Maggie has scored a weekend at her boss’s house in Martha’s Vineyard and the whole family is abuzz with excitement. Okay, mostly Jason is excited because it’s free and Mike is excited because the new nanny, Julie, is going. Jason is immediately suspicious as to why Mike would want to join a family weekend getaway, but it’s not like you can uninvite your son just because he’s hot for the nanny, right?

You’d think that Jason would want to keep tabs on Mike and Julie the entire weekend, but instead he opts to let Mike and Julie head out to the vineyard ahead of the rest of the family (who are still packing) and with the baby in tow. What? Jason went from 0 trust in Mike to maximum trust in about 2.2 seconds and it makes no sense.

I’m sure things would’ve worked out fine had it not been for Jason displaying uncharacteristically stereotypical man behaviour: refusing to use a map to get to Martha’s Vineyard. The rest of the family gets lost, misses the turnoff and are so late getting to the ferry terminal that they miss the last sailing.  Just like that, Mike and Julie are stuck in the house on Martha’s Vineyward. With the baby. Unsupervised.

Maggie is not impressed with Jason. Jason realizes he needs to make sure Mike knows to keep his mind…and hands!…off of Julie until they can take the morning ferry over. I think we all know that Jason’s warning will be largely in vain because it’s Mike we’re talking about here.

Back in Martha’s Vineyard, and for reasons that aren’t at all clear, Mike and Julie are setting up sleeping bags to sleep on the living room floor instead of making use of what I assume are multiple bedrooms. Maybe it’s to be close to the baby, or maybe it’s just the only way the rest of the plot can unfold the way the writers want it to. I’d put money on the latter. Regardless, Mike is super pumped to have a night alone with Julie, until she asks him not to hit on her. There goes Mike’s only plan for the evening.

Mike can see he needs to take a more subtle approach to hitting on Julie, because heaven forbid that he actually just not.  Julie is too smart for this, though. She is a Columbia-educated psychology major, after all. She calls Mike out on his childish behaviour, even going so far as to call him a kid even though Mike is only one year younger than her. Like seriously, at any age, a one-year age difference is virtually meaningless isn’t it?

Anyway, even though Julie thinks of Mike as a kid, she also thinks he’s cute, but also wants him to know that she wants a man of substance and she does not think of Mike as a man of substance. The thing is, once Mike thinks he doesn’t have a chance with Julie, he starts to actually act like a normal person. He stops trying to be ‘the man’, starts asking Julie about herself and actually listens to her answers. He’s being the person of substance that he’s always been but usually hides under the guise of being a lady’s man. Anyway, now that Mike is showing his true colours, Julie has that glint in her eye that clearly says her tune about Mike is changing. For all the Mike-like guys out there, let this be a lesson to you: ladies are rarely into false male bravado.

Now that Julie has seen Mike’s substance, things escalate quickly. They kiss. Then Julie freaks out, first because she’s a year older than Mike (which still makes no sense as cause for concern), and then because she works for Mike’s parents (which is definitely a more legitimate concern). What will they do? How will they sort this all out?

We won’t find out today, because Jason and the rest of the Seavers have shown up. Oh, but there is much more Mike and Julie fun to come!

At the end of this episode, here are some fun facts:

• If the Martha’s Vineyard ferry operator looked familiar, it’s because you’ve already seen him as the Dewey High School janitor, and as Buzz the repairman way back in season one. So either he’s moonlighting from one of these other two jobs or the hardest-working man in Long Island. Or, you know, he’s just one of the many recycled guest stars we get to see on Growing Pains. Yup, it’s definitely the last one.
• The episode title is Mandingo, which I thought would connect to the episode content in some way but when I looked it up here’s the definition: ” 1 : a member of a people of western Africa in or near the upper Niger valley. 2 : the language of the Mandingo.” What? How does this connect? So I dug a little deeper and wish I hadn’t because there’s also an urban dictionary definition that I won’t quote as written, but basically means a man with large genitalia. And although I can’t believe that a PG-13 family show would refer to such a shocking definition, it’s clearly the more related of the two definitions, so…