Tag: classic sitcom

Season 4 Episode 2: Birth of a Seaver

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Well, I think the episode title alone is a bit of a spoiler, but here we go anyway!

It’s Ben’s birthday and he has quite possibly the best birthday cake I’ve ever seen: a giant lifelike hamburger cake. And part of Ben’s birthday agreement seems to be not talking about the new baby, but that’s hard to do when Maggie is two weeks overdue and her baby bump is bursting at the seams. Ben’s birthday is being taken over and he is so not impressed with his soon-to-be sibling.

That’s unfortunate, because it seems there’s a chance he’ll have to share his birthday with his new brother or sister since Maggie starts going into labour. Here we go! The Growing Pains landscape is about to change in a big way.

Even though Maggie is apparently going into labour, the whole Seaver family (minus Ben) is hanging out in the living room? I’m not sure what they’re waiting for, but Mike is making his mom a cup of tea so it seems there’s zero urgency to this labour. Also, they all seem to have forgotten that Ben’s just hanging out in the kitchen staring at his cake like the sad sack that he is.  They also almost forget to take Ben to the hospital with them. Worst. Birthday. Ever.

At the hospital, they’re all getting briefed on protocol for the birthing room, which is the room in which all of them are going to watch Maggie give birth. Yes, the entire Seaver family. This makes perfect sense for the Seaver family, but I cannot see this being something any other family would want. I mean, the miracle of life is great and all but who really wants to watch their mom give birth?

Ben is still trapped in his downward spiral of self-pity, so he’s taken off wandering the halls of the hospital aimlessly, feeling like the forgotten child. He sort of is, because Maggie and Jason have bigger fish to fry right now, and Mike and Carol give up pretty quickly on trying to locate him.

That’s fine. Ben’s made himself a new friend. As he trolls the hospital halls, Ben befriends an older patient by helping him pick up a cigar that he plans to smoke…in the hospital. Only in the 80s, I guess? Anyway, they strike up a conversation and Ben ends up venting about how his whole family forgot about him on his birthday no less.  Ben’s new friend, Chris, tries to help help him get over himself by reminding him how great it is to be an older brother.  Ben’s still not buying that load of garbage, so instead he and Chris just play cards and tell dirty jokes. Ben thinks he’s made a new bestie, but then there’s this ultra-dark moment when it becomes very clear that Chris is never leaving the hospital. Growing Pains really is at peace with integrating death into its storylines. Yikes.

Just as Ben realizes he will never see Chris again, Carol and Mike finally find him and take him back to the birthing suite in the nick of time. Maggie’s already popped out the baby, which at least means the kids missed all the gory parts and can just capitalize on newborn baby snuggles with their new sister. All it takes is one second holding an angelic little baby, and Ben is sold on the awesomeness of being a big brother.  It’s a pretty sweet birthday present, especially since his sister was not actually born on Ben’s birthday but a solid three minutes into a fresh new day. Also, Ben gets the honour of naming his sister, and opts to honour his new friend Chris. Growing Pains fans, meet Chrissie Seaver.

And thank god Ben got to name her, because Maggie and Jason wanted to call her Irma. Good grief.

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

  • Where can I find myself that giant hamburger cake, stat?
  • How will a new character transform Growing Pains this season?
  • Why would anyone want to watch their mother give birth?

Season 4 Episode 1: Fools in Love

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We’re back with a brand new season, but unfortunately it appears to be a Ben-centric episode. While I suppose it’s possible that a new season means Ben’s storylines get better, I’m still not holding my breath.

Here we go. As the episode title implies, today we get fools for love, as in plural. And our two fools are Ben and Jason.

In Ben’s world, Vito (his friend, who I believe is making his first appearance in this very episode) is throwing a boy/girl Halloween party for which Ben and Stinky must bring dates. This is stressing Ben out to the max. He calls about a million girls in his class and gets rejected by all of them, until Carol wisely points out that one of Ben’s other best friends, Jennie, is a girl, and perhaps it would be easiest to invite her.

Sidenote: You may remember Jennie, aka Candace Cameron Bure, already made an appearance back in the episode with Jimmy the beloved but blundering repairman.

So Ben figures Jennie is his best bet, but he has to assure her that it’s not a real date before she agrees to go with him. This is just fine by Ben because he wants nothing to do with Jennie in the romantic sense, because she’s “one of the guys”…and also, they’re like maybe 12 years old. But then Jennie shows up for the party dressed ultra girly in a princess outfit and Ben changes his tune. He’s smitten.

