells him to make a big gesture. Milsap buys a huge house very near the Hughleys (of which Darryl is extremely jealous), and proposes to Regina, who says no.
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Episode 3 - Honey, I Beat the Kids
Release Date: 1999-10-08Darryl gives Michael a spanking for misbehaving, but it's Darryl who learns a lesson about raising children, and that the way he grew up is not necessarily the best way.
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Episode 4 - Sap & the Star
Release Date: 1999-10-15Milsap starts dating a movie star, and Darryl gets so caught up in the Hollywood lifestyle that he forgets Yvonne's birthday. To make up for his gaffe, Darryl sets up a romantic night of tango dancing for himself and his wife. Michael keeps trying to steal Milsap's girlfriend.
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Episode 5 - Help a Brother Out
Release Date: 1999-10-22Darryl's big brother Jojo comes to town with a crazy T-shirt scheme and an excuse for everything, usually involving the white man keeping him down. Darryl tries to get Jojo to get a real job, but Jojo working at Darryl's company doesn't work out when Jojo draws up a bogus contract with a huge client. Finally Darryl has it out with Jojo, telling him he can't always blame someone else for his problems, and Jojo, initially upset, finally listens and gets a job doing sales for the airline their father used to work for.
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Episode 6 - The Curse of the Coyote Man
Release Date: 1999-10-29Darryl, Milsap and Dave try to scare Michael and Sydney by telling them stories of the Coyote Man and then scaring them while they're trick or treating on Halloween. They scare the wrong kids, and then cut through the woods to catch up with the Hughley kids. Cops come the Hughley house with a video tape and a red stained sweat shirt. In a Blair Witch style documentary, the three men get lost and separated in the woods, and then Darryl is apparently attacked by Coyote Man. When the lights go out and a furry beast crashes into the house, everyone is terrified. It turns out that Darryl paid the real Coyote Man to scare his family.
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Episode 7 - Roots (1)
Release Date: 1999-11-05At a big family Thanksgiving, Darryl learns that the man he always thought was his father actually isn't, and his entire family has been lying to him his whole life.
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Episode 8 - Roots (2)
Release Date: 1999-11-12Darryl is incredibly upset by the news that Henry is not his biological father. Darryl's mother tells him about Jerry Rose, his real father, and how he took off shortly after Darryl was born. Henry tells Yvonne where to find Jerry Rose, and Yvonne packs up Darryl and takes him to Oakland, where Jerry has a restaurant. Jerry is incredibly excited to meet Darryl, and wants to be a part of his life. Jerry tells Darryl that he once sent $35,000 to Hattie Mae, but Henry sent the check back with a letter saying he didn't want to accept payment for raising ""his"" sons. Darryl realizes that Henry really is his ""real"" father even if he isn't his biological father, and goes back to L.A. and has a heart to heart with him.
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Episode 9 - Daddy's Going to Hell
Release Date: 1999-12-02Darryl doesn't go to church because he feels that it's full of gossiping hypocrites and is always trying to get money out of him. He's honored when Dave and Sally ask him to be Gretchen's god-father, but then gets all bent out of shape when he finds out the whole christening thing costs $200. He backs out, and then gets into a car accident. A man in a white suit who looks suspiciously like Isaac Hayes gives him a new appreciation for church, and he gets to the christening just in time to take his place as god-father.
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Episode 10 - I Love You, You're Fired
Release Date: 1999-12-10Yvonne fills in when Darryl's assistant quits, but their fabulous working relationship quickly deteriorates and Darryl ends up having to fire her. Yvonne hires Darryl's mother as her replacement for revenge.
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Episode 11 - Miracle on 135th and Avalon
Release Date: 1999-12-17Darryl tells Sydney and Michael a Christmas story to thwart their disbelief in Santa Claus, and it turns out that Darryl himself still believes in Santa.
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Episode 12 - Seoul Brother Next Door
Release Date: 2000-01-07Darryl and his Korean neighbor feud over their differences, but then finally realize that they do have some things in common.
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Episode 13 - Death Takes a Three Day Holiday
Release Date: 2000-01-21When a neighbor dies at a young age and his widow isn't left with enough life insurance, Yvonne becomes concerned about Darryl's life insurance situation, and convinces him to take the physical to get more life insurance even though he's scared of doctors. He gets a check up, and the doctor calls his house with test results, leaving a garbled message with Michael that has Darryl convinced he's dying. Darryl tries to live his last days as fully as possible, and after not sleeping for 37 hours he passes out from exhaustion. He wakes up and his doctor tells him that he's actually fine. It turns out that the doctor doesn't treat many black patients, in fact Darryl's only his second, and he overreated to a slight imbalance in Darryl's blood that's actually normal for black men.
