Who's the Boss?: The Unnatural

Who's the Boss?: The Unnatural
ABC
April 8, 1986
Sitcom
DVD
B-

Ellen Guylas wrote this story where Tony's old teammate Josh is doing an ad for Angela's agency.  The two agree to compete in a pick-up game.  Angela wants to play on Tony's team but he criticizes her when he's trying to teach her to bat, so she ends up on Josh's team.  Some of the moments from this episode would end up in the credits for several years, like Tony's slide and his spit-shake with Angela.

Jim Jansen returns as Dr. Ferguson.  Sort of playing themselves are Billy Martin, Steve Sax (who had been on Square Pegs four years earlier), and Bob Uecker (who was by then was starring on another "male housekeeper" show, Mr. Belvedere).

Square Pegs: No Joy in Weemawee

State-of-the-art tape recorder.  (OK, no, it
was dated by '83 and thus perfect for a school.)

Square Pegs: No Joy in Weemawee
CBS
February 21, 1983
Sitcom
DVD
B-

This Gross & Stillman story is better than most about sports, helped by an offbeat sense of humor, especially in some of the background and throwaway gags:

• The school newspaper (in keeping with the "Indian" theme) is called The Tom Tom, so there's a posterboard that says, "Tom Tom Club," a reference to the New Wave group (with a couple Talking Heads);
• During a montage of newspaper headlines, there's a reference to both Citizen Kane and His Girl Friday;
• When Steve Sax, who would also appear as himself on Who's the Boss? later in the decade, shows up, he's invariably introduced as "Rookie of the Year, Steve Sax," the Scooby-Doo form of celebrity address;
• Johnny is a member of the Jughead Fan Club.

We also finally get to see Johnny's real last name spelled out: Ulasevicz.  And we learn that Jennifer is so "popular" that it's beneath her to be a cheerleader.  Note that Weemawee, which has twice been established as not being in New Hampshire (or was it Connecticut?), here seems to be close to NYC (Letterman's show is taped in "the City") and is definitely not in California.

Karen Armstrong returns as Cindy, and Steven Peterman is back as Rob Donovan.