Why Do People Watch These Shows? : A tale of two sitcoms: Audiences often seem to love what the critics hate

We’re the loud, dumb relative who is always invited to come to the family reunion because we’re going to pick up the check.

--Dan Guntzelman, executive producer of the ABC comedy “Growing Pains”

The loud, dumb relative in question is the situation comedy--more specifically, situation comedies like “Growing Pains,” which manage to survive and prosper among the top 10 prime time shows despite unfriendly reviews.

These are the shows people mean when they say, piously: “I never watch television.” The same unseen sitcoms that, somehow, everyone seems mysteriously familiar with (“Well, I caught half of it this once when I was home and the car wouldn’t start and I had the flu and the remote control was stuck”).

People fear coming out of the sitcom-watchers closet so much that it’s not unusual for them to deny their viewing habits, even to themselves. Ask TV viewers what they watch on a national survey and they’ll say “Public Broadcasting,” asserts Alan Wurtzel, ABC’s senior vice president of marketing and research services. “And it’s not that people are lying to you when they say they’re watching PBS--they really think that they’re watching it.”

But despite denials, somebody is watching “Growing Pains,” “Who’s The Boss?” another ABC comedy the critics don’t like) and other--pardon the expression--sitcoms.

Despite its trashing by much of the press, the four-season-old “Growing Pains” ranked No. 5 in last season’s Nielsen ratings and ranks No. 10 this season-to-date. “Who’s The Boss” ended last season in sixth place and ranks No. 7 this season.

Because of their popularity, these shows help pick up the check for prime-time TV. Although once in a while TV may give birth to a show that pulls both top ratings and good reviews (note this season’s newcomer “Roseanne,” the No. 2 prime-time show, and the continuing phenomenon of the nation’s No.1 favorite, “The Cosby Show”), networks rely on the much-derided, though profitable, Top 10 sitcoms to keep themselves afloat. “Growing Pains” and “Who’s The Boss?” help foot the bill for the less lucrative, more costly to produce “thirtysomething,” “China Beach” and “20/20.” They also provide a crucial lead-in to the late evening programs.

In other ways, such shows may be even more valuable than top-rated late-evening comedies such as NBC’s “Cheers” and “Dear John” because they also draw an audience that includes more women and children, who make most of the family’s purchasing decisions and represent TV’s heaviest viewership.

The researchers have their own opinions as to why approximately 30 million people are relaxing with “Growing Pains” and “Who’s The Boss?” each week. But the best way to find out why people watch these shows is to ask the viewers themselves.

Calendar identified some regular watchers of one or both comedies, and asked them to speak frankly about why they want to spend their prime time with the loud, dumb relative.

‘GROWING PAINS’

The story of the Seaver family of Huntington, Long Island, starring former talk-show host Alan Thicke as Jason Seaver, Joanna Kerns as Maggie, teen idol Kirk Cameron as girl-crazy college freshman Mike, Tracey Gold as brainy high-schooler Carol and Jeremy Miller as the precocious little brother Ben--plus a new baby. A network description of the show from Warner Bros. Television: “Fatherhood has taken on a whole new meaning for Jason Seaver, who has assumed the chores of cooking, cleaning and minding the kids so his wife, Maggie, can pursue a career in journalism after spending 15 years as a housewife.”

REVIEWS: Although TV Guide once praised the show (“on a warmth scale of 1 to 10 . . . you’d have to give ‘Growing Pains’ an easy 9”), other critics have approached with fangs bared. “Imagine lying on the couch for 30 minutes of psychobabble delivered by Alan Thicke, who proves that old talk-show hosts don’t die, they just take acting lessons,” wrote one acerbic scribe. “The weekly show is an adolescent forever stuck in puberty, unable to mature, eternally fixed in a childlike state of awkwardness,” gloated the Hollywood Reporter’s review of the 1988-89 season premiere.

The producers have grown used to people beginning cocktail party conversations with “I never watch dumb sitcoms” or “My kids watch your show.” They live with it. And the critics? The producers point out that sitcom writers are writing for a family audience, not a “35-year-old man who works at a newspaper.” “The shows the critics love are aimed at adults,” Guntzelman said. “My personal viewing habits would not include the show I work on.”

Marshall attributes the success of the show to humor which operates on different levels for children, teens and adults, and to reality-based situations and characters. “I think it’s that relatability more than anything else,” he said. “(Viewers) like these people. They’re flawed but deeply likeable characters.”

There’s another touch of reality to “Growing Pains,” said Marshall: “One thing that sets our show apart is that our family watches a lot of television. You never see anybody watch TV on the other shows.”

THE VIEWERS: One evening late last summer, the Akin family of Hancock Park allowed a visitor to watch them watch TV. The group included mother Jan, a substitute librarian; Nancy, 11, a student at the Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies, Judy, 16, a Fairfax High junior and their overnight guest, 11-year-old Dominique Heffley, who attends Mark Keppel Elementary in Glendale. The father, insurance broker Seth Akin, holed up in his study rather than watch. Although he occasionally enjoys NBC’s “Golden Girls” and ABC’s “Perfect Strangers,” usually he would rather just watch the news.

