Season 2 Episode 12: Higher Education

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Mike is stoked for some sort of school ski trip which involves a very high female to male ratio (almost 2:1!!). Given these highly imbalanced numbers, Mike, Boner and Eddie are all super pumped about their odds with the ladies so they’re all psyching themselves up to ask their parents for permission to go. But even though Maggie and Jason are both deathly ill, Jason hasn’t forgotten that Mike is flunking English class and, unless he pulls his grade up, Jason’s not letting him hit the slopes. Don’t mess with a sick and grumpy Jason, Mike.

Lucky for Mike there’s a teacher’s aide who’s willing to do him a solid by changing his grade on his latest English test, but only because she’s hot for Mike. In exchange for his shiny new grade, she blackmails Mike into agreeing to be her date for the ski trip. That makes things complicated because it’s seriously going to interfere with his plans to flirt with all the other ladies on the trip.

Mike is truly torn. The problem is he’s already accepted the favour from his teacher’s aide. So now he has to decide if he should he simply agree to her terms and give up his odds with the other ladies on this trip, or if he should renege on the favour and accept his failing grade, which would also mean the end of his ski trip dreams. Tough call, Mike. To make matters even more complicated, Mike’s also realizing he’s caught dead in the middle of the exact kind of quid pro quo that women are usually roped into by men, and he’s seeing just how terrible that feels.  It’s a big insight for a teenaged boy.

And yet, despite this insight, Mike really hasn’t learned a thing. Instead, he’s asking Carol how he can repulse the teacher’s aide, and he wants his dad to tell him that he doesn’t need to choose between refusing or returning the favour. He basically wants to have his cake and eat it too. In Mike Seaver’s world, this type of thinking usually doesn’t turn out very well. And then Mike decides to add insult to injury by asking Eddie and Boner for advice. Now he’s really asking for trouble.

Boner and Eddie give Mike all sorts of offensive pick up lines designed to repulse the teacher’s aide. They assure Mike that these sleazy lines guarantee that any lady will not only be offended, but will possibly slap him in the face.  The only problem is the lines work for Mike. The teacher’s aide is all over him, and he has no choice but to tell her the truth: that he’s been trying to repulse her to get out of taking her on the ski trip.

This opens up a really interesting conversation, which I don’t think Growing Pains really leveraged enough, but I suppose in the mid-80s this topic wasn’t quite as big a deal as it is today. You see, the teacher’s aide knows that she blackmailed Mike, and she knew it was wrong, but she also knows that men have been treating women this same way since ‘the dawn of time’. So why shouldn’t she do the same if given the opportunity? But now she sees the error of her ways, and she knows she has to change Mike’s grade back. Mike sort of gets it, because he knows he’s done the exact same thing to girls in the past and he’s now experienced how terrible it feels, but he also really doesn’t get it because he still doesn’t think she should change his grade back.

Sorry, Mike, that’s the way it goes. No ski trip. No ladies. His parents will be disappointed in his grade. It’s truly a bad day in the life of Michael Aaron Seaver.

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

  • How would this episode play out differently today?
  • Are Eddie and Boner the sleaziest friends ever or is this just how teenaged boys are?

Season 2 Episode 11: Choices

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Mr. Dewitt is making a comeback, but once again it’s only his voice over the PA system. Why does Growing Pains continue to dangle the promise of Mr. Dewitt appearing in person only to let me down time and time again? Cruel. 

At first, Mr. Dewitt calls Mike to his office, which makes perfect sense because Mike is always in trouble. But then he corrects himself and calls Carol instead. What is happening in the world?  How could Carol Seaver possibly be in trouble? But it’s clear when Carol gets home from school that whatever Mr. Dewitt had to say was good news for Carol. We quickly learn that Carol has the chance to skip a grade. The chance to get one year ahead in life is something that Carol is over the moon about, as is Maggie. Mike, of course, is not at all excited because that would place him and Carol in the same grade, which is far too close for his comfort.

The wild card here is Jason, who we might expect to be excited, but who in reality is just as unexcited as Mike. In fact, he’s downright reluctant to express enthusiasm for Carol leap-frogging into eleventh grade.  Ever the pragmatic psychiatrist, Jason cautions Maggie that they need to get clearer on what’s really motivating Carol to skip a grade. Is it because it’s what she really wants, or is she just trying to make her parents happy, or perhaps is she just trying to bury her head in books to avoid social interactions?  Jason is worried that they’re missing something, and he wants them to dig deeper with Carol. 

