Tag: culture

Season 5 Episode 4: Fish Bait

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Not every episode can be a gem. We’ve seen this before in the land of Growing Pains, and we find ourselves here again with an episode aptly titled “Fish Bait.”

The gist—Mike is excited about class for perhaps the first time in his life because it’s acting class! He’s so excited he’s up at 6:30am, he’s made coffee and breakfast, AND he’s happy. Naturally, this doesn’t compute for Maggie and Jason, who’ve never seen Mike up early nor excited about school. Ever. The expression ‘there’s a first time for everything’ is clearly lost on them. Instead, they assume he must have a girl in his apartment, whom he’s presumably cooking for. Or that he’s been out all night and is just coming home. Ye of little faith!

At any rate, even Maggie & Jason’s suspicion can’t dampen his enthusiasm for Drama 102. But the excitement is short-lived. You see, his fellow classmates are, like, really into acting. They know stuff about acting. They take notes about acting. They know who Ibsen is, for goodness sakes! I mean, who doesn’t? (Sidenote: I certainly don’t, but hey, I’m not an actor.)

At any rate, Mike quickly sees he is out of his element. He’s gotta study up, and he wastes no time getting right to it. But a pile of books in hand makes Maggie and Jason even more concerned about Mike. What is all this new behaviour? Up early? Excited for class? Books? Despite this quite literally being all they’ve wanted to see for the last FIVE SEASONS, they are both perplexed and highly suspicious. Just goes to show, even when you get exactly what you’ve been asking for, it just won’t make you happy.

In fact, Maggie is so concerned about Mike’s studiousness that she wants to intervene to find out “what’s really wrong” with Mike. Wow. This episode is positively rife with judgment. Take, for example, this little back-and-forth between Jason and Maggie when Maggie says she wants to go fix whatever’s wrong with Mike:

Jason: “Come on, we’ve got to give him a chance to work out whatever’s bothering him on his own. We gotta have a little faith in him.”

Maggie: “Jason, this is Mike we’re talking about”

Jason: “I said a little faith”

Ouch.

Back in class the next day, we see that not only did the studying fail to impress Mike’s parents, but it also earned him zero cred with his classmates and acting teacher, who continue to mercilessly mock him for his lack of acting knowledge. He only adds insult to injury when he has the audacity to mention that he’s going to audition for a lowly television commercial. Mike’s teacher goes so far as to say that being in commercials isn’t even acting. Such snobbery for someone who teaches an intro to drama class at Alf Landon Community College!

Sadly, Mike can only take so much dream-dashing, mocking and criticism. Suddenly, he’s experiencing a crisis of faith reminiscent of what we saw Carol experience in the last episode. How will Mike tackle this self-doubt? Will he feel like he’s enough by the end of the episode? Conventional sitcom wisdom suggests the answer is yes, but let’s make sure…

Well, Mike is beaten down, but not so much so that he ditches the commercial audition. He’s determined to prove he can be an actor, in a fish n’ chips ad no less! I’m not judging. I think that’d be great, especially if part of the compensation came in the form of free fish n’ chips, perhaps even for life!

The audition room is where we get a couple of real TSN turning points. First, who should walk in but two of his classmates*? Yes, the very same classmates who so boldly mocked Mike for even considering acting in commercials. Hypocrisy!  But then there’s even MORE hypocrisy, with a side of questionable ethics to boot. It’s announced that the role has been filled, by none other than Mike’s acting teacher. Something’s fishy here! (You had to know a bad pun was coming your way with this episode title!)

Mike isn’t caught up in the morality of it all, though No, he’s learned the lesson he needed to learn: some people talk a big game with nothing to back it up. He’s no worse an actor than the rest of his classmates. Truly, he’s no worse than the person employed to teach him how to act!!!! Confidence restored! These Seaver kids really luck out with well-timed lessons/instant self-esteem boosters!

There we have it. Mike’s commitment to acting is firmly reestablished and all is well in the world. Well, except his parents still don’t have any faith in him. But who needs their parents to have faith in them when they have faith in themselves?

You might even say that’s a better lesson to learn than the one Mike actually learned, but 80s sitcoms rarely offer deeper lessons. We get what we get.

*This episode may be a dud, but it does mark the first appearance of Kirk Cameron’s future real-life wife and (spoiler alert) future on-screen girlfriend, Chelsea Noble who, unlike poor Julie McCullough, was deemed noble enough (pun intended) to stay on the show!

Season 5 Episode 3: Carol Meets the Real World

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80s Power Suit Alert!

If we’ve learned anything from 80s sitcoms, it’s that we don’t need to linger in storylines for any longer than absolutely necessary. Which is how in today’s episode we leave behind Mike and Julie’s storyline completely, and dive into…

Carol’s college acceptance!  

