Billy?

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Originally Posted by Novera

He was definitely one of those "hey the show is dying, we need to shoe horn in a new cute kid for laughs" character who was added to the show.

They probably thought it would be good to have a new kid since Jonathan and Samantha were already much older by then. He probably didn't test well with audiences (although I thought he had some really funny moments) and they decided to remove him from the show (to also save $).

I think the reason on the show was that Ms. Rosini was able to take care of him now. You can tell it was a quick/sudden decision because they didn't really give it much air time, it was something like "hey where's billy?" "Oh Ms. Rosini has him" and then on with the show with no mention of him again.

The show was already clearly starting to show its age when they came up with the idea of moving Sam ahead a year in school. Maybe the writers thought that it would create a fresh dynamic to have father and daughter attend the same college at the same time (kind of like that Rodney Dangerfield movie Back to School).

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Originally Posted by Novera

As strange as it is when show's did this back then, today I find it kind of an endearing 80's tv trope. New kid shows up out of nowhere, he's given the classic catchy "please let this be a catch phrase" line to repeat... then when it doesn't work out *POOF* he/she is gone. It's funny to me now, but I growing up (watching these shows) I'd wonder wtf happened to the new character?

Who's the Boss? was at its core, a show about unconventional or blended families. Angela takes Sam in and becomes a surrogate mother figure for her and likewise, Tony becomes kind of a secondary dad to Jonathan. So I kind of get why they thought that it would make perfect or logical sense to bring another non-blood relative of either Tony or Angela's in.

But Billy just came across as another one of those sickeningly precocious sitcom kids that you would likely see in the '80s and '90s (think for example, Michelle on Full House, Olivia on The Cosby Show, Andrew on Family Ties, Joey and later Matthew on Gimme a Break, Sam on Diff'rent Strokes, Chrissy on Growing Pains, Kennedy on Blossom, Seven on Married...with Children, Nicky on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, you get my point). You know, kids who were written as being mini-adults, or always getting one up on the rest of the characters with their cute one-liners and shenanigans.

[TVSCREEN2015]

Billy sucked! He wasn't cute and had the most annoying voice ever. A pathetic attempt to keep an aging show going. At this point, Samantha was all grown up and started college. Jonathan's screentime was reduced to walk in, say a line, then leave the room. Danny Pinturio grew up to be an awkward teenager and a terrible actor. Tony and Angela become bumbling idiots who act like they never raised a child before because a 5 year old can clearly out smart two adults. Ugh...

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Originally Posted by TVSCREEN2015

Billy sucked! He wasn't cute and had the most annoying voice ever. A pathetic attempt to keep an aging show going. At this point, Samantha was all grown up and started college. Jonathan's screentime was reduced to walk in, say a line, then leave the room. Danny Pinturio grew up to be an awkward teenager and a terrible actor. Tony and Angela become bumbling idiots who act like they never raised a child before because a 5 year old can clearly out smart two adults. Ugh...

I think that I said before that Billy was in no small part, a grating character, because it just felt like they were trying to make him out to be a little more than a mini version of Tony's character. He has the raspy sounding voice with the thick New York accent like Tony Danza as well as Tony's (as in Tony Micelli, the character) meathead/macho posturing tendencies.

Samantha and Jonathan during the early years of the show, were more endearing because they felt like genuine, relatable, authentic, multi-dimensional kids instead of caricatures. They weren't precocious to the point that it was cloying.

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Originally Posted by TVSCREEN2015

Billy sucked! He wasn't cute and had the most annoying voice ever. A pathetic attempt to keep an aging show going. At this point, Samantha was all grown up and started college. Jonathan's screentime was reduced to walk in, say a line, then leave the room. Danny Pinturio grew up to be an awkward teenager and a terrible actor. Tony and Angela become bumbling idiots who act like they never raised a child before because a 5 year old can clearly out smart two adults. Ugh...

I was today on GAC Family, watching the episode "Party Politics" about all of the trouble that Tony and Angela go through with putting together Billy's birthday party. And at the end of the episode, Billy says that for his next birthday party, maybe they could get Bert and Ernie.

I bring this up because I could've sworn that there was this really awkward dub over Billy's (Jonathan Halyalkar) voice. I thought that it was just my imagination talking but then I went back and looked at the Nick at Nite version from the 2000s. There, Billy tells Tony that maybe for his next birthday party, they could get Pee-Wee Herman.

That's when it all made sense to me. "Party Politics" was first broadcast on ABC on February 26, 1991. In July 1991, came the infamous incident in which Paul Reubens, Pee-Wee Herman's portrayer, was arrested while watching a film in an adult movie theater.