Maggie doesn’t really want to hear Jason’s rational thinking, but she has the good sense to realize maybe he has a point. She decides to see for herself.  The only problem is that all she does is ask a series of leading questions, to which Carol responds with one word answers. Maggie is satisfied that Carol has thought her decision through, but it’s clear to me that she could learn a lesson or two from Jason and incorporate some open-ended questions into her conversations. In doing so, she just might surface some helpful information. As it stands, she’s learned nothing about Carol’s true motivations.  

This becomes clear over dinner when Carol says that skipping a grade will ensure she doesn’t ‘make the same mistakes’ as her mother. Turns out Carol thinks that Maggie had to give up everything to get married and have kids, and that she regrets it to boot. See, Maggie? If you’d asked more than a few yes or no questions, you might have seen this sooner.  Well, Maggie and Jason now see a very big problem, which is that Maggie may have inadvertently been sending a message that excelling is everything, and also that Carol needs to put her career progression above all else. I’m just sitting here wondering if I was the laziest teenager ever because I had zero ambition at the age of 15 and hadn’t even started to contemplate the concept of career, but I supposed that’s an aside.

The point is that Maggie has some damage control to do.  Maggie tries to have a heart to heart with Carol to clear the air, to help her understand that she doesn’t regret any of her choices. Of course, Carol doesn’t believe a word of it. I mean, how could Maggie have given up a promising career at Newsweek for a local Long Island newspaper and not regret it? Carol really can’t wrap her head around that.

Since Maggie’s tactics have failed, it’s time to send in the big guns to rectify the situation. Jason is here to save the day, with his reel-to-reel (talk about a blast from the past!) in tow. He figures if Carol can just hear the joy of Maggie giving birth to her, surely she will understand that Maggie never regretted a thing.  Although I’m highly suspect that this approach would work in the real world, it seems to land with Carol. Finally, Maggie and Jason have gotten through to her. Carol gets that it’s not about choosing either a career or a family; it’s about recognizing that she has options and that Maggie wants her to make choices for herself.

And, in case you’re wondering, Carol’s choice is to not skip a grade, for which Mike is incredibly grateful.

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

  • Does anyone even know what a reel to reel is anymore? Does anyone reading this have countless audio recordings of their childhood moments sitting in a box somewhere like I do?
  • Will Carol ever get a storyline that isn’t about academics? I will keep asking, where is the Bobby romance storyline?!?!?

Season 2 Episode 10: The Breakfast Club

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We kick off this episode with Mike sneaking into the house, and Maggie and Jason almost clobbering him with a hockey stick because they think he’s an intruder. I cannot help but notice that Jason’s weapon of choice is a hockey stick, like the good Canadian kid that he is. I also cannot help but notice that Mike has some crazy athletic abilities. When Jason startles him with the hockey stick, he makes a very impressive vertical leap onto a cabinet that’s easily over three feet tall. Someone’s been doing his box jumps at the gym!

Anyway, none of this has anything to do with the point, which is that Mike is trying to sneak in after his curfew…or so he thinks. It turns out he’s actually earlier than his curfew and didn’t need to sneak in at all. Boner, of course, is to blame for this snafu because apparently he cannot tell time. All of this would be fine and well except that before Mike realized that he actually wasn’t late at all, he’d woven quite the tall tale in which he’d heroically saved lives from a towering inferno.  So even though he hasn’t broken curfew, he has been caught lying. And the Seavers take lying very seriously.

Like, very seriously. Mike is not only grounded for the entire weekend, but he also has to be in bed by 8 and there’ll be no television. There goes his weekend.

While Mike contemplates his new weekend reality, Maggie and Jason are preparing for a weekend getaway to Atlantic City, which sounds exciting until Jason reveals it’s for a psychiatric convention.  At any rate, Maggie’s parents are en route to take care of the kids and Maggie’s confident her father, a former police officer, can keep Mike in line for the weekend.

As it turns out, Maggie’s dad won’t have his hands full with just Mike. Just as Maggie and Jason are getting ready to go, she receives a phone call from her boss and she lies through her teeth to get out of working all weekend. The problem: Mike overhears all of it. Mike is supremely confident that he’s going to get out of his punishment now, because if Maggie is allowed to lie then how can he be punished for the same thing?

Not so fast, Mike. You’ve underestimated the lengths to which your father will go to teach you the value of honesty. And those lengths are considerable, because Jason proposes that Maggie’s punishment should actually be the same as Mike’s. Yes, you heard that right, Maggie is also grounded for the weekend. No psychiatric convention for her (although, if you ask me, that might have been a blessing in disguise!).  Now Maggie’s dad will have to keep both her and Mike in check over the weekend.

