PopFilter Vs. Our Childhood

In which we reminisce about childhood entertainment, then go back and watch it and re-assess.

RYAN HALEY

VS

FAMILY TIES

I was faced once again with the mighty task of deciding which television blind spot I should begin to fill. Start The Shield? Finish The West Wing? Finally admit to myself that it’s impossible to see everything, so what’s the point of watching anything? Or continue my endless journey of finding good shows that also have laugh tracks. The best part about picking sitcom crap is that you can sleep through most of it and not really miss anything, my number one requirement for late night Netflix viewing. Plus, there’s a 99% chance that I will realize it will be awful within the first ten minutes, and then have the ability to turn it off forever. Most of the stuff on Netflix that I would watch, I have, but since the dawn of Instant Viewing, there’s been one bowl-headed kid staring right at me, wondering why I’m watching anything else: Alex P. Keaton.

Sitcoms that you haven’t watched since you were a kid are almost impossible to rate or discuss. You watched them when you were young, when you were at your dumbest, and even though you’ve gotten smarter since then, there’s still the dumb replacement called Nostalgia. If you really think you can tell me that Step by Step was better than Full House, it’s just because of the person you were when you watched them. It has nothing to do with the quality of either show. (Step by Step is, of course, better than Full House, by definition, as Full House is The Worst Show of All-Time.) When I was a kid, Family Ties slid in right next to all of the other shows I watched. To me, it was no better or worse than Family Matters, Mr. Belvedere, or Alf. I didn’t know the difference between reruns of Family Ties and new episodes of Home Improvement. I liked it for no other reason than it was on. But, I hadn’t seen a single moment of it since the early nineties. Is it better than Family Matters?  And why are white people always like “my family ties?” but black people are always like “my family matters?”

 

The most important part in this experiment is whether or not you’ve seen these shows in syndication since you were a kid. Just to give everyone a frame of reference, here’s some quick opinions on shows from that time frame that I’ve seen recently enough to review.

 

Home Improvement – Unwatchable Garbage

Cheers – In the top ten shows of all time

Family Matters – Makes me want to go back in time and kill myself. Just look up the plot synopsis of any episode in the last season.

Roseanne – See Cheers

Step by Step –  Barf flavored cotton candy.

Full House – THE WORST SHOW OF ALL-TIME

Fresh Prince of Bel-Air – Still watchable. It’s formula had enough funny stuff going on to keep it interesting.

Married…With Children – The first two or three seasons are among the best stuff on this list. The last two or three are among the worst.

Boy Meets World – TGIF really stands for Thank God It’s Fucking horrible sappy bullshit that I can’t believe anyone would ever like, even braindead six year olds the only people who could get any enjoyment out of this are people who live in the bottom of an outhouse, like those hiding Jews in Schindler’s List or that little kid in Slumdog Millionaire, and the only time they are allowed out is when Boy Meets World or Full House was on. But apparently Thank God It’s Friday fit better with the theme song they had written.

Saved by the Bell – Mind-numbingly awful. No amount of nostalgia should allow you to watch this show

That’s crazy, right? If you asked ten year-old me which of those I’d like to watch, I would have told you it didn’t matter because they were all the same. So…where does the first two seasons of Family Ties fit in, a show that is no longer in syndication, and no one ever talks about. Closer to Cheers and Roseanne than Boy Meets World and Full House. 

The one thing that everyone knows about Family Ties is that it launched the career of Michael J. Fox. This isn’t surprising when you watch it; he’s clearly the best part about it. And although he was a talented kid, and earned his stardom, think about the role that he was handed. The gimmick of the show, if there was one, was that two hippies grew up to raise the second coming of Reagan. He went against everything they stood for. It’s a cute gimmick, sure, until you realize that it’s every sitcom since the dawn of sitcoms, flipped on its ear. Oldest daughter: dumb. Youngest daughter: precocious. We’ve seen them a billion times, and Justine Bateman and Tina Yothers are good, if not legendary. But Michael J. Fox plays the rebel teenager (also seen it a billion times), rebelling against his parents who were rebels. It’s not just figuring out a new way to present the rebellious teenager, but taking it one step further, and demonstrating how being rebellious isn’t about destroying things, but instead destroying specifically your parent’s things. What they hold important is bullshit. And if your parents took it to the extreme with their parents, you take it to the extreme right back.

 

As interesting as this is, it also provides a lot of (dated) laugh-out loud moments. Alex P. Keaton is constantly laughing at his parents, pointing out how “sixties” they are, as we laugh at him, pointing out how “eighties” he is. It’s as cyclical as the rebellious stylings of the Keatons themselves.

 

There’s another weird thing about the show, and the family in particular, that I didn’t remember, but really kind of dig. With the exception of Mallory’s every shrinking I.Q., every single thing out of this family’s mouth is dry-as-sand sarcasm. No one’s emotions ever spike, but are instead channeled into this weird, asshole hadouken that no family member is safe from. It’s weird for a TV show to have all five family members essentially have the same sense of humor, but it’s much more realistic, at least as far as all of the families I’ve ever been in. Why would you scream at someone when it’s so much easier to just calmly make them feel like an idiot. You tell them, Elyse.
The plot tropes are rampant, but if that’s the shit that bothers you, you really need to stay away from three-camera comedy, and television comedy, and television, forever. The bigger question is how it handles the “Very Special Episodes,” something the 80’s found very important, even though they had little idea how to do it. Family Ties has its share; in the first two seasons Alex gets addicted to speed, and Michael (the father) comes insanely close to fucking one of his co-workers (ANGELA FROM WHO’S THE BOSS?!?). The episodes have their wonky moments, although nothing comes close to Jesse Spano’s rendition of I’m So Excited. The true pinnacle of VSE comes in the form of Elyse’s brother, played by Tom Hanks. Tom Hanks is on the run from the FBI because he embezzled millions of dollars from his work to give some Eskimos or some shit. It’s bonkers. Alex is destroyed, not because his favorite uncle is on the run, but because he stole from the rich to give to the poor, when it should be the other way around. If you have any inclination to fire up Family Ties, begin with this awesome two-parter, and then go from there.-RH