Tag: classic sitcom

Season 3 Episode 11: Broadway Bound

On By InMyBackyardIn Season 3Leave a comment

We’re back to a storyline featuring someone other than Ben today, so I am heaps more excited than yesterday!

Now that he’s gotten the itch to be an actor, Mike is auditioning for another Dewey High play. But his co-star, Monica, who we might recall is best known around Dewey High for ‘looking good in gym shorts’, gives Mike an even better idea. She’s just read that there’s going to be a Broadway production of ‘Our Town’, which is the very same play at which they recently dazzled Long Island…or at least some small subsection of Long Island family and friends. Based on this raging success, Mike thinks they should audition for the Broadway production.

And Jason and Maggie think he has no ambition!

Mike is persuasive if nothing else, and he convinces Monica that it’s the best idea ever. It means that they’re going to miss their auditions for the Dewey High play, foregoing their chances at Long Island High School theatre fame, and they’ll have to cut school for the day.  But these are just tiny little details in comparison to a shot at the big time.

It takes some creativity to bring their plan to life. Mike has to bribe Carol to get to an appointment on her own when Jason and Maggie want Mike to drive her to it.  Mike also has to pretend to be Principal Dewitt over the intercom (sadly this means I don’t get a real Principal Dewitt sighting in this episode). He calls himself and Monica to the office, ensuring that none of their teachers give a second thought to why they’re not in class. It’s pretty smart, although one has to wonder how Principal Dewitt himself wouldn’t hear the announcement and catch them in the act.  No matter, Mike and Monica are off to their Broadway audition and they’re already envisioning themselves on stage, adored by fans and critics alike.

Their confidence takes a bit of a hit when they walk into the audition and see the sheer volume of people auditioning, and when they realize they don’t have all the requisite things like agents and headshots…and, you know, actual theatre experience. Monica gets increasingly freaked out about their lack of preparation and so she bails on Mike. She isn’t ready to have her Broadway dreams dashed, so her solution is simply not auditioning. If you don’t try, you can’t fail, right?

But Mike sees things the opposite way, because what good is a dream if you don’t do something about it? Those are wise words, Mike. So Mike goes on with his audition, because he drove all the way to Broadway dammit. Fear be damned! So he auditions and of course he doesn’t get the part. And like many a young soul, he takes this to mean that he has no talent. So now he doesn’t even want to audition for his high school play even though the affable Coach Lubbock, who moonlights as the high school’s theatre director, is willing to hold over the auditions for another day just for Mike and Monica.

When Mike tells Coach Lubbock he’s quitting theatre, Coach Lubbock says a big hell no. Okay, not in those exact words, but he does give Mike a pep talk that is really difficult to follow. The gist of it seems to be that if you give up every time you make a fool of yourself, you’ll never get anywhere. And also, that Mike is the most talented high school actor he’s ever seen.  Let’s just ignore the fact that Coach Lubbock just admitted he’d never directed theatre before Dewey High, so this doesn’t really mean much.

All that matters is that Mike is somehow inspired by Coach Lubbock’s words and decides that he will audition for the Dewey High production after all. His Broadway setback isn’t going to keep him from pursuing his dreams.

Meanwhile, back at home, Mike’s whole cover story is falling apart because the school called when Mike missed his audition at Dewey High, and Carol has no good excuse for why Mike didn’t drive her to the doctor. I sense that Mike is going to be in major trouble once again.  But maybe I’m wrong, because Jason in particular is actually sort of proud of Mike for pursuing something with passion, even if it means he skipped school. Say what? It may be the first time in Growing Pains history that I am genuinely surprised by Maggie and Jason’s reaction to Mike, and I am respecting them on a whole new level!

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

  • Can you really just show up for a Broadway audition and they’ll let you on stage?
  • What happened when Mike went home? Did Maggie and Jason actually let him get away with skipping school? I don’t believe it!
  • Does Mike get the part in the next high school play and does he kill it once again? We don’t find out. Ugh!

Season 3 Episode 10: This is Your Life

On By InMyBackyardIn Season 3Leave a comment

I have to tell you that I cheated and looked up the premise behind this episode before I started watching it, at which point I discovered it’s a Ben episode, and at which point I came narrowly close to not watching it at all. In other words, I’m already majorly biased against this episode. Let’s get this over with.

Ben’s got surgery on the horizon. He’s about to have his tonsils removed, but he doesn’t seem sick at all and it’s taking all my willpower not to go on a tangent about unnecessary “precautionary” surgeries in the medical system. Anyway, the Seavers are having Chinese takeout for Ben’s ‘final supper’ and his fortune cookie fortune is blank. Poor little Ben, already super anxious about his surgery, sees the blank fortune as a harbinger of death.

I know I’ve  been down on this episode in a big way, but I still feel for Ben because, as a kid, no matter how minor a surgery is, it’s still damn scary. My appendix burst when I was a 11 and the doctor basically sent me to the hospital immediately and I went directly into surgery and it was terrifying. It didn’t matter that dozens of adults kept telling me it was no big deal.

So Ben’s at the hospital trying to relax but he still can’t. Frankly, now I’m worried for him, because his doctor is Edward’s business manager from Silver Spoons. How’d he get to be a doctor? (also a super sad sidenote: in reading up on where Franklin Seales is now, I learned he actually passed away in 1990! I had no idea!). In a last ditch effort to ease Ben’s anxiety, Jason tells Ben that Seavers don’t let fear get in their way. Ben declares “then I don’t want to be a Seaver” and now I see where this is going.

