Who's the Boss?


Who's the Boss? is an American sitcom television series created by Martin Cohan and Blake Hunter, which aired on ABC from September 20, 1984, to April 25, 1992. Produced by Hunter-Cohan Productions in association with Embassy Television and Columbia Pictures Television, the series starred Tony Danza as Tony Micelli, a former major league baseball player who relocates to Fairfield, Connecticut, to work as a live-in housekeeper for a divorced advertising executive, played by Judith Light. Also featured were Alyssa Milano, Danny Pintauro and Katherine Helmond.
The show became one of the most popular sitcoms of the mid-to-late 1980s. The series was nominated for more than 40 awards, including ten Primetime Emmy Award and five Golden Globe Award nominations, winning one of each. Also very successful in the ratings, Who's the Boss? consistently ranked in the top 10 in the final primetime ratings between 1985 and 1989, and has since continued in syndication worldwide.

Plot

Widower Anthony Morton "Tony" Micelli is a former Major League Baseball player who was forced to retire due to a shoulder injury. Wanting to move out of Brooklyn to find a better environment for his daughter, Samantha, he ends up taking a job in upscale Fairfield, Connecticut as a live-in housekeeper for divorced advertising executive Angela Bower and her son Jonathan, and he and Samantha move into the Bower household. Appearing frequently is Angela's feisty, sexually progressive mother Mona Robinson, who dates all kinds of men, from college-age to silver-haired CEOs. This portrayal of a woman in middle age with an active social and sexual life was unusual for television at the time.
The title of the show refers to the clear role reversal of the two lead characters, where a woman is the breadwinner and a man stays at home and takes care of the household. It challenged contemporary stereotypes of young Italian-American males as macho, boorish and wholly ignorant of life outside of urban working-class neighborhoods, as Tony was depicted as sensitive, intelligent and domestic with an interest in intellectual pursuits, and yet still athletic and streetwise.
The easy-going, spontaneous Tony and the driven, self-controlled Angela are attracted to each other, though both are uncomfortable with the notion for much of the show's run. While there is playful banter and many hints of their feelings for each other, Tony and Angela do their best to avoid facing this aspect of their developing relationship and date other people. Angela has a steady romantic interest in Geoffrey Wells, while Tony has a variety of girlfriends who come and go, including Kathleen Sawyer in seasons six and seven. In the meantime, however, they become best friends, relying on each other frequently for emotional support. In addition, Tony provides a male role model for Jonathan, while Angela and Mona give Samantha the womanly guidance she had been missing.
Keeping ties with Tony's and Samantha's Brooklyn roots is motherly former neighbor Mrs. Rossini, who ends up becoming a thorn in Mona's side. Several other friends turn up a few times each season, sometimes in New York, sometimes in Connecticut.
Angela eventually strikes out on her own and opens her own ad firm in season three, while Tony decides to go back to school, enrolling in the same college that daughter Samantha would later attend. Samantha's best friend Bonnie is a recurring character during these seasons, while romance comes into her life in the form of boyfriend Jesse Nash during her senior year of high school and into college.
At the start of season eight, Tony and Angela finally acknowledge their love for each other. However, the series does not end with the widely expected marriage but on a more ambiguous note. This was due primarily to concerns by the network that a marriage, representing a definitive ending, could hurt syndication. Tony Danza also vehemently opposed the marriage, saying it would contradict the original purpose of the show.
During the final season, Samantha finds a new love in Hank Thomopoulous, who became a full-time character in January 1992. A fellow college student, Hank was originally poised to enter a medical program, but soon decides to become a puppeteer. Sam and Hank marry after an engagement lasting a matter of weeks.

Cast

Main cast

appeared in the first season as next door neighbor Diane Wilmington. Betty White also appeared in the first season as television host Bobbie Barnes. Comic James Coco was a frequent guest, beginning in season one as Tony's father-in-law Nick Milano, visiting from New York. People have credited his appearances on Who's the Boss? as a prime example of his comedic abilities on TV, despite the fact that he was not a regular and had never starred in a successful TV series of his own. When Coco died in February 1987, prior to the conclusion of season three, his character was written out as having died as well.
By the fall of 1990, with Samantha beginning college and Jonathan in high school, Who's the Boss?, like other series getting on in years, added a new younger cast member. Producers brought in five-year-old Billy, an orphan from the Micellis' old Brooklyn neighborhood whose grandmother left Billy in Tony's care. He moves in with the Bower family in season seven. Billy was a comic foil to Tony, but also attempted to get into the mix in other characters' storylines. He only lasted that season, however. In the E! True Hollywood Story about the series, Katherine Helmond remarked that Halyalkar was a gifted performer, but had difficulty catching up to the pace of the acting and timing the senior cast members had long established with each other. He was written out of the show at the end of the season. In the beginning of season eight, it was briefly explained that Billy had returned to live with his grandmother.
Frank Sinatra made a guest appearance in a 1989 episode, as well as Ray Charles, Mike Tyson and Thomas Hearns. Leslie Nielsen played Max, who was engaged to Mona in a 1988 episode. Matthew Perry played Benjamin Dawson, a roommate of Samantha's in a 1990 episode. Robert Mandan guest-starred in two episodes, as a CEO and love interest for Mona; Mandan and Helmond had previously starred as husband and wife in the comedy-drama Soap.