Maggie seems sort of okay with the being grounded part, but she’s really not cool with the 8pm bedtime portion of it. She sneaks downstairs late at night to watch a cheesy romance movie with not one but two giant bags of popcorn. Just when you think Maggie is perhaps worse than Mike, we see Mike trying to sneak out of the house. Come on, Mike, don’t you know that if you just got busted for sneaking out you need to wait at least a few days before trying again? Rookie mistake.

Maggie is about to come down hard on Mike for breaking the rules yet again, but Mike is onto her game. He sees the telltale signs of her movie (and popcorn) bingeing and calls Maggie out on her hypocrisy. Turns out they’re both terrible at following the rules…and telling the truth. This leads to an unconventional Growing Pains learning moment: one in which the heart-to-heart does not include Jason Seaver. My brain doesn’t know how to make sense of this.

Here’s the long and short of it: Mike feels like Maggie’s forgotten what it’s like to be a teenager. Maggie feels like Mike doesn’t understand what it’s like to be his parent. But she also realizes that she used to be more like Mike than she wants to admit, and her parents were pretty harsh on her, and maybe she actually does need to cut Mike a little slack. In the end, they opt to sneak out together for pizza. Rule breaker’s gotta stick together.

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

  • Is an 8pm bedtime really a punishment? Personally, I love going to bed early.
  • Really, what is a suitable consequence for lying? As someone without kids, I’m really struck by how complicated it would be to teach your kids not to lie when…we all lie.
  • What was Kirk Cameron’s workout routine back in the 80s? Because I want to be able to jump that high too.

 

Season 2 Episode 9: The Kid

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It’s Christmas time in the Seaver household once more! I am bracing myself for a legitimately heavy episode because season one’s Christmas episode involved a suicidal Santa and that has me thinking that Growing Pains really likes to make its holiday episodes meaningful. Will this season’s holiday episode bring us light-hearted festivities instead? Let’s find out!

We kick off with Mike trying to intuit what each of his presents are, which would be quite the talent to have, although I’ve never understood why anyone would want to ruin the surprise of their gifts. The best part of a gift is the surprise factor, isn’t it? That’s beside the point, I suppose. The point is that all the kids are too focused on what they want for Christmas. Mike wants a CD player, Carol wants a modem, Ben wants all the toys, and Jason is none too pleased that his kids don’t seem to understand the true meaning of Christmas.

Ben’s about to change all of that.  While out shopping for Mike’s Christmas present, Ben somehow falls into a dumpster and lands on a girl who’s in there looking for food. The meaning of Christmas is not lost on Ben, so he brings the girl home for Christmas Eve dinner. It seems that the rest of the Seavers only wanted to understand the true meaning of Christmas in theory, because they sort of don’t want to take this girl in, even temporarily. They are torn between their distaste of this homeless girl who smells and is dirty, and their realization that they can’t very well send a starving, homeless girl back into the cold of night especially on Christmas Eve. What message would that send to Ben about the meaning of Christmas, not to mention how we show compassion for our shared humanity?

What we end up with is a series of strained and awkward interactions with this poor girl, which I actually get because it really seems like awkwardness would be inevitable in this situation.  Imagine inviting a stranger into your home, and one whose day to day life looks so vastly different from your own, and then trying to find some common ground upon which to make conversation. Yeah. Awkward. To make matters worse, Maggie finds a jackknife in the girl’s clothes and then absolutely freaks out about how dangerous this girl might be. Thankfully Jason is there to talk her off the ledge, because honestly why wouldn’t a young girl living on the streets have some form of self-defence? Really, Maggie, did you think she was going to murder you all in your sleep? Come on, now.

Jason, of course, wants to talk to the girl because he thinks that he can fix everyone.  He wants her to call her parents because he is certain that they are worried about her and want to take her back, which I’m not convinced would be true.  But Jason is adamant that she consider whether she might be wrong about her parents. Perhaps they do love her and are worried sick about her. To Jason’s credit, he appears to have struck a chord with the girl.

The awkwardness isn’t over yet, though, because we still have Christmas Eve dinner, for which Carol has dressed up the girl as a little mini-Carol and the whole family is just stunned that she looks like a ‘regular’ girl now.  And then the Seavers continue with their tradition of saying what they’re thankful for, and Mike tries to make this poor girl participate. Of course, what she’s actually thankful for is not being outside freezing to death in the snow…”at least for one night”. Ouch. I’m not sure that’s quite what Mike wanted to hear, but that’s exactly why forcing the girl to take part in the ‘what-we’re-thankful-for’ game maybe wasn’t the best idea. Alas, after a couple more awkward moments, dinner takes a turn towards a light-hearted and celebratory feel.

