Family Ties Trivia
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This Family Ties trivia quiz has 50 free questions with answers and covers all seven seasons of the NBC sitcom about ex-hippie parents raising a Young Republican in Reagan-era Columbus, Ohio. There are questions on Alex, Mallory, Jennifer and Andy Keaton, on Steven's PBS station and Elyse's architecture career, on Skippy, Nick, Ellen and Lauren, and on the show's ending in 1989. The behind-the-scenes half digs into how Matthew Broderick passed on Alex, why the parents were supposed to be the stars, the 'Sit, Ubu, sit' closing tag, the theme song sung by Johnny Mathis and Deniece Williams, how Billy Vera's 'At This Moment' went to number one because of the show, Michael J. Fox's three straight Emmys, and the future stars who guested, from Tom Hanks to River Phoenix. Questions run from easy to expert, and every answer has been checked against a reliable source.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which actor was the producers' first choice to play Alex P. Keaton?
Matthew Broderick
Matthew Broderick. With him out of the picture, the show's creator had to fight his own network to cast Michael J. Fox, whom its programming chief thought too short to pass as the Keatons' son.
Q 02In which city is Family Ties set?
Columbus, Ohio
Columbus, Ohio. The comfortable suburb turned ugly in a two-part story from the final season: when Black friends of the Keatons move onto the street, some neighbours' racism comes out.
Q 03On which network did Family Ties air from 1982 to 1989?
NBC
NBC. In March 1987 the network took the rare step of showing the second half of an hour-long episode with no commercials at all, and that episode went on to win two Emmys.
Q 04Who created Family Ties?
Gary David Goldberg
Gary David Goldberg. He modelled Steven and Elyse on himself and his wife, former hippies who had hitchhiked around the world and run a day-care centre in Berkeley before he tried television.
Q 05What is Steven Keaton's job?
Manager of a public TV station
Manager of a public TV station. The mild-mannered Steven gets the show's gravest late storyline: in the final season he has a heart attack and needs a quadruple bypass.
Q 06What is Elyse Keaton's profession?
Architect
Architect. Her career gets its own late episode: when the first building Elyse designed is slated for the wrecking ball, the whole family joins her fight to stop the demolition.
Q 07Which actress played Elyse Keaton?
Meredith Baxter
Meredith Baxter. Billed then as Meredith Baxter-Birney, she had spent the late 1970s playing a grown daughter on the drama Family before switching generations to become TV's ex-hippie mother.
Q 08Which actor played Steven Keaton?
Michael Gross
Michael Gross. He spent the next 30 years as Burt Gummer, the gun-hoarding survivalist of the Tremors monster films: about as far from pacifist ex-hippie Steven as a role could get.
Q 09The actors who played Steven and Elyse Keaton turned out to share exactly what?
A date of birth
A date of birth: 21 June 1947. Both were 35 when the show began, so the 'teenager' cast as their son, Michael J. Fox, was only 14 years younger than his TV parents.
Q 10Who played Mallory Keaton?
Justine Bateman
Justine Bateman. Her contract for the show ruled out college after high school; she went in her late forties instead and left UCLA in 2016 with a degree in computer science.
Q 11In the opening scene of the Family Ties pilot, Steven and Elyse make their children watch old pictures of what?
An anti-war protest march
An anti-war protest march. Elyse calls it history in the making; Alex asks, 'What were you protesting? Good grooming?', and the show's generation gap is drawn in its first scene.
Q 12Who played tomboy Jennifer Keaton?
Tina Yothers
Tina Yothers. At 13 she set out on a second career as a singer, recording two singles and making her television singing debut on the show itself in February 1987.
Q 13Which child actor played Andy Keaton from season five onward?
Brian Bonsall
Q 21With what pitch was Family Ties sold to the network?
Hip parents, square kids
Hip parents, square kids. The parents were meant to be the leads, but the response to the fourth episode, a showcase for Michael J. Fox, was so strong that the series was re-centred on Alex.
Q 22Which US president called Family Ties his favorite show and reportedly offered to appear in an episode?
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan. The producers never took him up on it, which suited a show that began as a parody of the values he stood for and whose liberal writers played Alex's views for irony.
