Tonight begins a new television series for Alyssa Milano. The good thing for her is that she has a job again. The bad thing is that she might be remembered for this instead of Who’s The Boss? Yes, yes, she had that stint on Charmed, but no one really talks about it and fewer watched. The only reason to tune in was the possibility of seeing Shannen Doherty have a meltdown. Right now, Milano is still considered wildly sexy to men of a certain age: the ones who grew up watching her on Who’s The Boss? and fell in love with her teased hair, pegged acid-wash jeans, and Brooklyn accent. And now, she’s throwing all of that away on an already-critically-panned sitcom called Romantically Challenged. She says that she uses her years of dating experience to help her get into character.
Risking the whole "sex goddess" thing.
Of course, she’s not dating anymore in real life. 30-something men and Major League pitchers mourned when Milano accepted an engagement ring from Daniel Bugliari in January 2009. They’re married now. But her social life was much talked about, especially among baseball fans. She was our own real-life Baseball Annie, with a taste for pitchers. She dated Barry Zito, Carl Pavano, and Brad Penny. In her book “Safe at Home: Confessions of a baseball fanatic”, she says that she had sworn off ballplayers until Brad Penny said “Let’s go down to the clubhouse”. That’s supposed to be some kind of justification, or vindication, or something. Why couldn’t she just admit that some of us can’t help chasing the tall guys with the bubble-butts?
But I digress.
On her new show, Milano plays a recently-divorced mother of a 16 year-old girl. This is like kryptonite to the libidos of the men who are still in love with the 1980s, vintage Alyssa. But she is determined to have another go at sitcom fame. She has a younger sister on the show who thinks that promiscuity is the way to go. Then there are two male friends in the mix. It’s your basic sitcom platform with different actors thrown in. And it runs a high risk of turning the men who are still melting all over at the sight of her into guys who think of her as another married chick in her 30s.
Remember when she played Amy Fisher in one of the three made-for-TV movies about that whole “Long Island Lolita” thing? That one didn’t disrupt Milano’s reign as Italian-American Sex Goddess because she was wearing the same clothes as she did as Samantha Micelli, and even in the same size despite her growth. But this is dangerous, this new role. Playing a divorced mother of a teenager will forever change the way her fans view her.
But then, she’s always got her Dodgers. And Giants. And Marlins. And Yankees.