Boomtown. Great series, lots of moving parts. It was a hostage crisis, he was an out-of-work actor who had a big hit in the 80's (cue clips from Riptide), nice twist at the end.

Here's your *Riptide* trivia question: What show, getting trounced by *Moonlighting* in the ratings, had an episode entitled "If You Can't Beat 'Em, Join 'Em" that featured a mock Dave and Maddie team?

Boomtown FTW!

Oh and I wanted to add that "Riptide" was called "Trio mit vier Fäusten" ("Trio with four fists") here in germany :-)

Riptide.
The Screaming Mimi used to fly over my house all the time when I was a kid in LA.
Tuesday nights, sandwiched between the A-Team and Remington Steele.

http://german.imdb.com/title/tt0530189/

That's the link to the episode with complete information.

Quote: "The interesting thing about this episode was use of footage from the '80s series "Riptide" recast as the fictional TV series "Insured by Smith & Wesson""

Didn't take that long to find it out - would've been more challenging if you didn't name the actor that way you'd have to guess which one of the three (maybe four if you count in the robot ;-) ) was it :-)

It would've been harder if IMdB hadn't put in episode-listings last year. Without it it would've been much much harder.

# 3 is correct. It's Riptide.

Boomtown! I remember watching the episode and thinking that the flashbacks looked a lot like Riptide clips.

Great show that died too early.

I see I got beat by a couple of people.

Boomtown.

He played a washed up actor tangled in a robbery at a sports shop he was working with.

One of the cops was a fan of him and his series back in the day and was disappointed when he found out Penny's character had a share of responsability in the robbery.

Stop looking at me like that, I miss Boomtown.

Boomtown: Insured by Smith and Wesson
11/10/02 - NBC
Joe Penney plays Les Van Buren


WHAT DID I WIN?? A CAR?