For a while, "Family Ties" was as "in" as big hair and shoulder pads. Like "The Cosby Show," it was an Eighties' staple that gave viewers likeable characters who were more than just excuses for jokes or standard sitcom plots. Viewers discovered the show its third season, when it finished Number 5 in the Nielsen's as the second highest rated sitcom. The Cosby clan finished third. The following year-this season-"Family Ties" would finish second to "The Cosby Show" again, only this time they were ranked Number 1 and Number 2.
Viewers loved the Keatons almost as much as they did the Huxtables. Steven and Elyse Keaton (Michael Gross and Meredith Baxter-Birney) were former flower children who gave birth to children of a different decade: Alex (Michael J. Fox), a Young Republican who only thinks about money and personal success; Mallory (Justine Bateman), a shallow-thinker whose only interests are fashion and boys; and Jennifer (Tina Yothers), an athletic sibling who's the centrist of the family. This season there's also Andrew Keaton, who was born the end of the third season.
The plots are surprisingly driven by the characters' personalities rather than the standard sitcom recycled narratives--with the exception of the season opener, that is. In what's probably the weakest episode, the season opener was a 90-minute made-for-TV movie that was filmed on location in London. The Keatons, en route to Oxford, where Alex has been accepted, take a family vacation without the baby and get involved with spies. And so you have the smart humor of the show giving way to situational comedy of the most familiar sort: bumbling secret agents and equally bumbling Scotland Yard detectives. Throw in a Lord (John Moulder-Brown) who has been designated as Alex's roommate and who falls hard for Mallory, and you get a fairly silly show that fans will still enjoy watching because after all, these are the Keatons.
The show gets quickly on-track again, though. This is the season where Alex and Mallory find themselves in new opposites-attract situations, with Alex falling for a liberal art major named Ellen (Tracy Pollan, who went on to become Fox's real-life wife), and Mallory being wooed and wowed by a crude, blue-collar motorcycle-riding artist named Nick (Scott Velentine). And neighbor-friend Irwin "Skippy" Handelman (Marc Price) is still around to wish he were the one dating Mallory.
Here's how the other 24 episodes (not counting "Family Ties Vacation") play out. They're on four single-sided discs and housed in a standard-size keep case that has a middle "page" to hold two of the discs, with the episode guide printed on the inside cover (which, yes, you'll have to take out to read):
1-2) "The Real Thing," Pts. 1&2. Alex decides to date a good-looking coed he picked out of the Freshman yearbook, but ends up falling for her roommate instead. So much so that the success-conscious Alex even blows an essay exam.
3) "Mr. Wrong." No one in the family seems to like Mallory's new boyfriend, Nick, and they try to get her to see that he's not the one for her.
4) "Designated Hitter." Jennifer gets a love interest in this episode, but the tomboy blows it when she punches out a guy who's bullying her intended.
For a while, "Family Ties" was as "in" as big hair and shoulder pads. Like "The Cosby Show," it was an Eighties' staple that gave viewers likeable characters who were more than just excuses for jokes or standard sitcom plots. Viewers discovered the show its third season, when it finished Number 5 in the Nielsen's as the second highest rated sitcom. The Cosby clan finished third. The following year-this season-"Family Ties" would finish second to "The Cosby Show" again, only this time they were ranked Number 1 and Number 2.
Viewers loved the Keatons almost as much as they did the Huxtables. Steven and Elyse Keaton (Michael Gross and Meredith Baxter-Birney) were former flower children who gave birth to children of a different decade: Alex (Michael J. Fox), a Young Republican who only thinks about money and personal success; Mallory (Justine Bateman), a shallow-thinker whose only interests are fashion and boys; and Jennifer (Tina Yothers), an athletic sibling who's the centrist of the family. This season there's also Andrew Keaton, who was born the end of the third season.
The plots are surprisingly driven by the characters' personalities rather than the standard sitcom recycled narratives--with the exception of the season opener, that is. In what's probably the weakest episode, the season opener was a 90-minute made-for-TV movie that was filmed on location in London. The Keatons, en route to Oxford, where Alex has been accepted, take a family vacation without the baby and get involved with spies. And so you have the smart humor of the show giving way to situational comedy of the most familiar sort: bumbling secret agents and equally bumbling Scotland Yard detectives. Throw in a Lord (John Moulder-Brown) who has been designated as Alex's roommate and who falls hard for Mallory, and you get a fairly silly show that fans will still enjoy watching because after all, these are the Keatons.
The show gets quickly on-track again, though. This is the season where Alex and Mallory find themselves in new opposites-attract situations, with Alex falling for a liberal art major named Ellen (Tracy Pollan, who went on to become Fox's real-life wife), and Mallory being wooed and wowed by a crude, blue-collar motorcycle-riding artist named Nick (Scott Velentine). And neighbor-friend Irwin "Skippy" Handelman (Marc Price) is still around to wish he were the one dating Mallory.
Here's how the other 24 episodes (not counting "Family Ties Vacation") play out. They're on four single-sided discs and housed in a standard-size keep case that has a middle "page" to hold two of the discs, with the episode guide printed on the inside cover (which, yes, you'll have to take out to read):
1-2) "The Real Thing," Pts. 1&2. Alex decides to date a good-looking coed he picked out of the Freshman yearbook, but ends up falling for her roommate instead. So much so that the success-conscious Alex even blows an essay exam.
3) "Mr. Wrong." No one in the family seems to like Mallory's new boyfriend, Nick, and they try to get her to see that he's not the one for her.
4) "Designated Hitter." Jennifer gets a love interest in this episode, but the tomboy blows it when she punches out a guy who's bullying her intended.
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