Tony Canetti (Tony Danza) is a homicide detective in Hoboken, New Jersey. It's been a year since his divorce with his high school sweetheart Lucy and they have a young son together. He gets set up on a blind date with liberal obit writer Melanie Clifford (Lori Loughlin) who gets a promotion to the crime beat.
It's 1995 and Tony Danza is trying to start another run on network sitcom TV. I'm a Taxi guy and have never seen a full episode of Who's the Boss?. This is probably closer to Who. It's a laugh-track network TV sitcom. It's not that good. I didn't watch it back in the day. It was sandwiched between Roseanne and Home Improvement. I was not a big fan of either and I missed this one.
It would be fine as workplace sitcom like a less wackier Brooklyn Nine Nine. The main problem starts with trying to ram through a romance right off the bat. At the very least, this needs a better meet cute. The second episode could have been the better meet cute and works better as the pilot. It never makes sense anyways. She's forced to hang around the police station too much. No other reporter is spending so much time there. She shouldn't be a reporter. It would be a little bit complicated to insert a liberal into the police station and some writing is required. Castle inserted a writer. Lucifer inserted the devil. It's not impossible to insert a liberal but there needs to be a reason. The up and down relationship has its moments but it runs out of space. Danza and Loughlin develop a bit of combative chemistry but it's too little, too late. For whatever reason, she's not in the show for the last few episodes. He is more connected to his ex-wife Lucy by then. Quite frankly, just cut out Melanie and have him be married to Lucy. It's functional as a workplace and home-life sitcom.