Unfortunately, Jennie is still not smitten with Ben and he’s having to pretend he’s not interested in her even though he is.  Ben seems intent on wearing Jennie down, but then she totally bursts his bubble when she asks Ben to ask Vito if he likes her. Not only is Ben losing his shot with the girl that, just one hour ago, he decided he actually does like, but he’s losing her to one of his best friends. Ouch.

So now Ben is sitting on the sideline of a party like a chump while Jennie dances with Vito. When Mike shows up at the party to give Ben a ride home, he finds him sad and dejected and has to pick him up by the bootstraps because Ben is still young and has years more rejection ahead of him. Mike shares that he too has been known to experience rejection. Apparently, all Ben needed to hear was that even his older brother isn’t infallible when it comes to girls. Plus, Mike notices some other girl at the party is eyeing up Ben, and so Ben at least gets a slow dance at the party. And we all get to hear a sweet Tiffany tune.

But what about our other fool in love? Well, that happens to be poor Jason, who is dealing with Maggie’s pregnancy hormones, which are causing her to act like a deranged monster. And I suspect Growing Pains writers are either not married, or have wives with the understanding of saints, because they’re really presenting pregnant women as insane in a way that would never fly today.

Regardless, Maggie and her hormones are dragging Jason to lamaze class, where the lamaze instructor thinks that doctors don’t really do anything during a delivery. Jason, being a medical professional, is just dying to jump in and correct her. But crazy hormonal Maggie wants nothing to do with rocking the boat so she cuts him off just as he’s about to say he’s actually a doctor, and announces to the group that Jason is a mechanic.

This makes for an awkward moment because it’s not at all related to what the lamaze instructor was talking about, but also makes it awkward when one of the other women in the group goes into labour. Jason jumps in to help but because the woman’s husband thinks he’s a mechanic, Jason gets punched out for being a “pervert”. Good thing it was just false labour. But also, this is the second time Jason has either helped a woman give birth or almost had to help a woman give birth, and that seems like a lot of random delivery support for an average man, doesn’t it?

Somewhere in this hot mess of a storyline, Maggie realizes she’s been a monster and apologizes to Jason, but then freaks out all over again when he mentions something about hormones. I know this doesn’t make sense, and trust me that you’re just lucky you didn’t have to watch it.

So far, my verdict is: season 4 is not off to the greatest start.

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

Season 3 In a Nutshell

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In a nutshell

If I could summarize season 3 in one word it would be: long. Most shows tend to hover around 22 episodes per season, and Growing Pains Season 3 clocked in at a whopping 26. Perhaps not coincidentally, there were at least four episodes that offered nothing to ongoing storylines, which leads me to conclude that Growing Pains should have considered sticking to industry standards.

What we Learned This Season

  • Jason is not perfect. This season, he definitely had a couple questionable methods for getting through to various members of his family.
  • Swept Away is one of the worst songs from the 80s. I never need to hear this song again. Ever.
  • The Seavers are going to welcome a new addition to their family next season, but little time was devoted to this during Season 3.
  • Mike found his true love: acting. Carol said goodbye to her little-seen and little-discussed boyfriend of over one season. Ben still had nothing going on.

Best Episodes

  • Episode 7 A Star is Born: Mike signs up for a school play just to get close to a girl, but along the way he finds his calling. Although he didn’t at all take acting seriously at first, once he put his mind to it, he was actually good at it and also discovered that effort can lead to a good outcome.
  • Episode 9 Who’s Zooming Who?: I mean, seeing Brad Pitt pre-fame is pretty awesome. His acting has clearly evolved since the mid-80s. Also, watching Carol cope poorly with boy drama was highly entertaining.
  • A Tie! Episode 15 The Marrying Kind & Episode 13 Reason to Live: I’m absolutely cheating by highlighting two episodes, and I do not care. Also, these two episodes could not be more different. In The Marrying Kind we get Carol and Bobby deciding to elope at the tender age of 17, only to realize that their goals for the future are already diverging. Not only do they not get married but they also break up and we (sadly) say goodbye to Bobby’s character forever.  In Reason to Live, Growing Pains does its best to tackle the incredibly difficult subject of teenage depression and suicide. It’s obviously darker, but admirable that they were willing to go there.

