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Half & Half aired from September 2002 until September 2006 on UPN.

Mona and Dee Dee ( Rachel True, Essence Atkins) were sisters living in San Francisco who had never known each other when they were growing up in this opposites-attract comedy. Mona's mother ,Phyllis ( Telma Hopkins), had divorced her father, Charles ( Obba Babatunde), when Mona was a little girl. Since feisty, outspoken Phyllis and Charles' second wife , bitchy, status-conscious Big Dee Dee ( Valarie Pettiford), hated each other, there was little opportunity for their daughters to meet. All that changed as Mona prepared to move into a penthouse apartment that wealthy Charles had been promising her for years. While she was settling in, Dee Dee showed up with her pushy mother who wanted the apartment for her-Dee Dee got the apartment and Mona to make peace, took another apartment in the building. Living in the same building gave them plenty of time to get to know each other. Mona, who worked for a record company, was supporting herself, while spoiled Dee Dee was in law school. Mona was practical, had a self-deprecating sense of humor and not much of a social life, while perky Dee Dee, the eternal optimist, had no idea what it meant to be on a budget and was a social butterfly. Despite their differences they found they liked each other -which certainly couldn't be said for their mothers-and they became fast friends. Mona's best friend and confidant , Spencer ( Theron " Chico" Benymon), was a fellow A & R executive at Delicious Records , where overly gay Adam ( Alec Mapa) was the receptionist.

In the fall of 2003 Adam told Mona that Spencer had feelings for her just before she saw him in the arms of his new love , Camille ( Rowena King), a new photographer at their office, and Big Dee Dee found out she was pregnant. Mona wondered if she had been jealous of Spencer's girlfriends because she wanted him for herself. In February Delicious Records was bought out and demanding veteran executive Kai Owens ( McLyte ( nee Lana Moorer)took over the company. Kai promoted Mona to vice president , making her Spencer's boss and he found it difficult to adjust to their new situation. Things got worse for Spencer when Camille broke up with him and moved back home to London. A few weeks later Big Dee Dee went into early labor and gave birth to a son, Drew Christian . After her latest breakup, Mona and Spencer commiserated over their inability to sustain relationships and almost started one of their own , but decided the timing wasn't right. This left Mona depressed but Dee Dee told her she would eventually find her true love.

At the start of the 2004-2005 season Mona and Spencer decided not to risk their friendship by becoming lovers. During the season Kai kept Mona on her toes with lots of tough assignments, all of which she managed to complete. After the first of the year Dee Dee tried to prove to Mona she could manage without their father's help by landing a job with a law firm, but she was downsized before her first day on the job. Her frustration over not having a job made it difficult for her to write the valedictory speech at her law school graduation. Big Dee Dee didn't help-she told her daughter to give up her law career and just look for a man. In the season finale Phyllis moved into the same building with Mona and Dee Dee, much to her daughter's chagrin.

The last season began with Dee Dee looking for a job after her father, upset with her suggestion she go back to school, cut her off and demanded reimbursement for everything he had paid for since her twenty-first birthday. On the other hand things were looking up for Mona who was dating her new neighbor , Lorenzo ( Charles Divins), a hunky pastry chef.A few weeks later, Dee Dee talked her way into a job as a sports agent because of her expertise in contract detailes. Gus Mason ( Steven Eckholdt) hired her to work for his company, GMG, where she competed with the firm's star agent, Brett ( Joey Lawrence), who was forever belittling her talents. Ironically in April the two of them ended up in the sack together-twice. After breaking up with Lorenzo Mona started a new relationship with restauranteur Chase ( Lamman Rucker). When she decided to date both of them, they demanded she make a choice. In the season's last scene she did, but since Half & Half had been canceled , viewers never found out who she picked.

A Review of Half & Half

HALF AND HALF
Regular airtime: Mondays, 9:30pm ET (UPN)
Producers: Yvette Lee Bowser
Cast: Rachel True, Essence Atkins, Telma Hopkins, Valarie Pettiford, Chico Benymon, Obba Babatunde
by Bernadette Adams Davis
A Touch of Class

Right away, Phyllis (Telma Hopkins) makes it clear which sister got the raw deal in UPN's new sitcom, Half and Half. According to her, it was Mona, her daughter. Phyllis' ex, Charles, is now married to Big Dee Dee and they have a daughter, also named Dee Dee. As Phyllis puts it, while Mona was "growing up in the city, riding the bus... princess Dee Dee spent the summers in the country riding her pony."