And boy has she been waiting on pins and needles to see if she’ll get into Columbia! Do colleges still send acceptance letters in the mail? Is this still a thing? It seems that today we could spare our youth the agony of waiting for mail delivery…and spare our planet the agony of additional carbon footprint and needless paper consumption. Alas, in the 80s none of this was a concern. What a time to be alive!

Let’s get back on track: She’s IN, y’all!!!! But there is a tiny, itty-bitty, little snag: she’s been deferred by an entire semester.

Yes, straight-A student and bonafide genius Carol Seaver has to wait four months longer than she wanted to start college. The epitome of first world problems. And we have to wonder if Carol is downright addicted to education. I mean, after 15 years in the classroom, who wouldn’t want a break?

Carol Seaver.

That’s why she’s not only devastated, but also determined to find a way back to the classroom STAT. It doesn’t take her long to come up with a perfect plan. She’s gonna double up on courses at good old Alf Landon Community College. Sounds reasonable, right? But hang on. Alf Landon Community College is Mike’s school, and sure it’s suitable for the Mike Seavers of the world, but not for the Carol Seavers of this world.

Even Jason can’t wrap his head around it, but in efforts to maintain both Mike and Carol’s sense of self-worth, he offers this gem: “It’s not like it’s not a real college. It’s accredited. It has free-standing buildings.”

Put that on a brochure and sell it.

As usual, Jason’s meddling sparks self-doubt, and Carol is suddenly all too aware that Alf Landon Community College is woefully beneath her. Did she really bust her butt for all those years only to end up at the very same school as her slacker brother Mike? Yup, you sure did Carol, and it’s probably not the last time you’ll be treated to a dose of irony like this.

Plans (and self-esteem) are crumbling before our eyes. If not Alf Landon Community College, then what?  

Enter: Carol Seaver, Page-break Person (in a power suit no less!). This appears to be a job in which people scroll through DOS era screens to manually enter clean page breaks prior to publishing.  Most certainly this is a job that no longer requires actual humans.

What we learn from Carol’s first foray into the working world is that neither psychological safety nor harassment-free workplaces were a primary concern in the 80s. Carol is hit on by a considerably older colleague and yelled at by her boss (in front of every one) all during her very first morning. And, like most of us who lived in that time, Carol finds a way to succeed in spite of it.

Even though her boss has explicitly and repeatedly warned that the first rule of page-breaking is that we don’t read the pages, Carol can’t help herself. She’s on thin ice for all that reading slowing her down, but hang on a minute….this author has mistakenly confused microeconomics and macroeconomics, something probably 95% of the population wouldn’t bat an eye at.  I mean, I’ve taken three years of college-level economics and I’m sure I’d glaze right past it, but that’s what sets Carol Seaver apart from common folk like you and me.

Just like that, Carol is a page-breaking hero. She’s not only saved the day for what’s certain to be a riveting economics best-seller, but she’s also high on work life and completely over the initially crushing blow of a delayed academic career.

Let this be a lesson to you:  Crushed self-esteem can be repaired in mere days (even if you work in an arguably toxic environment), and maybe those economics courses weren’t a total waste of time after all!

Season 5 Episode 1: Anger with Love

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Welcome to Season 5, officially the latter half of Growing Pains series run.  Are you excited? You should be, because we are picking up right where we left off at the end of Season 4–with Mike’s proposal to Julie.

And wouldn’t you know it, she says yes!

And wouldn’t you also know that despite Maggie and Jason having hired Julie as a nanny, which means that they trusted her enough to care for one of their children, and also despite paying for her to join them on a cruise, they are both not at all thrilled with this engagement. In fact, Maggie is, and I quote, “not letting some blond” take her darling son away from her, and also at one point refers to Julie as a “scheming hussy.”

I should also point out that Maggie is also blond…which, I mean, I guess you can judge people with the same hair color as you if you want, but it seems questionable.

Anyway, this whole episode turns into Maggie and Jason attempting to talk Mike and Julie out of their engagement, mostly through trying to make marriage sound like the hardest and worst thing ever. Again, given that they married young and are still happily married in the show, this seems a questionable approach.

First, Maggie and Jason have Julie and Mike over for dinner, serving them weenies and beans, because they want Mike and Julie to know that’s all they’ll be able to afford as a young married couple. Jason also comes armed with a multi-page questionnaire designed to show Mike and Julie how little thought they’ve given to things like how they’ll make money and where they’ll live. Except Mike and Julie have given thought to all these things.

If you’re keeping score, so far it’s Maggie and Jason: 0 points. Julie and Mike: 1 point.