The family gathered for a re-run of “Growing Pains” in which a bad report card leads Mike Seaver to decide not to enter college in the fall, but to pursue a get-rich-quick scheme to prove that college is no key to success, instead. True to situation comedy’s immutable morality, Mike learns the error of his ways.

Before, during and after the family discussed what they liked about the show.

Jan Akin prefers “Growing Pains” to more slapstick comedies such as ABC’s “Perfect Strangers” (“That gets a little silly sometimes”), as well as to NBC’s “Family Ties” and “The Cosby Show.” She believes “Ties” places too much focus on star Michael J. Fox and that the Keaton family father, Steven (Michael Gross) is too wimpy. On “Cosby,” she said, “the wife is always putting down Cosby.”

“I think it’s a healthier atmosphere (than most family sitcoms), it’s a fairly accurate picture of what family life is like,” Jan said. “They seem to be able to talk things out, and solve a situation.” She laughed aloud when Jason Seaver told his son on the episode: “The decisions you make now are going to affect you for the rest of your life.” “That sounds familiar,” she said. “It’s something we try to practice anyway, open communication.

“And it always ends with a smile.”

Judy said some of the family situations on the show are identical to conflicts within the Akin family; Nancy agreed. “I like it ‘cause, like Judy said, some of the situations compare to what we’ve had,” Nancy said. “I like the way Jeremy Miller cooperates with Kirk Cameron. Carol and Mike fight the way we do: They insult each other.”

Nancy, who watches 1 1/2 to two hours of TV after dinner and homework (“a lot of kids (at school) live too far apart to play together, so they all watch TV”) added: “I think the parents are really fair. I like the way Mike manipulates (his parents). . . . I also like it when Mike figures out that his father is right.”

Nancy also criticized the critics for trashing “Growing Pains”: “I think they’re comparing two different things. The shows that are on later are more serious. But the 8 o’clock shows are for the families.”

Dominique tunes in to “Growing Pains” because “Joanna Kerns, and all TV mothers, remind me of my mom for some reason. I also like the way Kirk Cameron and other kids compete with each other. And it’s funny. I like serious stuff, but not serious enough to make you cry. I also like the dad, I liked the episode where the dad’s father died.”

Unlike the Akin family, Dominique gets cable at home, so after two or three sitcoms she usually switches to MTV: “(Network) TV is starting to make me a little tired. Sometimes I’d rather rent movies, or play games, or read.”

Still, she defends “Growing Pains” and other favorite network shows from the critics. “That’s stupid, because everybody has an opinion,” she said.

Other “Growing Pains” watchers include Amy Brownstein, a 21-year-old Syracuse University student who spent the summer as an advertising agency intern in Los Angeles, who likes the show “because it’s very lighthearted and doesn’t get into the very serious things; like it keeps things very light. . . . There are times when I’d prefer a more serious show, but there are too many mini-series about somebody who’s been raped, or is having an affair. If I’m sitting there watching ‘Fatal Attraction Version 5001,’ it just makes more anxiety in me.

“I don’t think anyone would get tired of something like ‘Growing Pains.’ Nobody ever gets tired of watching adolescents screwing up. When something happens to an 18-year-old character, there’s a 15-year-old watching who never went through that before. You’re 16 years old, and you say, ‘My God, what would so-and-so on ‘Growing Pains’ have done? I’m sure that helps make it better.”

Barbara Schiffman, a Burbank-based writer, watches “Growing Pains” with her daughter, Risa, 9. “It’s one of the few shows I like to watch with my daughter, because, besides the characters being fun, the issues are the kinds of things that end up saying things to her--sometimes we discuss it afterward,” she said. “I remember seeing one show about a young teen-age girl who was thinking about suicide, that one dealt with things that were a little bit more than usual sitcom stuff.”

Schiffman, who works from her home, said she and Risa have the television on “too much”--three to four hours a day. She added that Risa, who is an actress, watches shows with child stars her own age to study their performances. Schiffman prefers that Risa spend time with “Growing Pains” and “Who’s the Boss?” than what she calls “mindless entertainment” such as NBC’s “ALF.”

Jose Luis Marin, 15, student body president at Los Angeles’ Nightingale Junior High, says he got started watching comedies in morning re-runs two years ago during the breaks in his sixth-grade schedule. He stuck with “Pains” “because I like the little kid (Jeremy Miller as Ben). I like the show ‘Mr. Belvedere’ too because I like that kid. The kids really put the fun into a show. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I like programs with kids.”

Bill Normyle, 24, a game-show contestant coordinator, a relative newcomer to Los Angeles without access to a car when he talked to The Times, was using TV to keep him company. He said he watches “Growing Pains” when “there’s nothing else on.”