At the beginning of the seventh season, a new character, homeless teen Luke Brower (then-unknown Leonardo DiCaprio), was introduced in a last-ditch attempt to salvage ratings, to no avail. Growing Pains had declined slightly on its established Wednesday time slot in Season 6, and was moved to Saturday nights in the fall of 1991 to make room for newer comedies. The other long-running show initially affected by this strategy was Who’s the Boss?, which also moved to Saturdays. Ratings for both shows plunged to new lows, with insiders stating that ABC was getting rid of both programs by putting them on the “graveyard shift”. To diffuse this fact, ABC moved the long-running sitcom Perfect Strangers, a show with reasonably high ratings, to Saturdays in February 1992; its presence helped to launch a new comedy block known as I Love Saturday Night. This final effort at scheduling had an adverse effect for all 3 shows, and, most of all, for new cartoon Capitol Critters, which was cancelled after only 2 months. By then, Growing Pains (along with Who’s the Boss? and MacGyver) was canceled.
Controversies
Despite the show’s success, there were a few behind-the-scenes controversies.
Kirk Cameron’s clashes
In 1987, Kirk Cameron became a born again Christian. Afterwards he began to increasingly raise objections behind the scene to what he viewed as the depiction and promotion of immoral behavior on the show.
After Cameron’s religious conversion, his beliefs frequently interfered with production of the show. He insisted that no “adult themes” be incorporated into episodes, and he often demanded that entire episodes be re-written when he objected to the content (when one planned episode revolved around Julie giving Mike the key to her apartment, Cameron objected to the sexual connotations, and he forced a new script to be written). According to the Growing Pains episode of E! True Hollywood Story, Cameron at one point went so far as to call the President of ABC on the phone, and refer to executive producers Dan Guntzelman, Mike Sullivan and Steve Marshall as pornographers, due to the content of some of the episodes. In 1991, after the show’s sixth season, the three men quit the show as a result of Cameron’s actions and statements. Cameron’s conflicts with the writers were frequent in part due to his low level of tolerance for “immoral” behavior. For example, according to E True Hollywood Stories, one scene which he objected to would have shown Mike in bed with a girl. The camera would then pull back to reveal that the two were on stage, rehearsing a scene for a play. Even this oblique reference to sexuality was too much for Cameron. The most significant instance of Cameron’s editorial interference occurred in the 1989-1990 season which was supposed to involve Mike marrying his girlfriend Julie. However, Cameron objected to the fact that actress Julie McCullough, who played the popular character Julie Costello, had once posed nude for Playboy. Cameron demanded that the producers fire her or he would quit. McCullough was fired, and Julie was written out of the series as having left Mike at the altar.
In 2003, according to the article “The Re-birth of Kirk Cameron” in Christianity Today, Cameron “admits he made some mistakes common to new believers — such as distancing themselves so far from the world that they do no good for anyone … In time, however, he realized his missteps. In 2000, he re-joined his former cast members for a Growing Pains reunion movie. He stood in front of his TV family, and apologized for his behavior. ‘I was a 17-year-old guy trying to walk with integrity, knowing that I was walking in the opposite direction from many other people. I didn’t have the kind of maturity and graceful way of putting things perhaps that I would now,’ he says. Cameron’s fellow actors immediately embraced him.
Other problems
In addition to the problems with Cameron, the show’s constant references to Carol Seaver as “fat” (notwithstanding her normal weight and size for her age) took their toll on Tracey Gold. Although it was brushed off as “it’s not you, it’s the character,” the producers were unaware that Gold had a long history of eating disorders, and the constant insults eventually triggered a serious case of anorexia nervosa in Gold. She was forced to resign from the cast in January of 1992 and did not return until the 2-part final episode, for which she had to leave the hospital where she was still undergoing treatment.
In addition, about 1990, Jeremy Miller, who played younger son Ben Seaver, began to be stalked by an older man who wrote letters to Miller expressing his plans to rape the actor. The threat to Miller resulted in heightened security until the stalker revealed his home address in a threatening letter and was subsequently arrested and imprisoned.
