Tag: sitcom

Season 3 Episode 16: State of the Union

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Season 3 Episode 10: This is Your Life

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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 3 Episode 5: Michaelgate

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Another week, another episode recap coming your way! Likely, you can tell from the episode title that this one is going to feature Michael…and potentially a scandal, which tend to go hand in hand. Let’s get right to it!

I am already in heaven because mere minutes into the episode, Principal Dewitt is making an actual appearance. Not just his voice over the school PA system like the last few times, but in person. This tells me it’s gonna be a good one.

Anyway, Principal Dewitt is hauling Mike out of class, and Mike is already apologizing for all manner of things he may have done to warrant being pulled out of class by the principal. But colour everyone shocked, including Principal Dewitt, because Mike isn’t in trouble! In fact, he’s been selected by the student nomination committee to be a candidate for student body president, which is quite an honour in the high school world. Principal Dewitt doesn’t understand how this has happened, and he seems to be wracking his brain trying to figure out how to keep Mike out of office.

But is it even within Principal Dewitt’s power to stop this train once it’s in motion? I think that’s what we’re about to find out today.

But first, we get to see the Seaver family’s reaction to this news.  I’m once again appalled by the way that Mike’s parents fail to see him as capable of anything of substance. Maggie, in particular, is at a loss for words on how Mike possibly could’ve been nominated for high school president. Come on, Maggie, it’s only high school. Anyone can be nominated for high school politics and isn’t it really just a popularity contest anyway? Most importantly, when will Mike’s family start to have any sort of faith in him?

I should be clear that, at first, Mike isn’t thrilled about the nomination either. He’s worried he’s going to lose the party guy status that he’s so carefully cultivated. Oh, Mike. But then he gets a call from some girls in his class, girls that wouldn’t normally call him, and girls who are are “willing to do anything” to help him with his campaign. Mike’s starting to see the perks of his candidacy. Mike Seaver, Presidential Candidate, suddenly has a pretty nice ring to it.

It seems like the very next day after the nominations are announced, the candidates are tasked with speaking about their platforms. One has to wonder when they would’ve had time to prepare, but I suppose that’s just me overthinking a sitcom yet again. Anyway, by all accounts Mike is up against some sort of wunderkind of a perfect student. Still, Mike’s going to give it his all in the only way he knows how: with cheerleaders and brutal honesty. That’s right, Mike’s address features the world’s least coordinated cheerleaders and basically amounts to asking students to vote for him despite everything they know of him. I have to say, it’s the most refreshingly honest political speech ever made, and I’d probably vote for Mike because at least what you see is what you get.

Mike’s opponent, however, is hell bent on taking Mike down, and he’s got the three-piece suit/mullet combination to prove it. Also his name is Robert Jordan, and I firmly believe you cannot trust a man with a first name as a last name.  At first, Mike takes Robert’s criticism in good stead; Mike knows he’s the underdog here. But when Robert points out that Mike is such a joke that even Carol, his very own sister, isn’t supporting him, it’s way too below the belt. Mike suddenly realizes just how little everyone thinks of him (and my heart hurts for him in this moment). It’s then and there he decides to prove to his classmates that he is just as passionate about his high school as Robert Jordan, even if he doesn’t have a mullet or three piece suit.

When Carol is publicly outed as anti-Mike Seaver, she chastises her friend Ritchie for letting it happen, and it’s unclear to me how Ritchie had anything to do with that, but no matter. Also, Ritchie, if you recall, appeared several times earlier in the series but then disappeared for probably the last season, only to reappear in this episode seemingly only as a helpful plot device. At any rate, Ritchie spills a really big secret: Mike’s nomination for class president was actually rigged by Robert Jordan to up his odds of winning. Mike was deemed “the perfect loser” as a popular but not-taken-seriously student. Carol is shocked but I am not, because I knew Robert Jordan wasn’t a name to be trusted!

Mike is now determined to be taken more seriously, to the point that he even asks his mom to critique his next speech. When Maggie reads his speech, she’s touched, because Mike has painted himself as an everyman, and moreover as an everyman willing to admit his failings while still conveying his love for Dewey High. Maggie is so impressed that she actually hasn’t a stitch of critical feedback and, if you’ve been watching this show as much as I have, you know how rare that is. Mike is feeling pretty good about things…until Carol walks in.

Carol is about to tell Mike about the nominating committee scam, but Mike is so angry at her and adamant that he can win that she ends up keeping the news to herself. Not cool, Carol.