Just when you think that this episode might take a turn towards more light-hearted festivities after all, we flash forward to the middle of the night and the girl is stealing all of the Seavers’ Christmas presents. Maggie and Jason almost catch her in the act when they sneak down to hide even more presents under the tree, but she’s able to hide from them. As she’s hiding, she overhears Maggie and Jason talking about how the kids have wrapped up presents for this girl.  For a moment, it seems like this has warmed the girl’s heart. Maybe she’ll put the presents back under the tree.

No such luck.

When the Seavers wake up, there are no Christmas presents to be found under their tree.  They’re about to comb the streets in search of the girl (but mostly their presents) but they don’t have to go far (at least to find the presents). It turns out she’s left them right on their front stoop. Christmas is saved…for the Seavers, at least.

But also, Jason seems to have gotten through to the girl, too, because the episode ends with her in a phone booth calling home and talking to her father. So maybe, in the end, Christmas is actually saved for everyone.

Honestly, I’m not sure how I feel about this episode. Much like last season’s holiday episode, I sort of applaud Growing Pains for trying to address more serious themes. At the same time, neither a half hour format nor sitcoms in general really lend themselves to worthy exploration of important issues. What we end up with is sort of an idealized version of homelessness, in which the kid hasn’t come from a terrible home life, and thus appears to have the option of returning home, which I think we can all agree isn’t true for many living on the streets. I don’t know a good way to tackle this topic in a television show, let alone a sitcom, so I’m trying not to be overly critical about it. I suppose the best we can all do is take a moment to consider all that we have and can be grateful for, and some way in which we can give back to those who have less, especially at Christmas. And, really, I think walking away from anything on television motivated to do something good is the most we can ask for from this medium.

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

  • Carol finally mentioned Bobby in this episode (although, sadly, it was only to say she was thankful that he finally called after three weeks. You deserve better, Carol!) which has me wondering, where did Bobby go? When is he coming back? And why do female characters always wait around for guys who can’t be bothered to call?
  • What was Carol going to do with a modem in 1986? Was the internet even a thing?
  • Why was Ben out shopping by himself on Christmas Eve anyway?

Season 2 Episode 8: Jason’s Rib

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I had high hopes for this new week of episodes, but they have already been dashed. Today’s episode is yet another insufferable one, and I’m sorry you are subject to it, although at least you didn’t actually have to watch it. Be thankful for that. Let’s get this over with.

Jason and Maggie are on their way to a parent meeting, which Jason wants nothing to do with, but Maggie is a bit of a buzzkill and wants them to fulfill their ‘parental responsibility’.  But then Maggie does a total about-face, suggesting she and Jason blow off the parent meeting to go see a movie together. They decide to make a token appearance at the meeting and then sneak out to catch their movie. At this point, I am still optimistic that this will turn into a good episode, because maybe Maggie and Jason really going to play hookie on the PTA meeting to have a hot date together instead.

Maggie sneaks out of the PTA meeting successfully and it seems like I might get my wish, but then my hopes crumble when Jason is busted as he’s trying to sneak out to meet Maggie. The PTA leader wants to know what he thinks of dress codes, and if there’s one thing Jason can’t resist it’s an opportunity to promote giving young adults freedom of choice and responsibility. This would all be fine and good except that Maggie comes back to check in on what’s keeping Jason and he ropes her into sharing her viewpoint on the matter, which just so happens to be in stark contrast to Jason’s.

Uh oh.

Now instead of a hot date together, they’re going to air their opposing views on dress codes in front of the whole damn PTA! And, bigger uh oh, it turns out the dress code issue is but a minor symptom of bigger ideological differences, not to mention some petty and not-so-petty grievances they’ve been holding in for what appears to be a pretty long time. This all culminates in Jason calling Maggie ignorant, but don’t worry because he only meant it in the ‘classical definition’ of the word. Oh Jason.

You probably don’t need me to tell you that this whole scene made for a pretty uncomfortable ride home, one in which Jason tries to smooth things over but Maggie digs her heels in and time seems to stand still for me, the poor viewer, who is over here asking herself why this is even an episode. All you need to know is that Maggie ultimately ditches Jason roadside, which is completely uncharacteristic of their marriage 99% of the time so we know she’s legitimately cheesed.

