What Makes a Great TV Parent

What Makes a Great TV Parent

Actor Tony Danza poses backstage before participating in the BUILD Speaker Series to discuss the new Netflix series "The Good Cop" at AOL Studios on Wednesday, Sept. 19, 2018, in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)

It’s almost always a fun experience to interview an artist or actor about a new project they’re introducing and get some exclusive insider conversation points about them.

For the ten years you and I have rode to work together, we always tried to stay current with our celebrity guests and not ask the same 30 year old questions that are bound to bore the heck out of them… but… sometimes you can’t help it.

Recently we got to speak with Tony Danza and yes, he will be performing standards and telling career highlight stories in NYC and sure that sounds incredibly interesting at 7 am when we’re trapped in our car on the same roads with nothing else interesting happening.

It’s just that it was impossible not to ask about Who’s The Boss?. There was no way we weren’t gonna get into Taxi? Why was he so different where we couldn’t help but go back into the past? He’s our father. Not in a Darth Vader sort of way as I type his with two human hands but in defining pop culture of our lives sort of way.

Tony Micelli instilled in us the same basic values we watched him convey to his TV daughter Samantha. We may have hated him sending Sam to school in that Giant Banana Boat of a first car but understood when he wouldn’t relent with a flashier sports car because safety came before looking cool to high school peers.

We admired how he lost a bet on purpose by throwing that meatball down the middle of the plate to Angela who was playing for his arch enemy, because her friendship meant more than his pride. Tony Micelli was a TV parent that Tony Danza brought to life. For that, you can hear my voice crack at times.

Who knows, maybe today’s kids have their own TV parents to help them flash that light bulb above our heads, but you know what makes our generation of TV parents the best?

They were ours.

(Image: AP Newsroom)