Worst Episodes

  • Episode 19/20 Dance Fever Parts I & II: There are few things worse than a two-parter with no real point, and this was an insufferable example of that. Did I need close to fifty minutes of Carol and Boner deciding if they should dance together and Maggie and Jason fighting over who was a better DJ? No, I did not.
  • Episode 22 The Obscure Objects of our Desire Part I: If you want to know what’s worse than a two-parter with no real point, it’s a two parter with no real point that is also a flashback episode. Featuring flashbacks that show almost entire past episodes. This was torture. Torture that I admittedly skipped through.
  • Episode 23 The Obscure Objects of our Desire Part II: What can I even say about this? Nothing. More painfully long flashbacks that I didn’t need to see. Come on, Growing Pains, you can do better.

Now we boldly step into Season 4, Growing Pains’ middle aged period, if you will. I can hardly wait to see what we encounter next.

Season 3 Episode 26: Graduation Day

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The time has come. We have reached two endings today: the end of Season 3 and the end of Mike’s time at Dewey High. That’s right, today is Mike’s graduation ceremony and the Seavers are out in full force to celebrate the momentous occasion.

As a brief aside, it appears that Mike’s graduating class is maybe 60 students, which seems unlikely. I’m guessing Long Island, with its proximity to Manhattan, is chock full of nuclear families and its public school system is likely bursting at the seams.  Alas, that’s really not pertinent here.

What is pertinent is that Boner is making a commencement speech because he is class president, a plot detail which I had completely forgotten. My knack for remembering ultra obscure 80s sitcom plot details is clearly slipping. In the audience, Mike’s parents are realizing how far Mike has come through a series of flashbacks, the only saving grace of which is that we get to see Jason circa the 70s, sporting a serious beard and moustache combo as well as a very low cut shirt revealing an equally hairy chest.

  • Maggie’s trip down memory lane is a pleasant, but substance-less, vignette of Mike through the years.
  • Jason’s reflections focus on Mike wanting nothing to do with books nor school, while Jason constantly urges him to care deeply about both. I think we can all agree Jason was largely unsuccessful on that front.
  • Carol’s flashback is driven by a note from Mike that she finds in her pocket while at the graduation, in which Mike tells her that she owes him $50. Apparently as mere toddlers, Carol bet Mike would never graduate and, based on the fact that Mike didn’t know what the word graduate meant at the time, it sort of seemed she might be right.
  • Ben’s daydreaming about other things entirely, apparently being a war hero of some sort in a brief but painful clip that reminds me of the Friends episode where Phoebe is recalling a past Thanksgiving (as in a past life Thanksgiving) where she was an army medic. I have always hated that scene and I hated this scene too.

Basically, what you need to know is everyone’s super proud of Mike for making it this far.  Although, I have to admit that the entire Seaver family also looks mildly concerned that Mike isn’t actually going to graduate, even though we all know you don’t actually find out if you graduated at the graduation ceremony. That would be a terribly cruel exercise. Of course, Growing Pains creates some good drama by having Principal Dewitt accidentally standing on Mike’s diploma so it looks like he just might not be graduating after all. But that’s all sorted out quickly enough and we move on with the big moment in which Mike gets his diploma, all with the accompaniment of a cheesy BJ Thomas song and even more flashback sequences.

By my account, by far the best part of this episode is Principal Dewitt’s wry attitude, which is back with a vengeance and which has allowed me to forget his jerky behaviour in the Coach Lubbock termination affair.  Dewitt spends the entire graduation ceremony making it perfectly clear he would rather be anywhere else, and loathing that his role as high school administrator necessitate his lowering himself to lead such a ceremony. Ah, Principal Dewitt, what a gift to Dewey High you are.

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

  • Could a graduating class on Long Island really be that small?
  • Was BJ Thomas best friends with someone on this show? This episode features a BJ Thomas song and you might recall he was one of the singers on the original theme song.
  • How could I have forgotten that Boner was class president?

Season 3 Episode 25: How the West Was Won (Part II)

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It’s a new week and we are picking up right where we left off, with the aftermath of the Dewey High sit-in to save Coach Lubbock’s job.

Naturally the high school protest makes it on the local news, reported on by none other than Maggie. I mean, she did have the inside scoop on the story, what with it being her own kids who came up withe the idea. She’s even keeping her cool on camera even while the majority of her immediate family are being carted off by the cops. While that seems unfortunate, what’s even more unfortunate is that Coach Lubbock’s children happen to be watching the news, and this is how they find out that their dad’s been fired. That’s going to make for an awkward evening in the Lubbock household.