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Originally Posted by TVSCREEN2015

Billy sucked! He wasn't cute and had the most annoying voice ever. A pathetic attempt to keep an aging show going. At this point, Samantha was all grown up and started college. Jonathan's screentime was reduced to walk in, say a line, then leave the room. Danny Pinturio grew up to be an awkward teenager and a terrible actor. Tony and Angela become bumbling idiots who act like they never raised a child before because a 5 year old can clearly out smart two adults. Ugh...

I don't enjoy being too harsh on child actors because they're naturally, not as "experienced" or seasoned as adults. But I agree that Billy had a odd speaking voice. I guess that I'm super particular about people who have dodgy elocution or enunciation skills.

It wasn't just his accent because if that was the case, then we might as well jump on Tony Danza's case for always speaking in a really thick Brooklyn accent. It's just that Jonathan Halyalkar, the little boy who played Billy, had this voice that was both gravelly and squeaky if that makes sense. And like I said, it was sometimes difficult to make out what he was saying. Billy seemed to talk like he had marbles or cotton balls in his mouth to put it in another way.

Also, even though I just said that I normally try my best to not be too hard on child actors right away, Jonathan Halyalkar just seemed like one of those kid actors who needed to be heavily coached. You know the type of actor who would need somebody to kneel under the camera, recite the kid’s line and perform a gesture. And then the kid would then ape the way the line was spoken as closely as they could. Think of the Olsen Twins on Full House as a tell-tale example of what I'm referring to.

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Originally Posted by rcbrad

I read somewhere that he was written out of the show because they wanted to concentrate more on the romance between Tony and Angela, since it was going to be the last season.

If I remember correctly, Katherine Helmond said on the episode of E! True Hollywood Story on Who's the Boss?, that Jonathan Halyalkar, the little boy who played Billy, had a really hard time keeping up with the timing and pacing of the more experienced actors on the show. Bare in mind that he was only five years old at the time and this was really his first acting gig period.

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Originally Posted by TVSCREEN2015

Billy sucked! He wasn't cute and had the most annoying voice ever. A pathetic attempt to keep an aging show going. At this point, Samantha was all grown up and started college. Jonathan's screentime was reduced to walk in, say a line, then leave the room. Danny Pinturio grew up to be an awkward teenager and a terrible actor. Tony and Angela become bumbling idiots who act like they never raised a child before because a 5 year old can clearly out smart two adults. Ugh...

IFC was playing the Billy episodes from Season 7 today, and you can really sense or tell that the writers had to dumb things down to make room and accommodate the Billy character and his presence.

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Originally Posted by TVSCREEN2015

Billy sucked! He wasn't cute and had the most annoying voice ever. A pathetic attempt to keep an aging show going. At this point, Samantha was all grown up and started college. Jonathan's screentime was reduced to walk in, say a line, then leave the room. Danny Pinturio grew up to be an awkward teenager and a terrible actor. Tony and Angela become bumbling idiots who act like they never raised a child before because a 5 year old can clearly out smart two adults. Ugh...

Like I said previously, with Billy, you can also tell that they really had to dumb the writing down. Who's the Boss? was always an adult-show. That isn't to say that it wasn't something that couldn't appeal to children or the entire family, but it still wasn't exactly a show that was written from a little kid's perspective first and foremost. But it was almost like the "Full House-fication" of Who's the Boss? got into full effect (with Billy essentially, the Michelle) as the the writing had to get broader and like I said, dumber.

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Originally Posted by Novera

Oh that's actually a great point, they were fumbling their words and acting like first time parents with him!

Its like the writers got all excited about this new writing opportunity, forgetting this isn't a NEW show about a new couple who just had their first baby.

Come to think of it, there was an episode from Season 4 called "Another Single Parent", where Angela suspects that an apparent widow named Kelly is actually keeping their daughter, Melissa away from her husband, who is actually alive and well. That episode seemed to do a more realistic job at suddenly putting a cute little kid in Tony and Angela's world than they did later on with Billy. Like I said before, the writing by Season 7 seemed to become really dumbed down and cartoonish or farcical instead of taking things more seriously.

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Originally Posted by Novera

He was definitely one of those "hey the show is dying, we need to shoe horn in a new cute kid for laughs" character who was added to the show.

They probably thought it would be good to have a new kid since Jonathan and Samantha were already much older by then. He probably didn't test well with audiences (although I thought he had some really funny moments) and they decided to remove him from the show (to also save $).

I think the reason on the show was that Ms. Rosini was able to take care of him now. You can tell it was a quick/sudden decision because they didn't really give it much air time, it was something like "hey where's billy?" "Oh Ms. Rosini has him" and then on with the show with no mention of him again.

A similar sort of thing you could say, happened with The Partridge Family almost 20 years prior. In its fourth and final season, show brought in four year old Ricky Segall to play the Partridges' cute new neighbor. Many fans of the show believe that Ricky's arrival was the exact moment that the show jumped the shark.