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Cuts aired from February 2005 until September 2006 on UPN.
Kevin Barnes ( Marques Houston) gave up his career as " hairdresser to the rap stars" to return home to Baltimore and take over the family barbershop, Phatheadz. When his older brother, Flex, sold it to Jack Sherwood ( Corbin Bernsen), who owned a chain of successful hair salons, Kevin agreed to stay as comanager working with Sherwood's flighty spoiled daughter, Tiffany ( Shannon Elizabeth). Despite very different ideas on how the place should be run ( she wanted to incorporate a salon for women), they agreed to give it a go. After extensive remodeling they opened with a new look and a new name, Cuts. There were conflicts in management styles-Kevin was insensitive and businesslike while Tiffany was forgiving and nurturing -but they managed to compromise. Tiffany's tendacy to lose interest in the salon and revert to her spoiled ways was a recurring problem, but Kevin, and her demanding father, Jack got her back on track. Sassy Candy ( Shondrella Avery)was the manicurist and fast-talking Walt and easygoing Ace( Rashaan Nall, Edward " Grapevine" Fordham, Jr. ) were the principal barbers.
In the spring , when Jack tossed Tiffany out of his mansion to force her to live on her own, she moved in with Kevin, who left town to go on the road with his old band. That fall he returned and convinced Tiffany, who had recently hired a new stylist, Faith ( Beatrice Rosen), that she needed his help and got his job back. During the season Faith and Walt had an affair, but broke up; Kevin hired college student Darius ( Omarian) as his apprentice; and Tiffany had a serious romance with Jeremy ( Andrew Walker), whom she had hired and fired from Cuts. In the series finale, Tiffany , who had broken up with Jeremy , accepted Jack's offer to become senior v.p. of Development for Sherwood Industries; Kevin took over complete control of Cuts; and Candy found out she was pregnant from a one-night stand with Ace.
Jack Sherwood was played by David Garrison in the setup episode on One to One, the series from which Cuts was spun off.
A Review from The New York Times
TELEVISION REVIEW; A Salon Where the Repartee Can Be as Sharp as the Scissors
By VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN
Published: February 14, 2005
In the opening scene of ''Cuts,'' a comedy that starts tonight on UPN, a black hair-salon manager condemns as knuckleheads two white, blue-collar fatsos, a pair of loitering Teamsters who are supposed to be working for him.
It's not a hugely entertaining exchange, this black management-white labor confrontation, but it has the hallmarks of a deliberate provocation, and as an opener it suggests an unusually emphatic point of view for a sitcom. If ''Cuts'' can hold onto its confidence, it could be a welcome troublemaker to add to UPN's Monday night comedy lineup.
A spinoff of ''One on One,'' another UPN sitcom, ''Cuts'' is set almost entirely in the Baltimore hair salon, which is fractiously managed by Kevin Barnes (Marques Houston), the resentful son of the shop's black founder, and Tiffany Sherwood (Shannon Elizabeth), the Yale drop-out daughter of the white man who bought out Kevin's family.
The repartee between Kevin and Tiffany and Ms. Elizabeth's storied sexiness (she was the object of all desire in ''American Pie'') are the show's reasons for being, though Shondrella Avery, whose character, Candy, has been carried over from ''One on One,'' seems to be showing everyone the ropes here.
The talented Ms. Avery doesn't drop lines or oversell them; the producers ought to let her set the show's volume and pace, especially for Ms. Elizabeth, who insists on shouting almost everything she says. Rashaan Nall, as Walt, is another funny veteran who deserves fair airtime.
Tonight's plot revolves around the extravagant opening party for the salon, which Tiffany, a spoiled ditz, envisions grandly as a day spa. The renovation involves a few too many electrocution sight gags, but the incompetence of the workers -- lazy white guys and one glue-sniffing black one -- provides some laughs. The barbershop that appeared on the earlier sitcom is eventually given an expensive, aspirational makeover. Its hot tubs and plasma televisions neatly mark its distance from the neighborhood barbershop that has defined a vein of good-natured black comedy since the ''Barbershop'' movies.
Instead of deriving humor from familiarity and ordinariness, then, ''Cuts'' makes a theme of heterogeneity and clashes. But it also introduces unlikely bonds, like the one between Tiffany and Candy. To the viewer, Tiffany seems like a Paris Hilton-style fool, but to Candy, she's worldly.
A nice exchange that Ms. Avery nails reveals this dynamic, and adds one more beat and level of complexity to the show's many jokes at Tiffany's expense. Complaining about the expense of the party, Tiffany whines: ''I had to pay the caterer, the harpist, the swan wrangler -- -- ''
''The swan wrangler?'' Candy asks.
''Swans don't wrangle themselves, Candy,'' says Tiffany.
''Why is she turning on me?'' Candy says to some old friends, looking genuinely hurt. ''I mean, can't a sister get some knowledge?''
''Cuts'' may yet be good. In another promising touch, Corbin Bernsen, whose comic weirdness is known to viewers of ''Celebrity Mole,'' appears as Jack Sherwood, Tiffany's father.
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