Growing Pains

The Seaver family resides at 15 Robin Hood Lane in Huntington, Long Island, New York.[2]

Dr. Jason Seaver (portrayed by Alan Thicke), a psychiatrist, works from home because his wife, Maggie (Joanna Kerns), has gone back to work as a reporter. Jason has to take care of the kids: ladies' man Mike (Kirk Cameron), bookish honors student Carol (Tracey Gold), and rambunctious Ben (Jeremy Miller).

A fourth child, Chrissy Seaver (twins Kelsey and Kirsten Dohring; Ashley Johnson), is born on October 27, 1988, a day after Ben's 12th birthday. She was played in her newborn/infant stage by two uncredited sets of twin sisters, that remained in the role until the end of season four (1988–89). By season five (1989–90), she was played in her toddler stage by alternating twins Kirsten and Kelsey Dohring. In seasons six and seven (1990–92), Chrissy's age was advanced to five years old.

A new cast member was added for the seventh and final season (1991–92) when homeless teen Luke Brower (Leonardo DiCaprio) is brought into the Seaver family to live with them until nearly the end of season seven.

Often mentioned but rarely seen are the Seavers' next door neighbors the Koosmans - a reference to the 1969 Miracle Mets.

The season one main opening features various works of art and vintage photography depicting family life, closing with a shot of the cast.

The opening credits from seasons two through five features an opening shot of the cast in front of the Seaver house exterior. This is followed by a series of photos of each cast member from their childhood onward ending with a clip from the show with three looks ("original", "classic" and "modern"). The credits closed with another shot of the cast in front of the Seaver house before they all run inside. Starting in the second season, several different versions of the opening sequence were filmed. Whoever was the last to go into the house would usually be the focus of that week's episode.

The opening used in seasons six and seven featured opening and shot of the mantle on the Seavers' fireplace panning over photos of the cast. The photos of the cast from childhood remained but instead of clips from the show, current still photos were used. Some versions of these credits end with another shot of the mantle while others close with a montage of group shots from the same family photo shoot which the current photos used in the rest of the credits come from.

Soon after the cancellation of The Four Seasons, Joanna Kerns auditioned for a new series in late 1984, called Growing Pains. She auditioned with Alan Thicke, who was just coming off the failure of his TV talk show Thicke of the Night. Kerns joked in many interviews that Alan and she had immediate chemistry, especially when she kissed him on his nose by accident during their audition together. Kerns and Thicke's chemistry won them both the parts, and the two became great friends off the show. (They both had many things in common, including both being newly divorced and both being single parents.)

In 1985, Tracey Gold auditioned for the role of Carol Seaver on Growing Pains, but was not initially cast. The actress chosen for the pilot was Elizabeth Ward, who had starred alongside Gold in The Hand-Me-Down Kid, a 1983 ABC Afterschool Special. However, test audiences did not favor Ward in the role of Carol, and she was promptly replaced by Gold. In 1988 at age 19, Gold gained some weight over the Growing Pains series hiatus. That season, the sitcom's scripts called for her to be the brunt of fat jokes from her television brothers for many episodes in a row.

Beginning in October 1988, Gold dieted from 133 pounds to about 110 pounds on a medically supervised 500-calorie-a-day (2,100 kJ) diet, but still occasionally the scripts included fat jokes at her expense. In her autobiography, she says that between 1989 and 1991, she became increasingly obsessed with food and her weight and continued to slowly and steadily lose weight.

Kirk Cameron was an atheist in his early teens.[5] When he was 17, during the height of his career on Growing Pains, he became a born-again Christian.[6][7] After converting to Protestant Christianity, he began to insist that storylines be edited to remove anything he thought too adult or inappropriate in Growing Pains.[8]

