The running joke for so many people my age is taht we can’t remember why we entered a room ten seconds ago, but have vivid memories of the most random, trivial things from a very long time ago. I’ve obviously been using this superpower for good here on this very website, and it explains why every time I tell myself that I’m doing the best that I can, the theme to Just the Ten of Us gest stuck in my head.

If you’re not familiar with Just the Ten of Us, it was a spin-off of the ABC sitcom Growing Pains that ran from the spring of 1988 to the spring of 1990 (two full seasons and a four-episode “trial run” in ’88). The spin-off character was Coach Graham Lubbock, who’d had a recurring role as Mike and Carol Seaver’s teacher. There was a two-part episode of Growing Pains called “How the West Was Won” that served as a sort of back-door pilot in which Mike (Kirk Cameron) finds out that Lubbock’s been fired and organizes a protest to get the school to renew his contract. We also find out that Lubbock has seven kids–all girls except for one boy–two of whom are played by Jamie Luner and Brooke Theiss and whom Mike hits on once he sees them because that’s what Mike does.

The protest doesn’t work and Lubbock packs up the family for Eureka, California to teach at an all-boys prep school. And the house the school is providing is run down. The school eventually makes an exception for the Lubbock daughters, which will allow for so many “horny teenager” plots, as does the “New York fish out of water” premise.

Bill Kirchenbauer plays Coach Lubbock and Deborah Harmon is his wife Elizabeth. Both have had long careers as character actors. Harmon, especially, has turned up in a number of shows and movies I’ve seen: she’s the news anchor at the beginning of Back to the Future, Kurt Russell’s co-star in Used Cars, and has a number of sitcom appearances on shows such as The Facts of Life, Night Court, Married … With Children, and Malcolm in the Middle. Some of their teenage daughters are recognizable from television and movies of the 1980s and 1990s. I’d say that the most recognizable are Heather Langenkamp and Jamie Luner. Langenkamp, at this point, had already played Nancy in A Nightmare on Elm Street and A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: The Dream Warriors. Luner got her start here, but would go on to a number of daytime and nighttime soaps, such as All My Children, Melrose Place, and the short-lived WB show Savannah.

Funny enough, there are two more Freddy Kreuger connections and a Marvel Cinematic Universe connection among the Lubbock kids. JoAnn Willette had her Nightmare turn in A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge a couple of years before the show premiered. Brook Theiss would be in A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master as well as the NBC teen movie Class Cruise. And the Marvel connection? The one Lubbock boy, JR, was played by Matt Shakman, director of WandaVision and Fantastic Four: First Steps.

The entire series is on YouTube, so I decided to pick a random one to watch. I went with episode 4 of season 1, “Close Encounters”.

(more…)