Once Jason gets home via a lonely cab ride, he tries to make amends, but turns out if you tell Maggie she’s ignorant and question her judgment in front of an entire room full of people, she’s not going to take your  standard, run-of-the-mill apology.  You see, Maggie remembers a time when Jason said he loved her for having her own mind and ideologies, but now she’s worried those were all lies. Jason is offended that she would even think such a thing.  They’re both too stubborn to talk it through any more, so they break the cardinal rule of not going to bed angry and, to top it off, Jason sleeps on the couch in his office.  Ouch.

Maggie’s got her own plans to make things right the next day: she’s going to dress completely inappropriately for her big interview with the governor so she can trick Jason into admitting that how you dress does matter. And boom, Jason has to eat his words about dress codes, and about their ideological differences, and really the only thing that I care about at this point is that this episode is almost over.

Truly the only winner in this whole episode turns out to be Ben, who, because his parents were so distracted by their fighting that they didn’t notice nor care, gets to eat a breakfast consisting of roughly a quarter of an apple pie piled with several scoops of ice cream. That would’ve been my dream as a child. Who am I kidding? That’s my dream as an adult. Way to go, Ben!

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

  • Why is this episode called Jason’s rib?
  • Why is this even an episode?
  • Will I ever get an entire week of solid episodes?

Season 2 Episode 7: Do you believe in magic?

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I’m going to be straight with you because you deserve the truth. This episode was bad. Like really, really bad. So bad, in fact, that I have decided it is not worth my time (nor yours, for that matter!). Today, you get the world’s shortest and least detailed episode recap, and a sincere wish that next week’s episodes bring us more inspiring fodder for commentary.

Here’s the deal: The entire Seaver family decides to teach Mike a lesson about not conning people by running quite the intricately planned scam on him, all revolving around a ‘magic rock’. The magic rock, of course, isn’t really magic, but Mike gets duped into believing it is, and then it sort of does turn out to be a little bit magic for him. But that’s a whole big side story that isn’t worth the time it’ll take to write it. The bigger point is that the Seaver family’s scam totally backfires when Mike ends up turning a profit selling the magic rock to poor Boner.

But surprise, because Mike didn’t scam Boner. Boner scammed all of them because apparently the rock, while not magic, is geologically valuable. Boner’s chemistry teacher is willing to pay a big chunk of change just to get his hands on it. Way to go Boner!

Jason seems to think that the family has learned that you can’t lie to people, but I disagree. What I think we’ve all really learned here is that you can’t out-scam a scammer.

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

  • Where is the Bobby and Carol storyline? Come on Growing Pains, let’s try some episode continuity!
  • Why is that there is no middle ground with Growing Pains episodes? They’re either really good or really, really bad.
  • Has this family accomplished anything other than scamming one another during the course of this episode? The answer is a resounding no.

Season 2 Episode 6: Dream Lover

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Well, right off the bat I have the Bobby Darin song of the same name stuck in my head, so thanks for that Growing Pains.

In this episode, Carol’s English class is in the midst of studying Shakespeare, which has Carol both swooning and also bemoaning the lack of sensitive men in high schools. I hear ya, Carol. Anyway, Coach Lubbock is Carol’s English teacher and he’s in a bit of a jam because a) he isn’t an English teacher b) knows nothing about Shakespeare and c) has a star football player on his team (Bobby) who won’t be playing much longer if he can’t get his shit together and pull up his grade. The short version of this: he needs Carol’s help to tutor Bobby.

Carol is first and foremost flattered that Coach Lubbock entrusts her with tutoring, but secondarily she is also super pumped to spend time with Bobby because if one thing is true in television’s version of the American high school social system, it’s that the captain of the football team is the guy to know.  But then the actual practice of tutoring is driving Carol nuts because she’s a brainiac and Bobby is just not getting Shakespeare, and I feel for Bobby because I have no idea why high school students are subjected to Shakespeare in the first place. I’ve always felt his writing is better appreciated when we are older.  At any rate, Bobby is getting all fired up over Shakespeare not making any sense, and although it’s really testing Carol’s patience it’s also helping her see a passionate and sensitive side of Bobby that she hadn’t anticipated.

Uh oh.  Sparks are gonna fly between these two. I can just feel it. Also, it’s super obvious from the way they’re acting.

Maggie and Jason can see Carol is sort of smitten, but they don’t genuinely think anything can happen between Bobby and Carol. It’s the classic “a-star-football-player-couldn’t-possibly-like-a-smart-nice-girl” block. And Carol’s not liking it. So when her friends double-down on Carol’s goodie-goodie nature, Carol decides she’s had enough of everyone thinking she’s so innocent. She brags to her friends about how they spent the whole evening alone in her room, and basically implies that they “spent the night together”. But her friends are too dense to understand that Carol’s clearly exaggerating, and they’re off to the rumour mill races.

Word spreads fast, and Mike finds himself defending his sister’s honour and having to be the one to break it to his parents that smutty rumours about their little girl are spreading like wildfire. Of course, they all assume that Bobby started the rumour, because that’s usually the way this sort of thing goes, and at that moment Carol upstairs with Bobby and they all decide that’s gotta change right now. So Maggie and Jason barge in just as Bobby is about to ask Carol out on a real date.  Your timing is so off, Maggie and Jason.

Well, Maggie takes on talking to Carol and Jason takes on talking to Bobby. This opens a whole can of worms in which Carol admits to her mom that she is the one who started the rumour while poor Bobby has to suffer through Jason’s attempt to get him to confess to something he didn’t do, which really confuses the hell out of him. Bobby clearly hasn’t heard any rumours and thinks that Jason is trying to get him to confess to the fact that he hasn’t read Moby Dick. Jason’s about to lose it and confront Bobby directly, but thankfully Maggie barges in at just the right moment and stops Jason from outing Carol as the rumour starter. Phew! That would have been next-level embarrassing for Carol.

Bobby and Carol are finally able to have their moment together, which involves not only Bobby asking Carol out but also their very first kiss. The only problem is that no one’s looped Mike into who really started the rumour, so when he walks in and sees Carol and Bobby kissing, he socks it to him. Inexplicably, the episode ends here just when things are getting really interesting!

I’m not a dude, but if I imagine myself in Bobby’s shoes, the Seaver family would definitely have scared me away by now. Carol’s got herself a real keeper.

At the end of this episode:

  • How can you just end the episode with Mike punching Bobby? What happens next? Are Carol and Bobby a couple now? How will this whole rumour get cleared up at school without Bobby finding out Carol started it? There are too many questions.
  • At one point, Maggie asks Carol if she noticed Bobby’s cute butt. Is it totally inappropriate for Maggie to comment on a high school boy’s butt?

Season 2 Episode 5: Employee of the Month

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Ooooh, guys I have been waiting for this episode because it’s one I remember well. We are in for a real treat here! Let’s not waste any time on preamble.

In this episode, Mike wants a car. More specifically, he wants his parents to buy him a car. But Jason wants Mike to earn a car the hard way, with a job.  The good news is Mike is one step ahead of them. He’s found a job at WOB (World of Burgers) but he needs his parents to sign off on it. Despite Jason JUST telling Mike that he needed to be responsible and get a job to pay for a car, Maggie and Jason waffle hard on whether to let him work. That’s some seriously mixed messaging.  You can’t tell someone to be responsible and get a job, only to turn around and tell him that he can’t take the job that he got.

After Jason rambles on with a really protracted (and boring) monologue about the relative pros and cons of letting Mike work, they finally agree that he can take the job.  Thank god, because, really, I was about to get all uppity about their parenting tactics.  Mike gets to enter the bold frontier that is the working world, at a burger joint with perhaps my favourite oddly catchy slogan: ‘don’t get any on ya.’

Anyway, Mike’s first day is a bit of a hot mess and it’s super unclear if Mike’s actually got what it takes to deal with the pace and complexity of fast food. But somehow he pulls it together and within a month he earns the coveted role of Employee of the Month. This has gotta show Maggie and Jason that they were right to let Mike get a job, right?

You would think…but then the unthinkable happens. Mike gets fired. But it’s totally not his fault. In fact, this whole sequence of events is really triggering my issues around fairness. You see, Mike’s co-worker (who, incidentally, played a completely different character with a completely different name back in Episode 5: Superdad) is skating on thin ice. She’s one step away from being fired, and then she goes and leaves the cash register draw open and a whopping $37 got stolen. Mike takes the fall for it to save her hide. But guess what? Instead, Mike gets fired, even though he is Employee of the Month. How the mighty hath fallen. Also, do you see what I mean? This is not at all his fault! And then his co-worker whose butt he tried to save doesn’t even try to make things right. Super uncool.

Mike goes home, head hung low, and it seems like he’s going to tell his parents he had a pretty shitty day, but then the whole family is waiting for him on the back driveway. In his new (used) car. That his parents bought for him. As a reward for how hard he’d been working. That makes the whole “I got fired today” conversation a bit trickier, doesn’t it?

