Top of the Heap

1 9 9 1 (USA)
7 x 30 minute episodes

This short-lived series, a spin-off from Fox’s highly successful Married . . . with Children, centred on Al Bundy’s best friend, Charlie Verducci (Joseph Bologna).

Charlie was the divorced, sleazy, live-in superintendent of a run-down apartment building in Chicago – a grifter whose main goal in life was to help his son Vinnie (a pre-Friends Matt LeBlanc), a likeable but incredibly dumb hunk, marry rich.

The Verducci Master Plan was to put Vinnie in an environment full of rich women so that one of them would fall for the young stud.

To that end, Vinnie got a job working at the exclusive Rolling Hills Country Club outside Chicago.

The classy manager of the club, Alixandra Stone (Rita Moreno), had hired Vinnie because she thought the women members could use a little beefcake, and they certainly seemed to like it.

Charlie, who found her very sexy, kept trying to get her to go out with him, but to no avail. Emmet (Leslie Jordan), whose hormones always seemed to be raging, was the diminutive security guard at the club.

Mona (Joey Lauren Adams) was the Verducci’s sexy 16-year-old neighbour who had the hots for Vinnie.

Christina Applegate and David Faustino from Married made occasional guest appearances to keep the ties between Top of the Heap and its parent show apparent, but the magic wasn’t there, and it lasted just seven episodes before being cancelled in May 1991.

A further spin-off, Vinnie & Bobby aired briefly in 1992.

Charlie Verducci
Joseph Bologna
Vinnie Verducci
Matt LeBlanc
Mona Mullins
Joey Lauren Adams
Alixandra Stone
Rita Moreno
Emmet Lefebvre
Leslie Jordan

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