Tag: 80s sitcom

Season 4 In a Nutshell

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In a nutshell

Oh Season 4, you were a treasure trove of inconsistent storylines and major supporting characters who rarely showed up on screen. In Season 4 we met Julie Costello, whom I will one day devote an entire post to because her character (and her real life persona) were perhaps the most controversial of any Growing Pains cast members. We also met and said goodbye to poor Matthew Perry (aka Sandy). We saw Jason’s mother get married, though not without a fair share of drama nor without a team of Swedish gymnasts. If this sounds a bit all over the place, it’s because Season 4 was a bit all over the place. In a strange way, I’ve come to think of this as a Growing Pains hallmark.

What we Learned This Season

  • Jason’s near perfect pattern of parenting and psychiatric know-how really, really started to slip into some seriously questionable terrain.
  • Mike has more to offer than just being a scammer and trouble-maker. All it took was love to right that ship.
  • The Seavers have a nanny, but you will almost never see her actually doing any nanny-like duties.
  • Carol was on the receiving end of way too many fat jokes this season. I feel like season 4 was the real culmination in Carol fat jokes, which is appalling to watch given what we know about her anorexia in real life, and because she was never, ever, actually fat. I mean, clearly we need to move beyond commenting on anyone’s weight regardless of what it is, but it makes zero sense to have so many fat jokes for a skinny person. Ugh. Okay, I’ll get off my soapbox.
  • Poor Ben really got no good storylines the entire season, leading me to wonder what his experience was like in the early seasons of Growing Pains.

Best Episodes

  • Episode 11:  In Carol we Trust: I love me a good Carol-decides-to-break-all-the-rules episode and this one had Carol breaking the rules in spades. In short order she: lied about her age, snuck out to a wine bar with a boy she’d just met, broke curfew, lied to her parents about the reason for breaking curfew (with the best excuse ever: major cattle truck accident), and snuck a boy into the house while her parents were out. This is Growing Pains at its best, plus we meet Sandy, one of my most beloved Growing Pains guest stars.
  • Episode 20: Second Chance: Oh man, this is a heart-breaker of an episode. After nine episodes during which we barely see Sandy, Carol nevertheless manages to fall head over heals in love with him. And then **SPOILER ALERT**, Sandy is ripped away from us in a tragic car accident, all to teach us a lesson about drunk driving. I’m making it sound cheesy, but honestly it’s one of the most devastating PSA sitcom episodes I’ve ever seen.
  • Episode 4: Family Ties Part I & Part II: Sometimes when Jason is totally irrational and borderline crazy, I find it highly amusing. This is one such episode where he decides that he’s going to treat Mike like a tenant instead of a son, all over getting stiffed on a paltry $50 monthly rent fee. It’s non-sensical, over the top, and yet completely enjoyable.

Worst Episodes

  • Episode 19: Show 90. Who Knew? Jason goes full on helicopter parent and causes Mike to get a failing grade on his psychology paper. Not only does Jason demonstrate bad parenting, but he also calls his own psychiatrist expertise into question. All in all, this was both boring and infuriating.
  • Episode 12: Working Mother of the Year: I don’t want to rain on the importance of valuing working mothers, but this episode was awful. The only, and I mean only, redeeming moments of this episode were the two minutes Maggie spends talking to a cleaning staff member at the awards ceremony she missed. The rest of the episode was a steaming pile of boredom and Ishtar jokes.
  • Episode 15: Anniversary from Hell: Creepy cousin Larry is still stuck in my mind as the most disturbing part of this episode. Why was he hitting on relatives at a family function?!?!?! Aside from that, this was a big, old mess of an anniversary party, aside from the fact that it featured a legit pie fight.

Get ready for the downward slide into Growing Pains last three seasons. Next week we’re back with the Season 5 premiere, featuring the big resolution to a major cliffhanger. Stay tuned!

Season 4 Episode 20: Second Chance

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Sandy is back for the first time in way too many episodes, despite the fact that Maggie comments that they’ve been spending tons of time together. When, Maggie, when have they been spending time together because I sure haven’t seen it!

Anyway, Carol and Sandy, who are still not boyfriend and girlfriend despite all this mutual time-spending, are heading out for the evening. They return home hours later after a fancy dinner followed by a college party, and only then does Sandy finally drop the ‘g’ word, as in girlfriend. Carol, we can see, is as smitten as she’s been since the good old Bobby Wynette days. Sandy also invites Carol to a dean’s lunch at his college the very next day, which apparently is a Pretty Big Deal in relationship steps, or so thinks Maggie when Carol tells her. No matter my own personal opinion (that I’d rather not attend a stodgy academic luncheon, thank you very much) things are very much looking up for Carol’s love life.

Until they’re not looking up.

The next day, Sandy never shows up to pick up Carol for the Dean’s lunch. Mike and Ben are giving Carol a hard time about it, as brothers do, because they assume she’s just been stood up.  Which isn’t funny at all, although I can appreciate that immature teenage boys might find it funny, but is still 100% better than the actual reason Sandy didn’t show up:  he’d been hurt badly in a car accident the night before.