While under anesthesia, Ben gets his ‘wish’ in a seriously vivid dream, one in which he escapes the hospital before his surgery even starts, catches a cab ride home (with the Skipper from Gilligan’s Island no less!), and packs his bags to run away, presumably to avoid surgery and because he no longer wants to be a Seaver? But as he’s trying to leave the house, the rest of the Seavers return from the hospital with Ben Seaver, who is decidedly not the real Ben Seaver.

(another brief sidenote, because is it way too coincidental that the Skipper from Gilligan’s Island, Alan Hale Junior, also passed away in 1990?!?!? I’m sorry, that’s a lot of morbid sidenotes in one post. I promise I’ll get back on track now.)

New Ben Seaver is in the house, and he’s played by the kid who played Sam McKinney on Diff’rent Strokes, and I remember very little about him except that he was an annoying character on that show, too. (But I’m pleased to share at least he is still alive, unlike our two other guest stars.) Anyway, new Ben is Ben Seaver 2.0. He is the perfect child, well-mannered and a total kiss-ass and apparently the focus of his entire family’s adoration. The family is all about Ben 2.0. Of course all if this is just a projection of Ben’s worst fears. Ben’s subconscious is really working through some insecurities because there is like five straight minutes of new Ben being the apple of the family’s eye, when I think all of us would’ve got the point with about one tenth of that time.

The long and the short of it is that Ben is freaking out because his family cannot see nor hear him, and also this new Ben is getting all the ice cream. For Ben, who loves food more than anything, this is the straw that broke the camel’s back. He wants new Ben gone for good. He’s also figured out that this whole nightmare Ben 2.0 situation is only happening because he wished he didn’t want to be a Seaver. He’s ready to be a Seaver again and is going to do anything to make it happen.

The rest of this episode is not worth your time either so I’m going to fast track it: Ben realizes that if he returns to the hospital, he can get his life back. He then steals the cab he took home from the hospital and drives himself back to the hospital. And just like that, he’s awake again and coming out of surgery and his whole family is there to greet him. Ben 2.0 is gone. Phew! And Ben has learned just how important his family really is.

With that, I’m very pleased to announce this episode is over and I can only hope that tomorrow’s is infinitely more entertaining.

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

  • Is this episode a who’s who of characters from other sitcoms or what?
  • I know I’ve asked this before, but when will Ben-centric episodes get good?

 

Season 2 Episode 22: Confidentially Yours

On By InMyBackyardIn Season 21 Comment

We kick off this episode with a dream sequence in the style of Let’s Make a Deal, or at least that’s all I can think of because everyone in the audience is in costumes. But anyway, in her dream Maggie’s been nominated for a Pullitzer but everyone in the audience, including Jason, is either mocking her or completely in disbelief that a no-name like Maggie Seaver could be nominated for a Pullitzer. And it’s all a bit over the top, but I do enjoy that Maggie gets revenge on Jason by attempting to peck him to death (did I forget to mention she’s dressed in a chicken costume in this dream sequence? That would’ve been a helpful detail…).

Of course, Maggie’s dream was just a window into her soul, a soul that is none too pleased with being a measly Long Island local newspaper writer, and one who couldn’t even win a Long Island journalism award, an event which she had attended the night prior and which seems to have highlighted her lacklustre career. Maggie seems fired up to make a change. And, wouldn’t you know, she’s about to get an opportunity to do just that!

The very next day Maggie leaves a very long and conversational answering machine message (nostalgia!!!) about how the keynote from the Long Island Journalism Awards, who happens to be the editor for a big city newspaper, has offered her a writing job. In Manhattan! And he wants Jason and Maggie to meet for dinner to “get to know them socially”, and is this how things worked in the 80s or does this sound fishy to everyone else too?

I think I’m right because this editor seems a bit smarmy when they meet up, and he’s coming on a little strong when it comes to selling Maggie on the job. Something’s not right here. And then it turns out that the editor’s wife is a patient of Jason’s. Yikes. This puts him in a compromising position because it seems that Jason knows a whole lot about this editor via the editor’s wife/his patient. Unfortunately, doctor-patient confidentiality precludes him from sharing this information with Maggie, even though he’s dying to, especially since what he knows is that the editor is a cheater and a sleaze.

What will Jason do? He’s really struggling with his ethical dilemma here, especially when Maggie specifically asks for his opinion. Jason offers up cryptic hints and thought-provoking questions, which Maggie finds ultra irritating because she just wants his real opinion, but in actuality is the perfect career coaching approach that will help her make the decision for herself. Jason’s not taking this approach for noble reasons, of course. He’s just trying to avoid spilling the beans on this editor and outing his patient in the process. No matter, Maggie knows something’s up because Jason is usually way more forthright with his opinions.

Maggie’s journalistic instincts kick in and she goes for the kill on this editor. She starts asking him all sorts of questions about what drew him to her writing and basically backs him into a corner in which it becomes very clear that he’s never read a single thing she’s written. Maggie realizes that he wants her for something other than her writing, and that’s the end of that job opportunity. Maggie turns down the job, Jason maintains his patient-doctor confidentiality, and the editor is totally perplexed as to how someone could possibly turn him down.

Meanwhile, back at home, the kids are getting into a world of trouble. Carol and Mike break a lamp, which they think is a really big deal because Maggie just bought it. It look like a pretty basic lamp, though, so I can’t imagine any parent being all that upset about it, but Mike and Carol don’t agree with me.  So Carol spends hours  trying to painstakingly reassemble this lamp, sort of like the leg lamp in a Christmas Story, only less entertaining. She manages to do a pretty good job of it, and I’m sort of over this whole storyline.

But wait, maybe I was wrong, because even though this secondary storyline had me wanting to fast forward, when we realize that Ben has crazy glued himself to the coffee table, things become a bit more interesting. Because that could actually get you in trouble. A nice coffee table is expensive, y’all, not to mention hard to find. And the Seavers are going to need a new one when Mike decides he’s simply going to pull Ben off the coffee table, taking half the table’s surface along with him. Oh the trouble these kids get themselves into.

Because of course ruining two pieces of furniture isn’t enough, these kids are determined to make matters worse. Somehow, even though it’s clearly late evening at this point, Mike gets his hands on a floor sander and some furniture stain and decides they’re going to sand down the coffee table and then stain it. No one will ever notice that the original chunk of coffee table is firmly affixed to the ass of Ben’s pants.

The best advice I would give to Mike in this moment is to cut your losses, but alas that would involve time travel and also this show is fictional and so I have to let Mike make his own mistakes. And that he will. Because Mike doesn’t know the first thing about floor sanders and it quickly sands its way right through the coffee table (which perhaps tells me their coffee table wasn’t all that great to start with) and then almost knocks over the lamp they just fixed. Carol’s willing to do anything to save that lamp so she takes a flying leap to grab it, but in the process breaks the side table and the lamp. In one night alone, the Seaver kids have managed to basically destroy the entire living room.

If you’re keeping track, that means not only did Maggie miss out on a big city, real-deal journalist job, but now she also has no functional living room furniture. In other words, it’s definitely not her day.

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

  • Seriously, where did Mike get a sander at night?
  • How flimsy is the Seaver family’s living room furniture?
  • Why did everyone in Maggie’s dream have a costume on anyway? I really am not seeing how that related to the dream…unless the writers really just wanted Maggie to be able to peck Jason to death…

 

Season 2 Episode 21: The Long Goodbye

On By InMyBackyardIn Season 22 Comments

Right off the bat I’m not too psyched about this episode, because it starts off with Ben making a video about the Seaver family for some school project. So far, Ben-centric episodes have not been the best. Although on the plus side, we quickly see that this episode features a guest star: none other than Kirk’s sister Candace Cameron (now Candace Cameron Bure),  just prior to her big splash in Full House, so there’s something. Still, I’m only cautiously optimistic about this one.

It’s Seaver family chore day and everyone’s in a tizzy trying to get shit done, except for Jason, who left a major article deadline to align with Seaver family chore day, conveniently extricating him from any chore responsibilities. This seems inconsistent with Jason’s character, but also–and yes, I realize this is a huge gender stereotype–men do tend to be less invested in household chores, so maybe it all makes perfect sense.

Anyway, it’s not just family chore day.  Jimmy the handyman is also on his way over to repair the furnace. Jimmy appears to be beloved by the entire family…or, at least, by everyone other than Maggie. Ben’s stealth camera work catches Maggie and Jason in the midst of a conversation about Jimmy, during which it’s clear that Jason is fiercely defending Jimmy whereas Maggie is certain he’s past his prime. Is this entire episode going to be about the aging handyman? Ugh. I fear it is.

Nothing Jason can say about Jimmy seems to deter Maggie from her rampant ageism. She’s convinced that he’s incapable of fixing a furnace, simply by virtue of his age, which appears to maybe be his late 60s. Also, has Maggie forgotten that she entrusted her garbage disposal repair to an even older repair man just one season ago?  How quickly we can forget!

Let me get back on track, here. Ben and Jenny (Candace Cameron) are still making their video, but they decide that the Seavers are too boring to be the stars of their project (as far as this episode goes, I tend to agree), so they opt to film Jimmy instead. Ben finds common ground with Jimmy, because it turns out people think Ben’s too young to do stuff and people think that Jimmy’s too old to do stuff, and that’s really the same thing and both are injustices. And this is the most interesting thematic moment we’ll get in the entire episode.

What transpires next is a string of events that reinforces Maggie’s ageism. First, thick, black dust comes spewing out of every duct in the house and Jimmy merely yells out “Sorry about that! Won’t happen again!”. I mean, I get why Maggie is peeved here because it made a hell of a mess, but you also have to wonder how dirty were the Seaver’s ducts?!?!?  Then the washing machine that Jimmy supposedly adjusted starts jumping around on the basement floor. Then the power gets cut and Jason loses 28 pages of the article he’s written because this is before auto-save (which really deserves a shout-out here as a miracle modern invention). Anyway, Maggie is a stone’s throw from tossing Jimmy out on the street, and after he loses his article, even Jason is starting to doubt Jimmy’s abilities.

Of course, none of these household snafus are Jimmy’s fault. We quickly learn that Carol is to blame for the washing machine, because she put every, single rug in the house in at once, which is clearly way too much for a load of laundry. And then Ben’s video finally serves a purpose because as he’s replaying it, the family sees that it was Ben who was responsible for the great, black-dust-spewing duct explosion. You see, Ben wanted to help but attached a hose to the outtake vs. intake.  Jimmy has been fully vindicated!

Anyway, once Maggie and Jason see the error of their ways, they are over-the-top apologetic towards Jimmy, but I guess all that matters is that everyone’s Jimmy’s biggest fan all over again. And we learn that old people still have value and, good God, this was a terrible episode.

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

  • Do families actually have big, seasonal chore days? Growing up, in my house every weekend involved chores, not just a few days a year. Every. Weekend.
  • If my ducts were blown out, would they be filled with the same kind of intense black soot that was in the Seavers’ ducts? Do I need to be worried about that?
  • Was ageism a particularly hot issue at the time this episode was released? And, even if it was, didn’t Golden Girls already exist at that time to more eloquently prove that old people are freaking awesome?

Season 2 Episode 19: The Awful Truth

On By InMyBackyardIn Season 2Leave a comment

With a title like that, we have to be in for something extra special today, don’t we? Let’s find out!

Maggie and Jason are going out for a romantic lunch date and leaving the kids to their own devices.  This is the perfect set up for the kids to get themselves into trouble…or perhaps discover some sort of awful truth. I, for one, am excited!

With Maggie and Jason out of the house, we quickly discover that Ben needs help with a school project that he has, predictably, left until the last minute. He needs to map out his entire family history, and his plan was simply to ask his mom and dad to spell it out for him. Since they’re not home, he leans on Mike and Carol to help him, and this is where the kids unearth some really shocking information.

When Carol decides the best way to help Ben is to root through a trunk of Jason’s old stuff , she quickly finds a book with a rather troubling inscription. It seems, back in the day, that Jason’s intern friends at medical school bought him a book on how to score with chicks to help him cope with his divorce.

Say what?!?!?

As you would expect, this revelation throws the kids off-kilter in a big way. Even Mike is floored by this newfound information, and Mike is rarely floored by anything. The tides quickly turn in the kids’ minds: Jason goes from best father in the world status to a lying cheat in 2.2 seconds. How dare he have claimed that Maggie was the only woman for him when he’s actually been married before? This opens the door for some serious chicken-little-the-sky-is-falling thinking. The kids quickly concoct an entire alternate universe in which Jason has not only been married before, but possibly also has kids from this marriage, kids that he sees regularly, kids who perhaps even live on the same street as them. Mike, Carol and Ben are really letting their imaginations go wild here. Yikes.  There are some big questions they want answered, like who is this other lady, what happened, and can they ever trust their father again? Oooph. Jason better hope these kids can sort this out or he’s in for a world of unexpected (and likely unwarranted) attitude when he gets home.

The kids are dead set on solving this mystery, rifling through every one of Maggie and Jason’s private spaces in efforts to find some new clues. And clues they find. First, a signed picture from some lady named Petula, who they instantly assume is the other woman.  Jason has clearly not done as good a job as one would’ve expected on educating his kid on 60s music icons, but alas Petula Clark is likely too obscure a reference for most kids.  Then they find another picture of Jason with a different lady, during a time frame when he was supposedly married to Maggie and, whoa, is Jason’s ideal husband/father image about to be shattered? Then they find a letter from Maggie’s parents that references Maggie’s divorce and the kids are now reeling because how could it be that both of their parents have been divorced in the past. Good God, what is happening to their seemingly perfect family? It is falling apart at the seams right before their very eyes.

This is all too much for all three kids. They are so stunned, in fact, that they do nothing but sit silently on the couch, all in a row. Once they return home, Maggie and Jason are quick to notice that the kids seem a bit off, but of course they have no idea the extent of it. That is, until the kids start engaging them in mostly nonsensical conversations about love, marriage and divorce. It doesn’t take long for Jason to put two and two together to realize that the kids have figured out their dirty little secret.

As it turns out, the kids were sort of onto something. Maggie and Jason were both divorced…almost…but from each other, which all of us viewers saw coming but we know the kids didn’t, because they still thought Petula Clark was the ‘other woman’. The whole backstory is this: soon after their marriage, Maggie and Jason couldn’t see a way to make their marriage and their careers a priority, so they decided to call the whole thing off. But really they still loved each other so much so that in the very midst of their divorce proceedings, they decided to stay together. The divorce never actually went through. Phew! The Seaver children have been spared the shame of having two previously-married parents, and can bask in the safety net that is their parents true love for only each other.

In many ways, this title was misleading because really the truth wasn’t awful at all, and also Ben has a bit of a juicy story for his family history, so all’s well that ends well, I guess?

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

  • Surely, wouldn’t Ben’s family history project require more than just a history of his parents’ marriage? I’m thinking maybe he missed the boat on his assignment.
  • How could the Seaver kids turn on their father so quickly? Jason Seaver is clearly the pinnacle of fatherly perfection.
  • Did you know that Petula Clark is still active in music? The lady has been working for like 7 decades! Those Seaver kids should really know who she is. Actually, we all should!

Season 2 Episode 18: Carnival

On By InMyBackyardIn Season 2Leave a comment

Well, after a long-than-anticipated holiday break, we are back with our regularly scheduled programming! Happy new year to all, and let’s see what the Seavers are up to today.

Maggie has been working like a fiend and Jason’s been taking on all the typical ‘mom’ stuff like attending Ben’s PTA meetings. This, of course, means that Maggie feels like a bad mother. It doesn’t help when Ben tells her that if he had a picture of Maggie to put in the locket he made, he wouldn’t miss her so much when she works late. Ouch.

