Season 4 Episode 19: Show Ninety. Who Knew?

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I am back with your weekly dose of Growing Pains. If you’re wondering why I’m not posting daily right now, you can find out here.  I bet you’re thinking that if I’m only posting weekly, the posts will be extra good? Well, I hate to burst your bubble but the quality of a post largely depends on the quality of the Growing Pains episode. Unfortunately for you, today’s episode is a major letdown. Let’s get to it.

In this episode, Jason exhibits uncharacteristic helicopter parenting that backfires in a big way.

Mike is taking a psychology class and is convinced his professor has given him an unfair grade. Since he has an in with a real life psychiatric professional, Mike decides that for the first time in twelve years of formal education, he’s going to ask his dad to look at his homework. Jason is as shocked as all of us viewers.

At first glance, Jason tells Mike his problem is that he’s been too unclear with his test answers. So he challenges Mike to be more precise on his makeup assignment. When Jason goes to check on Mike’s progress with the makeup assignment, Mike has fallen asleep so Jason takes it upon himself to a) read through all of Mike’s answers and b) change them all to ‘right’ answers.

If you’re wondering, this isn’t even the helicopter parenting part of Jason’s behaviour.

Jason expects Mike to come home with a great grade, which he thinks will prove to Mike that he needs to be more thorough with his assignments. Instead, Mike gets a D. Jason is flabbergasted. It is at this point that he decides to take helicopter parenting to new levels by marching straight down to the professor’s office to complain.

*Sidenote: I gather that nowadays this is more common than it was in the 80s. In fact, I hear horrifying stories of parents contacting post-secondary institutions on behalf of their kids all the time. But as a child of the 80s, I can assure you that, back in these simpler times, your parents would more likely tell you to suck it up and take your medicine than advocate on your behalf to a freaking college professor.*

Mike’s professor is as aghast as I am that a parent has come to complain about his kid’s grade. He tries to hear Jason out, but basically ends up telling Jason that perhaps his own knowledge is a bit out of date. Truthfully, the professor’s a bit of a jerk, but he has a good point when he says it’s his class and he gets to choose how he presents the material and what he expects of his students. Anyway, in the end Jason’s big faux pas is admitting to the professor that he wrote all of Mike’s answers. Just like that Mike’s D is no longer a D. It’s an F.

And just like that, Mike vows that he will never again show his dad his homework. Yes, that is the big lesson learned in this episode. I’m as disappointed as you are.

I also don’t want it to be lost that amidst this horrendous storyline, two other storylines played out in small ways:

  1. Mike is still sneaking around with Julie, which would be 10 times more interesting as an episode than what I just watched.
  2. Carol is still dating Sandy, although we don’t actually see Sandy and, in fact, have not seen him in several episodes. Again, I would sooner watch twenty minutes of Carol and Sandy than what I just witnessed.

we interrupt this regular programming….again

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Whelp. I have failed to continue the tradition of Monday thru Friday episodes a day. Part of me feels terrible, and part of me accepts that sometimes more important things interfere with nostalgic 80s television episode recaps. You know, like a global pandemic, for instance.

My new goal is episode a week, which feels a little more manageable, and like maybe I can occasionally under promise and over deliver just to brighten your day.

Stay safe and healthy everyone and (if you can) please stay home.

Season 4 Episode 18: The Recruiter

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Here we go! Carol’s getting ready to apply for college, and she’s super pumped to go to Columbia. But both her parents are Boston College alumni and they just assume she’s dying to go there too. Carol feels pressured to be interested in the same school as her parents, perhaps because they cannot stop gushing about how she’s going to love it in a way that makes it sort of feel like she has no other option. I’d expect that kind of overbearing parenting from Maggie, but not Jason. Anyway, Carol chickens out on telling her parents where she really wants to go, and in the meantime mails off her application to buy her some time before she has to drop the proverbial bomb on her parents.

Sadly, she only buys herself a week. It turns out a college recruiter for Boston College just happens to be in Long Island and wants to squeeze in an interview that night. How is Carol going to get herself out of that pickle?

*Sidenote from the main plot: during the call from the college recruiter, which Ben actually takes, Carol and Ben have an exchange in which Carol claims “Sandy is not my boyfriend. He’s just the only guy I date.” But just in the last episode, Carol was busted for sneaking out on a date with a new guy in her class. Am I the only one who notices these inconsistencies? I realize the answer to that is yes.

Anyway, Carol swears Ben to secrecy about the interview and then finds out her parents are going to be out that night. Score! This opens the door for scheming! Carol quickly makes her way to Mike to help her out with her plan to make Boston College wish they’d never received her application. She’s going to intentionally blow the interview so she’ll have no choice but to go to Columbia. She just needs Mike to find people to play her parents because, for reasons I don’t understand, the college recruiter would want to meet her parents.

It should be totally easy to find replacement parents on several hours’ notice, right?

Armed with twenty bucks, Mike accepts his mission and returns with substitute Maggie and Jason, who turn out to be a homeless couple he plucked off the street. I don’t see a choice but to ignore this obviously insensitive move right now. The bottom line is Mike’s paid these two—Fred and Wilma—to play the part of Maggie and Jason and he needs to get them cleaned up, whereas Carol needs to put on her best bad-girl outfit.

When the college recruiter shows up, Carol and Fred do their damage. Here’s just a smattering of how:

  • Carol apologizes for her attire (which honestly isn’t that bad at all), claiming she has to work later. Wait, what? Is Carol joking about being a prostitute? I’m no expert, but I’m guessing you don’t have to go that far to put off a college recruiter.
  • Fred dives into the sherry
  • Carol claims to have spent six months in reform school over “a little misunderstanding involving a knife”.
  • Fred calls Carol a ‘little slut’ and Ben a ‘scumbum’

Perhaps not surprisingly, this is all it takes for the recruiter to run for the door.

Just when Carol and Mike think they’ve gotten away with everything, Maggie and Jason come home early! How will Carol and Mike explain Fred? Simple! They tell Maggie and Jason that Fred is the college recruiter. Problem solved. Except Fred is really only equipped to play the part of a marginally offensive parental figure, not to be a poised college recruiter from a prestigious school.

It takes mere minutes for Maggie and Jason to suspect there’s something fishy going on. Between Fred asking for more sherry, calling Maggie ‘Micky’, calling Jason a proctologist and getting the school name wrong, I can’t imagine why.  But really it isn’t until the actual college recruiter comes back to retrieve his pop-up map of the campus (yes, you read that right! a pop-up campus map!) that the jig is up.

Carol’s busted, but finally gets to tell her parents that she wants to go to Columbia. Maggie and Jason learn a really important lesson about letting your kids choose the school they want to go to. But no one learns the lesson that it’s not appropriate to make fun of the homeless.

Season 4 Episode 17: Double Standard

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Ben and Carol both snuck out on dates and stayed out way past their curfews, which translates into breaking not one but two long-standing Seaver rules. But the most shocking part for me is that Carol’s date wasn’t with Sandy.  Just two episodes ago she took Sandy to a family celebration and now she’s going out with “this new guy from school”. What the hell, Carol?  Anyway, both of them get busted by Maggie and Jason and now it’s time to face the music.

Now we learn how the Seaver parents decide who handles the kids’ disciplinary action: a coin toss. As a non-parent, I have to wonder, is this how parents decide these types of things in real life? I will never know. I suppose it doesn’t matter. All you need to know is that Jason loses the coin toss, and in the process we learn that he’s super biased. Okay, not just biased, actually kind of sexist, which is a form of bias I know, but much more specific.

We learn this because his two kids both try to appeal to Jason’s memory of being young and not being able to think straight at the sight of a hot girl or guy. Of course, Jason can identify with this all too well, but only as it relates to Ben losing his mind over a girl and not as it relates to Carol losing her mind over a guy.  In the end, Carol gets grounded for a month whereas lucky little Ben gets a stern warning, which I think we can all agree is the same as getting off scot-free.

