The Son of Feeney

TSOF Musings and Commentary: Step by Step and Brad Pitt

It is with great shame and embarrassment that this reviewer must admit an egregious error.  In the previous post, I identified the reviewed episode as "J.T.'s World."  While the episode "J.T.'s World" introduces the audience to J.T.'s cable access show, it is the episode "No Business Like Show Business" that carefully traces the plot of the feature film Wayne's World.  To the numerous readers who showed me the error of my ways, I thank you.  

More importantly, upon a subsequent viewing of "No Business Like Show Business," this reviewer could not help but think of Brad Pitt.  Why you ask?  The thought stems from the fact that Step by Step's pervasive derivative nature extends even to the production itself, most notably the casting department.  Inexplicably, Step by Step repeatedly used the same actors to portray completely different characters.  For example, in the above scene, producer Phil Jones is played by actor David Graf.  Two seasons later, Mr. Graf played the character Mitch Crawford in the episode "The Flight Before Christmas."  Two seasons after that, Mr. Graf played Dave Roberts in the episode "Just Say Maybe."  Notably, in the latter episode Dave Roberts is a police officer who is nearly cuckolded by the inexplicably heterosexual Jean-Luc.  The late Mr. Graf clearly had a talent for playing buffoons.

Mr. Graf is far from the only example of this bizarre practice.  Mary-Pat Green played Cody's Russian mail order bride in "Don't Ask" and then played a mother at basketball game who fights with a cross dressing Carol in the episode "Walk Like a Man."  Melanie Wilson plays Aggie, the woman whom Frank hires to work on his construction crew, in "One of the Guys."  She then plays two more roles in the series including the prospective buyer of the Lambert home, Cathie Adler, in the series finale.

Which leads us to Growing Pains, the sitcom that provides perhaps the most stunning example of an actor playing multiple roles in one series - Brad Pitt.  Mr. Pitt portrayed Jeff in the episode "Who's Zoomin' Who?" in 1987.  In "WZW?" Jeff is the new kid in school who scams Carol into dumping her beloved Bobby in favor of his mysterious charms.  Two years later, Mr. Pitt played a very different role in the episode "Feet Of Clay."  In that episode, Mr. Pitt played Jonathan Keith, a cool rock singer who seemingly befriends Ben.  But when Ben catches Jonathan cheating on his wife backstage, Jonathan shows his true nature and lashes out at a hurt Ben.

The strangest aspect of this casting is that it resulted in Growing Pains launching the career of both Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt.  

Finally, numerous readers questioned the accuracy of the previous post's representations.  Several followers of this blog insisted that Step by Step could not have borrowed from Wayne's World as liberally as your faithful reviewer stated.  To those readers, I provide this exhibit.  Skip ahead to the 3:30 mark for the truly damning footage.

"Second Chance:" Social Learning as Melodrama

TSOF Note: This review is Part 1 of a three part series examining various sitcoms' use of social learning theory to address the behavior of drinking and driving.

The archetypical sitcoms of the 1980’s, widely considered the golden age of the form, often employed lessons or messages as a cornerstone of their story telling. The network would regularly advertise such a showing as “a very special episode.” While scholars have long debated the impact of television on learning and behavior, very special episodes have their roots in the theories of social learning. Social learning is learning that occurs as a function of observing, retaining, and either replicating or avoiding behavior executed by others. Dr. Albert Bandura, perhaps the most outspoken and influential social learning theorist, has concentrated much of his work on the effects of television. In his 1977 book Social Learning Theory, Dr. Bandura wrote: “Learning would be exceedingly laborious, not to mention hazardous, if people had to rely solely on the effects of their own actions to inform them what to do. Fortunately, most human behavior is learned observationally through modeling: from observing others one forms an idea of how new behaviors are performed, and on later occasions this coded information serves as a guide for action.”

Social learning theory postulates that there are four key processes of social learning. The intended audience must observe behavior and its consequences, retain that memory, be able to reproduce the behavior in a similar circumstance, and, perhaps most importantly, the observer must be motivated to act on the learned behavior. It is this last element that poses the greatest challenge for a sitcom and one that very special episodes almost universally fail. Dr. Bandura wrote, “Because people can learn from example what to do, at least in approximate form, before performing any behavior, they are spared needless errors.” In their efforts to spare the audience “needless errors,” sitcom writers repeatedly cross the line from cautionary tale to ridiculous melodrama.