Who's The Boss?

Who's The Boss? is an American television sitcom starring Tony Danza, Judith Light, Alyssa Milano, Danny Pintauro, and Katherine Helmond. It was broadcast for eight seasons on ABC from 1984 to 1992. The show debuted on the same day as NBC's The Cosby Show in 1984.

Widower Anthony Morton "Tony" Micelli (Danza) is a former second baseman for the St. Louis Cardinals who was forced to retire due to a shoulder injury. He wanted to move out of Brooklyn to find a better environment for his daughter, Samantha (Alyssa Milano). He ended up taking a job in upscale Fairfield, Connecticut as a live-in Maid for divorced advertising executive Angela Bower (Judith Light), and Tony and his daughter move in to the Bower household.

This series contained a number of role reversals unusual for the time period, such as a domestic setting where the woman was the breadwinner while the man stayed home and maintained the household. Additionally, the role of Angela's mother Mona as a sexually active older woman was quite unusual then. Also well known for its use of UST; the very slow-building romantic relationship between Tony and Angela was quite a rarity at the time.

This series contains examples of:
"Sam: "His eyes! Look at his eyes!""
 * Actor Allusion: In one episode people keep questioning Tony if he's the guy from Taxi.
 * The Beard: One episode had Tony and Angela pretending to be married for one person and trying to prove they weren't for another.
 * Blackmail Is Such an Ugly Word: In the episode "Not With My Client You Don't", Angela's assistant calls "hooker" an ugly word and prefers "call girl".
 * Clip Show: "Sit Down and be Counted", "Life With Father", "The Way We Was".
 * Cool Old Lady: Mona.
 * The Danza: Trope Namer.
 * Did You Just Have Sex: Mona casually busts Tony over a fling with someone who wasn't Angela.
 * Everyone Can See It: Near the end of the show's run, the only people surprised by Tony and Angela's attraction to each other were Tony and Angela.
 * Fake Band: The doo-wop group "Tony and the Dreamtones" is played by actual doo-wop group "The Mighty Echoes" (plus, of course, Tony Danza).
 * Fun With Foreign Languages: "Tony the Nanny": Tony Danza theorizes that Italian-speaking uncle Vito Scotti thinks that he's to blame for Scotti's daughter standing up to him regarding her fiancé, and he's right (according to Scotti's daughter's interpretation).
 * Grandma What Massive Hotness You Have: Mona.
 * Homage: The house where the main characters live was designed as an homage to the house in the last season of I Love Lucy.
 * House Husband: Tony. Not a husband, but certainly qualifies.
 * I Need to Go Iron My Dog: In the episode "The Prodigal Son In Law", Jonathan asks Mona to help him with his homework as an excuse for the two to go upstairs, so that Tony can talk to Samantha about a family relative who has been sent to jail.
 * The Magic Poker Equation: In the episode "When Worlds Collide" Angela wins loads at poker early on, and her son Johnathan gets four aces in the epilogue.
 * No Longer With Us: Tony's father-in-law tells Tony that he (the father-in-law) is going to prison. But he can't bring himself to say the word "prison" and leaves off with, "I'm going to..." So Tony assumes that "die" was the unspeakable word that he was having trouble with. Hilarity Ensues as the father-in-law spends the whole episode enjoying the sympathy that is accorded to a terminally ill person.
 * Theme Tune Cameo: In the episode Sit Down and be Counted, nearly at the end of the episode the census worker says that he'd like to write a story based on the Bower-Micelli household. Tony is upset after the last question, and leaves with Angela to the movies. Three months later, Angela and Tony are sitting in front of the TV, watching "Hank the Housekeeper", heavily based on their lives, with the main female character named Andrea. At the end of the Show Within a Show, cue the instrumental theme song. Although it only lasted for a few seconds before the real theme song plays.
 * The Not Secret: See Everyone Can See It.
 * Tranquil Fury: In the two-parter episode where Hank and Sam runs off to marry (without telling Tony).


 * Masculine Girl Feminine Boy: Downplayed with Angela and Tony, but sometimes played straight. One episode has Angela drinking beer while watching a sports show while Tony sits next to her, reading a magazine (and a magazine about dress, at that).
 * Offscreen Crash: Episode "Daddy's Little Montague Girl": Character shoves shopping cart out of a house in rage. House happens to be in hilly San Francisco (as opposed to the usual Connecticut locale of the show). Cart heard rolling for about 30 seconds.
 * Parental Substitute: Angela becomes a mother figure to Samantha, while Tony becomes a father figure to Jonathan.
 * Poorly Disguised Pilot: For Living Dolls, a short-lived Spin Off about teenage fashion models.
 * Rip Tailoring: Angela does this once for Fan Service.
 * Really Gets Around: Mona.
 * Second Hand Storytelling: In the episode "Johnathan the Gymnast", they show Danny Pintauro wearing a cast and telling Judith Light about how he got it from a nasty gymnastics fall rather than showing the fall itself.
 * Sex Dressed
 * Shoo Out the New Guy: During the series' seventh season, the producers attempted to inject new life into the episode by adding a cute kid named Billy to the household; the explanation was that the kid, who was from Tony's old neighborhood in the Bronx, had been recently orphaned. The character was immensely unpopular with audiences; that, and Jonathan Halyalkar's inability to keep up with the more experienced cast's timing and pace (this was the 6-year-old's first acting gig), he was written out of the show at the end of the season. In the fall of 1991, it was briefly explaned that Billy had gone to live with another foster family.
 * Special Guest: In the episode "Hit the Road Chad", Ray Charles comes to the Bauers' to play a few songs.
 * Standardized Sitcom Housing: The house was made to have a more-than-passing resemblance to the one in the last season of I Love Lucy (both were located in Connecticut, within commuting distance of NYC....).
 * Thematic Theme Tune
 * Tomboyish Name: Tony's daughter Sam(antha).
 * Trans Atlantic Equivalent: Compare The Upper Hand (UK).
 * UST: Perhaps the Trope Codifier, along with Moonlighting.
 * Visit By Divorced Dad: Frequently.
 * You're Not My Mother: Subverted when Sam and Angela get into an argument, and Angela orders Sam to go to her room. Sam refuses and fires back with this trope. Tony then steps in, pointing out that he's her father, and orders her to listen to Angela.