Growing up in the '80s without cable TV meant that my brother and I resorted to free over-the-air TV. Most mornings when there wasn't school, we welcomed the Seavers into our living room as the show aired in syndication on ABC. To this date, I still remember one "very special episode"of the show when Mike Seaver (played by ultra-religious Kirk Cameron) faces peer pressure to do drugs. In the very special 1987 episode entitled Thank God It's Friday, Mike and his high school buddies Eddie and Boner go to a college party where everyone is doing lines of cocaine in the bathroom. Mike faces the challenge to "just say no" and eventually leaves Boner and Eddie at the party as he goes home to talk to his dad (played by the father of Robin Thicke, Alan Thicke). Mike and Jason discuss what happened that night where Jason shares that Boner called and left Mike a message: "they didn't go to the bathroom and didn't want to." Before the final credits, Kirk Cameron insisted he wasn't get paid to say this message: drugs are bad and don't do them.
The character of Mike Seaver started as a trouble-making teenager who lied, cheated and broke any rule in sight. He would learn a lesson during sitcom's 23-minute run, but he went right back to making bad decisions in the next episode. This all ended when Cameron became a born-again Christian and suddenly found himself at odds with the character he played. Stories surfaced about his clashes with the show's writers for storylines he found inappropriate. His character seemingly grew up and matured very quickly by the show's peak in 1990. His off-screen relations with fellow cast members also shifted. He withdrew from others on the show and only spoke with co-star Chelsea Noble (another born-again Christian) who he later married in real life. None of his other co-stars on the show received an invitation to their wedding. When Growing Pains wrapped up in 1992, Cameron left and didn't speak to any of them. The silence continued until 2000 while the cast reunited to film The Growing Pains Movie.