Praying at the Temple of A Different World or How to Stream Black Excellence

Last year, Netflix added all six seasons of A Different World (ADW), the spin-off of The Cosby Show. It was designed to star Lisa Bonet in her role of Denise Huxtable, the sometimes wayward and unfocused daughter from the Huxtable family as she attended college at a fictional Historically Black College/University (HBCU). The show, however, morphed into something much more than that. Before I douse you all in my journey in media and blackness as an adolescent, let’s do some math first (I promise this won’t hurt). I’m currently thirty five years old. The first episode of A Different World was titled “Reconcilable Differences” and it aired on September 24th, 1987, just before my 8th birthday. And just at this moment, I realized how much TV I watched as a young kid. I was raised on The Cosby Show (and training in secret at night to Public Enemy that I got from the older kids in the neighborhood, but that’s another column altogether). I somehow remember having a big crush on Lisa Bonet (1. Who didn’t? and 2. “having” probably indicates past tense as in no longer… but I have no further comment on that) and the fact that she was going to have a show featured on her was pretty amazing to my not-really-knowing-anything-about-girls-except-I-liked-how-they-looked adolescent self. Well, Lisa Bonet, true to form, lasted all of one season of the show, but that turned out to be the best thing for it as it was able to reshape itself into more of an ensemble show. At the time, I didn’t know …