Now, in what may be the most efficient election ever, it’s already election day and the returns are coming in. Robert Jordan is winning by a landslide and Mike is legit bummed. But then things start looking up, because suddenly the upper classman votes are in and the numbers for Mike are looking pretty darn good. And then Mr. Dewitt gets to deliver the final results: Mike has staged the biggest upset in Dewey High history!

If you’re thinking this has been too easy, you’re right!

No sooner are the Seavers in full-blown celebratory mode than Mr. Dewitt shows up at the Seaver residence. You know it’s serious when a principal goes to a student’s house…and, also, that’s really strange, right?  Mike assumes it’s something he’s done but for once it’s not because Carol quickly admits to Mike that she rigged the election by hacking into the computer system so that Mike would win. Whoa, Carol, that’s very un-you! Even though it’s a shot to Mike’s ego that he didn’t really win, he’s super touched that his sister would do that for him.

Mike is so touched, in fact, that he tries to take the fall for Carol’s scandal but he makes it very clear to his parents and Mr. Dewitt that he lacks the know-how to hack into a computer and manipulate results. Busted. But then Mike has to accept responsibility for the scandal in front of the whole school anyway, which seems unfair, but don’t worry because Robert Jordan can’t be president either because he attempted to interfere with the election process too. So with Mike and Robert Jordan both out of the running, guess who gets to be president? Somehow, some way, with a lack of logic that I cannot even attempt to comprehend, Boner ends up being class president. Lord help Dewey High.

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

  • Would any school administrator actually make a house call for a student issue?
  • Seriously, who are these kids with three piece suits in their closets?
  • What type of electoral process would ever allow Boner to end up in office?
  • Where has Ritchie been this past season?!?!?!

Season 3 Episode 2: Aloha Part II

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And we’re back with Part II! Who else is excited to see if the Seavers can salvage some semblance of family time on this family vacation?

I have to say this episode is a little all over the place, which leads me to wonder if perhaps the show’s writers really just wanted to go to Hawaii and threw together some random ideas to sell the concept to producers. And then when their pitch actually worked, they invested no further in the episodes’ storylines. This is all conjecture on my part, of course, but it feels highly plausible. I’m going to parse this episode out into each character’s storyline because otherwise I fear this post will be about as choppy and disjointed as the episode itself.

Mike: We pick up where we left off with Mike, on his date with Melia (his Hawaiian girl). Mike is really nervous with this girl, which we take to mean that he really, really likes her. They kiss on the beach at sunset, and it’s all very lovely and (thankfully) there’s no “Swept Away” playing in the background so I’m a happy camper.

But then Melia takes Mike back to her house. She lives with her parents and half her extended family, and even though she took Mike home she never actually takes him into the house to meet anyone, so it’s a little confusing why she brought him there in the first place. But what we do find out from this illogical plot element is that Melia has a child. And not a baby. I’m talking a full-blown toddler who is at least two, but looks more like three years old.

So if you’re wondering if Mike has hooked up with an older lady, no he hasn’t. Melia is only 17, and the writers are careful to point out that she did not have her kid out of wedlock (as if we’d care), and that she’s divorced now and raising this kid alone. I suppose in the late 80s, it would have been way too scandalous to have a single mother character this young who’d had a kid without being married? This isn’t me judging, because stuff happens, but I do wonder if you can actually get married legally at the age of 14, maybe 15, because this is the age at which Melia would’ve had to have been married for this timeline to make sense (fact check: Google tells me that you cannot).

Anyway, Mike is really thrown off by this, because he’s used to being the only kid in a relationship and now he sees that Melia isn’t just a girl, she’s a woman. He seeks counsel from Jason, who prompts Mike to consider that perhaps it’s not such a bad thing that he’s interested in a girl who’s so responsible. Mike isn’t so sure if he agrees. He’s got some thinking to do.

Carol: Carol has spent the entire evening waiting for Bobby’s call. Bobby, it appears, has not called at his designated time for this entire trip, and she is done with sitting around hoping he finally calls. Carol Seaver waits for no man. She decides she’s going to spend the rest of the trip lounging poolside with the brainy bellhop kid. I mean, bellhop boy likes books just as much as she does, and he’s going to Yale, whereas Bobby can’t even manage to call at a pre-established time.

Carol makes her way to the pool the next day to seek out her bellhop and they have a grand time talking about books, and bellhop kid is in the midst of oiling up Carol’s scantily clad body when Bobby shows up in Hawaii to surprise her.  It turns out that Bobby hadn’t been calling because he’d been working overtime so he could afford to fly out to surprise Carol, and I have to assume it would’ve taken every single penny the kid has ever earned to make this possible. And then Carol is actually still mad at him for not calling.