Back at the Seaver household, Maggie is “humiliated” that two thirds of her family has been arrested, although it seems like there was no real consequence for their arrests. No one’s talking court dates or anything, so I’m not sure Maggie has cause to be so worked up. The worst of the consequences seems to be that Mike and Carol were both suspended and, by virtue of this suspension, Carol will not be getting her coveted perfect attendance award.

For Mike, being arrested is not enough to keep him from trying to think of ways to save Coach Lubbock’s job.  In fact, he’s in the midst of wracking his brain for new ideas when Coach Lubbock shows up at the Seavers house to thank him…for helping him get fired faster. You see, when the school superintendent saw the whole situation on the news, he decided to fire Coach Lubbock right away instead of at the end of the term. Mike feels awful. Coach Lubbock feels even more awful. I think we can all agree, despite good intentions, this protest has been a giant fail on all fronts.

We then get a whole bunch of time with the Lubbock family dealing with the fallout of his immediate termination, which is all for the crossover series and of no interest to one Growing Pains fan in particular, namely me. The long and the short of it is, Coach Lubbock feels understandably jilted and unappreciated after 12 years at Dewey High.

But Coach Lubbock’s wife sees an opportunity to help him recognize that he has had an impact on his students. She’s called the Seavers and now the Seavers are hosting the Lubbocks for dinner. Coach Lubbock refuses to join the party, but his wife tells a little white lie to get Coach Lubbock in the Seaver house: she claims the whole dinner is a chance for Mike to apologize. But when he gets inside, Coach Lubbock quickly realizes Mike had no intention of apologizing. So instead, he gives Mike a piece of his mind about the dire consequence of his actions, and what it’s like to realize your whole career’s been for nothing because no one appreciates you.

This is our TSN turning point, because it’s this moment when Mike shares the impact Coach Lubbock has had on him and that’s really all Coach Lubbock needed to hear from anyone at this point.  Coach Lubbock is like the Grinch when his heart grows three sizes. He’s suddenly full of love and feeling like his career has meaning, and he makes a big speech about it before announcing that the Lubbocks are moving to California, because that’s where his new job is.

Which leads me to wonder, if Coach Lubbock already knew he had a job lined up, what was he so mad at Mike for? Alas, sometimes we have to accept that television won’t make perfect sense and ABC just needed a convenient vehicle to get Just the Ten of Us officially on its way. Mission accomplished, ABC, mission accomplished.

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

  • Would this whole scenario have turned out differently in today’s social media obsessed culture? For instance, with enough support and public outcries, would the superintendent have caved and let Coach Lubbock keep his job?
  • Do you have any kind of a record when you’re arrested at a protest? Carol says that she had her fingerprints taken and Boner said he was deloused and that all sounds like serious business but, again, there is no talk of any legal ramifications once they’re home. Something tells me you don’t get fingerprinted or deloused unless there’s bigger consequences.

Season 3 Episode 24: How the West Was Won (Part I)

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Back to back two-parters? Growing Pains was really pulling out all the stops in Season 3. And also, this is a cross-over episode. Sadly, cross-over episodes still exist today despite the fact that even in the 80s we could tell they were a bad idea. Cross-over episodes inevitably meant a bad episode for the original show, leading into a new show that was almost always not that good and short-lived.  In this two-parter, we have the set up for Just the Ten of Us, a show which featured Coach Lubbock and his eight children. Yes, eight children. On a teacher’s salary? Yikes.

We get right into the thick of it, with Maggie and Jason receiving a call that Mike and Carol are about to be arrested for protesting at the school. Mike? Activism? That doesn’t sound right! What could have possibly inspired Mike to take this kind of a stand? Whatever it is, Principal Dewitt is not happy about it, and he’s making that clear over a loudspeaker. Moderately riled up Principal Dewitt is amazing and  I am positively giddy that we might see more than a passing glance of him in this episode.

So Maggie and Jason show up at the school where a bunch of kids are staging a sit-in for reasons we don’t yet know, but they do seem to be passionate about whatever it is. Maggie’s freaking out because the police are on the way and just wants the kids to up and go, but Jason wants to hear them out because back in the day he was totally into activism. Of course you were, Jason Seaver.

