Daphne Ashbrook

The initial seven-week "test run" of The O.C. starts with a bang in this debut episode. The main focus is on Ryan Atwood (Ben McKenzie), a tough, trouble-prone teen who has been arrested for stealing a car and thrown out of his Chino home, seemingly headed inexorably toward a life of crime. Sensing that the boy has the potential for good if only given a chance, idealistic pro bono public defender Sandy Cohen (Peter Gallagher) invites Ryan to move into the pool house of the Cohen family's fashionable home, located in the wealthy Newport Beach district of Orange County, CA. Although Sandy's social-climbing ex-beauty-queen wife, Kirsten (Kelly Rowan), is upset by Ryan's presence, the young visitor finds a friend and kindred spirit in the Cohens' intellectual loner son, Seth (Adam Brody). Before long, Ryan has met his extremely attractive next-door neighbor Marissa Cooper (Mischa Barton). Unfortunately, he also has a nasty run-in at an O.C. fundraiser after-party with Marissa's jealous boyfriend, Luke Ward (Chris Carmack), the fallout from which threatens to condemn Ryan to the living hell of the foster-care system. "Welcome to the O.C., Bitch!" ~ All Movie Guide

A father and daughter confront their problems with both family and race issues in the independent drama Dumbarton Bridge. John Shed (Tom Wright) is a Vietnam veteran who scrapes together a living working at the salt ponds in a small town south of San Francisco. Though John is black, he has few black friends and lives with his white girlfriend, Belinda (Daphne Ashbrook). While stationed in Vietnam, John had an affair with a local woman and fathered a child. To his surprise, one day his daughter, now grown and named Ming (Esperanza Catubig), appears at his door to pay an extended visit. John is at best disinterested and at worst hostile towards his daughter, and when Belinda asks Ming to stay with them, the tension becomes so great that Belinda moves out. After a prolonged period of difficulty, John and Ming realize they have difficulty coming to terms with each other because they've never come to terms with their own ethnicity. John takes a step toward self-acceptance by joining a support group for black men, while Ming begins to resolve her own issues when she becomes romantically involved with a Vietnamese-American social worker. The debut feature from writer/director Charles Koppelman, Dumbarton Bridge features a score of vintage jazz classics assembled by legendary producer Orrin Keepnews. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Murder, She Wrote's 241st episode largely takes place in a trendy Fifth Avenue beauty salon. A powerful financier has been found murdered in the establishment, and a hairdresser who has been passing along "trade secrets" is among those suspected. It is possible, however, that a burglar may be the culprit--or that the victim had been involved in a lethal love triangle. Whatever the cast, leave it to Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury) to unentangle this "bad hair day" and solve the mystery. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A kickboxing cyborg security agent accidentally kills a corporate officer who was trying to rape a blonde employee in this sci-fi copy of Die Hard. The head of the corporation orders his security teams to kill both the cyborg and the employee to prevent word of the attempted rape from getting out. The cyborg and the victim must make their way out of the building with two teams of killer cyborgs after them. ~ Brian Gusse, All Movie Guide

Daphne Ashbrook guest stars as Ensign Melora Pazlar, a DS9 cartographer from a low-gravity world who requires a wheelchair to move about in normal gravity. Falling in love with Melora, Bashir tries to find a cure for her affliction. On a less lofty plateau, the redoubtable Quark is targetted for extinction by his old enemy Fallit Kot (Peter Crombie). First telecast October 30, 1993, "Melora" was written by Evan Carlos Somers, Steven Baum, Michael Piller, and James Crocker. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Two patients, one with flashbacks and another who remembers the crash of a UFO, lead a well-known Los Angeles psychiatrist into an investigation of UFO abductions in order to help them. ~ Tana Hobart, All Movie Guide

Hypnotic regression prompts a pair of sisters to recognize that they've been abducted by aliens. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide

Rock Hudson is a TV-biopic oversimplification of the life and career of the durable screen idol. Most of the background material is based on the book by Phyllis Gates, who was briefly married to Hudson in the 1950s. The film recounts (in fan-magazine fashion) Hudson's rise from truck driver to movie star, then spends the last twenty minutes or so on his death from AIDS. Only a few of Hudson's personal and professional associates are depicted in the film: Daphne Ashbrook is seen as Phyllis Gates, Andrew Robinson (who'd portrayed Liberace in an earlier TV movie!) plays Hudson's manager Henry Wilson, and Don Galloway portrays John Frankenheimer, who directed Hudson in Seconds. Rock Hudson himself is played by Thomas Ian Griffith, who came from obscurity and promptly went back after this film was completed. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

14 Going on 30 starts out like Candida and ends up like Back to the Future. 14-year-old Danny O'Neill (Gabey Olds), carrying a torch for his teacher, Peggy Noble (Daphne Ashbrook), can only suffer in silence as Peggy plans to marry brutish gym instructor "Jackjaw" Kelton (Rick Rossovich). With the help of his nerdy pal Lloyd's (Adam Carl) experimental growth accelerator, Danny becomes an overnight adult (now played by Steve Eckholdt). While in his 30-year-old state, Danny intends to expose Jackjaw as the jerk he is-only to end up in hot water himself. Loretta Swit, Patrick Duffy, Alan Thicke and Dick Van Patten guest-star in this made-for-TV movie, originally presented in two parts (March 6 and 13, 1988) on the Disney Sunday Movie anthology. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this entry in the long-running mystery series, Perry Mason begins representing a friend of Della's after he is accused of murdering an old madam who is also his wife. As the intrepid attorney investigates, he soon exposes a multi-million dollar banking fraud. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

This actioner is set in a remote, heavily forested area in Northern California where marijuana growers raise their illegal crops and run whole communities with their terrorist tactics and wealth. The tale centers on the efforts of a fearless New York cop to free one such community from the tyranny of the pot growers. It begins with a surveyor who is leading the town's crooked sheriff to a small marijuana field he has just discovered. The surveyor is killed before he can get there. Joshua, a small boy, sees the execution and tries to get back in time to tell his parents. Unfortunately, the killers murder his family and throw him off a cliff. The boy's aunt, worried at not hearing from her family, gets suspicious and asks an old flame, NY cop Joe Dillon, to investigate. The town sheriff is not pleased by his intrusion and warns him to stay out of it. Dillon disobeys, and that is where all the action comes in. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In this Stephen Cannell-produced pilot for a potential TV detective series, Mac Davis plays an ex-highway patrolman and Joseph Cortese an ex-trucker, related by marriage. Their wives were twin sisters--were, because in addition to all the other "ex" qualifications in their lives, Davis and Cortese are ex-husbands. Still pals after their group divorce, the boys become private eyes. Their first case is to get the goods on a shady tycoon (Robert Culp), who happens to be their former father-in-law. Brothers-in-Law was the first Steven J. Cannell independent production which failed to sell as a series, but it wouldn't be the last. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide