This Day in TV History: Family Ties premieres on NBC

40 years ago tonight, NBC premiered the new sitcom Family Ties. It seems odd now that it aired at 9:30 in between an extended Real People and a rerun of Quincy. For one thing, it's hard to think of it as other than an 8:00 or 8:30 program, and for another, we associate it more with the comeback years of NBC than this Real People period.

The show went on to be a big part of NBC's rise in the Eighties, though it can be argued it rode the coattails of a certain other family sitcom (O-be-kay-be!) that debuted a little later. Still, Ties lasted 7 seasons and over 175 episodes, launching Michael J. Fox into stardom and becoming an essential part of 1980s pop culture. 

We talked about Family Ties back in our first season!

Vanilla Extract Epidemic: Time for a BOTNS investigation?

Hey, remember early in the podcast's run when, while discussing Tom Hanks in "Say Uncle" on Family Ties, we speculated on the efficacy of using vanilla extract to get drunk?

Well, it's happening in Atlanta, folks!

https://www.wthr.com/article/school-officials-warn-students-getting-drunk-vanilla-extract

Uncle Ned approves! Well, the OLD bottle-chugging, maraschino cherry-gulping, Alex-slapping Uncle Ned would, but maybe the reformed Ned would speak out against this.

Further Viewing: Cryin' Time With Tom Hanks

Here at Battle of the Network Shows, we love Tom "There's no crying in baseball" Hanks, but we also love us some Tom "I hit Alex" Hanks, so if we have the chance to celebrate some more Hanks crying, we'll take it...even if it means watching a kind of lame TV movie.

In 1982, post Bosom Buddies, Hanks starred in Mazes and Monsters, a CBS TV movie based on a novel based on an erroneous real-life story about a game of Dungeons & Dragons gone wrong. Hanks plays Robbie, who transfers to Grant University after flunking out of Tufts for playing too much Mazes and Monsters (he also has some dark stuff in his past, but his parents blame the game). After, oh, possibly a day or two, he joins a group of gamers made up of Jay Jay (Chris Makepeace from Meatballs and My Bodyguard), Daniel (David Wallace, AKA Todd Chandler #3 from Days of Our Lives), and Kate (Wendy Crewson, Harrison Ford's first lady in Air Force One).

Teen genius Jay Jay comes from an eccentric family and wears funny hats. Pretty boy Daniel bemoans a life of one-night stands. Kate feels she can't be herself with guys (until she meets Robbie and they play Mazes and Monsters, jog, eat, make out, and study in a duet-scored montage). A few other recognizable faces show up in smaller parts: Clark Johnson (Meldrick Lewis from Homicide: Life on the Street), Murray Hamilton (the mayor from Jaws), and Kevin Peter Hall (the Predator from Predator) playing a monster.

Anyway, the Mazes and Monsters game soon gets out of hand when Jay Jay tries to take it up a notch by staging a new version in some mysterious caverns. No crying in this one but plenty of yelling.

Robbie's emotional/psychological troubles reemerge, and he starts to role-play his character from the game, a monk called Pardieu...all the time. He disappears on a quest (given to him, he thinks, by his god Hall, voiced by Hanks), and, well, all this gives Hanks ample opportunity for some crying.

In Manhattan on his quest, Robbie gets mugged and fends for himself.

This leads to a tearful phone call to Kate (who he dumped so he could practice celibacy--she moved on to Daniel). Unfortunately, the audio cuts off near the end of this clip, but you can find the full movie on Amazon Prime or, um, other places.

Finally, the gang finds Robbie atop one of the Two Towers of his quest, in fact one of the World Trade Center towers,and we get this...

While we can't really recommend Mazes and Monsters, it does have some cheesy music, Jay Jay's hats, and of course Tom Hanks giving it his tearful all.

Further Viewing, Ghosts of Christmas Past Edition Vol. I: Family Ties "A Keaton Christmas Carol"

TV shows have long had special holiday-themed episodes, and for Christmas, many go to that old gem A Christmas Carol for inspiration. Today and tomorrow, we'll look at two shows we covered on the podcast that did their own versions of A Christmas Carol. Up first, Family Ties "A Keaton Christmas Carol," which aired December 14, 1983, a mere month and a half before "Say Uncle."

The episode opens with most of the Keaton clan finishing up trimming the tree and naturally in a festive mood. Alex hasn't appeared, but when he does, well, maybe he should have stayed away. He's in a mood. He doesn't like Christmas and considers it a lot of baloney. He's so cranky that he forgot to pick up Jennifer's cough medicine, suggesting he'll pick it up tomorrow until Elyse reminds him that tomorrow is Christmas and all the shops will be closed. He even refuses to pose for the traditional family photo, thinking it dumb that to strike the same poses every year.

Upstairs, he yells out his window at some Christmas carolers, mutters a "bah, humbug," and settles in for a long winter's nap. Instead smoke billows through the room, and Jennifer appears decked out in red, only she's not Jennifer. She's the Ghost of Christmas Past, and she takes Alex on a journey...downstairs...but downstairs to a living room from ten years before.

We see a young, cheerful yet cheerfully Republican Alex (he takes some time to call the Watergate investigation a witch hunt) who loves Christmas.

Sure he and Mallory and even baby Jennifer recognized Steven through his Santa disguise, but they all have a good time, and lil' Alex even suggests that they turn their photo poses into an annual tradition.

