Who's the Boss?: When Worlds Collide

Who's the Boss?: When Worlds Collide
ABC
February 18, 1986
Sitcom
DVD
B

Cinnamon & Wengrod wrote this story where Tony and his friends need a place to play poker and so Angela invites them over.  She apparently hasn't met most of his friends yet.  The ones here are

• Eddie Carpucci (Robert Krantz, who has very few IMDB credits);
• Philly Fingers (John Del Regno in his first of four appearances in the role), whose wife is mad at him;
• Joey Rossini (Ray "Boom Boom" Mancini again), whose wife was very pregnant at Thanksgiving and has since had the baby;
• And Pee Wee (no last name, played here by Dennis Burkley and again in '89)

Angela joins the game and wins but the guys still like her, and in fact Tony says they love her, "What's not to love?"  Awkward pause.

Meanwhile, Emily, Angela's best friend from grad school is coming for a visit.  The all-night poker game is still going the next morning, so Tony's friends have to leave, but Eddie offers to stay behind and help Tony clean up the kitchen.  When he and Emily meet, they immediately hit it off, to the point that they start necking on the couch when Tony and Angela go in the kitchen!  He borrows Tony's van to take her on an errand for hand cream and they're gone a long while.  (The line about the cream's "penetration" is one of the two very racy ones in this episode, the other being Tony's "big bang" line.)  When they return, they exchange contact information but confide in their stunned friends that it probably won't work out because they're from such different worlds.  (Emily does research at Stanford, so she's not even living on the East Coast.)

Philly Fingers

I'd have gone with a B+ if Emily's character were fleshed out a bit more.  We hear that she's classy and reserved, more so than Angela, but we don't actually see it.  (In contrast, when Tony and Angela fix up another of his friends with her cousin, we get to know both one-shot characters better.)  The episode is obviously meant to throw a new light on Tony & Angela's relationship, with these more impulsive but still opposites-attracted surrogates.  Eddie tells Tony he couldn't invite Emily to Marty's Melody Room to shoot pool, but something similar will happen with Tony and Angela down the road.  

Watching this episode, I'm reminded that, although T & A are much closer than they were in the first season, the barriers are still much stronger than they would be even a year or two later, let alone six.  In fact, although Angela is willing to play poker with Tony's "rough around the edges" friends, she tries to protect Emily from them.  The attraction between Emily and Eddie is mostly physical, although it's implied that they like each other's personalities.  Perhaps it's easier for E & E to get together briefly because they know each other less well and they don't have to live with each other and the consequences, as T & A would.  But also, the stakes aren't as high for T & A now as they would become, with more to lose as time goes by.  Therefore, I think this is an episode that could only have aired in the second season.