When Did Who’s the Boss? Jump the Shark?

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https://popculturereferences.com/whe...ump-the-shark/

In a feature looking at if or when a TV series "jumped the shark," Brian asks you all to determine when (or if) Who's the Boss? jumped the shark.

Today, we look at when (or if) you folks believe that Who's the Boss? “jumped the shark.”

This is “Just Can’t Jump It,” a feature where we examine shows and whether they “jumped the shark.” Jumped the shark (coined by Jon Hein) means that the show had a specific point in time where, in retrospect, you realize that show was going downhill from there (even if, in some rare occasions, the show later course-corrected). Not every show DOES jump the shark. Some shows just remain good all the way through. And some shows are terrible all the way through. What we’re looking for are moments where a show that you otherwise enjoyed hit a point where it took a noticeable nose dive after that time and if so, what moment was that?

Who’s the Boss? was a long-running sitcom about a former baseball player, Tony Miceli, who gets a job as a live-in housekeeper, along with his daughter, at the ritzy Connecticut home of Angela Bower, a divorced advertising executive who has a young son of their own. The initial hook is, “He’s a MALE housekeeper!” and more specifically, “He’s a MALE housekeeper who looks like, well, you know, Tony Danza!” However, after that, the hook is the “When will they?” tension between Tony and Angela.

So first…DID IT JUMP THE SHARK? Definitely.

WHEN DID IT JUMP THE SHARK The show definitely was feeling its age by its fifth season, as you really can’t sustain “Will they or won’t they?” for more than four seasons with it hurting the show, but I think that even if you think Season 5 was too long for the quasi-romance, I think it wasn’t a huge drop-off from Season 4, more of a gradual decline, so I will go with instead the Season 6 premiere, “In Search of Tony,” when the whole family goes to Jamaica for vacation, and Tony and Angela make out….



and Tony stops it and tells her that they can’t make out until they are married, then corrects himself to UNLESS they are married. Then he mentions he is not ready to propose and she says she is not ready to accept and…uhm….what the heck?! This is insane. The show couldn’t keep going from this point with them in a “Will they or won’t they?” anymore. It was absurd, and this is the point I’m picking for the jumping the shark point. When they finally DID get together at the start of its final season in Season 8, it was a big ol’ “Who freaking cares anymore?”

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This is my personal opinion, but I never thought that the whole "Tony makes out with Angela in Jamaica" was the definitive "jump the shark" moment. I know that it's an easy enough of an answer since Tony and Angela's relationship was the heart and center of Who's the Boss?.

To me, when a show "jumps the shark", it's a clear and present sign to the viewers that things are never going to be the same again. Or it's a point of no return moment in terms of maintaining its tone and quality. Who's the Boss? you can argue flirted several times with jumping the shark whether it be almost spinning Mona off into her own series, having Angela lose her job at her accounting company before going out on her own, or having Tony enroll into college while still working as Angela's housekeeper.

I'm being absolutely dead serious when I say this, but in my mind, Who's the Boss? really "jumped the shark" when almost ten or so episodes into Season 6, Alyssa Milano suddenly started sporting a shorter, jet black hairstyle with bangs (beginning with the episode "Supermom Burnout"). It was completely random and there was even a line of dialogue from Tony Danza about how he didn't approve of it.

Granted, Alyssa had sported various hairstyles throughout the series leading up to that point, but like I said, her hairstyle change about midway into Season 6 was so random and spur of the moment. And it wasn't too long after that they, started making abrupt and illogical decisions with her character like saying that Sam is going to be able to graduate from high school a year early.

And it was also around this point, that they started messing around with the theme song again by adding a saxophone, which would be there for the last two seasons. Season 7 with Billy is what officially killed the show. It was the ultimate example of the show telling us "we're running out of ideas, so let's add a precocious little kid to the Bower-Micelli household". By the time that Tony and Angela officially got together, it was hard for anybody to care anymore but not the way that Pop Culture References would like to put it. I said before, that Tony's character by that point, had undergone a serious case of Flanderization.