But back to the protest. We’re about to find out what it’s all about. Unfortunately, we have to learn this through a prolonged flashback, in which Mike and Boner are forced to stay behind in Coach Lubbock’s class until they finish the homework they were supposed to do the night before. In the process of Mike trying to find the answers among other students’ homework, he finds a copy of Coach Lubbock’s resume which apparently includes his marital status and his age. Was that common practice in the 80s? Mike can’t believe that Coach Lubbock is 38 and married. Why this is so shocking to Mike is completely unclear.

As Mike and Boner are coming to terms with the fact that Coach Lubbock is more than just Coach, a couple of teenaged girls in private school uniforms come bounding into the classroom looking for Coach Lubbock. It turns out they’re his daughters. Well, the fact that Coach Lubbock has teenaged daughters, and ones Mike has deemed ‘hot’, in addition to being married and 38 just blows Mike and Boner’s minds completely.  They cannot believe he has a full life outside of school.  This is where Mike and Boner get the creepiest of ideas, which is to stalk Coach Lubbock and spy on him in his own home.

Mike and Boner don’t just spy, they spy from the fire escape directly outside Coach Lubbock’s apartment window. To me, this goes beyond casual curiosity.  But from this vantage point they discover that Coach Lubbock actually has seven kids (and another one on the way!), and that all of them (except the baby) are private school kids. Again, how would Coach Lubbock afford this? Maybe because all of them live in what looks like an impossibly small apartment.

This isn’t the juicy gossip they glean from their spying, though. No, as they sit there completely violating Coach Lubbock’s privacy, they also learn that as of the end of the semester Coach Lubbock will be out of a job. Naturally, Coach Lubbock is freaking out about this, and with eight kids to feed I can see why.  Only at this point do Mike and Boner seem to realize that maybe it’s totally inappropriate that they’re still hanging out on the fire escape spying, so at long last they leave the man in peace.

But Mike is really struck by what he’s overheard. Coach Lubbock, you may recall, is the one who believed in Mike and got him into acting. Mike’s got a soft spot for him, and he wants to help. He enlists Carol’s support in fighting ‘the man’ (which, I suppose in this case, is Principal Dewitt). Mike and Carol start with a peaceful attempt to bring about change, gathering 300 signatures on a petition to save Coach Lubbock’s job.

But when they present this petition to Principal Dewitt, things go south really fast.  Mr. Dewitt is a total jerk with zero compassion. I might have to rethink my love for him. I’ve gone from being super pumped at the amount of Principal Dewitt screen time in this episode to really questioning his character. Being a disillusioned high school administrator is one thing, but being so cavalier about firing someone is quite another. Principal Dewitt, I am disappointed in you. Mike is similarly appalled and this is how the full-blown sit-in comes to be.

Right at the end of the episode, the cops show up to break up the protest.  At first sight of cops, most of  the would-be student activists start scattering like leaves in the wind. But then Mike of all people implores them to take a stand and do what’s right for Coach Lubbock. And it works! The students sit right back down and Maggie freaks out all over again about the kids being arrested. But Jason is so proud that his kids are taking a stand for something that he decides to join the sit-in right along with them! Yowza.

Just as things are getting good, we have to wait until the next episode to find out what happens. Join me next week to find out.

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

  • What kind of salaries do Long Island public school teacher’s make?
  • Is Principal Dewitt not as likeable a character as I remember from my youth?
  • Would you actually get arrested for a harmless sit-in?
  • Would anyone be so curious about their teacher’s lives that they actually drive to their teacher’s house, climb up the fire escape and listen to an intensely personal conversation with their spouse? Wait, maybe I don’t want to know the answer to that question…

Season 3 Episode 21: Bringing Up Baby

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In this episode, Maggie deals with finding the right time to tell her boss she’s pregnant, which she’s been putting off, but is now reaching the critical point beyond which she may not be able to hide it: she has to wear a spandex outfit for an exercise segment the following week. There’s nothing like the threat of sporting spandex to light a fire under your ass, am I right?

So Maggie is anxious and Jason is trying to make things better. So while she’s at work and the kids are off for a teacher’s day, he ropes the kids into decorating the nursery. That will take one major thing off Maggie’s list and help her feel less overwhelmed by the whole baby situation.

The kids are not super thrilled about giving up their day off to decorate a nursery, and they’re even less thrilled when Jason realizes that the guest room is the farthest from Maggie and Jason’s room and that just won’t do. One of the kids is going to have to move out of his or her room and into the guest room so that the baby can be closer to Maggie and Jason.