Which is precisely why Mike decides not to tell them. Instead, he pretends to go to work every day, even going so far as to smear burger grease on himself so it looks like he’s been toiling at the deep fryer. That’s commitment. All the while, he’s out there on the hunt for a new job but striking out right, left and centre, which makes sense since he’s only got one job on his resume, from which he was fired after only a month.

He’s doing a pretty good job of hiding the truth, that is until his co-worker stops by the house to borrow Mike’s uniform. His parents tell her that Mike’s wearing the uniform right now at work, but his co-worker is a little slow on the draw and doesn’t pick up on the need to go along with Mike’s lies.  Instead, she spills the beans that he got fired a week ago.  Well now Jason is all fired up because, in his mind, once again Mike has let him down, first by getting fired and then by lying about it. Jason is never going to trust Mike again (he actually says these words!) which, for both a psychiatrist and a parent, seems a rather extreme and punitive reaction.

I’m willing to bet Jason really wanted to take those awful words back when Mike finally confesses that he got fired, and then adds to it that he didn’t want to tell Jason because it felt so good that his dad was finally so proud of him for something. Talk about a punch to the parental gut. Hearing this, Jason does a total 180 and decides to forget all of Mike’s lying, which strikes me as the first sensible thing he’s done this whole episode.

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

  • Would you really get fired over $37? I feel like a stern warning and deducting that amount off the next pay cheque would be a totally sufficient consequence.
  • Why wouldn’t Mike just tell his parents the full story right off the bat? It was clearly not his fault he got fired. Wait, maybe I know the answer to this question…maybe it’s because they never believe him (see season 1 episode 18, or season 2 episode 4)!
  • Is Mike’s co-worker sort of awful for not intervening even after she watches Mike get fired?

Season 2 Episode 4: Call Me

On By InMyBackyardIn Season 21 Comment

Hang on to your hats because in today’s episode Ben has discovered a dirty phone number. Maggie’s going to get ample opportunities to overreact, and Jason’s got another prime opportunity to have a deep and meaningful conversation with one of his kids. Let’s get to it.

It’s bill paying day in the Seaver household, and let’s pause for a moment to recall a time when you might have to set aside time to pay all your bills because they weren’t automatically charged to your credit card. It seems so long ago…Anyway, Jason is freaking out about the household bills, which I guess he should be because Carol apparently spent the equivalent of $110 in today’s dollars for a hair cut. No 15 year old needs a $110 hair cut. But the real kicker is when Jason notices a $216 dollar phone bill care of a whole bunch of charges (67 to be exact!) from the same number.

And when Jason calls that number he’s shocked at what he hears on the other end: sex! Uh oh, someone’s in trouble.

That someone is initially Mike, because he’s the most likely culprit for this type of thing if for no other reason than his age and gender. He denies knowing anything about this and, just as we’ve seen in the past, no one believes him. Still, Maggie and Jason are so certain of his guilt that they offer him quite possibly the worst plea bargain ever: either Mike confesses and has to wait an extra two years to get his driver’s license, or he denies being the culprit and never gets his license as long as he lives at home. That’s what we call a lose-lose situation, and I’m somewhat reluctant to believe a psychiatrist would see this as the best way to address this situation.

It’s at this point that Ben confesses to the crime. Guess what? Mike’s parents still don’t believe it’s not Mike. What will it take to get them off their certainty train, and to have a little bit of faith in their eldest child? Apparently what it takes is solid evidence that Mike couldn’t have made some of the calls because he wouldn’t have been home from school yet. Geez. And Mike still doesn’t get an apology from his parents for being falsely accused. Uncool, Maggie and Jason.

With the attention placed firmly on Ben, Maggie and Jason dig into his “perversion”, which seems rather a harsh word since he’s a kid and calling a 1-900 number seems like a pretty normal sign of pre-adolescent curiosity. Of course, Maggie and Jason want to know where Ben got this number, because heaven forbid their kid be the one to spread this type of filth. Well, Ben digs himself a deeper hole, and blames some other kid in his class, who then ends up getting a serious ass whooping (only in the 80s). It all sort of reads like that scene in A Christmas Story when Ralphie says Schwartz taught him the F bomb when we all knew it was Ralphie’s father.

It’s Ben’s principal that finally outs him, because apparently 14 other kids have racked up phone charges and all of them blame Ben for peddling his pornographic phone line all over the school yard. Maggie still seems reluctant to believe Ben is the ‘pervert’ but 14 against 1 are pretty big odds that even Maggie can’t deny. You know what this means, Ben: you’re going to have to talk to your dad about healthy sex.

