"THERE WAS ALWAYS going to be pressure to make it special," admits executive producer Bill Martin about the landmark half-hour for the sitcom that explores two racially diverse families living side-by-side in a predominantly Black neighborhood in Pasadena, California. "It had to have something meaty for each of our characters, and it needed guest stars, and it had to have emotional weight to it. And it had to be fun." Leave it to someone very close to the show to concoct the perfect story: Cedric the Entertainer, who plays cantankerous Calvin Butler and is also an executive producer. "Cedric pitched the idea of roping in our friends at The Talk," says Martin, who was instantly on board with the idea.
This story is from the April 10 - 23, 2023 edition of TV Guide Magazine.
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This story is from the April 10 - 23, 2023 edition of TV Guide Magazine.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
NCIS: Origins
A HEARTBROKEN LEROY Jethro Gibbs faces his first Christmas without his murdered wife and daughter in the NCIS prequel's emotional midseason finale.
Elsbeth
MARRIED ACTORS CARRIE Preston and Michael Emerson (above) have happily guest starred on each other's shows before (Lost, Claws).
SOUTHERN CHARMERS
Meet the newest debutants on Charleston's social scene
Is Jamie Really Gone?
And will Claire marry Lord John Grey? Starz's twisty timetravel drama Outlander gets messier than ever before
THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS
Eight years after his Daytime Emmy-winning run as lan Ward on The Young and the Restless, Ray Wise is back for a new reign of terror in Genoa City.
Spies Seeing Double
\"MY CHOSEN CAREER is a psychological tightrope walk over a pit of fire,\" says a CIA spook code-named Martian (played with steely intensity by Michael Fassbender) in the solemn spy drama The Agency.
BLITZ FRIDAY, NOV. 22
It is clearly \"the worst of times\" in this stirring Dickensian nail-biter of a movie, set during WWII's early days, when the German Luftwaffe bombed London nightly for months.
INTERIOR CHINATOWN TUESDAY, NOV. 19
Willis Wu (Silicon Valley's Jimmy O. Yang) is stuck.
BEATLES '64 FRIDAY, NOV. 29
In February 1964, the Beatles made their first flight to an America still reeling from the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
MUSIC BY JOHN WILLIAMS
\"There's no one else like John Williams,\" says Laurent Bouzereau, director of this documentary.