So that's the setup: two half-sisters who are raised in different economic circumstances, but now live in the same San Francisco apartment building. Charles promised the upstairs apartment to both daughters. He owns several rental properties and is caught in the middle as the young women and their mothers -- who have more than 20 years of beef -- fight about the space. A coin toss resolves the dispute and everyone races up to see the prize, which, amazingly, neither daughter had seen. Mona, the coin toss winner, learns that she's giving up her downstairs apartment for a tiny space with sloped ceilings. Getting stuck with the attic apartment is just one more slight in a lifetime of coming in second to Dee Dee. "Ever since the little princess was born, I've been treated like a raggedy, one-eyed doll you shove in the back of a dusty old drawer, or stinky old attic."

Half and Half is superficially the meeting of two opposites, a sort of familial Odd Couple. The pilot mostly sticks to the surface story of unfamiliar siblings in close quarters. The backstory, however, is what gives this light comedy the potential for meatier fare. More than being raised apart, the sisters were raised in different economic environments. Mona, an African American alternachick of the sort we haven't seen since Denise and Freddie from A Different World, grew up with her mother, the first wife. Dee Dee is the child of Charles' second marriage and the greater beneficiary of his financial success. Shrieking and frail, she is a BAP (Black American Princess), the product of private schools, cotillions, and summers in the country.

This class dichotomy is only the ground for more complications. Both women are college graduates and can afford, whether through their father's largesse or their own income, to live in the same apartment building. So, the difference is more upper middle class versus lower middle class than rich versus poor. That distinction matters, because it is one more primetime representation of the black middle class and African American diversity. Showcasing the black middle class is something executive producer Yvette Lee Bowser has done before with Living Single, which featured four black women, and For Your Love, an integrated comedy.

Another UPN comedy, Girlfriends, is the standout among current shows featuring black women. While UPN's The Parkers, which focuses on a single mother and her young adult daughter, relies on stereotypes about man-crazed, overweight, working class black women, Girlfriends and Half and Half get laughs with characters who are middle class, educated and ambitious. A Different World, Living Single, and For Your Love gave viewers similar characters, before their cancellations, and UPN is the only network even making an effort to fill the void.

However, in the Half and Half premiere, the writers tiptoe around the class and culture issues Mona and Dee Dee face. Instead of interrogating the sisters' class and cultural differences, the episode focuses on their reunion and subsequent misunderstanding over a man. Mona, in reluctant response to Dee Dee's cries for help, calls an exterminator to take care of the spiders in her old apartment. Even though he hasn't chosen the sexiest profession, the pest control guy is a hottie. Mona bonds with the bug man during an "amazing call," but when he arrives, he assumes Dee Dee made the call. It is her apartment, after all. And she thinks Mona was simply doing her a favor by taking charge of the situation.

Luckily for Mona, Dee Dee's date with the bug man is a bust. Once Mona confesses that she wants the exterminator for herself, Dee Dee hooks her up. The two go out, it goes great and Mona goes to Dee Dee's apartment to share the details. The scene helps soften Dee Dee's annoying, and seemingly fake, excitement about the new living situation. Mona thanks her sister and asks her why she helped her. "I did it because you're my sister," says Dee Dee, confirming what she said earlier: "I've always had the dream that someday we'd live together and help each other and be like real sisters."

Mona doesn't share the love. Her dream, she admits, was that a big bird would "dump you in the sea and then me and my mother would move back in with my father and be happy forever." The fact that Mona is still pained by being second to Dee Dee and doesn't share her yearning for a closer relationship hints at the harsher history the women share: namely, the who, what, when, where and whys of Charles and Phyllis' divorce.

Phyllis claims that she and Charles were still married when he met Big Dee Dee and that the second wife was a home-wrecker. When she and Charles were on a flight to Acapulco, Phyllis says, "That bitch comes rolling down the aisle... and let's just say the friendly skies never been so damn friendly." Charles and Big Dee Dee aren't around to refute that story, but the show does give at least one other clue. Dee Dee has just finished college, so she's probably around 22 years old. Mona's parents, as she says in the opening scene, have been divorced for 22 years. If a shotgun was the "something old" at Charles' wedding, the girls and their mamas will be in for more drama as they hang out at the sisters' apartments. Dealing with such a history, rather than relying on man-chasing for every plot, will set Half and Half apart.

— 30 September 2002

To watch some clips from Half & Half go to http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=half+%26+half+tv+show&aq=f