I first got hooked on Showtime's Soul Food, the hit five-season drama based on the 1997 movie of the same name about the personal and professional lives of three sisters in Chicago, when I was doing research for AfterEllen.com in 2003 on a potential lesbian story line. The lesbian story line never went anywhere, but I got sucked into the series, ordered the first season on DVD, and watched it all in one long weekend.

I had to wait four years for Paramount to release the second season on DVD, which they finally did earlier this month, but only a few minutes into the first disc, the feeling was definitely back.

What's so great about this series? I mean, besides the fantastic music and the fact that, as the first long-running and successful dramatic series on television to feature a predominantly African-American cast (it ran from 2000 to 2004), it was basically the black community's The L Word without all the lesbians, but with a much better theme song.

It's all about the sisters.

Three sisters, in particular: Teri, Bird, and Maxine, played by Nicole Ari Parker, Malinda Williams, and Vanessa A. Williams respectively. Their relationship is alternately supportive, meddlesome, and confrontational. When they're not laughing, crying, celebrating, or helping each other out of a jam, they're driving each other crazy, in big and small ways.

In other words, they remind me of my own relationship with my sister, except that we don't currently live in the same city, so we have to drive each other crazy using only the internet and the phone. My sister's favorite trick currently includes IM'ing from my mom's account pretending to be mom and trying to get me to complain about her (my sister), then laughing at me if I fall for it. Yes, she has too much free time for a grown woman with three kids, but what can I say — our relationship is pretty the same as it was when we were twelve.

But I digress. Here's a photo of the three actresses celebrating the series' success in 2004: … continue reading