Exactly twenty-four hours later, Maggie has come up with another plan which involves having Jason take Mike out for dinner to talk him out of getting married, while Maggie meets with Julie to talk her out of marriage. And by “talk her out of marriage”, I mean that Maggie planned to fire Julie. Yikes. Maggie’s really a got a mean streak in her. She even went so far as to call her parents into town to take over Julie’s nanny duties. In fact, it’s Maggie’s father Ed who accidentally spills the beans on this plan…to Julie’s face…which makes things very, very awkward, and which also ruins Maggie’s plan.

The new score: Maggie and Jason: still 0 points. Mike and Julie: 2 points.

Now Maggie’s parents get in on the action. Except they’re not against Mike and Julie getting married, which really infuriates Maggie to no end. Through a bunch of reverse psychology, they eventually help Maggie see that she’s acting just like her own parents did when she got engaged to Jason. And, like most of us, as soon as Maggie sees she’s acting just like her parents, she backs down.

In the end, Maggie and Jason are still not at all pleased about the engagement, but they’ve agreed that they won’t stand in their way.

The final tally: Maggie and Jason: 0 points. Mike and Julie: 3 points.

Hold onto your hats, it looks like we’ve got yet another Growing Pains wedding on the horizon!

Season 4 In a Nutshell

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In a nutshell

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

What we Learned This Season

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

Best Episodes

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

Worst Episodes

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

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

Season 4 Episode 22: The Love Boat Part II

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Thank you for patiently waiting for Part II of this fourth season finale. If you want a deep dive into Part I, you can find it here. Alternatively, the quick and dirty recap is as follows:

  • Wally and Irma’s relationship and wedding are on shaky ground after Jason presented Irma with a pre-nuptial, sparking all sorts of conflict
  • Maggie and Jason are fighting because Jason ruined Wally and Irma’s relationship
  • Mike and Julie are on the rocks because Mike was a jerk and chose twenty Swedish gymnasts over his date with Julie

We pick up in Part II with Maggie tossing Jason out of their cabin to make room for Irma, because she’s no longer keen to share tight quarters with Wally after their fight. Jason is still denying that he played any part in Wally and Irma’s breakup, but he acquiesces to leave Irma and Maggie to their slumber party. Out in the hallway, he runs into Wally. Now, all the way through Irma and Wally’s relationship, I’ve been pro-Wally but then he goes and challenges Jason to a fistfight and I have to question my allegiance. Is there anything more ridiculous than an octogenarian challenging a middle aged man to a fistfight on a cruise ship?

Ugh.

Meanwhile, Mike is trying to make up with Julie, but in a way that’s rarely effective: by telling Julie she should be thrilled that he was “willing to give up” all those Swedish women who were hot for him, just to be with her. Julie is about as impressed as one would expect. It seems Mike and Julie might be dunzo.

Or not, because Julie returns to the cabin she’s sharing with Carol, all down and out, and Carol helps her see that Mike really is being such an ass because he loves her so much. First of all, this means Carol’s figured out Julie and Mike are dating, which totally gets glazed over and thus plays out like a plot twist purely for convenience. More annoyingly, this whole “he’s acting like a jerk because he doesn’t know how to handle his love for you” is something men have been getting away with for way too long. Does anyone buy this line anymore?

While all of this is happening, Mike is confiding in his father, who is understandably shocked that he had no idea Mike and Julie were dating. Jason then rambles on at length about parents needing kids’ approval and kids needing their parents’ approval and honestly I couldn’t follow how this related to either of their situations. But in the end he’d somehow convinced Mike to grovel to get Julie back, and also realized that he was the cause of Wally and Irma’s fight.

Now, in rapid succession:

  • Jason rushes to repair Irma and Wally’s relationship, and we see that Irma sleeps in the skimpiest nightgowns I’ve ever seen on a grandma (photographic proof below)
  • Irma sees the light and then allows Mike and Jason to lower her down over the side of the ship so she can make up with Wally through his porthole. Surely cruise ships wouldn’t make such options accessible to their passengers?
  • Wally and Irma make up and decide they are getting married. RIGHT NOW. Like, in the middle of the night. The best part of this is that the cruise ship staff are totally game for this. They really must be the most upbeat, customer-oriented people on the planet.
  • The Swedish gymnasts inexplicably crash the wedding because what are they doing on an upper deck in the middle of the night in their pajamas? Is this something that frequently occurs on cruises?
  • Mike and Julie, quite rudely, make up and confess their love for one another while Irma and Wally are saying their vows.

It’s a bit of a hot mess of a wedding, but I guess all that matters is that everyone who arrived on the cruise in love are leaving still in love. What a love boat it is.