This throws Maggie into a real tailspin, which she takes out on Jason with appalling passive-aggression. I feel for Jason here because, really, he’s just being a good dad, but of course Maggie’s not actually upset about Jason being a good father. She’s just taking her guilt out on him. Thankfully (and as always), Jason talks her off the proverbial ledge, but then Maggie takes her guilt a step too far: she decides the only way to be a good mom is to volunteer for the school carnival even though she’s really not got the time for it.

When Maggie shows up at the PTA and sees all the moms going nuts for Jason, this only adds fuel to her fiery inferno of guilt. Jason is a better mom than her and she will not have it. In response, she agrees not just to volunteer but to take on the carnival chairperson role. Now she really doesn’t have time for that.  But damn it, Maggie’s still going to try.

The thing is, Maggie’s trying to do all this for Ben, but volunteering for the carnival is really only taking her time away from Ben because now she’s too busy stuffing goodie bags and making the world’s biggest pot of chilli to pay any attention to him. In fact, she’s not just not paying attention to Ben, he’s actually getting in trouble for being a pest while the rest of the family gets everything ready for the carnival. I think we can all see that Maggie’s plan is backfiring in a big way.

Come carnival night, it looks like everything has come together quite nicely. It’s certainly a more robust elementary school carnival than I’ve ever seen or experienced in my own childhood. It seems like Maggie’s pulled off being a super mom after all, except for the fact that Ben now actually thinks she’s a bad mom, which if you haven’t noticed already defeats the entire purpose of all this carnival coordination.

When Maggie realizes that Ben has thrown away the locket with her picture in it, and run away from the carnival, she is off in hot pursuit, although still oblivious to what Ben’s upset about.  I feel for Ben because when I was a child I sometimes was shocked that my parents couldn’t understand why I was so upset. I’m sure Ben just wants to grab his mom by the shoulders and scream ‘why are you so dense?’

I’ll spare you the whole, drawn-out conversation between Maggie and Ben that finally helps her see the light. Suffice it to say, Maggie eventually realizes that her actual job was never a real problem for Ben. Sure he missed his mom when she was at work, but he understood that she loved her work. The carnival was a whole other ball of unnecessary wax.  But no matter, all is right again in the Seaver household.

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

  • Do school carnivals actually have dunk tanks or is this merely a television phenomenon? I remember Mr. Belding in a dunk tank in an episode of Saved by the Bell, and it seems a few other shows had them too (although Google proved surprisingly unhelpful for the search term “80s sitcom dunk tank episodes”, so perhaps we will never know.) Regardless, I’m sure today’s insurance liability alone would render a dunk tank a definite no-go.
  • Will Maggie ever ask herself “WWJD” (what would Jason do)? I suspect this episode would have gone a lot differently if it’d been Jason feeling like the bad parent. He probably would have just talked to Ben right off the bat and we wouldn’t have had to suffer through the whole carnival experience…

Season 2 Episode 17: Your Sins

On By InMyBackyardIn Season 23 Comments

In this episode, Carol wants a nose job. Say what? Let’s see how Jason and Maggie try to talk her out of this one!

It turns out that Carol thinks she has a big nose (which, and I think I’m speaking fairly objectively here, she absolutely does not). Maggie points out that Carol has her nose, but this does not sway Carol because she thinks her mom can get away with having a “big nose” because all her other features are so big. Whoa, that’s a burn on many levels, Carol. Also, Maggie does not have big features. What’s up with the mirrors in the Seaver household, because they’re clearly distorting Carol’s perception?

Maggie and Jason assume Carol hasn’t thought her decision through, that all she needs is a good dose of reason, but this is Carol we’re talking about. Carol has done all the research—she can outline how the procedure is conducted, what the risks are, and how much it costs, all without skipping a beat. In Carol’s mind, it’s not a whim or childish lark.  She’s also fully prepared to counter Maggie and Jason’s logic with her own logical argument, which is that Jason and Maggie also do all sorts of things to improve the way they look, so how is this any different? Touché Carol, touché!

Jason’s solution is what I like to consider a parenting classic: to avoid telling your kid they can’t do something, tell them they can do it, but only if they pay for it themselves. Granted, this is only a viable solution when parents know that the financial burden is totally outside the kid’s reach, which it is for Carol…

…that is, until wins $3000 in a radio call-in contest.

Now Maggie and Jason have a real problem, because now they have to turn around and tell Carol she actually can’t get a nose job whether she has the money or not.  Carol, quite rightly, berates them for their hypocrisy. Good thing Carol has a plan to get her nose job with or without her parents’ support.

She bribes Mike to drive her to the doctor’s office and basically forging her parents’ signatures on the consent form.  The doctor’s office isn’t buying it, and they call Carol’s house and Maggie is the one to take the call and she is beyond cheesed that Carol would willingly disobey them. Carol is their golden child, after all.  But no matter, Maggie’s got to get down to that doctor’s office and put a stop to this.

Little does Maggie know, she doesn’t need to worry about it, because Mike is going to unwittingly talk Carol out of her rhinoplasty. It turns out all those years of being teased about her looks might be a big part of the reason Carol is so adamant that she needs a nose job.  Once Mike sees this, he flips the switch from smart-assed and insensitive older brother to decent human being and helps Carol understand that teasing is just something siblings do, and that Carol is actually pretty.

Just like that, Carol sees the light and no longer wants her nose job. Jason and Maggie still storm into the doctor’s office to save the day, mind you, but it’s totally unnecessary at this point.

