"Square Pegs" S1:E15 - "It's Academical!"

Patty (played by former Broadway Annie Sarah Jessica Parker) and Muffy (played by future billionaire and Atlanta Hawks owner Jami Gertz) are chosen to represent Weemawee on local TV quiz show "It's Academical!"  It's funny that they specifically reference "It's Academic," but Martin Mull is a much slicker host than Mac McGarry, also hosting the local "Teen Rap" show (DC's version of that kind of show was Channel 9's "Pick Up the Beat" - I loved the little vignettes they showed at the beginning of the show to introduce that episode's topic).  Other '80s shows with quiz show appearances include "Family Ties" (Mallory becomes the star player when Alex gets stage fright on camera) and pretty much every episode of "Head of the Class."  

"The Jeff Foxworthy Show" S2:E23 - "Field of Schemes"

ABC, in its infinite wisdom, once gave comedy sensation Jeff Foxworthy a sitcom in the mid-90s and then decided that the Southern comedian known for redneck jokes was too Southern for a national audience and set his show in Indiana.  Then again, they also thought Margaret Cho was too Asian-American in that era.  The show was a fish out of water comedy, which I guess gave Foxworthy the chance to explain the exotic South to the residents of Bloomington and get in a few redneck jokes.  His father-in-law, played by the guy who played Doug's dad on "King of Queens," was IU's president and looked down on him, as did most of the rest of the town.  Because he was from the South of course!  Even more inexplicable was the decision to portray Foxworthy as a love-machine sex god, but perhaps that was his choice.

Unsurprisingly, the show didn't do particularly well and moved to NBC for its drastically retooled second season.  All of the cast was dropped except for Jeff and son Haley Joel Osment, his new wife was much less hot, and the entire thing was moved to the small town in Georgia where the character was from and he ran a trucking company.  It was still a sitcom, but the humor was more natural and there wasn't a need to explain the South ... to Southerners.  Anyway, it still didn't do particularly well so this company softball game-themed episode was the last and one of the better ones.  Well, except for the fact that the opposing company's team is led by pitcher and giant Bill Walton.  He was an analyst for the NBA on NBC at the time, so perhaps the network felt a need to promote him?  Regardless, he's no Dick Butkus as a luncheonette owner on "My Two Dads," shown on the same Roku live channel.