Mike starts working poor Ben to make sure he’s doesn’t have to give up his room. He tells Ben if he offers up his room, Jason will reward his selfless generosity by letting Ben take over Carol’s room, which is the biggest of the rooms. Except, as you probably guessed, Jason does no such thing. Jason’s just thrilled that one of the kids has volunteered, and so now poor Ben is stuck with the guest room and its ‘fruity wallpaper’. According to Ben, this baby is ruining everything.

So Jason and the kids get to setting up the baby’s new room in Ben’s old room, and it takes them literally no time. I’m talking, in less than a full work day the room is decked out with wallpaper, a fully assembled crib, frilly curtains and wall hangings.  The Seaver clan should be hiring themselves out for one-day nursery turnarounds! They’d make a killing!

Meanwhile at work, we find out Maggie’s had reason to be anxious about letting her boss in on her pregnancy. Her poor news director just found out his star anchor elected not to come back from maternity leave, and so he’s issued a pretty clear (and illegal) stance on pregnancy in the workplace: it’s not allowed. Relax, he doesn’t really mean it, he was just venting in the moment. He’s a family guy at heart. But none of this makes Maggie feel better about her situation, so she puts off telling him she’s pregnant once again and heads home thoroughly discouraged.

Jason doesn’t pick up on Maggie’s emotional state, so when she’s not at all thrilled about the nursery being complete, he has to work his Jason Seaver psychiatric prowess. He already knows that Maggie is afraid to tell her boss she’s pregnant, but it’s got to be something deeper than just a fear of his reaction. And it is. Maggie’s afraid that things will change too much, that her boss will treat her too differently, that her career will be set back yet again because she’ll have to scale back at work.  It’s at this moment that the Jason Seaver that we know and love makes a return after a few episodes of questionable motives and tactics: he offers to reduce his patient load so that Maggie doesn’t have to scale back so much at work. What a man.

I mean, he also goes on to say he’ll have to start “curing the crazies” faster, which is super uncool…but the gesture for Maggie was at least spot-on for the version of Jason Seaver that we most know and love.

Maggie’s now feeling more settled about the baby on the way, and life not being totally turned up on its head. The kids, on the other hand, are not so sure.  In fact, Mike’s called a family meeting to discuss how the baby is ruining everything before it’s even born. Ouch.  The kids still don’t really understand why they’re having a baby if it’s going to take so much sacrifice from everyone. But then Maggie says that a baby is as close to a miracle as they’ll ever get, and then two out of three kids get it, but Ben still doesn’t. For Ben, they try selling the concept that a baby is a whole other person in the family to love. Eleven year old me would not have been swayed by that argument at all. I’d still be selfishly seeking a better ‘what’s in it for me?’ than love, but maybe I was just more of a brat than Ben. Regardless, in the magical world of television, Ben gets it and everyone’s excited for baby now.

Crisis averted. Now Maggie just has to deal with telling her boss…which still hasn’t happened.

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

  • Would Maggie and Jason’s reasoning really have worked on an eleven year old boy? I think not.
  • How on earth did Jason and the kids decorate that nursery and move all Ben’s stuff into another room so damn quickly?

Season 3 Episode 19: Dance Fever Part I

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Maggie and Jason are chaperoning another school dance. Wait? Didn’t this episode happen already? Yes, yes it did, back in season one. Recycling storylines already? Come on, Growing Pains.

So there’s a high school dance tonight and Maggie and Jason, as we’ve already established, are chaperoning. Mike, Eddie and Boner are going even though they expect it to be lame, and even though Mike is bummed his parents are chaperoning. Basically, Mike has FOMO and is convinced if they don’t go it’ll be the one time something actually happens. Carol and her friends are also going, because apparently Carol needs to move on after her breakup with Bobby. Poor Ben is the only one not going, but he’s got his own mystery plans with Stinky Sullivan, who is the same kid who played Ben’s bully back in season two. Growing Pains loves to recycle its guest stars.

I’m going to give you a heads up that all of these storylines are completely uninteresting, and this turns out to be a two-parter, which is doubly discouraging when the storylines aren’t interesting enough for one episode let alone two.

Here’s the lowdown:

Mike and Maggie really have nothing going on the majority of this episode, until near the end when they have to step in for the world’s worst DJ when he throws his back out.

