3. Growing Pains
If there's ever a family sitcom that should have been cancelled years earlier, it's Growing Pains. Really, there was no reason for the show to still be around. The main kids were all grown up -- they had to resort to introducing two new Seavers in the form of teenage runaway Luke (played by a young Leonardo Dicaprio) and a baby Seaver, which was quickly aged up to an adorable five year old girl. Whenever they have to add new kids, that's usually not a good sign. It means the ones they have just aren't interesting enough. Real life problems plagued the show as well. Tracey Gold struggled with anorexia, forcing her to take a leave of absence from the show. Kirk Cameron became a born again Christian, demanding that his character be given more mature material and advocating for the show to stay away from any story lines that might be construed as controversial, famously having several writers fired. On the whole, it feels that it might have been kinder to let the show die a natural death rather than keeping it on life support.