Bobby is also mad, because he’s caught Carol in a fairly compromising position. He doesn’t like this bellhop kid one bit, and so he tosses him right into the pool. While normally I’m not one for violence, tossing someone into a pool has a comedic element that makes me 100% okay with it. I mean, the bellhop kid was in a bathing suit and likely hot from laying around in the Hawaiian sun so Bobby basically did him a favour by cooling him off. Carol, of course, doesn’t see it that way and storms off. What a way to treat a guy who just flew across the country to see you, Carol. Will they work things out? Stay tuned.

Maggie and Jason: Maggie has finally filed her story and now she’s ready to fully dive into family vacation mode. Or is she? No sooner has she sent in her story than it goes national, which leads to an opportunity for a follow up piece. This is exciting stuff! Except that it also means that Maggie will have to fly home pretty much immediately to interview sources for the next story. Poor Jason, who finally thought he was going to get the family vacation of his dreams, resigns himself to the fact that he’s going to spend his last few days in Hawaii alone.

Or is he? Stay tuned!

Ben: I have no idea where Ben is this entire episode, because apparently his parents are 100% cool with him frolicking around the island completely unsupervised.

The Big Luau: The episode culminates at the luau, which may or may not be the final night of the Seaver family vacation, but regardless seems to be the big family event that Jason was most looking forward to. So it’s a pretty sad moment when Jason has to cancel the reservation because Maggie is gone, the kids are all AWOL and he can’t stomach a luau alone.

Except he won’t be. First, Ben returns from his horseback riding adventure and is so high on life in Hawaii that he begs Jason to take him to the luau. Now Jason has a luau buddy and calls to reinstate his reservation. Seaver, party of two.

Then, on their way to the luau, they stumble across poor Bobby, who apparently has been sulking under a palm tree all day since Carol blew him off.  So they bring Bobby along to the luau. Jason’s troupe is steadily growing.

And then Carol shows up at the luau, because she’s not going to let Bobby ruin her vacation. She and Bobby have it out right then and there and it turns out that Bobby was jealous and afraid of losing Carol, and Carol’s always been afraid of losing Bobby, and it’s really the most quickly resolved lover’s quarrel in history because now they’re back together and happy again. Oh, to be sixteen.

Then Mike shows up.  Jason’s got almost his entire family! The big shocker is that Mike has brought Melia’s daughter along with him, because somehow even though they’ve known each other only a couple days, Melia has entrusted Mike with taking care of his child (???). So what we learn is that Mike chose love over his fear of being with a real woman, and Melia seems to have sparked within him some sort of desire to be a better man. Jason seems so impressed by this that he’s totally overlooked how strange it is that Mike is babysitting a child he barely knows.

And then, good God, Maggie shows up! And get this: she’s quit her job! During her layover, she decided that family comes first and that she wasn’t going back to Long Island. Only when she told her editor this, the editor gave her quite the ultimatum: either get back to Long Island now, or don’t bother coming back at all. So Maggie up and quit. Whoa. When your family’s just spent got knows how much on a 10 day vacation in Hawaii, it seems like It seems like the absolute wrong time to quit your job, but…family first?

No matter, Jason has his entire family together so it’s a happy ending, right? Wrong! Because guess what’s back? “Swept Away” is back, and it plays for well over a full minute, during which we’re subjected to a montage of all the Seavers kissing their significant others while Ben films them like a little creeper, and then a flashback to all the moments of their magical Hawaiian vacation. This song, this song for which I now have even more of a dislike than I did in the 80s, is playing the entire time. Do you all understand how this ruins the entire episode?

The verdict: this is a two-part, on-location episode fail as far as I’m concerned. I’m definitely ready to say aloha to this one.

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

  • Was some member of Growing Pains staff best friends with Christopher Cross because why else would would we have to listen to so much of this song?
  • What kind of ending was this because absolutely nothing got sorted out? Like where is Bobby staying while he’s in Hawaii? What will Mike and Melia do now that he’s leaving?
  • Where was Ben for the first 85% of this episode?

Season 3 Episode 1: Aloha Part I

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Welcome, friends, welcome. We are boldly stepping into Season 3 where we kick off with not only a two-parter, but also a two-parter filmed on location. It really feels like a show has established itself when cast and crew are sent off to somewhat exotic locations for multi-part episodes, doesn’t it?

