Laurie Parres Movies

To help out DJ (Candace Cameron), Jesse (John Stamos) enters the charity basketball game she has organized. But though everyone else in the Tanner household is a whiz on the basketball court, Jesse can barely hold the up ball, even with two hands. Fortunately, he is given a few helpful tips by a very tall, very familiar-looking former NBA star--but when all is said and done, it is another member of the Tanner clan who scores the winning basket. And in a moment straight out of Leave It to Beaver, Steph (Jodie Sweetin) makes a grotesque-looking blouse for Becky (Lori Loughlin)--who, to spare Steph's feelings, may be forced to wear the monstrosity in public. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

This NBC sitcom went into production as The Hank Azaria Show, giving a pretty good indication of the star's identity. The versatile Hank Azaria, best known for his many voices on the animated series The Simpsons, was cast as Josh Miller, head writer of the late-night sketch comedy series Barb Thompson's Laugh Riot. Using events in his own life for material, Josh frequently served up sketches about powerful women and nerdish men -- appropriately, since he felt intimidated not only by his egotistical boss Barb Thompson (Katey Sagal), but also by his self-assertive Assistant D.A. wife Wendy (Jayne Brook). Also on hand were Josh's co-writers, the wisecracking Rina (Suzy Nakamura), the womanizing Kenny (Joshua Malina), and Kenny's buxom "assistant" Tabitha (Julia Schultz). Sort of a multicultural Dick Van Dyke Show, with bizarre fantasy sequences thrown in to show off Hank Azaria's vast vocal gifts (he also talked directly to the camera, à la virtually every other sitcom of the early 21st century), Imagine That made its first network TV appearance on January 8, 2002. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The weekly, half-hour UPN comedy series Love, Inc. revolved around a dating service run by a woman named Clea (Holly Robinson Peete), who had hoped to use her own happy nine-year marriage as publicity for the organization -- but had to resort to "plan B" when that marriage ended in divorce. In each episode, Clea dispatched her "wing-men" and "wing-women" to play Cupid for a variety of unattached males and females, many of whom were so eccentric that the task of finding an appropriate mate seemed all but impossible. In the original pilot episode, Clea's chief "wing-woman," Denise Johnson, whose success at bringing couples together was matched only by her spectacular failure in finding love on her own, had been played by Shannen Doherty. According to the source one believed, Doherty either tested badly with a sample audience or was given the thumbs-down by a group of potential sponsors: whatever the case, by the time the series debuted on September 22, 2005, Doherty had been replaced by Busy Philipps. The rest of the cast included Ion Overman as Viviana, the service's Argentinean receptionist, who needed to land an American husband to stay in the country; Reagan Gomez-Preston as Francine, the resident style expert; and Vince Vieluf as Barry, the service's technical wizard. Love, Inc. was created by Andrew Secunda, formerly a writer on Late Night With Conan O'Brien. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi