Why did WHO'S THE FUCKING BOSS run for eight goddamn years? It was terrible.

OP, I'm sensing you don't like this show. It would help if you told us why.

Alyssa Milano was 'jail bait' for an entire generation of men

[quote] Alyssa Milano was 'jail bait' for an entire generation of men

Except the ones who were repeatedly cornholing Danny Pintauro and telling him "this never happened" when it was over.

R2=frau

It was escapism.

Who's the Boss SUCKED! It was shockingly bad!

Obviously the OP hated the '80s.

There were worse shows.

Judith Light and Katherine Helmond were terrific.

Danny Pintauro was my favorite child actor turned bottom.

It was pretty good and I could identify with the blonde guy, we didn't have that many American shows in Germany back then, it got much more with the advent of private television, which came around the time of Who, but still, they tended to take the better ones, we didn't get Soap and Happy Days and we never heard of Valerie Bertinelli, it has got with more to do than that back then at their time was just state television, they also never synchronized those shows for syndication; Tony Danza was very popular here, and the blonde guy, who could have needed a Northern family background, was a character not primitive, impatient, assholish and bratty like so many other child and youth characters in US television and movies, (not much better in other countries, especially outside state TV), also great that he graduated from Princeton in real life; or maybe Stanford or Yale.

Because Two and a Half Men wasn't invented yet.

I'll have you know those were eight years during which Danny Pintauro had blue balls looking at Tony Danza's hot body!

You could ask the same question about Growing Pains, Full House, and many other terrible 80’s “family shows”that we’re excruciatingly terrible. I would hate watch them sometimes just to try to understand their popularity.

I wanted their living room.

I never got the high ratings. It was an average show, nothing to justify it being in the top ten ever.

Eh oh. Oh eh.

Tony Danza and Judith Light had terrific chemistry. The show was smart not to pair them together right away (like Moonlighting) so the anticipation of Tony and Angela getting together kept viewers vested in the show. By the time they did get together, the show was on its last legs.

I didn't care for it and never watched it, but I wouldn't rant about it 26 years after the series ended. Take your meds.

The premise was rather hilariously offensive to Italian-Americans. Tony needed to get himself and his daughter out of the poor dead-end, Brooklyn wherever ghetto they were living, so the only answer? To be a male nanny to Judith Light in WASPy Connecticut.

One of the last times class was acknowledged on TV. Now all white people are portrayed as "privileged".

Was it as bad as "Charles in Charge"?

"Charles in Charge" was almost as bad, R20. Apparently in the 80s there was an epidemic of young Italian-American men becoming male nannies and housekeepers for WASP families.

I always thought Alyssa Milano was a bit too fat to deserve the teen-bombshell status she enjoyed.

OP = Tony Micelli’s Dead Wife

It was on for 8 years because...

"The show received positive reviews throughout most of its run, becoming one of the most popular sitcoms of the mid-to-late 1980s. The series was nominated for more than forty 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 ten in the final primetime ratings between the years of 1985 and 1989, and has since continued in syndication worldwide."

Wikipedia

R19 that’s true actually. R20 no it wasn’t. Not even close. It wasn’t a bad show, really. A lot of the other ABC comedies of the time were way worse.

I know Tony Danza has no talent but he was perfect for this. He was very likeable and I totally get his popularity (in this, not Taxi). Judith light - I know she’s a very “trained” actress and is very acclaimed as of late (a friend of mine actually works closely with her), but she was not made for sitcoms, let’s put it that way. She never managed to make herself terribly likeable in the role (and the idea that she was playing a WASP is kind of funny, too).

I had no problem with the show - it surely wasn’t great but not everything is. Like someone said, I’m glad they saved the Tony Angela get together for the end. It did run too long though.

Katherine Helmond's Voice & tits, Tony's balls&ass, and a budding Allysa Milano: that's perv juice for three different mouth-breathing demographics!

Don't forget me R26!

It was a frau fantasy for the 80s, and that's why it survived.

Remember, this was the era of WORKING GIRL, MR. MOM, etc.

I was very disappointed that they didn't get married at the end, I'd been watching for years and I felt betrayed that it went back to the beginning, like a big loop.

I met the producer some years later in Key West and I asked him about it, expressing my thoughts, and he stated that it was done like that for syndication, so that it didn't climax but went on and on, but I told him I thought that was a poor choice and never watched the reruns, knowing that it all lead nowhere...

R29, Mary!

Mr. Belvedere >> Who's The Boss >> Charles In Charge

It wasn't a great or memorable show, but the cast was likable enough & there are plenty of other garbage shows that stay on the air forever. Why get so upset about a 30-year-old sitcom? Did ABC reject your pilot?

I agree R17. The only reason I watched the show was to check out Tony Danza's ass. Cute.

I loved it when I was a kid, and sing along happily to the theme song whenever it pops up on tv these days - Mona was fabulous.

When you're naming bad sitcoms of the 80s and 90s, don't forget Gimme A Break!

Tony Danza took off all Of his clothes

As soon as it became evident that Danny was queer, his part was drastically reduced to one or two lines per show. If they could have done it, the producers would probably have killed him off.

He didn't know how good he had it.

Judith Light carried that show on her padded shoulders.

How did the theme song go?

R36 you noticed that too? Poor kid. Once the darling of the airwaves and a stupendous career ahead of him, then puberty hit and watching him moon over girls became painful to watch. The producers must have been pissed, hoping he'd be their Joey Lawrence.