Julie McCullough landed the role of nanny Julie Costello on Growing Pains in 1989. She appeared in eight episodes until she was fired in 1990, which allegedly stemmed from series star Kirk Cameron's conversion to evangelical Christianity, a conversion that, according to The E! True Hollywood Story episode focusing on the show, served to alienate him from his fellow cast members, as he did not invite any of them to his wedding. In his 2008 autobiography Still Growing, Cameron states that he did not call for her to be fired and the show's producers have claimed that Julie's character was never intended to be a permanent character. However, the long-told story is that Cameron called for McCullough's termination because of his anger and objections to her having posed nude in Playboy, accusing the show's producers of promoting pornography. A decade later, Cameron apologized to his TV family for some of his prior behavior due to his lack of maturity.[9] He reportedly did not reconcile with McCullough, who claims that Cameron refused to speak to her during a later encounter. She remains critical of him, stating that she lost a lot from the public criticism she endured during the controversy. McCullough has criticized the evangelical television programming Cameron has produced, which she has viewed on one occasion, saying on her MySpace page:

He thinks if I read science books that I'm going to hell. [I would] rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints ... the sinners are much more fun. And a lot more interesting than some book-burner who is still having growing pains. I am at peace with God. Kirk thinks people like me are going to Hell, if I do then at least I'll go well informed and well read.[10]

At about age 14, Jeremy Miller received numerous letters from an older male stalker during the run of Growing Pains.[11]

In 1990, Tracey Gold began group therapy in an eating disorder program, but only learned more ways to lose weight. That season, her problem with weight loss was touched upon slightly on her television series, when Gold is seen looking at her body in a carnival mirror, and describes to another character the distorted image in her head. In 1991, she started starving herself more than ever and vomiting, and lost a massive amount of weight, to the point that she was admitted to a hospital in early 1992. Her lowest weight is estimated to have been near 80 pounds. She was suspended from the show for her skeletal appearance. Photos of Gold's emaciated body were plastered all over tabloid magazines, and she was one of the first celebrities ever to be formally outed for anorexia. She last appeared in the 1991 episode, "Menage a Luke" after missing the two prior episodes where her problem is very obvious in some scenes, and did not return until the last two episodes of the series in the late spring of 1992, although she was not nearly recovered at this point.

In 1991, Leonardo DiCaprio became a recurring cast member on Growing Pains, playing Luke Brower, a homeless boy who is taken in by the Seaver family.[12] Co-star Joanna Kerns recalled DiCaprio being "especially intelligent and disarming for his age," but also mischievous on set.[13] The teenage DiCaprio was cast by the producers to appeal to the teenage female audiences, but when the show's ratings did not improve, DiCaprio left it.[12] He was nominated for a Young Artist Award for Best Young Actor Co-starring in a Television Series.[14]

In 1992, Alan Thicke appeared as himself in the pilot episode of the sitcom Hangin' with Mr. Cooper. He appeared in the pre-credits teaser scene, alongside series star Mark Curry, humorously referencing the pilot episode being filmed on the same set used as the Seavers' home on Growing Pains.

After the series was cancelled, Kirk Cameron did not maintain contact with his former co-stars, and did not speak to Tracey Gold for eight years. Cameron has stated that this was not due to any animosity on his part toward any of his former cast-members, but an outgrowth of his desire to start a new life away from the entertainment industry, and the life he had been in for the previous seven years.

Growing Pains spawned the spin-off series, Just the Ten of Us, which featured Coach Graham Lubbock, Mike and Carol's gym teacher, moving to California with his large family to teach at an all-boys Catholic school after he was fired from Thomas Dewey High School.

In 2000, the cast reunited for The Growing Pains Movie, followed by Growing Pains: Return of the Seavers in 2004. Prior to the premiere of The Growing Pains Movie, Kirk Cameron described his regrets over how his relationship with his castmates changed after his religious conversion during production of the series, saying, "I definitely kind of made an about-face, going toward another aspect of my life", admits Cameron. "I shifted my focus from 100% on the show, to 100% on [my new life], and left 0% on the show—and even the friendships that were a part of that show. If I could go back, I think I could make decisions that were less inadvertently hurtful to the cast—like talking and explaining to them why I just wanted to have my family at my wedding."[15]

Warner Home Video has released the first two seasons on DVD in Region 1[16] while the Warner Archive Collection released the remaining seasons as a manufacture-on-demand title that can only be available exclusively through Warner's online store, and Amazon.com.

• Growing Pains at IMDb
• Growing Pains at TV.com
• Growing Pains French website (in French)
• Growing Pains Archived 2018-06-25 at the Wayback Machine at UP TV Network