Who's the Boss?: The Heiress

Who's the Boss?: The Heiress
ABC
October 15, 1985
Sitcom
DVD
B

This episode has a different, more soapy feel than most of the series, perhaps partly because it has a different writer and director (neither of whom worked on any of my other shows).  Mona might get an inheritance of $80,000, but then she refuses it when she realizes that the dead man is her ex-lover, under a different name.  Back when Angela was 9, the family was supposed to spend the summer in Nantucket, but her father was too busy with work.  Mona was lonely and so she had an affair, which she later confessed to Angela's father.

Angela is upset to find out about this, but, partly through Tony "sticking his Roman nose into their business," mother and daughter have a good, mostly serious talk.  We learn that Mona sees Angela as a lot like her father, who was a banker and a workaholic.  And Angela forgives her mother because her father did.

Note that Tony seems to find a picture of Angela at 14 unappealing, despite having kissed her when she was 13.  And Jonathan's turtle turns up after three years lost in the attic.

Delivery Woman Peggy Mannix would be Woman on Plane on Roseanne.  And, yes, the role of interior decorator Carol Patrice would not be the only one 28-year-old Fran Drescher would play on WtB.