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

Cafe Society
21

That may be true. I was never a huge fan of the show. I can’t remember what station ran it, nor what night it was on. So it must have been a show I happened to watch if I were home and someone else put it on, or if I were casting around for something to do during the rerun season, and no one else was watching the TV.

There were shows I tried never to miss, and I can still remember what day and network they were on, even decades later, but I can’t tell you a thing about Family Ties.

I did just look it up on IMDb, though, and it seems that Nick and Andy were both added in season 4, so I probably watch seasons 1-3. That would make sense, as that was when I was in high school. I still lived at home-- actually, with my aunt and uncle, but that’s where I’d lived all through high school-- for my freshman and sophomore years of college, but I was rarely at home in the evenings anymore.

In high school, except when I was in a play, I was mostly home in the evenings on school nights, unless I was babysitting. I wasn’t a very exciting teenager. I went to synagogue on Saturday mornings and read Torah pretty often; on Sundays, I volunteered at the hospital, and sometimes at the community kitchen. Really dull.

22

No opinion on the OP, but as an aside, I remember thinking Mallory was kinda hot. Somewhat recenetly I saw a show in which she guest starred all growed up. Aging HAS NOT been kind to Justine Bateman.

23

It’s been absolutely vindictive.

24

My recollection is that the show went downhill as Michael J. Fox became more famous. It’s the Fonzie/Hawkeye/Urkel effect; when you have an ensemble show and one character becomes popular they start trying to make that one character the center of every episode. And the show usually suffers as a result.

25

The show had run it’s course. Fox was as far over the top as there was to go, none of the other characters mattered much in comparison. Andy and Nick were just symptoms of the show never having much appeal outside of the Alex P. Keaton character.

26

Actually, I think it was the 4th episode, when Alex loses his virginity. Reportedly at one point the studio audience was laughing so hard that the producer told Meredith Baxter, “If you want out of your contract, I wouldn’t blame you.”

27

You’re probably right about when it started - but by the time the fourth episode was filming, I’ll bet they had episodes in the pipeline that were too far along to be made completely Alex-focused (the fifth episode is Mallory-focused) - by the second season they had time to adjust to the new reality.

28

My hazy recollection actually was that Jennifer was smart. I recall one very late episode where she easily matched Alex in a recitation of trivia. BUT I think they only started playing up her smarts in the last seasons when she was a teenager so RivkahChaya likely gave up on it before then.

I agree it was one of those sitcoms that aged poorly. I started watching as a teen and kept with it through inertia, but it really did go down hill. And I agree much like Homer on the Simpsons, the dumbing of Mallory definitely went a step or ten too far into farce. But then few sitcoms do stay strong past a few seasons - it’s the rare example that holds up well until the end.

29

Yeah, Jennifer was portrayed as very smart (perhaps smarter than Alex) in the early years, just differently focused (reading Sayre as a preteen, etc.)

30

Wow. I don’t remember that. But like I said, I literally (and I have a degree in English, so when I say “literally,” that’s what I mean) have not seen it since its first run.

I didn’t really even mind the idea that Mallory didn’t care about school, and Alex was hyper-focused on it, even if that was a bit of a gender-type; what I objected to was that fact that Mallory morphed into someone who was borderline retarded. And yes, I mean that literally as well. She said and did things that were so stupid, she shouldn’t have been left alone.

And on top of being stupid, she was shallow. The two don’t necessarily go together. I worked in community living for disabled people, and knew lots of people who carried a diagnosis of retardation; many of them were far from shallow. One woman’s favorite TV show was Nova, and she knew everything about Greek and Roman mythology, and tons about Hellenistic society. She liked Hercules and Xena, but would often point out things the show got wrong. Yes, this woman with an actual diagnosis of Mental Retardation was brighter than Mallory.

I was just kinda “Meh” about the show before this thread, but I’m really starting to dislike it.

31

Oh man, do I have a Justine Bateman anecdote. Many moons ago, when Mr. Rilch and I were both working in indie films, we knew this guy, another crew member. He’d been called to work on a show that was on its first or second day of filming. A grip position had become available. He went down to the set next day, and at lunch, asked the other grips, “So, the guy I’m replacing – did he get hurt?” “No, (grimace), he got fired.” Justine Bateman was the star, or at least in the cast, and Clueless Grip had been standing next to her for some reason. He said something, I forget what exactly, but along the lines of “So what have you been up to lately?”

Now, to be fair, it’s not a good idea to try to make elevator chit-chat with an actor. Some are pleasant, some downright friendly, but basically you wait for them to speak first, because some don’t want crew members or extras talking to them. I can understand that, but I wonder how many of them will give the guy a look like he’s just shot her, storm off to …someone: the director maybe, or just the nearest production person, demand that that person be fired, do this loudly, as in a guy in the grip truck could hear her, and include the phrase “It is him or me.” So yeah, that was Justine Bateman, mid-1990s.

My recollection is that the show went downhill as Michael J. Fox became more famous. It’s the Fonzie/Hawkeye/Urkel effect; when you have an ensemble show and one character becomes popular they start trying to make that one character the center of every episode. And the show usually suffers as a result.

Yeah, and Henry Winkler did not want Fonzie to be the focus of the show. He wanted to be free to take a movie or Broadway offer if one became available. (I think he did do at least one movie during the Happy Days run.) He didn’t want the weight of the show to be on his shoulders, and he did not want his career and livelihood to depend on The Fonz.

32

Heroes, 1977. He played a Vietnam vet who went on a cross-country trip with Sally Field (a popular 1977 movie plot, given Smokey and the Bandit was released that year, and get this- in both movies Sally’s character just left her fiance before hooking up with the male protagonist) to be a worm farmer with his buddy in California. There was a three month period where we had HBO in 1978 and 11 year-old me watched everything. Including this.

33

I remember Heroes. In addition to Winkler, it also had Harrison Ford who had just been in Star Wars and was trying to avoid being typecast as Han Solo.

34

To me, it’s the first time I remember being emotionally moved by the placement of a current song in a movie, when Carry On Wayward Son played at the end.

35

My memory might be wrong (it was Kierkegaard that Jennifer read, not Sartre, for example)

36

Right, Heroes. I remembered that, and The One and Only, but I thought they might have been pre-Happy Days. (Now IMDB tells me TOaO was 1978.)

Oh, and I forgot to mention: The story goes that Garry Marshall wanted to change the show title to “Fonzie’s Happy Days”. (I can just hear him saying that, too.) Winkler’s slightly delayed response was to throw an Orange Julius at a wall.