-cough-
I thought this was familiar, and could have sworn to having given a response to it. You’re channeling yourself again @Drum_God
My response is still the same though.
After editing a different clause/assumption:
If we only stick to the end of Family Ties, we know he does well in school, and gets a job on Wall Street. Too many different things could have happened during that time: success, failure, getting rich, getting Madoxed, etc. My read - he made and makes a lot of money, but isn’t keeping much of it beyond appearances - mostly because he’s on his 2rd, 3rd, or maybe even 4th wife/lover. After all, he’s rich, he’s charming, and he is not particularly faithful. So the first few times, he didn’t have a pre-nup, and being found the offending party for likely affairs, got taken to the cleaners. He still does well, but the costs of supporting a few ex-wives, and possibly a current wife and lover are putting a huge strain on him.
In this scenario, he could actually be a real Trumpist to a degree. A casual philanderer, one who feels he’s been done wrong by ‘liberal’ assumptions of behavior, always being asked to not be a casual misogynist . . . there would be a lot of appeal. He’d probably say he was supporting Trump 100% for the typical Republican reasons - strong borders, lower taxes, more trickle down, less political activism, but deep down he wouldn’t be nearly as critical as the Senatorial version would have been.
And from my later response to you about Alex’s moral character:
It’s possible. My opinion on the matter is certainly the more negative of the two. The reason I am . . . cynical, is that I tend to find that life after college tends to grind away a lot of idealism in the pursuit of success. And Alex is very ambitious, determined to prove himself, and to be aggressively different from his parents. Taking into account his going to work in ‘Greed is Good’ Wall Street of the late 80s, I cannot help but expect the worse.
And no, I didn’t think Alex was Trump-casual or crass with women. But getting himself in trouble and divorcing a few times? That would be the norm for a successful young man in that situation. And that in and of itself could easily sour him.
But you are correct D_G - I am still looking at the worst case scenario for a young man who when last seen had a lot of possibilities. If there is such a thing as ‘heaven’ for past sitcom characters, we can all hope that for his sake he found a way to balance his desire for success with his moral compass. It’s a trial many people in this world have attempted and failed.