Mike, Eddie and Boner are having zero fun until Mike sees a pretty girl. He ends up dancing up a storm with her and is super into it until she starts talking. Her voice is…something else. Mike’s not sure if he can actually deal her speaking voice, even though he thinks she’s super hot. This is the Mike cliffhanger. Will he or won’t he end up with her by the end of the dance? Are you also not at all waiting with baited breath? That’s what I thought.

Carol and her friends are also having no fun. When a nice but slightly nerdy boy asks Carol to dance, her friends are total jerks and reject him because they think that it’s social suicide for Carol to dance with him. But they also seem to not understand their own rank in the high school social system, because when they try to approach guys they think are in their echelon, they get a karmic response. The guys blow them off just like they blew off the poor sort-of-nerdy guy.

Carol and Boner, both having no fun, end up dancing together and having fun for the first time. But they both have to put up with all the haters who think they shouldn’t be dancing with each other, and it’s seriously ruining their good times. Will they cave to peer pressure or keep dancing the night away together? We’ll find out next time.

Meanwhile, Ben’s big adventure is getting nowhere. All we know is that he is supposed to be sleeping over at Stinky’s but Stinky has told his parents that he’s sleeping over at Ben’s. They’re both on their way to some sort of magical place that isn’t even revealed in this episode, which makes me wonder how anyone is supposed to care if they ever get there.

Sadly, you’ll have to wait until next week to see how what happens with all these storylines. But if you ask me, what this episode needed was a good dose of Annette Funicello’s sassy season one attitude.

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

  • Do I really have to watch the second part of this episode?

 

Season 3 Episode 16: State of the Union

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After yesterday’s dramatic episode, how can Growing Pains possibly keep the momentum going? The short answer is that it cannot. Today’s episode is a bit of a hot mess. It’s not the worst of Growing Pains, mind you, but it’s not the best either. Now that I’ve suitably lowered your expectations, let’s get to it.

Maggie’s been burning the midnight oil for a while, it seems, working on some sort of multi-part health story which involves her undergoing a full physical on television. How is this news? Who knows. While she works away on this “news” story, Jason’s been holding down the fort at home. They’ve been ships in the night, barely finding the time to check in on household tasks let alone on each other.

This drift has Jason grasping at straws to find ways to spend more time with Maggie. He talks her into a lunch date but as he waits for Maggie at the office, Jason ends up chatting with Maggie’s boss and discovering they have a mutual favourite basketball player. Then there’s the kicker: Maggie’s boss invites Jason to join him for lunch with his favourite basketball player. Jason cannot resist and this is how Jason and Maggie’s lunch date becomes Maggie tagging along on a dudes’ sports lunch.

Maggie is not at all impressed. She’s even less impressed when her boss has no time for her to talk work, but has all the time to take Jason to a basketball game that night. Maggie and Jason end up in a passive aggressive fight about whether or not Jason should go to the game. There’s so many mind games here, the worst of which is when Jason acts like he’s decided not to go to the game, but only so that Maggie will feel bad and tell him he should actually go.

Once Maggie figures this out, they really have it out. This is the only interesting part of the episode, because we’re getting to the real crux of why they’re feeling distant lately. It’s not because Maggie is working so much. It’s far deeper than that. Jason, it seems, actually sort of resents Maggie working. This is a huge trigger for Maggie, because here she is trying her hardest to make something of her career while her husband is unconsciously trying to keep her playing small. You can actually feel the air being sucked out of the room in the midst of this scene, and it is the first real chink in Jason Seaver’s perfect-father/husband-armour. I’m not sure I’m ready for Jason Seaver to be knocked down a peg, but what I can say is that this scene feels like a legit relationship moment and I want to see how they work through this.

But then the phone rings and all that glorious relationship tension goes out the window. Maggie’s doctor has called with the results from her physical. She’s pregnant. Yup, pregnant. Just like that Maggie and Jason forgive each other and all that heavy stuff they’ve just raised has been sloughed under the rug. Not only am I disappointed that we missed a real opportunity to show a more complete picture of the ups and downs of marriage, but I’m also of the opinion that eventually whatever you’ve sloughed under the rug is going to come back with a vengeance so this doesn’t really seem resolved.

But this is Growing Pains, a sitcom, and I am once again overthinking things. I will let it go and accept that we’re about to boldly move into Growing Pains’ new phase: one in which they welcome a baby into the mix, which is either a chance to breathe new lifeblood into a show or kickstart an epic downward spiral. Only time will tell!

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

  • Are pregnancy tests really part of standard physicals?
  • Is Carol at all sad about Bobby? We hear nothing of her breakup in this episode and I’m still grieving the loss of Bobby Wynette.

