Alan Thicke Says There Will Never be a "Growing Pains" Reboot
by Nia Howe-Smith
June 9, 2015


Here’s something that might get your scrunchie in a twist.

Though there’s been near-constant announcements of ‘80s and ‘90s TV reboots like "Fuller House", "Coach", "The X-Files" and "Twin Peaks", beloved family sitcom "Growing Pains" will likely never join the trend.



At the Cool Comedy Hot Cuisine benefit for the Scleroderma Research Foundation on June 5, Alan Thicke, who played family patriarch Mike Seaver, said it just wasn’t in the cards.

“We did a couple TV movies, and I think that’s where we belong,” he told EW. “I like things to be left in the perspective of their historical narrative. It’s a crapshoot when you try to revisit that.”





But that doesn’t mean there wasn’t once a fictional version of a "Growing Pains" reboot, on his mockumentary series, "Unusually Thicke".

“I had an idea, fictionally on the show that… we should do a reboot, so I went to John Stamos, and tried to talk him into being the new Mike Seaver,” Thicke says.



Apparently Stamos responded by saying they’d need to modernize the family and make them vampires, and that Mike Seaver should also be gay.

“So if you see a gay Mike Seaver vampire, you heard it here first,” he said with a laugh.

http://www.ew.com/article/2015/06/09/alan-thicke-growing-pains-reboot

http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2015/09/03/alan-thicke-doesnt-want-to-see-growing-pains-remake/

“We did a couple of movies and that went very nicely,” he says, "but I think we all have a better feeling about the nostalgia of things like that and I think we might all be disappointed if we saw it again, attempting to be fresh and new.”

Alan is absolutely right and dead on with both his statements. They did 2 follow up movies after all. Where the hell could they possibly take it after that? They closed the main series and the two movies off really well so any reboot would be done just for the sake of doing it. I completely get where he's coming with this. I have a lot of respect for the man. His son not so much.

But the decision on reboot or no would probably not be Alan's alone. That would be more down to Warner and ABC. If Warner finds an angle they think they can work with I imagine they'd try to pitch and shop it around, regardless of if the original cast is on the project or not. I wouldn't worry about ABC taking any reboots period. I couldn't possibly be any more disappointed in Paul Lee right now. Very disappointed in him. He should have picked up Girl Meets World, Fuller House and the new Coach when he had the chance. They all got pitched to him and he passed. He's afraid of skewing too young or old but with these reboots you're going to get EVERY one more or less. I've read he hasn't got many years left at abc so hopefully whoever takes over for him will be smarter with this stuff.

I imagine Alan's wishes will be respected with Growing Pains so it's probably safe to say no reboot for it.