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

  • Couldn’t the writers or produces have picked a more believable thing for Carol to want to change about herself? I mean, her nose is tiny so it just didn’t make sense that it was the thing she wanted to change.
  • Is a nose job really only $2400? In today’s dollars that would be about $6000 and that seems awfully cheap for any medical services in the US (Update: I Googled it and learned that the “average cost of rhinoplasty is $5,350, according to 2018 statistics from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. This average cost is only part of the total price – it does not include anesthesia, operating room facilities or other related expenses.” I suspect those additional costs would really add up…but still, that’s way cheaper than I thought!)

Season 2 Episode 16: My Brother, Myself

On By InMyBackyardIn Season 2Leave a comment

It appears that it’s going to be a Ben-centric episode, so I have to admit I’m already biased against it. Let’s get this over with.

It looks like the Seavers are heading to a live taping of the Cosby Show. Fun fact: I refused to believe that the Cosby Show was taped in New York (I assumed LA like most sitcoms) and then Googled it. The Cosby Show was indeed filmed in studios in Brooklyn and Queens. Who knew! Also, let’s just remember that Growing Pains took place in the 80s and this was before everything came out about Bill Cosby so I’m just not even going to go there.

Anyway, the Seavers are going to a live taping and Ben is beyond excited, but just as he’s settling in for some Cosby Show hijinks, the unthinkable happens:  puberty strikes, seemingly in an instant. Some young girl is smiling and waving at Ben from across the studio audience and he’s feeling all the feels and doesn’t know what to think about this new experience.

One thing is for sure. He’s not thinking about the Cosby Show anymore.

Ben’s fascination with girls might be the most sudden and rapidly growing obsession I’ve ever witnessed. He has gone from never thinking about girls to total and utter preoccupation in the span of one day. As you would expect from a 10 year old, he has no idea what to do to actually impress a girl, so he of course goes to Mike. Now, Jason already had the foresight to warn Mike never to give Ben any advice on girls.  At first, Mike tries to uphold this commitment to his dad, but I think you already know that he won’t be able to resist giving bad brotherly advice before the episode is through.

When Maggie and Jason go out for the evening, Ben smells opportunity with the only girl to whom he has ready access: his babysitter, Trudy, who you might recall is allowed to babysit even though she is not allowed to stay home by herself. Before Trudy arrives for her babysitting gig at the Seavers, Ben finds his way to Mike’s room and this is where things start to go off the rails. Mike doesn’t think he’s offering advice but he forgets that Ben is like a sponge absorbing everything he says. According to Mike, ladies want someone dangerous, unpredictable and who could get into trouble at any moment.

I am shaking my head so hard at this.

Ben, of course, takes this to heart. Dressed like Don Johnson circa Miami Vice, which I suppose was the 80s version of ‘dangerous’, Ben is ready to work his best moves on Trudy. And by “moves”, I mean putting his arm around her because that is all a 10 year old can (and should) be able to think of. Despite the innocence of Ben’s moves, Trudy is still having none of it. She may only be twelve, but girl’s able to establish some very clear boundaries!

It’s at this point that Mike comes home (after being stood up for a date, no less!), and catches Ben in the midst of his attempt to woo Trudy, which wasn’t working in the first place and is now made worse when Mike openly mocks him. Ben feels supremely rejected and proclaims he is done with girls. Since Mike is home, it seems they can send Trudy home and end Ben’s embarrassment for good.

The wrinkle in this storyline, if you can call it a wrinkle, is that when Trudy’s sister shows up to pick Trudy up, both she and Mike seem instantly smitten with one another. Trudy’s sister is home from college for the weekend, and Mike is eager to squeeze in a date with her. That night. At the Seaver house. Somehow this lame excuse for a date is amenable to Trudy’s sister. Perhaps she is blinded by Mike’s claim that he’s an Ivy league college man. Oh yes, that’s right, Mike has lied about his age and says he’s a Yale student, all so he can have a shot with this girl he just met.  It’s some seriously bad role modelling for Ben, not to mention a super sleazy tactic.

Now that Trudy’s sister is smitten, poor Trudy is stuck hanging out with Ben, which she’s super angry about. But Ben is refusing to go back into the living room with Trudy after his embarrassing first advances. Mike has to fix this so that he can get some uninterrupted time with Trudy’s sister. You know, for their hot date…in the Seaver kitchen. Good grief.

This is where Mike defies Jason’s orders not to give advice to Ben, and also gives him the worst advice you could ever give a young man: “all girls mean the opposite of what they say.” I mean, this was obviously wrong in the 80s, too, but in today’s world Mike would be eviscerated for this type of comment.

Ben’s about to learn two important lessons. First, that Mike doesn’t know what he’s talking about when it comes to women. And second, that girls most definitely do not mean the opposite of what they say. When Ben keeps trying to put his arm around Trudy, she finally blows a gasket. Her feisty declination of his advances at least helps him learn this second lesson quickly.

It is only when Ben stops trying to be a total sleaze and actually talks to Trudy as a person that she starts to be interested in him. Funny how that works. And just as they’re starting to have a real conversation and Trudy is finally keen to hang out with Ben to hear more about such riveting topics as live tapings of the Cosby Show, Trudy’s sister is ready to get the hell out of the Seaver household.

You guessed it, Mike’s lies have blown up in his face and Trudy’s sister is simultaneously angry that he’s lied to her and also repulsed that she’s wasted her night on someone two years her junior. So if you’re keeping score, tonight Ben gets one point with the ladies and Mike gets zero. And, as with so many other early season episodes of Growing Pains, I’m just glad this episode is finally over.