The only sitcom I know of that had a cameo by Sinatra

Judith Light was so awful and unlikeable as that woman who was after Steven Keaton. How the fuck did they give her a sitcom after that?

[quote] The only reason I watched the show was to check out Tony Danza's ass.

I shot more than one load to the clip of him in the shower during the show opening.

I've been on WHO'S THE BOSS! too!

I wouldn't watch that show. I never cared for Judith Light until she was on SVU, I thought she was sensational.

Two words: Katherine Helmond. Just like Christopher Hewett was the reason why Mr. Belvedere lasted so long.

And Danza was afraid to take take off his shirt to goose the ratings with women viewers

I remember there was a boxing episode and Mona wore a bikini in the ring carrying a numbered sign for the corresponding round.

All the guys were getting hot and bothered and Jonathan says, "that's my gramma," and a guy responds, "that's my fantasy."

I wondered if Mona & Jonathan had a Sebastian Venable/Violet type relationship after that.

[italic] Who's the Fucking Boss[/italic] was so profane it could only be shown on the Playboy Channel. It starred Susie Essen as Angela and Gordon Ramsay as Tony, and was written by David Mamet.

Tiny Dancer, I mean Tony Danza, looks like Pepe the Frog.0

Did they make a gay porn version , Who's Fucking the Boss with a gay Tony lookalike?

I loved when we got a shot of the hair on Tony's lower back. I loved it when he was shirtless.

I watched it as a kid to jerk off to that split second shirtless shot of Tony in the opening credits. (I was very young.)

I always wondered what the hell was up with the situation though. My mom and I used to marvel at how atrocious Angela’s hair dye job was with the black roots and the fried, electrified strands. And she basically came off as a young version of Dorothy Zborbak. Why was this gorgeous guy into this lanky homely lady?

I was SHOCKED when I learned years later that she is a respected stage actress and a beloved supporter of LGBT rights. I met her once around 2006. She was lovely and very attractive.

Tony was a hot piece of ass who played dumb and lovable rather well. Katherine Helmond was a hoot.

[quote]I loved when we got a shot of the hair on Tony's lower back.

Ugh, that was a boner killer for me. He was so hot and pretty hairless otherwise. Weird to have that patch.

“Who’s the Boss’ll be back in a moment. Stick around.”

The show was lightweight but the leads had good chemistry.

It was still much better than other shows like Full House which required you have a lobotomy to bear watching.

I hope they do a reboot and Judith Light comes back for it.

I think it was a show for kids and they watched it.

Who WAS the Boss?

Who's The Boss Reunion

Watching the reruns as a kid if bothered me how fake the backgrounds always looked whenever they opened the front door they didn’t even try lol

Wow, check this out. Judith recalls the final scene of the show.

That’s very dramatic, R65. You’d think she was talking about playing Ophelia or something.

LOL, R66. I thought the ending was clever. Not St Elsewhere or Newhart clever, but still pretty clever. Like most 80s shows, it was fluff, often with a subliminal lesson if the episode was centered around either of the kids. But I liked it. The casting was great.

Since Tony and Angela didn't marry, there was no shark-jump baby, but the characters did adopt a young kid. I remember the tabloid stories about how Danza had allegedly been really mean to the little kid. I don't remember why.

In remember a "Behind the Music" type documentary where Pintauro was obviously still a little annoyed that the writers didn't give his character much to do after he hit age 13 or so. (It had to be especially rough for him after watching Milano get world famous.) It seems that the producers recognized that he was gay before Pintauro realized it himself.

However, he shouldn't feel too bad. Over on Growing Pains, the show obviously didn't think that straight teen male Jeremy Miller was hot enough to attract teen girl viewers, so they hired Leonard DiCaprio for that purpose. Growing Pains jumped two sharks: new baby and adopted teenager.

If I wrote for television, the opening scene of my pilot would be a literal shark-jumping baby.

It's funny that r55 mentions Light's hair on the show when one of the best scenes of the show had Angela babysitting a little girl who points out that Angela's hair "is black at the bottom".

Doesn’t take a genius to see it, R69.

Re r66, I'm sure once they were informed how the show would end, and got their scripts, etc, and finally shot it, it was very moving for the cast... BUT it was the wrong way to end it, and it made the previous 195 episodes fairly pointless.

Pintauro could have had a huge career like Milano.

But instead of sucking producer cock like her, he chose anonymous cock.

That never pays well in the end.

I barely remember an episode with Lee Ving in it playing a biker.

Pardon me?

I never like Catherine Helmond’s mayonnaise.

It was porn for the housefrauen.

Whoever posted that Judith Light's character was essentially a younger Dorothy Zbornak, was so right on, I never thought about it, but it's totally true.

Also, wasn't Light's hairstyle considered 'frosted'? That seemed to be a thing back in the day...

Twas I, R77. That’s how I always saw Angela. And yes, my aunt had frosted hair during that era, but it was ash blonde and I don’t think the roots were jet black.

The final scene was an homage to the first scene, but it was not exactly like nothing had happened. He came back with the intent of rekindling their romantic relationship, not to be the maid in a platonic set-up.

I think Judith is attractive and her hair improved towards the end, but it was a mystery of what they were going for for much of the run.

I always thought it was odd they married Samantha off so young.

I do remember being disappointed when Danza started wearing the looser fit jeans that were coming into style.