Tag: humour

Season 4 Episode 22: The Love Boat Part II

On By InMyBackyardIn Season 41 Comment

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 1 Episode 18: Reputation

On By InMyBackyardIn Season 14 Comments

Mike is “doing his homework”, which mostly involves air drumming with a pencil and trying to put historical facts into musical lyrics. Actually that latter approach is a pretty sound method for improving recall, but Jason doesn’t approve of any of this. He wants Mike to really apply himself to studying, maybe not just squeak through American History. And Mike better listen, or he might be staring summer school in the face. Well there’s a threat to kick off an episode!

Either Jason’s pep talk worked or Mike is really terrified by the prospect of summer school because he’s enlisted Carol’s help to prepare for his test. You can tell Carol thinks he’s a lost cause, but she still offers him some study tips, and something she says really seems to give Mike a brilliant idea, but we’re not quite sure what’s up his sleeve yet…

The next morning, Mike is simply way too excited about his history test. Good thing Ben is on detective duty without even knowing it, because he’s discovered why Mike is so pumped for this test, which is that Mike’s written all his history notes on the bottom of his shoes. And all of us viewers are saying a collective ‘don’t do it, Mike, don’t do it!’ But there’s no stopping Mike when it comes to getting into trouble.

But the surprise turn of events is that when Mike goes to take the test, he’s shocked when actually doesn’t need all those facts on his shoes. He actually knows the answers, which we can tell is a first for him. As it turns out, when you spend all night meticulously writing historical facts on the soles of your shoes, you’re actually studying and, in Mike’s case, it was without even trying.  And wouldn’t you know it but Mike ends up with the highest grade in the class! This should be cause for celebration but for one important fact: no one believes in Mike.

Mr. Dewitt is instantly leery of Mike’s stellar test performance, but he has no evidence to support his suspicions. That is, until Mike feels the need to gloat, during which he really puts his foot in his mouth, or rather puts his feet up on his desk. Mr. Dewitt now has the smoking gun he was looking for. Oh, Mike.

I have to go on a brief tangent here because this episode marks the arrival of Mr. Dewitt, who plays Mike’s history teacher in this episode, but also appears in a total of 13 episodes, and at some point is promoted to principal. I am over the moon excited because Mr. Dewitt has to be one of my favourite teacher/principal characters ever (second maybe only to Mr. Feeny of Boy Meets World fame), and he’s definitely my absolute favourite principal/teacher character of the sardonic variety. Thank you for indulging me, and we can now return to the episode at hand.

Mike tries to convince everyone that he didn’t cheat but Eddie and Boner laugh in his face, proving once again that they may be the worst friends ever. Carol also laughs in Mike’s face because she cannot imagine a world in which Mike could potentially be as intelligent as she is. Mr. Dewitt won’t even hear him out because he saw the proof for himself. Then the real icing on the cake is that Maggie and Jason don’t even believe him, and if anyone should believe Mike, it should be his own parents, right? It’s very clear that no one believes in Mike’s abilities, and that’s got to take a toll on you at that age, or at any age for that matter.

It’s at this point I am very, very triggered by this situation, not in and of itself but as symptomatic of larger societal tendencies. This is a small-scale but still infuriating example of the injustices that can occur when we define people by their past actions, as if they are not capable of ever showing up differently. This is why people give up fighting for justice when the world’s given up on them. How do you prove to someone that you can be different when their mind is already made up? What a dark place that would be to live in. Seriously, can you imagine that? This is exactly where Mike’s at, because he can’t believe that no one’s got his back and, eventually, he simply resigns himself to the fact that he’s going to be falsely accused of this crime.  Okay, I’ll get off my soapbox now.

Back at school, it’s time for Mike and his parents to await a discussion and likely punishment from Mr. Dewitt. As they’re waiting for him to arrive, the Jason Seaver I know and love returns at long last because he finally starts to wonder if maybe Mike’s total and utter surrender to the fact that no one will ever believe him is a sign that he didn’t actually cheat.  He works some parental magic by stating a bunch of historical inaccuracies to see if Mike will correct them, which of course he does and, holy crap, Jason now sees Mike’s been telling the truth all along. And now he will fight to the death to restore Mike’s honour.

Okay, that was melodramatic. Really, he’ll just advocate for Mike like a normal parent, and that’s enough because Mr. Dewitt is a man reasonable enough to allow Mike one more opportunity to prove he didn’t cheat. How will he do that? Well, he’ll let Mike retake the test, of course. Only this time there’ll be nowhere to hide the answers because Mike is going to have to take the test in his skivvies. Aside from the obvious issues with requiring a student to strip down to his underwear, at least Mike is able to prove that he’s capable of more, and that we cannot confine people to narrow boxes based on their past behaviours. And that is a lesson we all benefit from learning.