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

  • How were women not angrier in the 80s with these kinds of attitudes so dominant in pop culture?
  • Why do girls continue to be impressed by Mike’s bravado and sleaze?
  • When will I ever get an entire week of enjoyable Growing Pains episodes?

Season 2 Episode 15: Thank God It’s Friday

On By InMyBackyardIn Season 22 Comments

It’s Friday night and there’s a lot going on. Carol’s supposed to have a date with Bobby but he’s been grounded for getting his third speeding ticket in a matter of weeks. Jason’s been looking forward to a date night with Maggie all week, but she’s exhausted and doesn’t feel like it. Ben just wants to watch TGIF on TV (remember those good old days? I do.). And Mike’s got big plans with Eddie and Boner. Where will all these possible storylines take us? Let’s find out together.

With Carol’s date cancelled and Maggie bailing on date night, the whole gang (minus Mike) is hanging in this fine Friday evening feasting on TV dinners, on TV trays no less! This is just bringing back all sorts of memories of my family eating dinner on TV trays, watching Entertainment Tonight back in the days when it wasn’t smutty and before John Tesh started making new age music…

I got sidetracked there, didn’t I? Let me get back on track.

As the Seavers are digging into their TV dinners, the doorbell rings. It turns out Jason forgot to cancel Ben’s babysitter, and now she’s going to hang with the Seavers for the night because her parents are out and Ben’s babysitter isn’t allowed to stay home alone.  I’ll spare you the rest of this storyline because nothing really happens that’s more interesting than the TV dinner/TV tray nostalgia.

Meanwhile, Mike and the boys are trying desperately to come up with exciting plans for their Friday night. I guess Long Island isn’t a hotbed for teenage adventures…that is, until a Dewey High alum, now a college freshman, waltzes into the pizza  shop. Mike sees him picking up a massive tower of pizza boxes and he smells the sweet aroma of a potential party. Turns out Mike’s right, and he literally begs for an invite. College guy acquiesces and it looks like Mike, Eddie and Boner’s Friday night is looking up.

When they arrive at the party, it’s sort of like that scene in Pretty in Pink when Molly Ringwald goes to the party with Andrew McCarthy and she feels totally out of place amongst all the rich, popular kids.  Although Mike has always been portrayed as one of the cool kids, this party scene makes it clear he’s not quite at the upper echelons of the high school social pyramid.  Mike, Eddie and Boner instantly feel like fish out of water, but Mike is determined to fit in.

Mike’s strategy for fitting in is making moves on the first girl who looks his way. He thinks he’s hitting it off but then, within seconds she’s inviting Mike to the bathroom with her. He thinks that’s a little weird, but then things get even more uncomfortable when she assures him she’s not trying to get her hands on his stash because she’s got her own cocaine. Oh my, it looks like we’ve got ourselves a ‘very special episode’ here!  Mike and the gang have unwittingly stumbled on a party fuelled largely by cocaine and this is going to present us all with some super valuable learning moments. Let’s get back to the party.

What will Mike do when faced with the choice of being cool (i.e. doing coke) or being totally uncool (i.e. not doing coke)? I’m less worried about Mike than Eddie, who seems all too eager to just do coke to impress a bunch of snooty girls. He’s working the famous “just because you do coke once doesn’t mean you’ll get hooked” logic, which Mike is not at all sold on, and poor Boner can’t pick which side of the fence he’s on. What we have here is a cocaine standoff.

Mike is pushing hard for the boys to make a stealth escape from the party before they’re labelled ‘weenies’ for just saying no, but they are already too late: a whole gaggle of fellow Dewey High Hooters (yup, Hooters) have spotted them and now if they leave the party they will be socially doomed.  As I watch this, I’m just feeling incredibly grateful for what has turned out to be a highly sheltered upbringing during which the most harmful substance I was pressured to use as a teenager was alcohol, and even then no one really cared if you said no.

We reach the crux of the episode at this point: Mike has stalled as much as he can and now the blond girl is back and it’s an are-you-in-or-are-you-out moment. Without hesitation, Mike stands his ground and just says no, and without offering any feeble excuses. He just says he doesn’t want to do coke, which probably would’ve been fine if the entire party hadn’t heard him say it.

Now everyone’s laughing and some guy, who is probably two years older than Mike (although, to be fair, he looks 30), condescendingly calls them boys, as though doing coke makes you manly. Mike’s gonna seize this moment to escape from perhaps the most embarrassing social event of his life. The only problem is that Eddie and Boner don’t want to leave. Turns out best friends don’t always stick together because Eddie would rather try to score with some hot chicks even if it means trying out a little blow. And I will ask you yet again if Eddie and Boner aren’t the worst ‘best friends’ ever?

Now Mike is wrestling with the fact that he knows he made the right choice but, in doing so, seems to have lost the things that matter to high school boys (popularity, chances with girls, and his best friends). How can making the right choice come with so many negative side effects? Thank goodness Jason is there to help Mike make sense of this. Jason reminds Mike that, in the end, we must make the choices that are right for us, knowing we may not please everyone. Jason knows what’s what: that if we make decisions based on what we think others want, we’re setting ourselves up for unhappiness.  Mike feels better about his choice, and we find out that Eddie and Boner did leave the party after all, which Mike sees as a sign that they really are the best, but which I see as just another reason he should seriously reconsider how he defines friendship.

