Eddie Mekka Movies

In this high-tension drama, Ray Mercer (Peter Weller) is a former cop who was kicked off the force and sent to prison after it was discovered that he embezzled $4,000 from the police officers' pension fund. Shortly after he's released on parole, Ray and his wife Rebecca (Tia Carrere) decide to get a divorce and head to Las Vegas where they can get it over with quickly. Rebecca wants to visit a casino, but Ray's conditions of parole forbid it; while he waits for her outside as she gambles, he hands a few bucks to a casino hostess and asks her to play a slot machine for him. Ray thinks good luck is finally with him when the machine pays off a $450,000 jackpot, but that's just before a group of ambitious thieves circle the casino to pull a massive robbery. The local police are convinced that Ray is somehow in on the crime; he jumps in to help in hopes of clearing his name, and he discovers evidence that suggests that the owner of the casino, Charles Atlas (Dennis Hopper), may have engineered the robbery on his own operation. Also released as Cold Cash and Showdown, Top of the World features Peter Coyote and David Alan Grier in supporting roles. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Following up the goofy big-screen comedies Dragnet and Delirious, director Tom Mankiewicz delivered this made-for-cable thriller starring Tony Goldwyn and Lynn Whitfield. After witnessing a murder, Goldwyn finds himself pursued by a group of thugs led by mafia boss Alan Arkin. Whitfield stars as the detective assigned to ensure that Goldwyn not only doesn't flee out of fear for his life, but stays alive long enough to testify at the murder trial. Along the way, as the two spend more time together, a romance ensues. Peter Boyle, George Segal and Will Patton round out the cast, and the film was scripted by Dan Gordon who would later gain noteriety as a scribe on 1999's The Hurricane. ~ Matthew Tobey, Rovi

This episode focuses on Blue Moon employees Bert Viola (Curtis Armstrong) and Agnes Dipesto (Allyce Beasley). Bert wants to attend a Viola family reunion, but Agnes has been sequestered with the jury for the murder trial of one John Gibson--and of course, Agnes is the sole holdout who believes in Gibson's innocence. Out of desperation, Bert decides that the only way to get Agnes out of the jury room is to solve the murder himself! In a dream sequence, the Moonlighting regulars are recast as the principals in John Gibson's alleged crime. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Based on a novel by Iris Rainer Dart, Beaches traces the 30-year oil-and-water friendship between free-spirited Bronx Jew CC Bloom (Bette Midler) and uptight San Francisco WASP Hillary Essex (Barbara Hershey). The two meet as children in Atlantic City (played by Mayim Bialik and Marcie Leeds) and are reunited in the 1960s, when CC is a struggling singer and Hillary is trying to break free from her staid upbringing by becoming an activist. The two ladies room together, then fall out when both are attracted to off-Broadway producer John Pierce (John Heard). CC wins John, but she quickly outgrows him as she matriculates into a bawdy performer. The recently patched-up friendship between CC and Hillary is torn asunder again when Hillary and her new husband express distaste for CC's performing style. Comes the 1970s, and CC and Hillary are reunited after shedding their respective spouses. Broke again, they once more become Manhattan roommates. Their bond strengthens, but there is tragedy in store for the duo. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Laverne & Shirley was Laverne & Shirley in name only as the series entered its eighth and final season. For a variety of reasons, chief among them her feelings that she was being overshadowed by co-star Penny Marshall (Laverne) and that the producers were insensitive to the work limitations imposed by her pregnancy, Cindy Williams had walked off the series after completing only two season-eight episodes. Providentially, the first of these, the season opener of September 28, 1982, had contrived to marry off Shirley to an army medic named Walter Meany (making her Shirley Feeney Meany!), thereby explaining away the many absences that Williams was expected to take before giving birth. No one (except perhaps the actress herself) could have suspected that the next episode telecast, "Window on Main Street, would constitute Williams' last appearance on the series. Thus, Laverne soldiered on throughout the rest of the season without Shirley, as the writers tried to recapture the old magic by briefly teaming Penny Marshall with such guest stars as Julie Brown, Carrie Fisher, Laraine Newman, Carol Kane, and Vicki Lawrence, the latter reprising her role as bombastic WAC sergeant Plout. And in an unrelated distaff development, series co-star David L. Lander, normally cast as the goofy Squiggy, shows up in drag as Squiggy's sister Squendolyn! Perhaps the highlight of the season is future Tonight Show host Jay Leno's guest appearance as duplicitous radio DJ Bobby Bitts in the episode "Do the Carmine." Ranking 25th in the ratings during its terminal season -- not bad, but far below its onetime ranking as America's Number One series -- Laverne & Shirley concluded with the unremarkable episode "Here Today, Hair Tomorrow." ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