Season 3 Episode 12: Scarlett Letter

On By InMyBackyardIn Season 3Leave a comment

Buckle your seatbelts, we’ve got a good one here. Today’s episode deals with favouritism in education and you know how much I love to get on my soapbox with these types of topics!

We start off with Carol’s friends giving her a hard time for missing the greatest or worst party ever, depending on which one of Carol’s friends you ask. They think Carol was just studying, and she’s trying to convince them she was doing nothing of the sort. In fact, Carol claims she couldn’t possibly have been studying by the dim light of Bobby’s dashboard, where she spent the entire evening. Things are getting juicy, and Carol’s friends are impressed.

But then Coach Lubbock goes and ruins it by deciding to spring on his class the dreaded pop quiz, which I don’t think I ever had in my entire high school career. Are they a real thing? Anyway, Carol freaks out to her friends, because she was too busy making out with Bobby to read the assignment and now she’s going to ruin her perfect academic record. And I mean, she’s really freaking out about the fact that she may have failed something for the first time. She even goes to Mike for help on how to cope with failure!!!  She also feels compelled to brace her parents for her impending failure, but chooses to announces it to them in a way that definitely makes it seem like she’s saying she’s pregnant. Needless to say, poor Maggie and Jason both nearly have coronaries before Carol clears up the misunderstanding.

The next day Carol is bracing herself for the moment Coach Lubbock hands her a failing grade. And I bet you can guess what happens. She gets an “A+”. So now her friends don’t believe she and Bobby were doing anything untoward, which is I suppose super uncool in high school. But Carol doesn’t really care about that, because she’s just thrilled at her own brilliance.

Until she talks to Mike.

Mike takes one look at the answers on her test and declares it total bull you-know-what. He knows a circular answer when he reads one, and he immediately sees that Carol’s answers aren’t saying a damn thing of substance. Her answers are just like Mike’s, just with bigger words. He calls favouritism pure and simple, and now he’s got Carol questioning her entire academic career. Were all her A’s lies? Carol literally goes through all her old tests and papers, all of which she’s apparently kept in chronological order. She’s crestfallen because she’s deemed that a sizeable stack of these tests and papers were, in fact, not ‘real’ As. Ouch.

It’s at this point that Carol goes a bit off the deep end. She tries to remove her name from the Honour Society plaque, and yells at Coach Lubbock to change her A+ to an F. It’s at this point that Coach Lubbock calls in Maggie and Jason to talk some sense into Carol. Carol shares her woes with Maggie and Jason: she thinks that all of her teachers have merely been giving her As because they expect her to get As, just in the way that Mike gets Ds because that’s what his teachers expect from him.

Soapbox moment digression: this is a really good life lesson, because I’m sure all of us have had these experiences in education. Personally, I turned in some steaming piles of crap as papers and was often rewarded with excellent grades, simply by virtue of the fact that certain teachers loved my writing.  And I will also admit that I “significantly helped” a couple people with assignments and papers over the years, and they did not get the same good grades that I would have gotten had I been the one to turn it in. And the same thing happens in the workplace, where I promise you that we are all guilty of deciding we love certain people (and their work) more than others, the result of which is that we come to believe that people can either do no wrong or do no right. We may or may not be aware of it, but this happens literally everywhere in life. It’s disheartening and calls into question whether the concept of merit can ever truly exist. Okay, I’m done now. 

If grades are meaningless, Carol’s decided she’s done with academic pursuits.  She clearly feels like she’s losing a part of her identity and someone’s gotta make things right.  Enter Mike Seaver (and, I might add, this is the second time in the last three episodes when Mike has been the one to help Carol out!). Mike is trying to help Carol realize that no one will care about her grades once she’s out of school; they’ll only care about what type of person she is. Well, and the kind of car she drives. And then he gets off on a bit of a car tangent, but Carol has already made the connection she needed to make: the more she learns, the better a person she’ll be, which is why it’s super important to take her studies seriously.

This is, like, 100 layers deeper than the point Mike was trying to make, but whatever, Carol’s back to being a brain and balance in the Seaver household has been restored.

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

  • Where was Bobby in this episode? Surely Carol would go to her steady boyfriend if she were having crisis of confidence?
  • Where is Jason Seaver’s wisdom? I am worried that two of the three last episodes’ conflicts were solved by Mike.
  • Are pop quizzes a real thing?