We end this episode with the classic “lead actor speaks seriously to the camera about the dangers of drug use”. The jaded part of me wants to mock this, but the older I get the more I can appreciate that networks were trying to do something to positively impact youth within a medium that was never really intended to do that. What I also appreciate is that Growing Pains took a slightly different take on the ‘don’t do drugs’ message, which was to focus on the fact that real friends won’t force you to do things you don’t want to do, that if someone only likes you because you’ll do drugs with them it’s probably not a real friendship. Plus, given that Kirk Cameron was (I think) already on his path to discovering religion in a major way, it feels like he is actually speaking with conviction, unlike so many of the actors that recorded these PSAs in the 80s. So I guess this is my long-winded way of saying way to go Growing Pains. I think you hit the mark better than many of your 80s family sitcom contemporaries.

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

  • Why is Mike friends with Eddie and Boner? Seriously. Why?
  • Was there an 80s family sitcom that didn’t have a ‘very special episode’ about drugs? I can’t think of a single one.

Season 2 Episode 14: Thank You, Willie Nelson

On By InMyBackyardIn Season 21 Comment

I’m intrigued by this episode’s title and can’t wait to see how Growing Pains and Willie Nelson somehow intersect.

Carol’s hosting the largest slumber party I’ve ever seen. Seriously there are easily a dozen girls at this party, and I cannot remember a time in my own life, beyond the age of 8 at least, when a sleepover was so well attended. The important facts about this slumber party are twofold: 1) they are listening to Belinda Carlisle’s ‘Mad About You’, which was one of my all-time favourite songs as an 80s child and 2) Mike and is creepily spying on the girls dancing in their night gowns…one of whom is also his sister.

Ben, who at his age is less appreciative of teenage girls in short nightgowns, takes a less mature approach to ruining the slumber party, which involves unleashing a snake into the mix. Oh, but wait, he’s only doing it so that Mike can intervene and “save the girls” from the dangerous snake.

But wait, because it turns out all this slumber party nonsense has nothing to do with the episode, because what this episode is really going to be about is Maggie’s parents, who have just rolled up to the Seaver household in their new motorhome, which is also their new permanent home, because they’ve sold their free-standing house to become rubber tramps. What? Stay with me here, I promise the pieces will all fall into place.

Maggie’s mom is clearly not happy with their decision to roam free on the open road. I wouldn’t be either if my husband sold the house without so much as asking me, which is exactly what happened to Maggie’s mom. Different generations, I suppose.

While Maggie tries to calm her mother, her dad takes Jason on a tour of the Vegabond Deluxe (the motorohome). Normally, Maggie’s father can’t stand Jason,  but he’s finding a newfound respect for him based solely on the fact that Jason is waxing poetic about life in a motorhome. I sense this isn’t how Jason actually feels, but he’s working some sort of angle with Maggie’s dad that’s not fully clear at this point.

Maggie’s being more direct with advice to her mother: tell her husband the truth about how she doesn’t want to live in a motorhome. Which she does. But because, as Jason so aptly put it, Maggie’s parent’s marriage “has never been based on truth”, this leads to a big old fight and Maggie’s mom decides she’s done with the motorhome (and possibly Maggie’s dad) for good. She’s going to stay with the Seavers for a while, and that’s really going to ruin Carol’s slumber party because grandma’s about to rock some Dire Straits on the piano and that’s a sure-fire party killer.

Jason heads back out to the motorhome to finish what he started with Maggie’s dad. It’s easier to see now that Jason is executing a carefully crafted combination of reverse psychology and good old psychiatric know-how. He’s already got Maggie’s dad believing that he wants to live the motorhome lifestyle too, and now he’s complaining about how Maggie doesn’t agree with him either. In other words, Jason’s really doubling down on showing Maggie’s dad they’re in the same situation and they’re in it together. But  all of this is merely a method to open door for Jason to start asking some deeper questions about what really made Maggie’s dad up and sell his house.

Now we’re getting somewhere.

It turns out the Maggie’s dad felt stifled at home once he retired. They had finished all the chores and all the endless fixing of things and then what was left to do? Was that all there was to life with what little time he has left? Whomp. Maggie’s dad is actually grappling with his mortality.

In the end this rather poignant, albeit heavy, moment is glossed over completely. Instead, Maggie’s mom tries to get through to Maggie’s dad one last time, they shout it out a bit on the driveway, and finally it emerges that all Maggie’s mom really wanted was to be asked what she wanted. Once Maggie’s dad hears that, he asks her and her answer is that she only wants what will make him happy. If that’s not circular reasoning, I don’t know what is.

What’s clear is that Maggie’s mom and dad are now on the same page and ready to hit the road in their beast of a motorhome. I, on the other hand, and now sitting here wrestling with some big questions about my own mortality and wishing that Jason had tackled this topic with Maggie’s dad because I could really use some of his sage advice.  But today that is not in the cards, so I guess I’ll have to work through it alone. These are the risks of Growing Pains viewership, I suppose.

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

  • Does it make me ageist that I tend to dislike any episodes that centre on Maggie, Jason or Maggie’s parents?
  • Does anyone else find it confusing that Carol is portrayed as a super dorky nerd, but then she has a slumber party with a dozen girls attending?
  • What did I miss that I still don’t see the connection between this episode and Willie Nelson? The likely answer is that I tuned out at various points in this episode and simply missed the reference.