At the end of this episode, I am left wondering:

  • Wouldn’t it have been super painfully obvious if Mike had cheated off the bottom of his shoes? It would not be easy to read those notes without some serious contortion.
  • Will Maggie and Jason accept this A as an anomaly or has Mike now reset their expectations of him to do better all the time? It’s a slippery slope showing your potential!
  • Why is Mike friends with Eddie and Boner? Because it seems like they’re consistently jerks towards him. Or is this how teenage dudes form their relationships?

Season 1 Episode 3: Jealousy

On By InMyBackyardIn Season 1Leave a comment

Yet another episode kicks off with the backstory narration (the exact same one as the pilot and second episodes). Really, 80s sitcom viewers? I know we couldn’t binge watch back in the day, but surely the concept behind Growing Pains was not so complicated nor progressive that we couldn’t figure it out on our own just from watching!

In this episode, Maggie has a lead on a big story about contaminated water and it’s really taking her time away from Jason and he really doesn’t like it. And he really, really doesn’t like Maggie’s partner on the story, because he’s a man, and calls Maggie “Mags”, and all of this seems very threatening to Jason despite the fact that he and Maggie can otherwise not keep their hands off each other.  At any rate, Maggie’s working relationship with Fred is really throwing Jason off his game.

Maggie, of course, notices that Jason is jealous and confronts him about it…or, rather, laughs at him about it. In my experience, laughing at someone’s darker emotions almost never helps, and this time is no different. Spurred by his jealousy, Jason decides it’s a good idea to go to Maggie’s office in person and late at night, just to “ask her what Ben should do for his science project”. Even the kids know this isn’t cool and try to talk him out of it, but there’s no stopping the Jason Seaver jealousy freight train.

Karma has a funny way of rearing its head, though. Jason shows up at Maggie’s office, but instead of walking in like a normal person, he decides to creep along the glass like an intruder. Of course, Maggie and Fred then assume he is an intruder, perhaps one of the contaminated water goons, and Fred kicks the door open into Jason’s face.

Maggie and Jason then hash it out in her office (the first time this season an issue is not resolved in the Seaver family kitchen!). It turns out Maggie spent 15 years being jealous of Jason going to work in his “sexy psychiatrist sweaters” and so she has little time or patience for Jason’s jealousy. I think this was her attempt at empathy, but for me it fell a bit flat.  Jason, being a psychiatrist and all, quickly levels up his self-awareness and sees how he’s been overreacting.  Within minutes, all is well in the Seaver’s marriage once again.

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

  • Seriously, when will Ben or Carol get a meaningful storyline? Ben had a pretty weak science project storyline in this one, but Carol had nothing at all. To be fair, Mike’s storyline in this one is pretty marginal as well, so I suppose it was at least equitable amongst the kids this time around.
  • Is Fred a 1980s silver fox? I wouldn’t have thought so, but Jason was so jealous that I’m questioning my understanding of the 1980s male aesthetic. Fred did have a Tom Selleck kind of mustache going on…
  • Is there such a thing as a sexy psychiatrist sweater?
  • What happened with Maggie’s story? I kind of wanted to know whether they blew the roof off the story and caught the jerks poisoning the water, but we are left hanging. I know, I know, it’s a sitcom and the newspaper story was entirely secondary but honestly it was one of the most interesting things going on.  

Season 1 Episode 2: Springsteen

On By InMyBackyardIn Season 1Leave a comment

Growing Pains wasted no time in reminding us of the show’s premise to kick off the second episode, leading me to wonder if there was a big gap between the pilot air date and the rest of the episodes, or whether 80s viewers just had particularly bad retention.

Here’s the gist of this episode: Mike is on a mission to score Springsteen tickets the night before the big concert, which of course means the concert is already sold out. We watch Mike answer phone call after phone call (on a corded phone! Oh, nostalgia!), but all to no avail. These tickets are hard to come by, which makes sense because this would’ve been Bruce’s heyday, but also because he waited until the last day to try to get his hands on tickets.  But I get it, because I saw Springsteen in Jersey well past his heyday and he still rocked out for over three hours. Mike knew he would be in for a killer show if he could just get his hands on those damn tickets.  

Thankfully Jason totally gets it, too, and manages to get his hands on 7th row tickets. It is unclear how, though I suspect scalpers would’ve been the only realistic option.  The catch: Mike has to go to the concert with his dad. I guess to a 15 year old, this may be the epitome of uncool, and I probably would have felt that way at that age too, but at the ripe old age of 40 I can’t help but feel like it’s really NBD to go to a concert with your dad. This, of course, is the gift of hindsight, which Mike doesn’t yet have. So instead he swears his friends to secrecy and begrudgingly goes to the concert with his dad.

Wouldn’t you know it, but they have an absolutely fantastic time together, because Mike and his dad actually like each other (and because going to a concert with your parents is NBD). Then tragedy strikes and Mike and his dad are interviewed by the tri-state news while leaving the concert.  The jig is up and everyone at school is going to know Mike is super lame for going to a concert with his dad. Mike’s high school social game is about to be dead in the water.  Personally, I think it would’ve been okay if Jason hadn’t both air drummed and kissed Mike repeatedly on the cheek on camera. I’ll be honest, I would’ve run from the cameras after that, too.