To counteract a precipitous drop in its ratings during its previous season, Laverne & Shirley launched season six by shifting the series' locale from Milwaukee, WI, to Burbank, CA. Fired from their jobs when Shotz Brewery decides to switch to automation, Laverne (Penny Marshall) and Shirley (Cindy Williams) pack their bags and leave Beertown in favor of the Golden State, where Laverne's dad, Frank (Phil Foster), and his new bride (and the girls' former landlady), Edna (Betty Garrett), have already resettled and opened a restaurant called Cowboy Bill's. In the interests of continuity, Laverne and Shirley are soon joined in California by their zany ex-co-workers Lenny (Michael McKean) and Squiggy (David L. Lander), and by Laverne's erstwhile boyfriend Carmine (Eddie Mekka). Moving into an apartment managed by part-time stuntman Sonny St. Jacques (Ed Marinaro), Laverne and Shirley immediately come into contact with their new neighbor, airheaded model-dancer Rhonda Lee (Leslie Easterbrook), and not long afterward the girls land jobs in the gift-wrapping section of Bardwell's Department Store. They also launch an ongoing effort to break into the movies, beginning with the famous episode in which Troy Donahue appears as himself. Evidently, several years have passed between season five, which was ostensibly set in the very early '60s, and season six. How else can one explain how Lenny and Squiggy end up as guests on TV's The Dating Game, which didn't debut until December of 1965, or how Frank and Edna, who were married in the early months of season five, are suddenly celebrating their fifth wedding anniversary? Highlights this season include the return of Vicki Lawrence as the redoubtable Sgt. Plout of the WACS, now seeking help from her former "grunts" Laverne and Shirley as she goes AWOL; Eric Idle and Peter Noone, showing up as pot-smoking rock singers in the episode "I Do, I Do"; Lenny and Squiggy imagining themselves as silent movie stars in "Born Too Late"; and "Laverne's Broken Leg," which may well have been the first sitcom episode inspired by the 1946 feature film It's a Wonderful Life (but certainly not the last)! The move from Milwaukee to Burbank did wonders for Laverne & Shirley's ratings: not even showing up in the Top 30 during season five, the series shot up to 20th place for season six. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

When Laverne & Shirley signed on in January of 1976, America's top-rated program was Happy Days -- of which Laverne & Shirley was, of course, a spin-off. By the time the last-named series entered its third season, it had climbed to the coveted number one slot, while Happy Days had retreated to number two. Season three opens with a typically slapsticky entry, "Airport '59," wherein Laverne (Penny Marshall) and Shirley (Penny Marshall) end up at the controls of a passenger plane. Later on, in the series' first two-parter, "Cruise," our heroines take a vacation on a luxury liner, only to be saddled with a pair of stowaways -- none other than their Shotz Brewery co-workers Lenny (Michael McKean) and Squiggy (David L. Lander). In a subsequent installment, 1950s singing idol Fabian shows up as Laverne & Shirley's first era-appropriate guest star. And in a brace of physical-humor tours de force, "The Obstacle Course" and "2001: A Comedy Odyssey," the girls (a) become police recruits and (b) imagine what their lives will be like in old age. But for all its hilarious hijinks, the third season's most memorable episode is also its most moving and poignant: "The Slow Child," guest-starring Linda Gillen as Amy Babish, the mentally challenged daughter of Laverne and Shirley's landlady, Edna Babish (Betty Garrett). ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Exploiting the overwhelmingly positive audience response to the 1975 Happy Days episode in which Richie (Ron Howard) and Potsie (Anson Williams) found themselves on a riotous date with brash but lovable "older women" Laverne De Fazio (Penny Marshall) and Shirley Feeney (Cindy Williams), executive producer Garry Marshall obligingly whipped up a spin-off series showcasing these two supporting characters, logically titled Laverne & Shirley. Most of the familiar pieces are already in place during the series' 15-episode inaugural season: roommates Laverne and Shirley work at Milwaukee's Shotz Brewery along with zany beer-truck drivers Lenny (Michael McKean) and Squiggy (David L. Lander); the girls occasionally hang out at the Pizza Bowl, owned by Laverne's widowed father, Frank (Phil Foster); and while long-suffering Shirley bounces from one loser boyfriend to another, Laverne has a fairly steady relationship with the preening, self-consciously macho Carmine (Eddie Mekka). All that is missing from season one is the girls' landlady Edna Babish, though Helen Page Camp is seen in a handful of early episodes as apartment manager Mrs. Havenhurst. In order to assure Laverne & Shirley a well-attended launching, Happy Days star Henry Winkler appeared as "The Fonz" in the new series' first two episodes. By the time the season-one finale "Mother Knows Worst" (featuring Pat Carroll in her only appearance as Shirley's mom) rolled around, Laverne & Shirley was America's second most popular series (just guess what was number one!). ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi