Greetings,
Okay, let me start by saying that my use of the word "perfect" in the title of this post is simply for the benefit of wordplay. You see, I will be talking about a TV show today, but it wasn't perfect. No show is. Except for Little House on the Prairie. That show was perfect. However, was this show I speak of, for lack of a less overused word, awesome? Why, yes, it was! And, again, back to the title, I will be discussing a show called Just the Ten of Us.
I can't imagine that there aren't at least some of you that remember this show. It has been over twenty years since it aired, and it may not have been a huge hit, as per the likes of The Cosby Show or Family Ties. But I have many, many fond memories of it. Just the Ten of Us was an ABC show that was a spin-off of Growing Pains, a show that I really didn't watch, but did so enough to know that it wasn't as good as what it spawned. In my opinion, anyway. It took one of the teachers from that show and followed him and his very large family. How big was the family? Well, that "ten" should be taken at face value. That's right. Two parents, EIGHT kids. Holy crap! And, speaking of holy, I bet I know what you're thinking - with that many kids, they must be Catholic! Well, you would be right in that assumption. In fact, their Catholicism is a kind of a big part of the show, and, yes, it was used for comedy, but not to the point of being offensive. I don't think so, anyway. Then again, I'm not Catholic, so who knows? Look, it's a comedy and the characters happen to have this particular religion, so there you go. I suppose this a somewhat good way to segue into talking about the setup, characters, cast and whatnot. So let's get to it.
Just the Ten of Us was about the Lubbock family, headed by Coach Graham Lubbock, a fun but sometimes strict father, played by Bill Kirchenbauer (I think I spelled that right). He was apparently a recurring and popular character on Growing Pains, and, therefore, got this spin off, wherein he moves his devout and loving wife, Elizabeth, played by Deborah Harmon, and his family from New York to Eureka, California, after losing his job and getting an offer at St. Augustine's. Here's the thing about St. Augustine's though - it's an all boys school. There are eight Lubbock children. Only two of them are boys. Yeah, he's got six daughters, four of whom are teenagers and will be attending high school with teenage boys who have never seen a girl EVER IN THEIR LIVES! Okay, that's not really true, but, through the eyes this father, it may as well have been. Now let's talk about those kids, shall we?
We start with the oldest, Marie, played by Heather Langenkamp. Yep. Nancy from A Nightmare on Elm Street was on this show. And whilst that is how most people still see her, I see her as Marie from Just the Ten of Us. It's all about where you first see people and when. Anyway, her character is, to put it bluntly, "the good one". As I said, the Lubbock family is Catholic, but, of all the children, Marie has embraced it the most, even expressing ambitions to one day become a nun. But she also just wants to be a teenage girl and struggles with it a bit. Next up are the twins, because, if you've got eight kids, there's a good chance you're going to have some of those in the mix. Their names are Cindy and Wendy played by Jamie Luner and Brooke Theiss, respectively. Now, initially, both of the girls were showcased as the same type of vapid, but soon, Cindy was made out to be the dumb one with a heart of gold, whilst Wendy became a bit more of a conniver but not too mean spirited of one. And they were also both the most boy crazy of the sisters, but I think Wendy won because she got to go out with both Matt LeBlanc and Matthew Perry. No, seriously, they were both on this show, pre-Friends. Fourth in line is my personal favorite character, Connie, played by JoAnn Willette. She was, to say the least, the deepest of all the kids. She was very smart, with all her book reading and what have you, and she was also kind of cynical. Also, Connie was a writer. So, yeah, I could really relate to her. I actually think she also got some of the best dialogue, where she could show how intelligent she was and yet it didn't cross the line into her being pretentious. Though it did come close to that every now and then, it just ended up being funny.
And now for the younger children. The firstborn and only talking boy was Graham, Jr., but we called him J.R. played by Matt Shakman. He was your typical trouble making young kid, and it could get annoying sometimes, but not too often. Again, they wrote his character really well and made it just plain funny. And you can tell that a lot of what he did was to get attention, since it is probably easy to get lost in the shuffle in a family that big. Then, we have Sherry played by Heidi Zeigler. Aw, man, she was great. Sherry was literally the smartest member of the family and never let anyone forget it. The way she spoke almost made her seem like a shrunken grown-up, but it worked, a lot. Heidi was such a fantastic little actress that you totally bought the whole act. She and J.R. also had some great banter, since she was so smart and he was not so much, and as she got older and still made fun of her big sisters, you can see that she kind of wanted to be a part of what they were doing. Just like kids tend to do. And then we have Harvey and Melissa, the babies. They're . . . there. To give us ten. And that's about it.
So that's the family. Any other characters? Of course, we do have to go to school, don't we? Let's begin with Headmaster of St. Augustine's, Father Hargis played by Frank Bonner, who I believe is best known for his role of WKRP in Cincinnati. He was pretty good here, and all the while you're watching him, you ask yourself a couple of questions. Like, why is he a priest again? And why is he the headmaster of this school? Because he kind of seems to hate doing both of those things. We also have a fellow student of the girls named Gavin Doosler played by Even Arnold. Yeah, he's the geek, in case you couldn't tell by his name. What is it about giving the geeks these obvious nomenclatures? Anyway, he was in a lot of episodes and was a fairly important character after awhile. That's fine. I thought he was kind of entertaining. We also get a crazy old nun named Sister Ethel played by Maxine Elliott Hicks, who would show up here and there to do her crazy nun stuff. And finally, there's another coach in the school named Duane Johnson (wait, what?) played by Dennis Haysbert. See, high school coaches. You, too, can one day become president if you try hard enough. 'Cause wasn't he the president on 24 or something? I don't know. I never watched it. Anyway, that's basically the whole cast there.
Now I was going to talk about some of my favorite episodes, but I've had so much fun going back and reminiscing about this show, I think I may have to devote one of my Top Ten lists to it. I will say this, though, this family did have some fun adventures, such as joining the choir, buying a cow and going to the Virgin Islands. Okay, that last one was just the four oldest girls, but whatever. Oh, and speaking of them, Marie, Cindy, Wendy and Connie also started a singing group called the Lubbock Babes and performed at a local pizza joint. They actually did this in several episodes, and I must say, they weren't bad singers at all.
Okay, I may as well take this time to talk about the show's undeserved cancellation. Like I said, Just the Ten of Us was never a mega hit, but it did have a good following and decent ratings. From what I have gathered, it was all about politics at ABC. Even though the show had high enough ratings to merit it another season, somebody decided that they would rather have something with more of an adult edge and another show from Miller/Boyett and Lorimar, who were also behind the other three shows in the TGIF lineup, because they wanted them all to "look the same". Okay? So a great series like Just the Ten of Us got cancelled so that a show called Going Places could take its place. Never heard of that one? Well, it was kind of not good and barely lasted a season. So . . . genius idea, guys. Part of me wishes that things worked back the then the way they often do today. You know, the way shows with a lot of fans and decent ratings get cancelled and are then picked up by another network and their original network regrets dropping them in the first place and all the fans are happy. Yeah, that would have been fabulous.
Anyway, let me wrap this up. I know that Just the Ten of Us may not have the legendary status that other comedies from that era do, but it was still a really good show. It was hilarious and had a talented cast, and it had writers who knew how to present younger characters intelligently but also realistically. What a novel idea! Now I don't know if episodes can be found anywhere, maybe online or somewhere, but I do seriously hope that someone digs up this gem for a DVD release or that a channel decides to start airing some reruns. I would watch, and I bet a lot of other people would, too.
Love and full moons,
Becky the Writer