Naturally, Mike’s friends are insufferable after this incident. I mean, I was super pumped that Eddie and Boner made their first appearance in this episode…until they started being, well, Eddie and Boner. Mike has to don a really poor disguise just to get through the school day.

Jason eventually recognizes that maybe he went a bit over the top, and he and Mike have the requisite heart to heart (in the kitchen, of course) to make things right. To top it off, Alan Thicke PICKS KIRK CAMERON UP. Now, I know Kirk Cameron was super skinny as a young teenager, but the move still strikes me as one that would require a hell of a lot of strength. Alan Thicke was underappreciated in so many ways.

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

  • When do Carol and Ben get some decent storylines?  So far they’ve been relegated to the background. It’s the Mike show. Carol had a small animal rights storyline where she tried to foil her mom’s plan to trap and kill attic mice, and poor Ben got zilch in the storyline department.   
  • When will an issue be solved outside of the kitchen? Perhaps I should start a count of episodes during which the major conflicts are resolved and/or heart-to-hearts happen in the kitchen.
  • Does anyone else find that, although the heart to heart moments are a little on the cheesy-sitcom-moment side, you also sort of wish that your family had communicated like that?

Season 1 Episode 1: Pilot

To be honest, I don’t think I ever really liked Growing Pains’ first season, so I was sort of dreading these first 22 episodes. In perhaps a case of lowered expectations making reality better than it is, the pilot episode wasn’t nearly as bad as I remembered.

Before we really get started, can we just take a moment to respect the Growing Pains theme song? I mean, it’s still pretty catchy, and it was performed by legitimate singers. It might actually be the best part of the episode, and is most definitely the most nostalgic part of the show for me.

Right off the bat, I’m struck by the episode’s first minute, which is essentially a narrated backstory. Maggie’s gone back to work after 15 years, and Jason has transplanted his psychiatric practice into the home so he can be there to support the kids. This kind of protracted context-setting would never fly in today’s television. Spending precious moments just explaining the Seaver family dynamic would surely alienate today’s viewers. Besides, the premise is just not that complicated.

Here’s the gist of the episode: We kick off at breakfast time in the Seaver kitchen, where Jason and Maggie are ultra frisky in front of their kids about which I am not sure how I feel. On the one hand, it’s a little off-putting to me watching as an adult. On the other hand, maybe they’re actually setting a good example for their kids about healthy emotional expression, and the fact that passion doesn’t need to fade in marriages. Either way, I am most definitely giving this 100% too much deep thought.

Here’s what we’re working with in this episode: Ben is sad because his mom has gone back to work and he misses having her at home. Carol isn’t really doing much of anything. Mike wants to go to an under 20 club, delightfully named ‘House of Sweat’, and his mom doesn’t want him to go.  Mike pleads his case (he needs more freedom) and Jason caves (after Mike commits to giving him more responsibility in exchange for freedom). This seems like it will somehow go wrong.

And it does.

Mike is, in fact, not ready for responsibility because he winds up in jail after side-swiping a police car in the House of Sweat parking lot. This is further complicated by the fact that he doesn’t actually have a driver’s license.  My own take is that Mike was actually kind of being responsible because his friend was drunk and therefore unable to drive . It’s just unclear to me how his friend became quite so intoxicated at an under 20 club. Tiny, insignificant detail.

Jason, predictably, is none too pleased with Mike’s irresponsibility.  But the ever-so-slight plot twist is that Jason is actually more upset with himself because he really wants to have a trusting and open relationship with his son and he feels that’s been violated. Whoa. That’s actually pretty deep for 80s sitcom fare. They work it all out, though, and in the kitchen, which based on this episode is where the Seavers spend approximately 95% of their time.

The episode then ends on a totally bizarre note (in my opinion) because Jason is attempting to show his son that he still has moments where he does ‘dumb stuff’ by MOONING HIM. Thankfully it’s Maggie who walks into the kitchen because I am not sure how I feel about a father mooning his son.

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

  • Was Jason really mad that Mike violated his trust or was it actually because Mike’s arrest interfered with his champagne-and-satin-sheets plans with Maggie that night?
  • Was Growing Pains more religious than I remember? Maggie references original sin, which I can’t imagine cropping up in casual sitcom conversations these days.
  • Do kids get grounded anymore? Mike was grounded for two months and, maybe because I was never really grounded, this seems both excessive and nearly impossible to actually enforce.
  • Are holding cells actually located right in the middle of police stations? Are they always full of heavily tattooed but relatively harmless men who gruffly ask the newcomer “what are you in for?”
  • Is it all appropriate to even attempt to moon your own kid?
  • Are Maggie and Jason too racy for family sitcoms? Do they need to tone it down in front of their kids?
  • Is the Growing Pains theme song just really the best television theme song ever? Forget this question. I already know the answer, and it is a resounding yes.

So many questions left answered. Thankfully we have another 21 episodes this season to wade through these and other questions. The journey is just beginning my friends.

 

On By InMyBackyardIn Season 11 Comment