Q 23The hour-long episode in which Alex mourns a dead friend is staged like which classic play?
Brian Bonsall. Baby Andy returned from a single summer break as a preschooler, and big brother Alex set about coaching him as a pint-sized conservative.
Q 14Why was baby Andy written into season three?
The actress playing Elyse was pregnant in real life
The actress playing Elyse was pregnant in real life, with twins. On screen Elyse had one baby, and went into labour in the middle of singing a song in front of live television cameras.
Q 15What is the name of the Keatons' nerdy neighbor with a crush on Mallory?
Skippy Handelman
Skippy Handelman. Marc Price followed the lovelorn nerd with a very different lead: a bullied heavy-metal fan haunted by his dead rock idol in the 1986 horror film Trick or Treat.
Q 16Mallory's boyfriend Nick Moore, played by Scott Valentine, was written as what kind of character?
A Sylvester Stallone-esque artist
A Sylvester Stallone-esque artist. Nick, a high-school dropout who sculpts from junk, got a spin-off pilot of his own, The Art of Being Nick, but it was never picked up as a series.
Q 17Which actress played Alex's girlfriend Ellen Reed and later married the actor who played Alex?
Tracy Pollan
Tracy Pollan. She left after a single season as Ellen; the two were reunited as co-stars on the film Bright Lights, Big City and married in the summer of 1988, soon after it came out.
Q 18Which future star of a hit 1990s sitcom played Alex's girlfriend Lauren Miller in the last two seasons?
Courteney Cox
Courteney Cox. Her Lauren is a psychology student who meets Alex when he volunteers for her study of overachievers, and she later packs him off to group therapy to make him open up.
Q 19Which future Oscar winner played Elyse's brother Ned Donnelly in three episodes?
Tom Hanks
Tom Hanks. Fresh from the sitcom Bosom Buddies, he played the high-flying uncle Alex idolises, then returned a season later for a darker episode in which the family finds Ned has a drinking problem.
Q 20Which future film star played Eugene, the boy genius Alex hires as a tutor?
River Phoenix
River Phoenix. A year before Stand by Me he played the math tutor who turns out to be barely a teenager, then loses interest in Alex's lessons as soon as he notices Jennifer.
Our Town
Our Town. For the second half-hour Alex stands on a nearly bare stage answering an unseen therapist, a performance that brought Michael J. Fox the second of his three straight Emmys.
Q 24Which episode won the 1987 Emmy for Outstanding Writing in a Comedy Series?
A, My Name Is Alex
A, My Name Is Alex. His grief is sharpened by guilt: the friend died in a car crash while running an errand that Alex had begged off, and Alex cannot stop asking why he was the one spared.
Q 25What is the title of the Family Ties theme song?
Without Us
Without Us. Heard every week for seven seasons, the full-length recording was never issued at the time; it surfaced only in 2003, as a bonus track on a reissued album of duets.
Q 26Which duo recorded the theme song of Family Ties?
Johnny Mathis and Deniece Williams
Johnny Mathis and Deniece Williams. Viewers heard their duet over the titles for years but could not buy it: the full recording stayed unreleased until a 2003 reissue of their duets album.
Q 27Which 1981 Billy Vera song went to number one in 1987 after being used as Alex and Ellen's love theme?
At This Moment
At This Moment. A writer on the show caught Vera's club set while hunting for a love song the budget could afford; after it aired, the network took more than 9,000 calls asking what it was.
Q 28What kind of dog is Ubu, seen in the closing tag of every episode?
A black Labrador Retriever
A black Labrador Retriever. Ubu hitchhiked around Europe with the show's creator and his future wife in their penniless years, long before the company that carries his name existed.
Q 29Which line is heard over the Ubu Productions logo that closes every episode?
Sit, Ubu, sit! Good dog!
Sit, Ubu, sit! Good dog! The line stuck so firmly that the show's creator, whose dog Ubu was, used it as the title of the memoir he published in 2008.
Q 30In the episode 'Go Tigers', Mallory wrecks Alex's admissions interview at which Ivy League university?
Princeton
Princeton. The title is its sports cheer; with the interview in ruins, Alex ends up at a local college, still living at his parents' house.