As you may have guessed from the episode title, the Seaver family is vacationing in Maui. Aloha indeed! You would think that the Seaver clan would be thrilled about this because, hello, it’s Hawaii. But you would be wrong. Because aside from Jason and Ben, no one actually wants to be there. Say what?

At the start of the episode, the entire family is out at sea, on a boat that has apparently broken down quite far off the coast. Naturally, we can see why the family is upset about this, because being stranded asea would be a little panic-inducing if you ask me. But that’s not why they’re actually mad.  To find out why, we must endure a series of flashbacks, through which we learn:

  • Jason, bless his soul, had presented his family with two options for the annual Seaver family vacation: Disneyworld or Maui. I mean, this is just another example of Jason’s awesomeness because those are both really outstanding vacation options, and clearly signs that the Seavers are doing okay in life.
  • No one wants to go…except for Ben.
  • Carol is bummed because she won’t be able to spend any time with Bobby even though we have heard nothing about Bobby in 8 whole episodes.
  • Mike is bummed because he wants to hang with Eddie and Boner and all I can say is really Mike?!?!?
  • Maggie has way too much going on at work because some hotshot new journalist is, in Maggie’s opinion, trying to steal her job.

Is it just me or is what we’re really seeing that a sizeable percentage of the Seaver family is pretty darn ungrateful?

Anyway, Maggie tries to convince the kids that Disneyworld is the way to go, because if they have to be “stuck on vacation”, at least Florida is only a two-hour flight in case she needs to head back to work.  She campaigns hard with the kids, and is confident she’s got their votes in the bag. But she’s forgotten about Mike.

And Mike has discovered that Hawaii is full of “hot babes” in coconut bras. Mike wages a counterwar, convincing his siblings that Maui is actually the way to go. Ben is an easy sell because at the age of 10 or 11 or whatever he is, all it takes is the promise of horse-back riding on the beach. Carol is a harder sell, but Mike convinces her if she votes for Maui she’ll get to stay home to spend time with Bobby (spoiler: he can’t deliver on this promise). Supposedly the smart one, Carol somehow still falls for this. And this is how Maui came to be.

And so, the entire family has ended up Maui, where no one has been able to shake off their negativity about the trip. Maggie has been working on her story every night from the comfort of the bathroom. Carol has wasted away her days waiting around for phone calls from Bobby. Mike, actually, has been perfectly fine, because he found his “Hawaiian hottie” within moments of landing and has been pseudo-stalking her for days. Jason has noticed that the family had been spending zero time together and, being the family man that he is, has been hell-bent on some quality family time.

This is the incredibly long backstory to how the Seavers ended up bobbing aimlessly on open waters. But before you worry that the Seavers might drift further asea, never to be found again, it turns out that there’s no real risk. Jason is actually the culprit behind the non-functional boat. He’s sabotaged what was supposed to be a short sailing trip by removing a spark plug simply so the family would be forced to spend time together.  As you would expect, this did not help matters.

Once the Seavers return safely to shore, things really far apart. Now that everyone’s disclosed their true feelings about the trip, they freely unleash their dissatisfaction in all manner of behaviours. Maggie dives right back into her work, no longer feeling the need to hide out in the bathroom. Carol is going to openly wait around for Bobby’s call, or perhaps spend time with the brainy bellhop she’s just met; it’s super unclear at this point. Ben’s going to take advantage of his new discovery: room service.  Mike’s already flown the coop to spend what’s left of the day with his Hawaiian hottie, all to the soundtrack of Christopher Cross’ “Swept Away”, which is a song I couldn’t stand even in the 80s and, in my opinion, has not held up over time.

And that leaves Jason, all alone on his way to a luau, on a family vacation in which his family is decidedly absent. Whatever will happen next? We’ll find out tomorrow!

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

  • Is Bobby just a convenient plot device for these writers because we have not heard anything about him since, like, Season 2 Episode 13?
  • Would Maggie’s job really have provided her with a laptop back in the late 80s, because I Googled what those bricks were worth back then and apparently they were $4000+ (!!!!)?
  • Will Jason somehow find a way to bring this family back together in tomorrow’s episode?
  • How many more times will I have to hear “Swept Away”? I can remember when I watched this as a child feeling like the song was overplayed and, I kid you not, in this first part alone there was a 40 second straight segment of the song. Forty seconds is an eternity when it comes to a 22 minute sitcom. And that song.

Season 2 Episode 19: The Awful Truth

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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.