Also, did anyone ever get grounded for four weeks? Is there a parent on earth who would have the patience to enforce that kind of punishment? My mom used to ground me occasionally for a few days but it almost never stuck for more than a day. Am I the anomaly or are the Seavers out to lunch here?

Carol takes her punishment surprisingly well. I would expect no less from a tried and true rule follower. But when she hears that all Ben got was a stinking warning, all bets are off. She goes straight to Maggie and accuses Jason of being a “pig” (her word, not mine). Although Maggie doesn’t want to think of Jason as sexist, a quick conversation with him to fact-check Carol’s theory makes it clear that Carol picked a suitable moniker.

Maggie’s got to fix things, so she takes on the punishment for both kids, both of whom also use the same line of reasoning they used with their dad. They’ve clearly not given any thought to better rationales that might garner more sympathy. Come on, kids, every kid knows you’ve got to come up with a better story if you’re given a second chance to explain yourself! Anyway, this time Ben’s not so lucky. He loses television for a month, which doesn’t sound like much these days when you’d have numerous devices connected to internet. But this is the late 80s and Ben is a twelve year old boy, and TV is pretty much all he’s got.

What about Carol you might be asking? Well, it turns out that Maggie’s no less biased than Jason because this time Carol gets off scot-free. When Maggie and Jason realize they’re both sexist/biased, do they think it’s wise to try to reduce their bias? Nope. Apparently they want to hang on to it. Instead, they decide the only rational course of action is that Maggie will punish the male Seaver children and Jason will punish the female Seaver children.

In other words, now everybody loses, but mostly Ben and Carol because they are stuck with their original, strict punishments and it’s about to be no-fun in the Seaver household.

I’d also like to note that I went to extra effort to bring you this recap today. The only version of this episode I could find (for free) on the internet was sped up, not enough that things looked different on screen, but just enough so that everyone sounded like a character from Alvin and the Chipmunks. You’re welcome.

Season 4 Episode 16: Fortunate Son

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I’m back with more Growing Pains levity. I think it’s important to acknowledge that I am fully aware of all that’s going on in the world and in my community, and I recognize that Growing Pains episode recaps are completely unimportant. I also believe that we need lightness at times. It’s not healthy to watch news coverage 24/7 and work ourselves into a frenzy. So let this be a space where you can come and take a 5 minute breather from your stresses.

Actually, maybe this recap isn’t going to be a breather from your stresses, because today’s episode deals with overt racism…

I’m going to try very hard not to criticize Growing Pains, or any show for that matter, for how it tries to tackle a topic like racism. I don’t know how any television show could possibly unpack and make a meaningful statement on a complex, systemic issue like racism. The most we can expect from television is to raise awareness, and honestly for the late 80s/early 90s this was probably pretty progressive because, unlike today, mainstream entertainment wasn’t talking as much about racism.

So now that I’ve kicked off with not one, but two caveats, let’s get to the episode itself.

Mike hates his job at the carwash and wants a new one, but he also claims it’s really, really hard to find a new job.  But Ben’s about to prove him wrong in mere seconds. They happen to be in a convenience store and Ben walks right up to the manager and basically asks him to hire Mike. I guess the manager liked Ben’s gumption and assumed it was a genetically shared trait, because he offers Mike a job starting immediately. And by immediately, I mean in 15 minutes. Just like that, Mike has a new and likely equally un-lucrative career as a graveyard shift convenience store clerk. Mike is thrilled. Mike’s new co-worker, Raj, who’s been working the graveyard shift forever and never gets to see his woman, is also thrilled. It’s a win-win.

Sidenote: An important plot detail here is that all the other store clerks are visible minorities, except for the manager.

You know who it’s not a win for? Maggie and Jason. They aren’t thrilled with this new job, what with it being a graveyard shift at a convenience store where they keep a gun under the counter in case of robberies. Maggie is so concerned that she stays up polishing silverware into the wee hours of the night waiting for Mike to come home. She tries to guilt Mike into requesting an earlier shift, even though he’s the new guy and thinks he should pay his dues before asking for special favours.

