powermandan Growing Pains is a family sitcom that deals with traditional matters that need dealing. Drinking, smoking, curfews, and others. Some episodes are sadder that deal with death in the family and suicide. The episode about teen suicide is one that there should have been more of if Growing Pains wanted to set itself apart from other shows around this time. The suicide episode was like something Diff'rent Strokes would do. That is what set it apart from others, they took risks. But there are many meaningful episodes that can come to help and really make you laugh. I know that this doesn't have very high ratings on many sites and sources, but I have a personal connection with this. I feel this is my own.Growing Pains is about the Seaver clan: Maggie (Kerns) pursues her career in journalism again while husband Jason (Thicke) does his psychiatry work at home. They have three children: girl- chasing slacker, Mike (Cameron); clever, bookworm Carol (Gold); and nutty, rambunctious Ben (Miller). By season four, Chrissy Seaver was introduced and aged very fast when Ashley Johnson was cast in the role. The character of Chrissy is one of the most recognized TV characters that age faster. Around that time, Maggie and Jason's work locations switched again with Maggie working from home and Jason having an office. One thing I like about Growing Pains is the chemistry and evolvement of the characters. The one that evolves the most is Mike. In the early seasons, he is girl-crazy, immature, and trouble making with no ambition. he eventually decides he wants to be an actor, and the episodes where he puts his plan into action show how had it is to find work as any artist. He later works as a teacher, where he takes in homeless Luke Brower (DiCaprio). Mike becoming a teacher was very unrealistic because a university degree is needed and Mike just went to community college for drama. He becomes a sophisticated and responsible young man. He totally changes from the slacker in the first few seasons. Luckily, his transition was very smooth and precise, making it realistic and admirable. This was also when he fell in love with his character's girlfriend (Noble) in real life and wound up marrying. Mike becomes Luke's guardian and father figure. The introduction of Luke alone was a good addition to the show. Tracey Gold was having health problems and her character was seen less in the last season as she attends university, and they needed a good replacement. Who better than a young Leo DiCaprio? This was before the days of Gilbert Grape and Titanic, but DiCaprio still shines in a very memorable role. Any old fan of Growing Pains knew that Leo was destined for greatness. With most seasons in the 80s and a couple in the 90s, Growing Pains is a wonderful cruise down memory lane.