This is one of the few times when I am not sure Jason is hitting the mark with how he addresses the situation. Ben is pretty clear that he wasn’t really interested in the content of what he heard on the sex hotline. He was more interested in notoriety. When he saw how all the other kids wanted the number from him, he felt popular, and he got addicted to the popularity. But despite the sexual nature of the hotline being rather secondary, Jason still wants to ensure that Ben understands healthy sex which, in case you didn’t know, isn’t the kind you buy over the phone. It seems like there was a lost opportunity to talk about the hazards of seeking external validation (i.e. popularity) just to feel good about yourself, but that’s just me.

Ben gets it (as much as any nine year old can really get it), Maggie and Jason feel a bit more relieved that their child isn’t a ‘pervert’, and I am sitting here hoping that they haven’t instilled so much shame in poor little Ben that he’s scarred for life over something that seemed relatively innocent.

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

  • Will Mike ever revolt against his parents for their consistent lack of faith in him?
  • In the age of the internet, do 1-900 even exist anymore?

 

 

Season 2 Episode 3: Long Day’s Journey into Night

On By InMyBackyardIn Season 2Leave a comment

Hold on, Growing Pains fans, because Carol has a new friend that’s sparking Maggie’s judgment flame in a big way. Do you remember how epically judgmental Maggie was in Mike’s Madonna Story? I mean, she was throwing around the word ‘tramp’ like there was no tomorrow. Well, that Maggie is back today. Let’s get to it.

As mentioned, Carol’s got a new friend, who is apparently bad news because she’s got Carol wearing makeup, piercing her ears, and–gasp!–wearing ‘sexy’ sweaters. Without even having met her, Maggie has declared this new friend a ‘slut’. Yikes, Maggie.

We meet Annie, the new friend, shortly thereafter and, in my opinion, she seems like your average teenager, and quite well-mannered at that. Maggie’s still not convinced, of course, despite the fact that at this point there is zero reason to believe that Annie is going to drag Carol to the dark side.  In fact, their wild and crazy plans were to go to the mall. Nothing happens at the mall, Maggie.

It’s no matter, anyways, because mall  plans are soon abandoned in favour of hanging out at the Seavers. Unfortunately, this is also how we find out that Maggie is sort of right about Annie. It’s not that Annie’s a slut, mind you, but she’s sort of making it seem like Carol’s friendship is secondary to her desire to get closer to Mike.

The plot thickens.

Mike, of course, like any other boy his age, is interested in Annie right away, seemingly for no other reasons than she is a) of a similar age b) blond and attractive and c) interested in him.  He and Annie have some flirtatious back and forth, but so far things remain hands off and innocent. Maybe Mike will make the right choice, here.

The plot further thickens when Carol leaves Annie alone in her room. Annie promptly makes a phone call, without asking to use the phone by the way, to tell a friend about how she’s only hanging out with Carol to get to Mike. Naturally, Maggie is the one to overhear this, which gets her all riled up plus now she has to wrestle with whether or not to break Carol’s heart by telling her that her new best friend is really not a great friend at all.

While Maggie is in front of the house, debating with Jason whether or not to tell Carol the truth about her friend, Annie’s busy making her move on Mike inside. And this is how Maggie is spared having to break the news to Carol, because Carol comes downstairs just as Annie and Mike are mid-kiss and that’s the end of that friendship…for now at least.  Carol freaks out, runs to her room, and then leaves Annie hanging out downstairs with the rest of the Seaver family which none of them seem to find at all strange.

Annie is nothing if not persistent, though, and she keeps pestering Carol to forgive her. While she admits her primary motivation was Mike, she also just really, really loved hanging out with Carol. Just when you think Carol is never going to get over her hurt feelings, she swings rapidly towards forgiveness. Just like that, the girls are fast friends again, and Mike is forgotten. Which, by the way, Mike does not at all understand. That’s girls, Mike.

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

  • Was one of the writers working through his or her own issues with women via Maggie? Maggie’s seriously harsh judgments are sort of inconsistent with her typical sweet demeanour and it’s sort of jarring to watch.
  • Can sweaters that cover every inch of your upper body actually be slutty?
  • Wouldn’t the entire Seaver family have found it incredibly weird that Annie was watching tv downstairs with them instead of hanging out with Carol?
  • Does Mike not know that hitting on your sister’s friends is both super uncool and bound to end poorly (particularly at that age)?