50 Fun Facts About Family Ties

Which actor turned down the role of Alex P. Keaton before it went to the eventual star?

Broderick passed and made WarGames instead. Fox won three consecutive Emmys for the role and married his on-screen girlfriend Tracy Pollan in 1988.

In which city is Family Ties set?

Steven Keaton is a Buffalo native who runs the fictional local PBS station WKS. Elyse works as an independent architect.

On which network did Family Ties air from 1982 to 1989?

It ran seven seasons, moving from Wednesdays to Thursdays behind The Cosby Show and finally to Sundays for its last two years.

Who created Family Ties?

Goldberg based it on watching his own radical generation raise kids who were 'definitely to the right' of their parents. He later created Spin City and Brooklyn Bridge.

What is Steven Keaton's job?

He runs WKS, the fictional local PBS affiliate. Ed O'Neill auditioned for the role but decided he was not right for it.

What is Elyse Keaton's profession?

She and Steven met and married at college in Berkeley in 1964, having lived as hippies in California in the 1960s.

Which actress played Elyse Keaton?

Baxter had played the eldest daughter on the 1970s drama Family; the new show mirrored it by adding a fourth child later on.

Which actor played Steven Keaton?

Gross went on to play survivalist Burt Gummer in every Tremors film and the TV series, the only actor to appear in all of them.

What unusual coincidence do the actors who play Steven and Elyse share?

Both were born June 21, 1947, and were only fourteen years older than their on-screen son Michael J. Fox.

Who played Mallory Keaton?

Bateman, older sister of Jason Bateman, won a Young Artist Award in 1985. Laura Dern had been considered for the role.

Which episode reveals that Mallory has a higher IQ than Alex?

Mallory is otherwise written as a shopping-obsessed airhead and constant target for Alex's teasing.

Who played tomboy Jennifer Keaton?

Jennifer shares her parents' liberal values more than her siblings do and cares mostly about sports.

Which child actor played Andy Keaton from season five onward?

He later played Worf's son Alexander on Star Trek: The Next Generation. Twins Garrett and Tyler Merriman played baby Andy in season four.

Why was baby Andy written into the show in season three?

Andy then aged about four years between seasons four and five, a classic sitcom time jump.

What is the name of the Keatons' nerdy neighbor with a crush on Mallory?

Marc Price played Irwin 'Skippy' Handelman and won a Young Artist Award for it in 1986.

Mallory's boyfriend Nick Moore, played by Scott Valentine, was written as what kind of character?

Nick's grunted 'Ay' catchphrase and leather jacket made him a fan favorite from season four onward.

Which actress played Alex's girlfriend Ellen Reed and later married the actor who played Alex?

They married in 1988. Fox joked that for a decade they could not step onto a dance floor without hearing 'At This Moment.'

Which future Friends star played Alex's girlfriend Lauren Miller in the final two seasons?

Cox joined in season six, three years after her Bruce Springsteen 'Dancing in the Dark' video.

Which future Oscar winner played Elyse's brother Ned Donnelly in three episodes?

Ned's story arc included a memorable episode about alcoholism, foreshadowing Hanks's dramatic career.

Which young actor played Eugene Forbes in the episode 'My Tutor'?

Feldman appeared in 'The Disciple' and Wheaton in ''D' Is for Date.' Christina Applegate, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Crispin Glover also guested.

With what pitch was Family Ties sold to the network?

Elyse and Steven were meant to be the leads, but the audience reacted so strongly to Alex during the fourth taping that the show reorganized around him.

How did The New York Times famously sum up Alex P. Keaton when the show ended?

Goldberg said he never intended Alex to be sympathetic, but Fox's likability kept audiences from seeing 'the darker side of what he's actually saying.'

How many consecutive Emmys did the actor playing Alex win as Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series?

He won in 1986, 1987 and 1988, and added a Golden Globe in 1989. He was filming Back to the Future at night during the show's third season.

Which episode won the 1987 Emmy for Outstanding Writing in a Comedy Series?

The hour-long episode, in which Alex confronts a friend's death on a bare stage, also won a technical Emmy.

What is the title of the Family Ties theme song?

Jeff Barry and Tom Scott wrote it. It was credited simply as 'Us' in season one.

Which duo sang the theme song from episode 11 onward?

Producers were unhappy with the first version by Dennis Tufano and Mindy Sterling. A full-length version appears on Mathis and Williams' album That's What Friends Are For.

Which 1981 Billy Vera song went to number one in 1987 after being used as Alex and Ellen's love theme?

