Family Ties- Who ruined it more, the addition of Andy or Nick?

Cafe Society
1

I’m watching reruns of Family Ties and it’s currently in the third season where Elyse finds out she’s pregnant again. Up to that point, it was a pretty good show, they rotated the storylines between the parents and kids and Michael J. Fox had some good lines.

From what I remember it all went downhill after Andy was born, the storylines all became about the baby and all were unfunny. I know that’s when Michael J. Fox filmed Back to the Future and I think they added Mallory’s boyfriend Nick hoping to take over Fox’s popularity. I think they even tried a couple of Nick spinoffs hoping to cash in on his popularity, but at the time, my friends and I never found Nick the least bit attractive or funny.

Now maybe things will change now that I’m rewatching it, after not seeing it for 30 years, but from what I remember that Andy and then Nick ruined the show.

Anyone else?

2

It’s been a really long time since I’ve seen Family Ties, and I don’t even remember the “Andy” episodes. But I do remember Nick, and I thought he was pretty funny. In the spirit of “opposites attract”, Mallory seemed to be attracted to Nick because he was the anti-intellectual in a household of educated intellectually-focused ex-hippie liberal parents – a Fonzie type greaser who dropped out of high school. In general Nick caused considerable consternation for Mallory’s parents. To this day I still (vaguely) remember a hilarious bit of dialogue where Nick says he stopped going to high school. Shocked, Mallory’s dad says something like “can you expand on that?”. “Yeah,” says Nick. “When they held classes, I wasn’t there.” :slight_smile:

3

Nick was in the series before Andy. Nick provided a character that the father, who liked everybody, could dislike - which made for humor.

4

I vote Andy

5

Andy is born in season three and Nick joins the cast in the beginning of season four.

6

I see how I went wrong. Brian Bonsall joined in season five - as the toddler Andy. I forgot about the baby version

7

Welcome to the SDMB, @undeuxpaw!

Nick was OK, and he gave the Dad* some much-needed laughs. But I will note he represented an archetype which I’ve come (unfairly, perhaps) to call ‘New Jersey lugs’ that I saw a LOT of on TV, but never in real life.

*Who I always thought of as “BJ Honeycutt’s Ohio cousin.”

8

I don’t remember finding Andy at all objectionable. Maybe I was too young to be tired of the old “let’s add another kid to the show” strategy that I would certainly roll my eyes at now. So I’ll vote for Nick and his whole meathead routine. Recalling that does make me wince a little.

9

I stopped watching it when they made Mallory dumb. This must have been before the baby or the boyfriend, because I vaguely remember both from weekly promos, but I don’t remember seeing an episode with either one. On the other hand, I don’t think I’ve watched it since the initial run.

I do remember thinking it was really sexist to have the super smart son, and the stupid daughter. It was one thing when it was just Alex’s was just studious, and of the opinion that he was smart and Mallory was dumb, while there was no objective evidence that she wasn’t bright. But at some point they had her saying and doing things that were borderline impaired. I stopped watching.

It stayed on the air without my business, but I wonder to what extent the character Nick could not have worked with a Mallory of normal intelligence.

10

Not only did the addition of Brian Bonsall ruin Family Ties, he nearly took down Star Trek: The Next Generation when they added him as Worf’s kid.

Nick was just a lovable goofball, sort of like Haley’s boyfriend Dylan on Modern Family.

11

I remember liking Nick well enough. I think what made me start losing interest was just having the kids get older and then there’s less interplay between them because Alex has his university storyline and Mallory is doing whatever she does after graduating (fashion school?).

The same thing happened with The Cosby Show; if you don’t want to just fire Theo and Vanessa after they graduate from high school, you end up with a smaller and smaller portion of the show being about the younger kids.

12

ANY TIME they add in a small child it ruins it. Andy, definitely.

13

I think adding a small child is usually a symptom of the problem (i.e., the original cute kids grow up and can’t do cute kid stories any more) rather than the cause.

14

Yes, it was the aging-up that hurt the show. Always does.

I watched the spin-off with Nick.

15

So I started this thread after starting to watch the reruns. I was surprised to find Nick not nearly as annoying as I remembered nor was the Andy character a problem.

The decline was just the poor storylines, Michael J. Fox did his best to save the show, but the original format of former hippie parents raising kids in the 80’s had outgrown any humour.

It’s the type of show where it should have ended it’s run after four seasons.

16

I remember liking the episode where they play Scrabble (in Season 5).

“After I ZOQUO, I like to UUSHNUU.”

17

I stopped watching it when they made Mallory dumb. What season was that? I think it must have been before the last kid was born, because I don’t remember him at all.

It was one thing when Alex was simply a more serious student than Mallory; in any family, you’ll have one kid who takes school more seriously than another, but it isn’t because the less serious student it actually stupid.

When Alex was a better student, but Mallory wasn’t stupid, it rung slightly sexist, but I lived with it, because Alex was also kind of a jerk, and Mallory was much nicer.

Then Michael J. Fox because unfathomably popular with audiences, so they toned down his asshat qualities, and he was a good student less because he was a cutthroat, and more because he was really bright.

When he was cutthroat-competitive, Mallory was nice as a contrast, but when they made him just plain bright, and less of an egotist, Mallory had to be dumb to provide contrast.

That, to me, was no longer just slightly sexist, but downright offensive.

I quit watching, and I haven’t seen it since. According to IMDb, it premiered in 1982, when I was 15, and lasted 7 seasons. I suppose getting older could have contributed to my finding it tiresome, but I very specifically remember thinking that I hated what they’d done with the Mallory character.

Anyway, as far as I’m concerned, shifting the focus of the show from culture clashes between the parents on one hand, and the kids on the other, and making it “The Alex Show,” with dumb Mallory constantly getting in his way, like she’s Gilligan and he’s the professor, was what ruined the show, and that was before the introduction of either the baby or the boyfriend.

18

That sounds familiar.

Oh, now I remember.

19

Oh, man. Did I just post to a zombie?

20

There is a big difference between the first season of the series and the later seasons - the first season was about the parents more than any of the kids, so any particular episode might be about how the parents dealt with issues with Alex, or Mallory or Jennifer, with no sense that focusing on Mallory or Jennifer was an unusual thing. By the second season the creators knew that Alex was the breakout character, and he started stealing focus from everybody (but particularly from the parents (Baxter, I gather, felt that her show had been taken away from her). This only got worse with time, of course, resulting in the dumbification of Mallory and Jennifer, etc.