Who's the Boss?: Angela Gets Fired, Part 1ABC
September 23, 1986
Sitcom
DVD
B
For the Season-Three opener, Howard Meyers wrote what is one of the most pivotal episodes in the series. At first, it seems like it's just a vacation episode, but it's the first real vacation Angela has taken since she met Tony. (And probably for awhile before that.) He urges her to relax and forget about work, and eventually she does. He even throws out what he thinks is a trivial message but is actually about an important ($8 million) account. Since she's the President and wasn't as available as she promised, the company blames her when they lose the account. (We find out that the current Chairman of the Board, presumably Grant's replacement, is Donald Stewart.) Having learned an important lesson about life, partly through Tony, Angela is a changed woman. She stands up for her right to have a vacation, and so they fire her and replace her with weasely Jim Peterson.
While this episode changed the course of the show, I don't think it's necessarily one of the best in the series, unlike Part 2. The kids aren't given much to do, although it is nice how Sam asks Angela's advice on writing a postcard to Chad McCann. In retrospect, yes, this episode plays off the Jamaica vacation episode of three years later, but looking backward rather than forward, it most relates to the one in Season Two where Angela wore a business suit to the beach and didn't stay long. I do like that instead of Angela getting her job back, as might've happened on a less soap-operatic sitcom, she'll take a different direction with her life, as Tony makes up for helping her get fired.
F. William Parker, who was Mr. Marcus on The Bob Newhart Show, plays Bill Pierce here, while Bert Rosario was twice Reuben Ortiz on BNS, as well as Maxie in The Brady Girls Get Married and Carlos here. Earl Boen and Howard Stevens make their last appearances as respectively Jim Peterson and Howie Mendelson, although Jim will impact a future episode from offscreen.
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