Quoi de neuf, docteur ?

I still love the fantastic wit Growing Pains has! Even in reruns, this show still makes me laugh--a lot. With a talented cast like this, I'm surprised none of them made it big in Hollywood (except for you-know-who from Titanic). The Seavers were one of my favorite TV families and I was sad when the show left the air. I also loved the recent reunion movie!

Growing Pains was definitely the show to watch during the dreaded 80's. Kirk Cameron (Mike) was the heart-throb of the show, and it seriously got funnier every episode. There was not ONE THING wrong with this show, (although I did really want to see something FINALLY happen with Boner & Carol), but that's a whole other story. Best Show Ever. You know you want to admit it.

Growing Pains is one of the greatest shows of the 1980's. However, because of "The Cosby Show" and "Family Ties" and other great shows during the late 80's, the show is constantly overlooked and very underrated. The show had very good acting. It is a shame that this show is constantly overlooked when we talk about the greatest shows in the 80's

This show was one of the best shows of the eighties at its peak. From the '88-89 season on however it got worse and worse with each subsequent year, until it just collapsed by the time the early nineties arrived. Starting off a little slow but still funny, the show kicked it into overdrive during its second and third seasons ('86-87 and '87-88). Not only did it have smart, original humour based in pop culture references and 'Moonlighting' style in-jokes with the audience, but it was also touching, even if it did cross over into the realm of sappiness on occasion. The '88-89 season however brought with it a bunch of problems, Kirk Cameron's mullett style haircut the least of them. The baby was born, breaking up the show's focus on the core family. Mike graduated high school, diminishing a lot of the funny supporting characters like Boner, Eddie, Coach Lubbock, Principal Dewitt etc. They still showed up from time to time (some of them in their own series) but it wasn't the same. I know that there was no way of preventing this, but taking Mike and then eventually Carol out of this enclosed, familiar environment made the show uneven, with new characters and settings coming and going each week. Julie the babysitter, Grandma Erma, Wally, and Luke all brought nothing to the show except bad episodes.

The shift in the characters clothing from bright colorful pastels to dark earth tones was another turnoff, at least from a viewer's standpoint. Again this might be just due to the changing of the times. I think a new producer came aboard after the show sold into syndication and that's why the series got so lame from this point on. Also I heard that because of his religion, Kirk Cameron was editing the scripts to make sure they fit in with his conservative beliefs. Whatever the reason, this show went out with a whimper when it left the air in 1992, and probably totaled more years as a bad show, than I think it should have as the good one that most people remember.

After the family ties success on NBC, ABC developed Growing Pains to rival it about the Seavers with their 3 children in Long Island, New York. Nobody in this show has the New York accent but it still beats other shows. Kirk Cameron became a huge teen star in the eighties. Tracey Gold shined as the middle sister, Carol Seaver. Alan Thicke finally had a successful show in his lifetime and Joanna Kerns came out of her big sister Donna Devarona's shadows as the Growing Pains mom. The writing could have been better and the show could have equaled Family Ties but nowadays, a show like this would have got Emmys. Sure, it was sweet and full of saccharine but I miss it now.