Twenty years is a long time. But watching the cast of The Game walk back into a room together, it’s clear that some things don’t need much warming up. This past weekend, all six original stars of the beloved series reunited for dinner at Lucia’s in Los Angeles, marking two decades since the show first brought Melanie, Derwin, Malik, Tasha, Kelly, and Jason into living rooms across the country.

Hosea Chanchez, Tia Mowry, Pooch Hall, Wendy Raquel Robinson, Brittany Daniel, and Coby Bell gathered for an evening of lingering embraces, laughter, and a roundtable conversation that reportedly covered everything from favorite episodes to the debate that never really got resolved — Team Melanie or Team Derwin.

Nearly a decade had passed since the cast was last together in the same room, making the milestone feel like something more than a dinner reservation.

Created by Mara Brock Akil, The Game premiered in October 2006 as a spinoff of Girlfriends and quickly became a hit, running for nine seasons across The CW and BET. Its mixed of humor, relationship drama, and the world of professional football gave viewers characters they could root for, argue about, and see themselves in.

Before the series moved to BET, The CW described The Game as the number one broadcast television show among African American adults. Its 2011 return to BET drew 7.7 million viewers for the Season 4 premiere, reported at the time as the number one ad-supported sitcom telecast in cable television history.

The evening at Lucia’s was about honoring what the show actually built, the friendships behind the performances, the creative partnership that made those characters feel real, and the audiences who never let the series go even when the network did.

Twenty years after the first episode, The Game still means something. That much was clear from the table.

Photo Credit: Nikki Boutte