Nonetheless, Mike humors his mother. The next day he tells his manager that his mom is making him ask for a different shift, but also basically tells his manager he is only asking so he can honestly tell his mom he asked. He doesn’t really expect the shift change. But lo and behold, the manager instantly gives Mike the day shift and poor Raj and Jerry, both of whom you’ll recall are visual minorities, are put back on graveyards. They are not amused.

Now Mike feels guilty and just as he’s trying to make the case for why his manager should put him back on night shifts, his manager says “if we can’t look after our own, who will?” Mike is actually left speechless, which we know almost never happens to Mike. He tries to talk to his dad about it, but he’s super vague and honestly even if Jason were the most brilliant psychiatrist on the planet there’s no way he could decipher Mike’s gibberish.

So Mike just goes to work, where he is greeted by a couple of cold shoulders, notably those of his two co-workers. Mike’s conscience is telling him confront his boss (go Mike!), and so he does. His manager tries to ‘clear the air’, which unfortunately just makes things worse because he basically goes on to say that white people have to stick together and look out for themselves. And then he tries to convince Mike that if the manager were the same ethnicity as Jerry or Raj, they’d get the advantages instead, so what’s the problem? Mike kinda still thinks there’s a problem with that reason, but you can see he’s not quite as sure. But then his manager goes on to point out that he’s a six-time winner of a minority employer award, which is basically just a variation on the “I can’t be racist because I have [insert whatever minority here] friends” argument.

Now Mike is even more confused and doesn’t know what to think, because maybe his manager’s not such a bad guy after all. Wrong, Mike, wrong.  Thankfully Jason and Maggie recall their awkward morning conversation and ask Mike about it when they get home. Mike tries to explain that he was just confused but that everything is good now, but then he goes on to share everything his boss told him which clearly demonstrates to Jason and Maggie that everything is not good now. Jason explains to Mike what prejudice is and now Mike knows why everything his boss has told him hasn’t sat right. Jason also wants Mike to take action. That’s right, Jason!

But wait, because Maggie still doesn’t want Mike to work graveyards, so basically she’s okay with racism if it benefits her son. Surely Jason is going to right this ship? Nope, he sure isn’t. He waffles on Mike going back to the graveyard shift too. Even Mike knows this is total crap.

So Mike stages a small racism trap for his boss: he dumps out some soda on the floor and let’s his boss believe it was one of his coworkers. Sure enough, his manager freaks out about it. But then when Mike claims it was actually him, his boss just calmly tells Mike to be a bit more careful. That’s all the evidence Mike needs. He quits his job on the spot, and then his manager calls Mike a spoiled white kid so he doesn’t even seem to want to love ‘his own kind’ anymore either.

This is how Mike Seaver learns about privilege and racism, and how to take a stand…at least on a micro-level.

Welcome back to the world of Growing Pains, everyone.

Season 4 Episode 15: Anniversary from Hell

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Front to back, this episode is a front-runner for worst of season four. I’m not going to lie, it’s one of those episodes where I was constantly thinking ‘how is this even an episode?’. The plot is best described as ‘barely holding itself together’. Let’s get this over with.

The kids are orchestrating a surprise anniversary party for their parents, which includes all the grandparents, Maggie’s holiday card mailing list, and several Seaver kids’ dates. Like Ben has a date, and when did he start having dates all the time? And Carol has Sandy, who we haven’t seen nor referenced in four episodes, but who she is now referring to as her boyfriend. Mike is date-less, but it’s clear that’s because he and Julie are hiding something, which is also annoying because we haven’t even seen Julie in five episodes. Come on Growing Pains. I expect more from you.

Anyway, Maggie and Jason are surprised by the party, for sure, but also tensions rise because it’s a crazy mix of relatives that really don’t get along. Like there’s this “cousin Larry” who is hitting on everyone there even though virtually everyone there seems to be a blood relative, so what the hell Larry?!?!  And then Whalley doesn’t like Maggie’s father, and Irma doesn’t like Maggie’s mother and so they’re at each other’s throats the whole time, but in a totally passive-aggressive way.