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Episode 14 - So What Do You Do, Mrs. Hughley?
Release Date: 2000-01-28At a charity auction, Yvonne meets a number of working mothers who are condescending when they find out Yvonne is a stay at home mom, but her gift-basket that she donates sells for a lot of money. Yvonne decides to start a gift-basket business to prove she too can do it all and starts to work herself to the bone. Yvonne feels badly when Sydney gets a D on a math test, Michael has a new friend she hasn't even met, Darryl has to take Sydney to her Buttercup Girls meeting, and Michael starts gaining weight from Jessie Mae's butter-heavy cooking. She realizes she's doing something she hates and ignoring something she loves to prove something to people she doesn't care about, so she quits.
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Episode 15 - Lies My Valentine Told Me
Release Date: 2000-02-11It turns out that both the Hughleys and the Rogerses have been keeping secrets from each other, and the others' suspicions cause the two couples to have a terrible Valentine's Day. Darryl bought an expensive watch, Yvonne got her own credit card, Dave is keeping a motorcycle at Milsap's, and Sally bought a whole bunch of new clothes. Meanwhile, the Hughley kids and their friend Ronnie are playing with exotic animals like bat and pythons in the Hughleys' home.
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Episode 16 - Two Jacks and a Beanstalk
Release Date: 2000-02-25Way back in the middle ages, Jack Sr. (D.L. Hughley) works for meager wages. With his hungry, hovel-dwelling brood, they have little to do but complain about food. When Jack Jr. (Dee Jay Daniels) sells their cow for beans, his father chides him for their lack of means. But the legumes, of course, are the magic kind, so the two Jacks climb the sprouting vine. In the clouds they search for untold wealth, to ensure a lifetime of happiness and health.
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Episode 17 - She's a Brickhouse
Release Date: 2000-03-03Darryl's sexy new neighbor causes a stir in the neighborhood.
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Episode 18 - The Music Man
Release Date: 2000-03-17Mr. Ballard is fired from Sydney and Michael's school after Darryl encourages him to stand up for himself when the budget for his school musical is cut. Darryl hires him on at the vending comapny, but he brings productivity way down. So Darryl decides to go to the school superintendant to try to get Mr. Ballard his job back. He ends up striking a deal where Mr. Ballard can do his school musical if Darryl funds it. At the last minute, the superintendant sells all of the school's musical instruments, so Ballard puts on a take-off on ""Stomp"" called ""Whomp,"" and all-percussion show using sports equipment and trash can lids. Everyone loves the show and pressures the superintendant into giving Ballard his job back.
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Episode 19 - The Girl That I Married
Release Date: 2000-03-31After Darryl teaches his son how to be a ladies man, and Michael starts dating two women at the same time, Yvonne admits that she was dating someone else when she first started dating Darryl. Darryl, although he originally refuses to go to Yvonne's college reunion, now crashes it in order to hunt down her other boyfriend. He learns to have some confidence in his relationship with Yvonne, but still tackles both a Reverend and a Rabbi out of jealousy. Meanwhile, Sydney becomes friends with one of Michael's girlfriends and gets him busted.
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Episode 20 - Body Double
Release Date: 2000-04-07Yvonne's parents drop the family's hated Aunt Thelma off at the Hughley residence where she proceeds to die. Darryl goes with Yvonne's father to make funeral arrangements, and even though he also hated Aunt Thelma, he is horrified with how cheap his father-in-law is being. At the wake in the Hughleys' house, the family realizes that they have a strange white woman in the casket instead of Aunt Thelma, and the guys have to crash a confederate funeral to steal their hated Aunt's body back. The finally have a proper wake that Darryl pays for and the kids even find something good to say about the old woman.
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Episode 21 - Love the One You're With
Release Date: 2000-04-21Darryl's parents haven't had sex in a month, so they head to a couples retreat for the weekend. Darryl thinks the couples retreat will ruin his parents marriage, so he decides to follow them up there with Yvonne... and of course Dave and Sally come too. After Darryl's parents start threatening divorce, they rediscover their passion and spend most of the weekend in bed. Darryl, however, in the spirit of honesty and communication fostered by the retreat, tells Yvonne about some of his methods for not listening to her. Yvonne shoots back with some harsh honesty of her own and they have an all-out fight. They realize that their marriage has worked just fine for the last 15 years with them being honest about the things they like about each other, and just keeping quiet about everything else, so if it isn't broken they shouldn't fix it.
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Episode 22 - The Thin Black Line
Release Date: 2000-04-28Yvonne's cousin makes a documentary of the Hughleys, making Darryl hyper-aware of the possibility that he is selling out by moving to the white suburbs. Sydney gets into a fight with a girl at school who calls her white. The Rogerses are made to feel that some how they are racist.