Growing Pains was not a seminal show. It’s never going to be remembered when people talk about the great family sitcoms of the last 25 or 30 years. It’s not Family Ties or even The Cosby Show, but it was, and still is, a very good family sitcom. And for that, it will always have a place in my heart. I have no shame in admitting it was one of my favorites as a kid

Growing Pains centers around the Seaver family: father Jason (Alan Thicke), mother Maggie (Joanna Kerns), and children Mike (Kirk Cameron), Carol (Tracey Gold) and Ben (Jeremy Miller). In many ways, it’s a very typical ‘80s’ family sitcom, but where it differs is in the parents. The main premise of the show had the parents deciding that Maggie should go back to work as a newspaper reporter after 15 years at home with the kids while Jason would operate his psychiatric practice out of the home so he can be with the kids. It’s a nice little twist on the standard formula and it makes for some good stories.

The Growing Pains kids were big highlights of this show. Wiseguy Mike was constantly up to new tricks and constantly using his charm to try to get himself out of trouble. Sometimes he’d succeed and sometimes he’d fail, but he was always fun to watch. Make no mistake, Kirk Cameron was the breakout star of this show and for good reason. Gold’s nerdy Carol was a typical foil for Mike’s schemes, and at least in the first season, Miller’s Ben was the cute little kid with all the intelligent punchlines. These kidswere a great bunch and their dynamic amongst both themselves and with their parents is far more entertaining than one might expect.

I don’t remember if I was a regular viewer of Growing Pains from the start, but it couldn’t have been on the air long before I was. It’s been more than 20 years now since it premiered, and while I never saw much of it in syndication, I was very much surprised that I remembered as many of these episodes as I did. This was by no means a groundbreaking or life-altering show, but it was well-written with identifiable and likable characters. I didn’t just watch this show because it was funny, which it was, I watched it because I knew and liked this family. Sure, Jason was a bit corny sometimes, but who cares? Wouldn’t you have liked him as a dad?

So Warner Home Video has given us all 22 episodes of the first season of this show and, I must say, there are some excellent shows here. Some of the highlights:

Episode 2, Springsteen - Mike desperately wants to go to the Bruce Springsteen concert and all of his attempts to get tickets fail, but then Jason comes through with tickets and they go together. They both have a great time at the show, but then Jason embarrasses Mike on a television news interview after the concert. It’s a funny and realistic episode about kids being embarrassed by their parents, still very relevant today. Another highlight of this episode is that it features the first appearance of Mike’s best friends, Eddie (K.C. Martel) and Boner (Andrew Koenig whose father, interestingly enough, was Walter Koenig, who played Pavel Chekov in the original Star Trek TV series and movies). Yes, Boner. What a great name for a friend.

Episode 4, Carol’s Article - This is a great episode because it focuses on all three kids. Carol wants to be a newspaper reporter like her mom so she tries to write for her high school paper. As a typical nerd, she fills her article with big words that nobody will know like “muculence.” Maggie, the seasoned reporter, reads the article and is critical of her writing, which upsets Carol, but eventually they come to an understanding. And then there’s the B plot which has Mike and Ben gambling Ben’s money on horses with Jason’s blessings. Awesome.

Episode 10, Dirt Bike - Mike disobeys his parents order that he doesn’t ride his friend’s (Brian Robbins, who later played Eric on Head of the Class and went on to direct Varsity Blues and other films) dirt bike when he goes camping. Mike falls off the bike and injures his posterior. The real highlight is the site gag at the end where we see Mike with two pillows stuffed in his sweatpants to shield his ass from the pain of sitting. Top shelf.

Episode 14, First Blood - Ben’s youth hockey coach (Dan Lauria, the guy who played Kevin’s dad on The Wonder Years) teaches the kids that the only way to play hockey is to play it dirty. Liberal Jason doesn’t agree with this approach so he approaches the coach to try to talk about it. They end up fighting and Jason gets a black eye. Ben follows his lead and gets into a fight of his own. The irony is hilarious.

Episode 18, Reputation - This is one I remember vividly from my youth. Mike, ever the poor student, thinks he cannot pass his history test without cheating so he stays up most of the night copying notes onto the soles of his sneakers. How he was planning on reading the soles of his sneakers while taking a test is beyond me, but it turns out Mike didn’t need to cheat because the information got into his brain while he was preparing to cheat. Much to everyone’s surprise, he gets a 94 on his test and his teacher accuses him of cheating when he sees the notes on the bottom of his sneakers. But we can’t have an unhappy ending in Seaverland so of course Mike is allowed to retake the test where he can prove he really did know his history. It’s a feel good ending, for sure.

As you can see, Growing Pains had its share of classic episodes, even in its first season. That said, I don’t think it holds up quite as well after 20 years as I’d hoped it would. Perhaps it’s just wishful thinking that one of my childhood favorites would stand the test of time without any scars, but there are some here and there. The writing is cheesy and formulaic at times, but then, the same can be said for most sitcoms. If any parents are looking for solid entertainment for their families, I don’t think they can go wrong here.

Video
Growing Pains was both shot and edited on videotape in the mid ‘80s so it’s never going to look perfect. The picture quality on these discs certainly exemplifies this. Colors are flat and blacks aren’t very black, but I’ve seen much worse from other shows of this vintage. In the end, it still looks better than it ever has.

Audio
It sounds okay. Music sounds weak, but the dialogue is reasonably crisp. You won’t have any trouble understanding people. The one gripe I have is the inclusion of the original laugh track, which is just annoying. Yeah, I know they recorded this show in front of an audience, but the laugh tracks are not natural. Why can’t more sitcom DVDs have the option to watch the show with or without the laugh track like the M*A*S*H DVDs? I’d pay extra for that.

I was pleased to see that Warner has included English subtitles and closed captions on these discs, but it was a shame they didn’t do the same for the extra features.

Extra Features
First, on disc one, we get a feature I wasn’t expecting. In a feature called Original Pilot – Unaired Scenes (11:05), we see scenes from the original pilot with an actress by the name of Elizabeth Ward in the part of Carol. I had no idea that there had ever been a different Carol. Strange. It was a good choice to replace her, though, because this Elizabeth Ward was not a cute girl. Tracey Gold, while playing a nerd, was cute and that was important when I was 11 years old. Good call.

The other extras are located on the fourth disc. Leading off, we get what should be the highlight, a reunion feature titled Growing Pains Reunion: S’mores and More (29:02). What a disappointment this was. First off, stupid title. Second, somebody thought it was a good idea to get the five principle cast members and writer Tim O’Donnell (who wrote none of the first season episodes) and have them sit around a fire cooking up s’mores and reminiscing about the first season. Third, they did this in somebody’s back yard, but that didn’t stop them from overproducing the hell out of it. Fourth, they sat everybody on tree stumps around the fire. Fifth, they set up a dolly track around the cast. Sixth, since this wasn’t enough, they also set up an overhead crane shot. Was all this necessary? No, because nobody really had anything revealing to say despite this feature lasting nearly 30 minutes.

The one other feature we get is simply titled Gag Reel (5:28). This is exactly what you’d expect, outtakes and bloopers from the first season. There’s nothing very funny here. It’s mostly Alan Thicke acting like a jackass in front of the camera.

Parting Words
Growing Pains was a good show in the ‘80s and, while it’s not quite as good as I had remembered it being as a kid, it’s still quality entertainment. With a suggested retail price under $30, and readily available online for under $20 for 22 episodes, it’s a bargain and an easy recommendation.