I hate to post on celebrity deaths. It feels like capitalizing on a terrible, personal experience that should be left sacred to friends and loved ones. But I have to say something about Alan Thicke. It must be plain to see from this blog’s existence that I grew up watching reruns. Growing Pains, while frequently lampooned on this website, was nearest and dearest to my heart.
In some ways, the Seaver children’s lifestyle mirrored my own. I grew up in an upper-middle class home with two professional parents. I even had one parent, who like Alan Thicke’s Dr. Seaver, worked from a home office as a mental health services professional. It could be for this reason alone that Alan Thicke is so close to my heart, but my appreciation does not stop there.
I’ve watched a lot of television family sitcoms over the years and, in my mind, Alan Thicke accomplished what no other TV actor of the 80’s sitcom golden era had successfully been able to do. He gave us a character who was wholly comedically funny and was also a good dad. Think of all the great TV dad’s, Ward Cleaver, Mike Brady, Steven Keaton, or maybe even Danny Tanner if we are feeling particularly generous.
Now how many of those guys cracked good jokes where the timing was just right and the writing wasn’t too smarmy? How many of those guys would you want to have a cup of coffee with? How many of those guys would you trust to be in a Robin Sparkles video? And how many of those guys did ALL of those things while being genuinely good parents to their TV kids (while also still seeming like a human being)?
In a blog full of jokes, I’ll put all joking aside and say Alan Thicke is my gold standard for modern TV sitcom dads. Maybe Growing Pains can’t be considered “modern” anymore, but I’m still holding all TV dads to this standard. Alan Thicke’s Jason Seaver felt like Andy Griffith’s Andy Taylor with a Ph.D. I can laugh at sitcoms even when they’re not trying to be funny because they usually get human nature so wrong. But Alan Thick got it right.
Also, “They said they didn’t go to the bathroom and they don’t want to,” will always be a funny line.
Goodnight.
Very Special Readers, I give you the scariest episode of Miami Vice ever. While this is not explicitly a Halloween episode, it did originally air on October 31st and it will give you nightmares. It’s a dark and spooky night and this dude is crossing a drawbridge as it opens. It’s just him and like some delivery trucks and he’s making creepy hand gestures like he’s commanding the bridge to open. He should have straight up have been arrested on the bridge, I think. But it’s Miami in the 80’s, which this show leads me to believe was a totally a completely lawless time. So he ends up at this luxurious house. He’s wearing latex gloves and has his boots duct taped to his pants. He’s moaning which oh my gosh I hope is not a sexual noise on his part. It’s not a sexual noise I have ever heard before, but I think this may be par for the course with this guy.
With Lt. Gilmore indisposed, Crockett takes the lead on the case. Having learned absolutely nothing from the cop who just went nuts working this case, Crockett tells Castillo that he needs to start thinking like the burglar. So he starts speaking in insane babble and staying up all night. And then he just drives his car to like the middle of nowhere suburbia and is all spooked at the noises of birds cooing. And there’s tons and tons of lipstick drawings all over the road and street signs. OH WAIT JUST KIDDING IT WAS A DREAM. He wakes up at his desk. Then he takes his vice team on a stakeout. But it’s a crap stakeout because they’re all standing outside of a sports car bemoaning the fact that they haven’t seen anything. They give up and go home and the cat burglar is in a house RIGHT NEXT TO WHERE THERE CAR WAS. Omg. Someone is NOT getting re-elected over at Metro-Dade.
Every year Ralph has a Halloween party and every year a gang called The Demons crashes it and destroy it. So this year he’s decided to have it at a creepy old house where The Demons will never find him. He sends Richie to check out the house and make sure that it is spooky enough for the party.
When the time comes for the party, Richard is all freaked out about a potential ghost. Dude, if you find a headless body in an abandoned house, you should be freaked out about a potential serial killer. But I guess the 1950’s were a more innocent time.
Everything is fine until the lights go out later on in the night. But it’s just Ralph fooling around again. Richie calls him out on it and Ralph gets pretty pissed that Richie ruined his prank. So he goes over to talk to Potsie. He taps him on the shoulder mid-dance, so Potsie thinks he’s trying to cut-in. But Ralph just wants to talk, so Potsie tells his dance partner to go make him a sandwich. Literally. Ohhhh the 70’s/50’s.
The Very Special Blog 