Eventually, Maggie and Jason end up sneaking out of the party entirely, and reminiscing about how all the arguing reminds them of their wedding reception. It’s a good thing they extricated themselves from the party, because shit’s about to go down, in a pie-fight kinda way. In the midst of bickering about serving pie, Maggie’s mother gets a pie in the face, which makes Irma laugh, which makes someone throw a pie in her face. Before you know it, it’s a total pie-throwing free for all and all I can think is that there’s no way that anyone would order this many pies for a party. I mean, who even orders pie for a party when obviously the correct dessert option for any celebration is a heavily-frosted cake?

All you need to know is that the party ends in an epic pie fight. Maggie and Jason drive off together to escape the craziness. And then, in a plot sequence that in no way connects to the rest of the episode and thus feels completely disjointed, we see Mike letting himself into someone’s apartment. I think we all know at this point that it’s going to be Julie’s, or maybe it’s only because I remember the Julie-Mike storyline that it’s obvious to me. Regardless, it’s “revealed” that Mike and Julie have been secretly seeing each other since Martha’s Vineyard.

My verdict on this episode is two-fold: 1) it’s a hot mess 2) I’m so glad it’s over.

Season 4 Episode 14: Feet of Clay

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Ben’s waiting in an epic line to buy tickets for a Johnathan Keith concert. Who’s Johnathan Keith? No one in real life, but in this episode of Growing Pains he’s the best thing in music since…sliced bread? That was a bad mixed metaphor. Anyway, remember when you had to wait in line for concert tickets? I do. Now people only wait in line for things like cronuts and kicks. Anyway, Johnathan Keith is played by none other than Brad Pitt, and it’s been just long enough from his guest stint as Carol’s love interest for us to forget that he ever played a sleazy Long Island high schooler instead of a rock icon.

Boy, have I ever gotten off-track.

Sadly, the concert sells out before Ben gets a chance to buy tickets. Bummer. Enter Jason. Jason apparently went to med school with Johnathan Keith’s dad. Isn’t that a delightful coincidence? Jason gets right on the phone to ask for a favour from someone he hasn’t spoken to in years. Of course, this guy’s been getting calls from his entire alumni network trying to get tickets so Jason strikes out through his channels. Now what? Enter Maggie. Maggie calls the entertainment editor at her paper and gets tickets and access to the sound check. Score.

Ben is positively psyched after sound check, rolling around backstage like a groupie and hoping to snag an autograph from Johnathan. Unfortunately, Ben also has to go to the bathroom, which leaves Jason hovering around outside Johnathan’s dressing room.  And then Johnathan comes out! If Jason couldn’t be the one to get the concert tickets and backstage access, could he at least be the one to get Ben an autograph?  First he has to wait for Johnathan to demand a hot coffee, to which his roadie replies “where am I going to find hot coffee at 3 o’clock in the afternoon?” Never has there ever been stronger evidence of the vast divide between the late 80s and the Starbucks generation.

Anyway, Jason waits for the roadie to head off in search of the elusive late afternoon coffee before jumping on the opportunity to snag Johnathan’s autograph.  He even gets Johnathan to invite Ben to his dressing room to meet him. That is going to win him some major parental brownie points. Jason’s pretty damn proud of himself, until he hears Johnathan reaming out one of his security crew for not keeping fans like Jason out of his hair. Actually, what he said was “now I have to meet with some bozo’s kid.”  Johnathan sounds like sort of a jerk, and you can see Jason is now questioning how the meeting with Ben and Johnathan will go. But what can you do when it’s your kid’s idol? You gotta let him meet him.

So after this whole scene has transpired, which would’ve been like 15 minutes in real time, Ben finally emerges from the bathroom and you have to wonder what was he doing in there for so long?!?!?  Ben wastes no time in going to meet his idol, and at first Johnathan is being super nice to Ben and everything. I mean, he’s got a staff photographer in the dressing room with them, so he’s clearly milking the scenario for publicity, but at least he’s not being a jerk. Perhaps Ben will never have to learn that his idol is a bit of an ass.

