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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 and the up and coming career of Tommy Herr. 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 housekeeper for divorced advertising executive Angela Bower (Judith Light). The Micellis moved into the Bower residence. Also starring were Danny Pintauro as Angela’s son Jonathan and Katherine Helmond as Mona Robinson, her feisty, man-hungry mother.

The title of the show referred to the clear role reversal of the two lead actors, where a woman was the breadwinner, while a man stayed at home and took care of the house, thus the question of who the “boss” really was. It challenged media stereotypes of Italian-Americans as wholly ignorant of life outside of urban working-class neighborhoods.

THEME:

The show’s theme song, “Brand New Life” had four full versions of this song, as well as two short versions used during the course of the series’ run. The first version, used in the first two seasons, was performed by Tony Danza himself. The second version, which was used from 1986-1990, was performed by country music singer Steve Wariner. The third version was used for the final two seasons (shown here).

The original version featured the opening verse, “There’s more to life than what you’re livin’”, which was changed to “There’s a time for love and a time for livin’” in the show’s third season. Below is the season three version with the lyric change, compared to the original above:

The season three version also had the opening instrumental elongated and a slightly mellower music. A modified version was used during the show’s seventh season and modified again for season eight. Various instrumental versions of this theme were used as a closing theme during the series.

The pilot episode’s opening sequence featured the van (which supposedly belongs to Tony) driving from New York to the Bowers’ house in Connecticut, with the cast and executive producer’s names credited over it (the footage of the van driving to Connecticut was truncated to the very beginning of the opening for the beginning with episode two, limited to the first five seconds for the first two seasons and extended to the first twelve seconds afterwards with the remainder replaced with episode clips). During the first season, Alyssa Milano and Danny Pintauro were credited together (they were credited separately from season two onward).

The original airing of the pilot episode featured a slightly different intro, compared to what was used in later airings.