Because it’s Friday and almost all of the good TV shows are on hiatus and there’s not much going on in general, let’s take a little trip down memory lane to the year 1991. During Season Five of Married with Children, in an attempt to capitalize off the crass, blue collar show’s popularity, Fox introduced a spin-off called Top of the Heap — which starred Matt LeBlanc as “Vinnie,” introduced as a boyfriend of Kelly’s who was basically the boy equivalent of Kelly. Top of the Heap was not a very good show.
The main premise of Top of the Heap was that Vinnie lived in the Chicago slums with his gritty, deadbeat father Charlie — played by veteran character actor Joseph Bologna (awesome name) — whose get rich quick scheme was to marry his son off to a wealthy woman. That’s right: The entire premise of this show was a guy whose dreams in life involved prostituting his only son out to women. Years later, It’s Always Sunny would touch on that same premise, but of course the people on that show are supposed to be the worst human beings ever.
As such, he gets Vinnie a job at a country club because that’s apparently where single rich women hang out. Definitely single rich women, and not married women to rich men who would happily screw 24-year-old Matt LeBlanc’s brains out. Sadly, we never did get to find out if the pair made it big, because Top of the Heap was cancelled after seven episodes. It was revived a year later as something else, but that didn’t work out so great either.
Oh! And I feel like it’s worth mentioning that Top of the Heap also starred a young Joey Lauren Adams as Vinnie and Charlie’s neighbor who was hot for Vinnie, but Vinnie was too noble to lay a finger on her since she was underage. Which just goes to demonstrate how poorly conceived this show was.
Anyway, here’s the teaser for Top of the Heap, in all of its ’90s glory.