Or maybe not. Because just after the Seavers leave Johnathan’s dressing room, his “hot coffee” arrives, and now I see that I fell for Johnathan’s euphemism hook, line and sinker. By “hot coffee”, Johnathan meant a lady, and one who is most definitely not the wife he was just gushing about to the Seavers.  This certainly explains why it would be difficult to find ‘hot coffee’ at 3 in the afternoon.

Anyway, Ben’s about to learn the cold hard truth about his rock idol. He’s forgotten his signed record in Johnathan’s dressing room, but he thinks they’re besties now so he just goes barging right back in without knocking. Well, he catches Johnathan and his ‘hot coffee’ in the midst of some unseemly behaviour, which is bad enough, but then Johnathan freaks out and calls  Ben a “snot nosed little brat”. Clearly this is mean for sure, but at the same time doesn’t seem quite mean enough for a rock star. I guess it’s a PG rated show, though, so I don’t know what I’m expecting him to say.

Anyway, Ben’s perfect image of Johnathan Keith is shattered but he doesn’t tell his parents what happened. Instead, he rushes up to his room and tears apart his Johnathan Keith poster. Take that Johnathan Keith. You’ve lost a fan. He even tries to scalp his concert tickets under the guise that he’s too sick to go. When Ben shows Jason he has a fever of 128, Jason quickly spots the old thermometer under the light bulb trick, and he’s also totally perplexed as to why Ben suddenly has zero interest in his rock idol. Ben finally crumbles and tells Jason the truth about Johnathan Keith, which of course Jason already knows because he also saw a taste of it first-hand.

Jason has to help Ben understand that sometimes people let you down, that you can’t always trust the image they present to the world, but that you can appreciate their gifts no matter how they might behave. And that’s a good lesson for all of us to learn, because everyone has good in them even if we don’t see it in every moment.  Or maybe I’m making this a much deeper lesson than it was intended to be, but I’ll give Jason credit for that little nugget of wisdom anyway. In the end, Ben goes to the concert and has a great time so all’s well that ends well, I guess.

At the end of this episode, I’m left wondering:

  • Where is Julie? For a nanny, she’s been AWOL for way too many episodes.
  • Where is Sandy?
  • What was Ben doing in the bathroom for so long? These types of illogical plot details drive me crazy!

Season 4 Episode 13: Semper Fidelis

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In this episode, we bid farewell to a beloved Growing Pains supporting character, Richard “Boner” Stabone.  But we have a while to go before we learn that, so really I’ve just delivered a big episode spoiler. Let’s take a few steps back and start from the beginning.

It seems like school isn’t going so well for Mike or Boner at this point, which is unsurprising since they’re trying to study together but Mike’s idea of studying involves more of tossing rolled up socks into a bin using his feet than opening books. The other key difference between the two of them is that Mike seems perfectly at ease with just getting by, whereas Boner is really starting to feel frustrated by his struggles with school. He wants to do more than get by, and he’s been thinking about his options, options which he really wants to talk to Mike about, but doesn’t because Mike falls asleep instead of listening to his friend.

One week later, Alf Landon college grades arrive in the mail which, even for the late 80s, seems an antiquated method for distributing grades. But hey, I was still in elementary school in the late 80s so what do I know? Anyway, Mike gets straight Ds, but Boner’s not so lucky (if you can call straight Ds lucky, that is). He’s staring at a bunch of Fs, but he’s oddly zen about it. Because Mike and Boner’s friendship has never been founded on sharing thoughts and feelings, Mike doesn’t even stop to wonder why Boner is suddenly so chill about flunking his classes.

As it turns out, the reason Boner is so chill is because he’s enlisted in the marines. Mike is shocked and thinks Boner’s making a huge mistake, and he’s also sort of mad that Boner didn’t tell him he was considering the marines. He tried, Mike, and you fell asleep.  Mike is reacting by criticizing Boner’s choice and distancing himself Boner, but what he’s clearly upset about is a) losing his best friend and b) being jealous that Boner has made choices about his future instead of just coasting along aimlessly.