NBC said it had never had such a response to a song. It became one of the last gold-certified 45s and the last country-charting song to top the pop chart for 13 years.

What kind of dog is Ubu, seen in the closing tag of every episode?

Ubu Roi, named after the French play, was Goldberg's college dog. The photo with a frisbee was taken in the Tuileries Garden in Paris.

What does the show's creator say over the Ubu Productions closing logo?

The bark that follows was created by a sound engineer. Goldberg titled his 2008 memoir Sit, Ubu, Sit.

Which fictional college does Alex attend?

Lauren Miller, his later girlfriend, was a psychology graduate student there. His earlier love Ellen Reed was a feminist artist.

According to the show's creator, what did the last scene of nearly every episode become?

He inherited a six-scenes-and-a-tag structure from Jim Brooks and Allan Burns, and the tag became Alex saying sorry for his latest money scheme.

Which sitcom star auditioned for Steven Keaton but turned it down as not right for him?

O'Neill went on to play Al Bundy, a very different TV dad, on Married... with Children.

Which future Oscar winner was considered for the role of Mallory?

Dern was 15 when the show was cast; the part went to Justine Bateman.

On what date did the Family Ties series finale air?

The show had premiered September 22, 1982. Its Sunday slot in the last two seasons was often followed by Day by Day, another Ubu series.

Which Ubu Productions sitcom did Steven and Andy Keaton cross over into for the episode 'Trading Places'?

That episode revealed Steven went to college with Doug Sheehan's character. Another Day by Day episode was pre-empted by the TV premiere of Back to the Future.

In the Family Ties star's final Spin City episodes, Mike Flaherty meets whom in Washington?

Michael Gross played Mike Flaherty's therapist and Meredith Baxter played his mother in the same run of episodes.

Which 2021 Marvel series parodied the Family Ties opening in its fifth episode?

'On a Very Special Episode...' recreated the sketch-to-painting title sequence as Wanda and Vision raise super-powered twins.

Under what title did Family Ties first air in Germany on ZDF in 1984?

It means 'Help, we grow up!' Later German airings used Familienbande and Jede Menge Familie, and Italy called it Casa Keaton.

Which blockbuster starring Family Ties' Alex premiered on NBC on November 13, 1988?

The same night, Justine Bateman, Tina Yothers and Brian Bonsall appeared in character on Mickey's 60th Birthday.

Where was the show's breakout star, the actor behind Alex, born in 1961?

He was born there on June 9, 1961. His real middle name is Andrew; he chose the J as a nod to actor Michael J. Pollard.

Which NBC executive said Fox's was 'not the kind of face you'll ever find on a lunchbox'?

He thought Fox too short next to his TV parents. After Fox hit big, he sent Tartikoff a custom lunchbox inscribed 'This is for you to put your crow in.'

Fox said he negotiated the role of Alex from a payphone at which fast-food restaurant?

He told the story to Jimmy Fallon in 2014. His first film roles, Midnight Madness and Class of 1984, had credited him as plain Michael Fox.

Alex P. Keaton owns a lunchbox bearing the likeness of which president?

His other heroes include William F. Buckley Jr., Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford and economist Milton Friedman.

What is Alex's favourite television show?

He is also an avid reader of The Wall Street Journal. Despite his sharp suits and briefcase, his home was firmly a PBS household.

Mallory later enrols at which nearby school, whose courses Alex openly mocks?

Alex, by contrast, wins a scholarship close enough to home to keep commuting, and ends up teaching an economics course as a teaching assistant.

Steven Keaton is a native of which city?

He and Elyse met and married in college in Berkeley, and his fictional public TV station is called WKS.

Who sang the theme song over the first ten episodes, before being replaced?

Jeff Barry and Tom Scott composed the tune, credited in season one simply as 'Us'. Sterling is better known today as Frau Farbissina in Austin Powers.

Under what title did the show air on Italy's Italia 1 from 1986 to 1992?

Germany's RTL went with the literal 'Familienbande', while ProSieben called it 'Jede Menge Familie' - 'Whole lot of family'.

In 1999 TV Guide ranked Alex P. Keaton where on its 50 Greatest TV Characters of All Time?

TV Land later gave Fox its 2008 award for 'Character You'd Pay to Do Your Homework for You', and the cast won Fan Favorite in 2011.

Which future Back to the Future co-star of Fox played Doug in 'The Birthday Boy'?

Glover went on to play George McFly. Other guests included Geena Davis, Wil Wheaton, Christina Applegate and Julia Louis-Dreyfus.