Monday, December 21, 2009

Who's the Boss?

Remember the show about Tony Micelli, the housekeeper, Angela Bower, the career woman, their kids Samantha Micelli & Jonathan Bower, and Mona, Angela’s boy crazy mother?

Angela was an up-tight and work-obsessed career woman, her son Jonathan was quiet & shy, and her crazy free-spirited mother, Mona, was obsessed with men!! Enter Tony Micelli (Tony Danza) and his daughter Samantha. Tony, an ex-major league baseball player joins Angela’s family as a live-in housekeeper, and wins the family over with his easy-going attitude, his penchant for fun and his disarming smile. Soon there’s a romance blossoming between Angela & Tony among household banter and loads of laughter.

I'm a big fan of 'Who's the Boss?' It used to be aired at 6.30pm (or was it 6?) on weekdays and I’d watch it religiously. I was in school then (I’m an 80s baby :)

It was such a funny show! The best part was the chemistry between Tony Danza & Judith Light. It was brilliant! The sexual tension between them was palpable. And Mona was simply hilarious!

There were a couple of conventions that the show went against. For one, the role reversal - male live-in housekeeper working for a career oriented woman - was new for the 80s. Secondly, Angela’s mother, Mona was shown to be a sexually progressive woman. She was boy crazy and had an active sex life – she dated men across age groups, from college kids to men in their 50s! Such a female character was quite unusual for 80s television.

The show was laden with laughter and peppered with feel-good moments. Yet I feel it never got its due :(

3 comments:

bricks said...

I realised few years back that the Tony's daughter, Sam, was played by the teen sensation Alyssa Milano.

Scarlett said...

@Bricks - Yeah! Where's she now?

bricks said...

She was a porn star in her days before Poison Ivy. Now she can be seen in some episodes of TV productions. Check IMDB.