Friday, December 4, 2009

Who's The Boss or "The football toss heard round the world"


When you are 10 years old, a lot of things you watch on TV, see in the movies, or hear on the radio can go over your head. This was one of those moments.

The TV show "Who's The Boss" was one of those shows tailor made for the 1980's. It featured a successful yet bitter single mom, Angela, who nice house was big enough to merit needing a house keeper. The house keeper eventually turned into Tony Micelli (who, while rare at the time, had the same first name as the actor who played him...Tony Danza. At the time, I thought that was weird).

Anyway, add Tony's emerging future sexpot daughter Samantha (played by Alyssa Milano) and mix in Angela's future gay son Jonathon and the first MILF ever portrayed on TV, Mona, and you had a comedy gold mine.

Most of the series was based around Angela's career, or one of the kids getting into trouble, or Tony screwing something up. Every now and then though, we got a classic "very special episode". This was one of them. Below is a very condensed version of the episode.







The first thing to quickly point out is the name of one of the producers at the :21 mark. I don't if that name is a joke or not but if it isn't then "Bud Wiser" is the most awesome name one can ever be born with.

Anyway, the football throw that launched a thousand mother/daughter and father/son chats occurs around the :35 mark. I can personally tell you that at the time, I thought Samantha Micelli had hands like Zeke Mowatt of the Giants and just dropped the ball. Little did I know that she was GROWING BREASTS...."whoa!" said my tiny brain once I figured this out.

Anyway, the rest of the episode involves Tony shopping for a bra (again, waaaaay over my head at the time), Sam getting all dolled up for the first time, and everybody having a good laugh at the end when a boy calls looking for her. However it will be that soft toss of the football that will resonate forever with me. I remember some neighborhood friends and I reenacting that throw yelling "ouch! my breast!" as we made a catch. Ahhh, to be 10 years old again.

*** Quick post script here. The most ironic thing about all of this is that Alyssa Milano ended up getting breast implants (at least it appears she did based on classic movies "Embrace Of The Vampire" and "Poison Ivy 2"). What would Tony say about that?