kira02bit The 1980s/early 1990s were awash in fairly awful "family" sitcoms, each one more progressively dreadful. Growing Pains is a perfect example. The 1980s brought us Family Ties, a tepid family sitcom headlined and built around familiar face Meredith Baxter Birney as the mother. As often happened, the producers/network threw Birney under the bus and switched the focus to up-and-coming actor Michael J. Fox, whose Alex Keaton was supposed to be a comical caricature of greed but instead became a hero to a nation of rising greed merchants. As imitation is purportedly the sincerest form of flattery, ABC immediately followed suit with their own carbon copy - Growing Pains.This time the focus was supposed to be Alan Thicke as the dad. Thicke was a likable, if exceedingly bland personality whose late night talk show Thicke of the Night had just tanked. Joanna Kerns joined him as the second half of the perplexed, slightly liberal couple with three smart-mouthed, precocious kids (were there any other kind in sitcoms?), played by Kirk Cameron, Tracy Gold and Jeremy Miller. Much as with FT, the producers/network did not waste time to immediately shift the focus to Cameron as the eldest son, whose mischief was supposed to galvanize each episode and allow it to end with one of those tired parental chats. Also as with FT, Gold and Miller were relegated to background status in favor of the what ABC hoped would be their breakout star in Cameron.Looking back with hindsight being 20/20, Growing Pains is little more than a third rate Family Ties rip-off with a criminally overused laugh track, a dearth of actual laughs and is remembered as nothing more than the dubious starting point for current acting legend Leonardo DiCaprio, who was added in the final season to try to boost flagging ratings, and in being the source that inflicted the sublimely talentless Kirk Cameron on an unwitting nation. At one point, they tried to spin off Bill Kirchenbauer who had a recurring role as a coach into his own sitcom Just the Ten of Us, which had the distinction of being dramatically worse than Growing Pains.Watching GP now is almost unendurable with its sanitized comedy, its saccharine sweetness and its pervasive canned laughter. Thicke and Kearns try really hard, but they were never the point of this show. Even a talent like DiCaprio could not make much of a dent. The biggest problems rest with the producers and Cameron. One can easily understand them wanting to re-create Michael J. Fox's success, but the focus shifted to Fox when he proved to be a scene-stealer and then later took that charisma to the big screen. Cameron is decidedly charisma free. The writers give him all of the best lines/plots (such as they are), but he is such a proverbial lightweight that they just thud around him. Like Michael J. Fox on FT or not, he was definitely talented and charismatic - two descriptors that are not in the same area code with Cameron. A herculean effort was made to turn Cameron into a teenybopper idol, but the most remarkable thing about him is how asexual he comes off in the show. His prankster Mike is almost devoid of any sexual attraction and his acting is relegated to an arrogant, self-satisfied smirk, which seems to be tattooed across his countenance and impossible to remove.Oddly, the most interesting thing about GP is how its backstage antics seemed infinitely more fascinating than what appeared in front of the camera. The producers not only had their hands full with the impossible task of trying to make the show funny and turn Cameron, who they had doubled down on into a star (fat chance!), but they also had to cope with Cameron's fundamentalist evangelical religious tantrums, which apparently resulted in him antagonizing other cast members, his insistence on scrubbing or altogether abandoning any edgy story lines (the closest this show got to edgy humor was naming Cameron's best friend Boner), and forbidding any provocative romances on the show. In a highly publicized and controversially costly event, Julie McCullough was brought on as Cameron's on screen girlfriend and the story arc was to have them married by the end of the season. McCullough proved to be popular, but midway through the story arc Cameron discovered she had once posed nude for Playboy and demanded her immediate firing lest his virtue be compromised by working in close proximity to her (you know, girl cooties or something). Producers folded like a cheap suit and the ratings began to tank. In a frantic last ditch effort, DiCaprio was later brought in to hopefully ease the headache-inducing Cameron out the door, but the damage was done.Truthfully the series did not have an abundance to offer at that point - it did not have much from the start. The show itself never developed the following of Family Ties in repeats and is only scantly remembered by most 80s TV fans, usually with a bit of prompting. Alan Thicke begat the criminally horrid singer Robin Thicke, DiCaprio has become a big screen sensation and perennial Oscar contender and Cameron has pretty much taken the path of most grade Z talent whose undeserved time in the sun has waned - he found deeper religious conviction and appears in increasingly more preposterous, badly done Christian-produced fodder and in laughable debates trying to convince non-Christians that there is a God because a banana fits comfortably in your hand.

superstition2 As with other "family friendly" shows, the underlying theme is how propaganda is good for society. Good people are crafted by presenting a manufactured saccharine reality, rather than actual reality. I can't recall the show doing a good job of demonstrating the pitfalls of hypocrisy and other truly educational matters, unlike Family Ties.It's been a long time since I saw this, but it was similar to Full House, another show that I found unwatchable because of the bland characters and smarminess. At least Michael J. Fox brought energy as well as some reality to his show. Cameron, by contrast, is more interested in knocking cast members away and apparently lobbying against producers to prevent reality from peeking through.The show isn't awful, but when I made a short list of the weakest examples of corporate television, this show was part of it, along with Full House.

the_heartbreak_kid A Family Ties wannabe? I wouldn't hardly agree with that! The Seaver family from Growing Pains had much more character and likability for me anyways than the cast from family ties. Now I'm not trashing family ties at all.....But Growing Pains just had a much better cast in my opinion. I mean Tracey Gold? Come on. It didn't get much better than that in the late 80s and early 90s. When this show originally aired I was very young. So naturally when I caught that the show was re-running on Disney I thought hey I'm gonna check this out and hope it isn't as corny as some of the other stuff I use to watch when I was little....well much to my surprise the show holds up nicely. You actually care about the characters.