Background

Who's the Boss? was created by television producers and business partners Martin Cohan and Blake Hunter in 1983. In early development, the series was titled You're the Boss, in reference to Angela employing Tony and the gender role reversal. Before the fall 1984 premiere, the producers changed it to Who's the Boss?, an open ended title which hinted that any one of the leads could get their own way and be the "boss". Unlike Danza, who had served as the Tony prototype from the beginning, Judith Light was one of many who auditioned for the role of Angela. She was eventually cast based on her performance, which Hunter commented as "class Jean Harlow type, or more of a Meryl Streep." The character of Mona was initially created as an older sister to Angela, but as Cohan and Hunter struggled to handle the casting of the role, they decided on re-writing the role into "a free spirit with a quick tongue," who they envisioned Katherine Helmond to play. Danny Pintauro and Alyssa Milano were also cast based on their auditions.
The series' pilot was shot in November 1983, a full 10 months before the show actually went on the air. ABC originally was planning to put it on mid-season in January 1984, but due to creative differences between the producers and the network, the show was delayed until the next season. The show debuted on September 20, 1984.
In the fall of 1991, after seven years on its established Tuesday night slot, Who's the Boss? was moved to Saturday nights at 8:00 p.m., along with fellow long-running sitcom Growing Pains. In February 1992, ABC added the long-running Perfect Strangers and the new cartoon Capitol Critters to the night. It was promoted as the new I Love Saturday Night lineup, an equivalent to the hit Friday TGIF
Capital Critters as its lead-in. The I Love Saturday Night banner proved to be short-lived, folding on February 29, 1992; Who's the Boss? moved back into the Saturday 8/7c slot in early March.
The series' ratings dropped significantly in its new time slot, and the decision was made to end the series that spring. The hour-long series finale aired on Saturday, April 25, 1992, along with the finales for Growing Pains and MacGyver. Who's the Boss? reruns continued to air through the summer.

Impact

Critical reception

Early reviews of the series were lukewarm. Jerry Buck, writing for Ocala Star-Banner, noted that while the series "doesn't have the same impact , it's not bad, either." He compared Danza and Light's on-screen chemistry to Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. The Pittsburgh Press criticized that "the show may have a universal theme it's hard to find," while Duane Dudek of Milwaukee Journal Sentinel summed the series as a "pleasant little sitcom" which was not a "struggle for mastery in some ways, a rather old-fashioned love story." John J. O'Connor of The New York Times was complimentary of the female leads, Light and Helmond, but was concerned if Danza, who "spends a good deal of time with his shirt off and his thick weight-lifted physique" would "keep this sitcom in ratings shape."

Awards and nominations

Who's the Boss? was nominated for more than forty awards, including ten Primetime Emmy Award and five Golden Globe Award nominations, winning one each; Katherine Helmond received the 1989 Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Series, Miniseries or Television Film, while Mark J. Levin was awarded the 1989 Emmy Award for Outstanding Lighting Direction for a Comedy Series for his work on the episode "Two on a Billboard." Frequently nominated at the annual Young Artist Awards, Milano earned three awards for her portrayal of Samantha. Danny Pintauro and recurring guest Scott Bloom received one award each.

Theme song

The show's theme song, "Brand New Life", was written by series creators and executive producers Cohan and Hunter, with music composed by Larry Carlton and Robert Kraft. Three versions were used throughout the series' run, which were performed by Larry Weiss, Steve Wariner, and Jonathan Wolff. The third version was first used for the last eight episodes of season six, and a very minor revision of that particular version of the theme was used during seasons seven and eight.

Distribution

Syndication

ABC aired reruns of Who's the Boss? at 11:00 A.M. during its daytime schedule from June 1, 1987 until July 1, 1988; it was replaced by Growing Pains on the daytime schedule. The series entered off-network syndication in September 1989; the show was a success in syndication and was offered to local stations throughout the 1990s.
Fox Family/ABC Family aired the series in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Nick at Nite broadcast the show between 2004 and 2006. In 2005, TV Land broadcast the show as part of Nick at Nite's 20th Anniversary Celebration. The series also aired on Ion Television from July 2007 to February 2008, airing Monday-Thursdays at 9:00 and 9:30 p.m. ET. It began airing on the Hallmark Channel in an early afternoon weekday block beginning on May 17, 2010 and ran until April 2, 2011. The series began airing on TVGN in July 2012, and on Hub Network from April 1 until July 12, 2013. On June 1, 2014, the show joined the regular TV Land schedule.
Several episodes from seasons one, two, and eight can be viewed for free in Minisode format on Crackle, which is owned by Sony Pictures Television.
On August 22, 2019, it was announced that Antenna TV will be airing the series on Fall 2020. On July 20, 2020, Antenna TV announced that it will air on October 5, 2020.

Home media

released the first season of Who's the Boss? on DVD in Region 1 on June 8, 2004. The remaining seven seasons have yet be released due to copyright issues.

Spin-offs

The first attempted Who's the Boss? spin-off had its origins in the final episode of season two, "Charmed Lives", a backdoor pilot for a program about two women up for the same job as well as overall being a series about the lives of single career women in the '80s. Starring Fran Drescher and Donna Dixon, it was not picked up as a series.
In 1987, producers had planned a spin-off entitled Mona, which focused on Mona's character leaving Angela to help her brother Cornelius run a seedy hotel in Manhattan. The third season featured this plot in a two-part episode, but when ABC changed their mind about the spinoff, fearing what Mona's departure could mean to the show, the ending was rewritten to feature Mona returning to Angela's home.
The third attempted spin-off, which did make it to series, was titled Living Dolls. Premiering and ending in 1989, the show starred Leah Remini, Michael Learned, and Halle Berry. The show featured Remini, who had appeared in two Who's the Boss? episodes as a friend of Samantha's, as a homeless model taken under the wing of an agent played by Learned. In those same Who's the Boss? episodes, Jonathan Ward played Learned's son Rick; in the Living Dolls series, David Moscow took over the role.

International versions

Several versions of Who's the Boss? have been produced for foreign television markets. Some are dubbed and others are remakes. In many cases the names of the lead characters were changed: