Family Ties: Difference between revisions
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{{tropelist}}
* [[Absentee Actor]]: Meredith Baxter is absent from some of the season three episodes. Sometimes it is explained, often nobody bothers with an excuse.
* [[Artistic Title]]: The opening Title of
* [[Belligerent Sexual Tension]]: Alex and Ellen. So much so that, years after she moved to Paris and they broke up, when Alex met Lauren he knew he liked her because "No girl has made me this angry this quickly since Ellen."
* [[Big Damn Movie]]: ''Family Ties Vacation'', an action-adventure TV movie filmed on-location in England.
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* [[Can't Get Away with Nuthin']]
* [[The Cast Showoff]]: In later seasons, Jennifer. In earlier episodes, Elyse.
* [[Clip Show]]:
** Parodied on ''[[SNL]]'' when Justine Bateman hosted. They did a ''Family Ties'' spoof where they would flashback to another episode and in that episode they flashback to '''another''' episode and so on until they flashbacked to a real episode of ''[[The Jeffersons]]''.
* [[Cool Uncle]]: Uncle Ned (played by [[Tom Hanks]]) is really cool, but has a drinking problem.
* [[Costumer]]: In the episode "Philadelphia Story", Alex has a dream where he must convince Thomas Jefferson to write the Declaration of Independence and the cast wears clothing from that time period.
* [[The Couch]]
* [[Cousin Oliver]]: Andrew.
* [[Crossover]]: Oddly happened a decade after the show ended. Michael J. Fox went on to play the lead on ''[[Spin City]]'' and his character on that show eventually had an off-screen [[Actor Allusion|run-in with Alex]] - who is revealed to have become the junior senator from Ohio.
* [[Deadpan Snarker]]: EVERYONE.
* [[The Ditz]]: Mallory.
* [[Ditzy Genius]]: Alex. He's a hypercompetitive straight A student and math genius who was doing his parents' taxes when he was five years old and advised his parents on mortgage rates when they bought their house. Yet in everyday activities he often proves completely incapable. His little sister frequently beats him in sports, he fails at things like building kites, cooking or fixing cars even with extensive directions.
* [[Dom Com]]
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* [[The Eighties]]
* [[Eighties Hair]]: Jennifer's hair in later seasons was a fairly extreme case.
** Alex had a bit of a mullet around
* [[Evil Matriarch]]
* [[Excellent Adventure]]: In one episode, Alex P. Keaton falls asleep - and he witnesses the Declaration of Independence. As this episode occurred around the time that Michael J. Fox (Alex's actor) was also playing Marty McFly on ''Back to the Future'', this episode was possibly a nod to the then upcoming film. In the film, Doc Brown types in the date of the Declaration of Independence - when demonstrating to Marty how his time machine works.
* [[Extroverted Nerd]]: Skippy Handelman, even though he's not particularly intelligent.
* [[G-Rated Drug]]: One episode has Alex becoming dependent on "diet pills" (implied to be amphetamines) to stay up late studying.
* [[Good Parents]]: Steven and Elyse.
* [[Hair-Trigger Temper]]: Steven's father.
* [[Heel Realization]]: Happens in about half the episodes, usually to [[Jerk with a Heart of Gold|Alex]], though the other characters get their fair share as well.
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* [[In with the In Crowd]]
* [[Ivy League for Everyone]]: Subverted.
* [[Jerk with a Heart of Gold]]: Alex.
* [[Lamaze Class]]
* [[Locked in a Room]]
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* [[Smug Snake]]: Mr. Tadesco, Alex' teacher in "The Harder They Fall".
* [[Soapbox Sadie]]: Jennifer in later years.
* [[Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome]]: Andy. Went from infant in
* [[Talk About That Thing]]
* [[Teens Are Short]]: Alex being only 5'5", exactly a foot shorter than 6'5" Michael Gross
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* [[Vacation Episode]]: See [[Big Damn Movie]], above.
* [[Very Special Episode]]: A number of these including: Uncle Ned's alcoholism, a colleague of Stephen's inappropriately touches Mallory, Alex gets hooked on stay-awake pills, a friend of Alex's is killed in a car crash, Alex suffers from insomnia, Stephen has a heart attack, among others...
* [[Wacky Guy]]: Mallory's boyfriend, Nick.
* [[Where Did We Go Wrong?]]: The Keatons are at a loss as to how their kids ended up so differently, particularly Alex.
* [[Yet Another Christmas Carol]]: Jennifer and Mallory take the form of the Ghosts of Christmas past and future (respectively) and Alex learns the true meaning of Christmas, and what his greed could lead to.
* [[You Are Not Alone]]:
** A particularly impactful example is the episode "'A,' My Name is Alex
** Mallory actually winds up doing this for the shattered mother of a friend who committed suicide.
* [[Younger Than They Look]]: In the last couple of seasons, Jennifer is 15 or 16 years old, but look like she could be in her late teens or early twenties toward the end of the series. Also, Michael Gross who plays Steven. He went grey early, his hair thinned a bit, and was only about 42 by the time the show ended.
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