All The Tropes

Family Ties: Difference between revisions

Page Discussion

Family Ties (view source)

Revision as of 07:45, 9 January 2014

4 bytes added ,  10 years ago
m
Mass update links
VisualWikitext
m (remove unneccessary quote box template)
m (Mass update links)
Line 17:
* [[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.
* [[Big Ego, Hidden Depths]]
* [[Bourgeois Bohemian]]: The [[Ur Example]].
* [[Bratty Teenage Daughter]]: Mallory, sometimes. Jennifer, when Andy came along and later when she was going through puberty.
* [[Canon Welding]]: In the last episode of ''[[Spin City]]'' where [[Michael J Fox]] appears as a regular, it is suggested that the series takes place in the same universe as ''Family Ties''.
* [[Can't Get Away With Nuthin']]
* [[The Cast Showoff]]: In later seasons, Jennifer. In earlier episodes, Elyse.
* [[Clip Show]]: several. Two sees the Keatons share stories with Alex's girlfriends Ellen and later Lauren, another has the men and women of the family rehashing past incidents.
Line 43:
* [[Extraverted Nerd]]: Skippy Handelman, even though he's not particularly intelligent.
* [[Good Parents]]: Steven and Elyse
* [[G -Rated Drug]]: One episode has Alex becoming dependent on "diet pills" (implied to be amphetamines) to stay up late studying.
* [[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.
* [[Hey ItsIt's That Guy]]: [[Tom Hanks]] as Elyse's alcoholic brother.
** Courtney Cox as Alex's girlfriend Lauren.
** Geena Davis as Karen, the Keatons' housekeeper when Elyse is pregnant.
Line 58:
* [[Lamaze Class]]
* [[Locked in A Room]]
* [[Long -Lost Uncle Aesop]]: The alcoholic uncle, Elyse's brother Ned ([[Tom Hanks]]), and Elyse's sister Michelle--although in an earlier episode Elyse argues with her mother and refers to herself as "your only daughter". There's a [[Very Special Episode]] featuring Mallory's favorite aunt, the never-before-seen Trudy, who dies of a heart attack (which of course is never again mentioned). Also teen pregnancy was dealt with by bringing in a never-seen-before friend, and both Alex and Mallory mourn friends whom we'd never seen alive or would hear about later.
** Ned was in a two-part episode the previous season fleeing the FBI for stealing money from his company.
* [[Mysterious Middle Initial]]: Both actor Michael J. Fox and character Alex P. Keaton.
Line 66:
* [[Opposites Attract]]: Alex and Ellen.
* [[Parent Ex Machina]]
* [[Post -Robbery Trauma]]: Elyse invests in a gun after a break in.
* [[Romance On the Set]]: Michael J. Fox and Tracy Pollan, who played Alex and Ellen respectively, got married in real life.
** However, according to Fox's autobiography ''Lucky Man'', the two actors did not start dating until sometime after ''Family Ties'' was cancelled, as Pollan was already dating [[Kevin Bacon]], while Fox was dating Nancy McKeon. Fox did have a crush on her, though.
Line 85:
* [[What Could Have Been]]: Originally, the actor who played Nick, Scott Valentine, was supposed to have been spun off into his own series, ''The Art of Being Nick''. Unfortunately, however, NBC did not pick it up because they were reportedly afraid that Nick's absence would hurt ''Family Ties''.
** [[Matthew Broderick]] was the producers' choice to play Alex before Michael J. Fox.
* [[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]]:
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Special:MobileDiff/511008"