Maggie and Jason rush Carol to the hospital to see Sandy, and it’s here we learn that Sandy and Carol had been drinking the night before. Yes, this is a ‘very special’ episode, but I promise you it’s much more heart-breaking than the average ‘very special’ episode. Stay with me here.

Anyway, not only is Sandy not looking so great, but he’s also going to be charged with driving under the influence. Whelp. This tells me Sandy had been drinking a fair bit, and also it seems that Sandy has had a pattern of driving drunk because he tells Carol he’s driven successfully after putting back way more booze. Yikes. I mean, but let’s be honest, most of when we were young either were that person or knew someone who was that person. When we are young, we think we are infallible. You want to be mad at Sandy for driving drunk, but he seems to have genuinely learned his lesson, as one is likely to do after wrapping his car around a tree.  Carol and Sandy know they’ve been given a second chance (yup, hence the episode title).

With that, Carol leaves Sandy to face the music with his parents, and Carol has to face her parents too because they don’t quite understand why Sandy drove his car into a tree either. Understandably, they are pissed and it’s one of the few authentic parental moments we’ve seen on Growing Pains. Because they are fired up, and I think we can all agree our parents would’ve been equally as fired up if we’d been drinking underage and then driven home with a drunk driver. You can also tell it’s coming from a place of love, and a realization that the accident could’ve just as easily happened with Carol in the car. Carol assures them that she has learned her lesson, that she and Sandy have both learned their lesson. It’s all quite emotional.

Carol and her parents head home to give Sandy time with his parents. The second they walk into the house, they see Mike hovering awkwardly in the doorway and you just know he’s got bad news to share. Carol, who only moments prior had been smiling and joking about visiting Sandy again that evening, seems to sense immediately that something is up.  And something is up, because Mike is about to break the worst news you can break to someone: Sandy had just passed away from internal injuries. I don’t know what to say about the rest of the episode, because honestly losing someone you love suddenly is not something to make light of. I’d normally be the first to mock any ‘very special episode’ but this is just not one I’m willing to mock.

Truth be told, I have been dreading this episode, because it’s always broken my heart. As a kid, I can distinctly remember finding it shocking. As an adult, I found my eyes welling with tears. So many other sitcoms tried the drinking/driving angle and most of those episodes, at worst, culminated in a near miss. Certainly, few shows were tackling drinking-driving deaths. Maybe it’s just that I have more compassion than I used to, or maybe it actually was a really moving episode; either way, this one hits me straight in the heart every time.

RIP Sandy whose-last-name-we-never-even-learned. As with all of Carol’s boyfriends, you were almost always absent from the show except in vague references. Still, we grew to love your character. I will fondly remember the scene in which you tucked yourself into a kitchen cupboard to hide from a raging Jason Seaver. Those were the good old days before your character was made a cautionary tale for driving drunk.  We will miss you.

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.

Season 4 Episode 10: Mandingo

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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…

Season 4 Episode 9: The Nanny

On By InMyBackyardIn Season 41 Comment

It’s Maggie’s first day back at work since having the baby, and she’s barely holding it together. Never fear, Maggie, because Jason’s created an impossibly sophisticated, colour-coded baby-board to ensure that Chrissie is well taken care of during this transition.  Everyone’s got their role and every minute of the day is accounted for. How could this airtight plan possibly go wrong?

It takes mere minutes for us to see the first signs of a flawed plan, because apparently Jason is taking care of Chrissie during the bulk of each work day, which would be fine except he also works and I imagine his patients wouldn’t much appreciate being interrupted by a crying baby.  And then also, he’s relied heavily on his kids to stick to a rigid schedule, but of course none of them show up at their assigned time. It’s all starting to fall apart.

The real straw that broke the camel’s back is when Jason discovers Stinky Sullivan taking care of Chrissie. And by “taking care” of Chrissie, I mean he’s breast-feeding her with some sort of weird contraption designed to allow men to experience some facsimile of breastfeeding. If you can’t picture it, it’s an 80s version of this:

In the end, Jason realizes his colour-coded board is woefully insufficient. It’s time to talk nanny. Maggie puts Jason in charge of finding a nanny stat. He delivers in a big way, finding Julie in (I think) a single day, which is both amazing and mildly terrifying all at the same time. Maggie is not so thrilled with this bubbly blond who is altogether too Maggie-like, only a younger version. In other words, Maggie is jealous. The worst part is she wants Jason to fire Julie, even though she knows that she’s just reacting out of jealousy. That’s cold.

Jason knows that Maggie will love Julie if she just gets to know her, so he works his psychiatric magic yet again. They can fire Julie, but Maggie has to be the one to do it. I see what you’re doing, Jason.  And of course he’s right, because the second Maggie starts talking to Julie she can see that she’s perfectly qualified, that they actually have a ton in common, and damn it all if the girl can’t also make a mean souffle. I mean, you do not fire someone who can whip up a weeknight souffle, Maggie. That alone is worth a million bucks.

Just like that, we have a new cast member, because **spoiler alert** Julie’s about to become a regular fixture around these parts. And with it she’s going to bring all sorts of behind-the-scenes Growing Pains controversy. Buckle up! It’s gonna be a wild ride!