Thank goodness Jason is around to help Mike work through his feelings. Or at least he tries to, but Mike still isn’t willing to look beneath the surface and see his own jealousy and insecurity. Instead, he and Boner spend Boner’s last two weeks in town not speaking to each other. Boys.

But when Boner comes by to say his goodbyes, Mike finally gets his head out of his ass. He hears how excited Boner is about his choice, how clear he is in his goals. And he’s finally able to be happy for Boner, and to accept that all his anger was really a combination of sadness and projection. They hug it out, and wouldn’t you know it that Boner’s initiative inspires Mike to finally take his own future seriously (at least for the remainder of this episode).  With that, Richard “Boner” Stabone fades into Growing Pains history.

It’s truly a sad moment, perhaps even more so because of what happened to Andrew Koenig (the actor who played Boner). Reportedly suffering from clinical depression, he took his own life in 2010. I remember when this happened, likely because it happened in my hometown of Vancouver, but also because I am always broken-hearted when I hear of someone taking his or her life. Obviously I didn’t know Andrew personally, but it seems that those who knew him described him as a gentle soul. In addition to his work as an actor, he worked behind the scenes in television and film, and was also a passionate advocate for human rights.  I encourage you to check out some of his personal and career history, and to make extra effort to reach out to anyone you know who might be in a dark place.

Season 4 Episode 12: Working Mother of the Year

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Maggie is missing out on a Working Mother of the Year award ceremony to provide live coverage on an apparently riveting Long Island garbage strike story. Having been in Manhattan during a garbage strike, I actually take back that snarky comment because garbage pickup in a dense metropolis is no joke. At any rate, she’s stuck hiding out in the news van, waiting for an elusive ‘garbage czar’ instead of accepting her award, and she is none too pleased about it.

This is all a setup for a series of flashbacks, but at least these flashbacks aren’t to old episodes, but rather to Maggie’s struggles to find the time to write her acceptance speech for her award. The irony of a busy working mother not finding time to write her speech for a working mother of the year award is not lost on anybody. Unfortunately, this still doesn’t make for an interesting flashback.  Here’s what you need to know: every time Maggie tried to carve out time to write her speech she was waylaid by other commitments, her work, her own exhaustion, and then an inexplicable plot point in which she has to stop Carol from going out on a date with a balding 28 year old. It’s at this point where I am asking myself, where in the hell is Sandy?!?  Carol is super angry at her mom, but honestly Carol, I think your mom helped you dodge a bullet because that guy was going to take you out for a non-alcoholic celery margarita, which basically sounds like celery juice. You can do better. We all can do better.

Anyway, in the end Maggie does somehow write her speech but she’s not there to deliver it, so Jason steps up to the plate and delivers it for her. Maggie arrives hours after the event is over, and ends up hanging out with the cleaning staff, who is a lovely lady but who I have to question because she eats a pickle that Maggie pulled out of her cleavage (I’ll spare you the boring backstory as to how the pickle even got there). I mean, can you imagine how warm that would be???? Anyway, the two of them bond over warm pickles and being working moms, and how under-recognized women’s work can be. Amen. Unfortunately, aside from this one thematic statement, so far this episode is a front-runner for worst episode of Season 4. What a way to end the week!

I’m going to wrap up this episode and this week with a fun fact (I use the term fun loosely):  This episode is one of at least two episodes features a running joke about Ishtar, which for my entire life I never understood, partly because I didn’t think it was a real movie and partly because when this show first aired things like the internet didn’t exist to quickly look up movie info. IMDB now confirms that Ishtar was, in fact, a movie, and a controversial one at that. It was costly and time-consuming to make, and featured an all-star cast, but made next to nothing at the box office and was pretty widely declared a total dud.  Clearly someone on the Growing Pains staff either loved or hated it, or somehow was connected to its production.  At long last, I understand this running joke. Even though it’s not a particularly great running joke, the fact that I’ve finally deciphered it after 31 years is oddly satisfying.