But we are not even done yet, because the big cliffhanger of a season 4 finale happens in the final seconds: not only does Mike tell his entire family that he and Julie have been dating, but he also proposes to Julie right then and there! OMG, this is our first Growing Pains cliffhanger and I am ever-so-thankful that we are not watching this in real time, when we’d have to wait until the Fall season to find out what happens. Through the magic of it being thirty years later, you’ll find out in a measly two weeks when I return with the Season 5 premiere.

Are you already abuzz with excitement?

Join me next week for the Season 4 In a Nutshell recap. Until then, stay safe everyone!

Season 4 Episode 21: The Love Boat (Part I)

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We have another Growing Pains two-parter that is also an on-location episode and a season finale to boot. Yeehaw! If you’re counting, that’s a triple threat to kick off this post.

There is a bit of a preface on this episode, though, and that it is that it takes place on a cruise ship. I think it’s best if we compartmentalize all the recent and disastrous health crises on cruise ships. Instead, let’s take a trip down memory lane to the early 90s, a time when cruises were–for some, at least–the height of indulgent and relaxing vacation life. Personally, the idea of being stuck on a ship for days on end has never appealed to me, but one thing I’ve learned is that cruise lovers love their cruises and you don’t f— with that love for cruises!

Okay, so why the cruise? Well, because Jason’s mother, Irma, and her fiance, Wally, first met on a cruise. And they thought it would be hella romantic to tie the knot on the very same ship on which their love first bloomed. That means that all the Seavers are setting sail, including Julie. Because even though we have barely seen her character in recent episodes, particularly performing the nanny duties for which she is presumably still employed, she is a) still secretly dating Mike and b) apparently so indispensable to the Seaver family that they simply cannot leave her behind. All aboard for this oceanic adventure!

Pretty much all the Seavers seem excited about the cruise and the wedding. Mike and Julie are pumped to have some private romantic time…on a ship full of people. Ben just thinks everything is fun because he’s twelve. And Carol, well Carol doesn’t seem to have a strong opinion, actually, but given that her boyfriend just passed away I’ll take that as about as enthusiastic as she can be.  The only notable exception is Jason, who has still not warmed up to Wally despite the fact that, by all other accounts, Wally seems like a pretty nice guy.

And so, we end up with lots of troubling family dynamics and then, in true Growing Pains fashion, some ridiculous sub-plots:

  • Jason is in such a tizzy about his mom’s wedding that he presents her with a prenuptial agreement, which Irma takes about as well as you’d expect.
  • Ben meets the entire Stockholm gymnastics team and somehow they are all thrilled to hang out with a twelve year old boy even though they are clearly considerably older.
  • Mike and Julie are sneaking around, but not at all subtly because they’re kissing and holding onto each other in hallways and on ship decks as though they’re not constantly surrounded by people. Also Julie drops the L word on Mike so they are clearly more of a big deal than you would guess from the amount of screen time Julie gets. But then Mike goes and messes it up by choosing to play water polo with the Stockholm gymnasts instead of meeting Julie for their sunset date. Julie catches him getting a massage from four blonds, and basically tells Mike maybe they shouldn’t date anymore. Ouch.
  • Carol organizes a bachelorette party that even includes a stripper. Kudos to Carol for somehow scoping out a stripper on a cruise ship. Maggie is appalled but Irma’s super into it. The lady’s sassy.
  • At the wedding rehearsal, all hell breaks loose when Jason tries to apologize for the prenup but then basically calls Wally a “gold digger on a pension”. Wally loses his temper with Jason, and then Irma picks a fight with Wally, and before you know it they’re both questioning whether they should be getting married after all. Yikes.

So at the end of what I believe is only one day at sea, everyone’s in a funk about something: Jason about Wally, Irma about Jason and Wally, Wally about Jason and Irma, Maggie about Jason, Julie about Mike, and Mike about Julie. Only little Ben is happy, and that’s because four Swedish blonds were rubbing him down with sunscreen at night. Oh, and probably Carol is happy too because she got to see a male exotic dancer.

Even though there was a lot going on in this episode, if you ask me the best part of it was actually that Mike is sporting pleated khaki shorts and a long-sleeved mock turtleneck. On a tropical cruise. I’d like to say that would’ve been a choice look in the early 90s, but sadly I remember the early 90s well and, even then, that was not fashion forward . I don’t know what to blame for Mike’s fashion choice, but I can assure you it’s not the early 90s’ fault.

Stay tuned for part II!

Season 4 Episode 20: Second Chance

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

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

Until they’re not looking up.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Season 4 Episode 19: Show Ninety. Who Knew?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Season 4 Episode 18: The Recruiter

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Season 4 Episode 17: Double Standard

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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