Back in bed, the Ghost of Christmas Future pays a visit in the guise of Mallory (no time for the Ghost of Christmas Present here).

She shows him a grim, dare I say, dyskensian future, and the cast gets to have fun playing older versions of themselves. The Keatons (and apparently the world) have fallen on hard times. To make ends meet, Elyse does other people's laundry and Jennifer farms dirt in a wheelbarrow (the family's only form of transportation). Mallory's on baby number four, and Steven looks like he wandered in from the set of A Christmas Carol movie.

Only Alex has had success, becoming a tycoon who lives in New York. He arrives in a helicopter, crushes the wheelbarrow, and strides into the house looking like he wandered in from the set of a 1930s comedy--fat, bald, pinky-ring-wearing. Real Alex panics as the sight of all this (the meanness and the baldness) and promises to do better. Of course, a modern audience knows this only represents a possible future. After all, Brian Bosnall's Andy doesn't even get mentioned! (Hmm. Maybe Alex should have stayed a jerk.)

"Grovel before your master!"

The episode ends with a changed Alex excitedly offering lame gifts to everyone. He had to get them from 7-Eleven, so he had limited options (most notably a six-pack of cough syrup for Jennifer--I hope she used it up before Uncle Ned visited). Although they don't understand his behavior, the family accepts their goofy gifts in the spirit Alex intended, and he opens the door to his last present--the carolers!

It wouldn't be a Keaton Christmas without some orange juice...
or any day of the week.

"Six-pack of cough syrup or orange juice,
six-pack of syrup or orange juice?"

While this episode doesn't reach the heights of "Say Uncle," it offers plenty of laughs, the fun of seeing young Alex, and of course a heartwarming lesson--don't act like a scrooge or you might lose your hair. Sure, we don't ever learn why Alex hates Christmas, and it frankly seems a little out of character, but the writers and the cast get to have fun with the characters, casting them in an absurd light they couldn't otherwise, all while imparting some warmth and wisdom. Who can say, "bah, humbug," to that?

Merry Christmas, Ubu, Merry Christmas. Good dog.

Great Tom Hanks story from "Family Ties" creator Gary David Goldberg

In his memoir Sit, Ubu, Sit, Family Ties creator Gary David Goldberg  talks about how staff writer Michael Weithorn invented the Ned character Mike and I rave about in this week's podcast.  Weithorn envisioned Tom Hanks, then coming off Bosom Buddies, as Alex's uncle, and the show signed him to an affordable deal for several episodes.

On page 67 (Shame on the publishers for not including an index in this book), Goldberg describes "Mike Fox's" reaction to Hanks as "love at first sight." In fact, he quotes Fox as saying, "I love this guy. I love him." He begs Goldberg for scenes with him, saying he doesn't even need jokes, that they can give Hanks all the jokes. He just wants to be on stage with Hanks."

After Ned's debut in the Season 1 two-parter "The Fugitive" but before shooting "Say Uncle," the Touchstone movie "Splash" premiered to huge success. Goldberg writes that Hanks' then-agent called him and said that Tom wasn't gonna do the other episodes contracted for, and even if he did, "it would have to be for at least 10 times the originally agreed-upon price."

As Goldberg continues:

A day or two later the phone rings in my office, and it's Tom Hanks.

"Have these guys been busting your balls?" Tom wants to know, using the legal terminology for what's been going on here."

"A little bit," I have to admit.

"Listen, man, I loved working with you guys. I love Mike Fox. Anytime, anywhere. At the original price, OK?"

"You drive a hard bargain, Tom. But OK."

I love this story because it confirms several things we hope to be true: 1) Hanks is a great guy, 2) Hanks and Fox loved working together. Goldberg goes on to talk about the scene the two actors share in the kitchen (the vanilla extract scene we talk about in the pod) and says he still remembers it clearly and can "call up that shiver of excitement on the back of my neck," knowing how big those two would soon become and their easy chemistry.

Sit, Ubu, Sit is a great read but not as detailed about Family Ties as fans of the series would hope. I wrote more about it on Cultureshark.

Further Viewing: The Return of Bruno

The lengths we go to for our audience! In our Family Ties episode, we also discuss a number of Bruce Willis' Seagram's Golden Wine Cooler commercials and speculate a little on his "Bruno" persona and his brief music career. Well, folks, after downing a couple of bottles of vanilla extract (I didn't have any Golden Wine Coolers in the house), I watched Willis' 1987 HBO special The Return of Bruno. I expected a awful vanity project (what else would you expect when an actor starts a music career and promotes it with a 60-minute TV Special?) I found something else...a mediocre, occasionally amusing vanity project.

I don't blame Willis for taking advantage of his sudden rise to fame and living out some dreams--fronting an R&B band, making a mint off of wine cooler commercials. In 1987, Moonlighting had been on the air for a couple years, he had one movie under his belt (Bruno aired in February '87, and Blake Edwards' Blind Date premiered in late March). Willis probably had a plan and certainly had hopes, but could anyone have predicted Die Hard at that point? Why not get while the getting's good? So for embracing Willis, the world got Bruno.

Bruno uses the model of The Rutles and This is Spinal Tap to tell the story of Bruno Radolini, an unsung rock 'n' roll legend. In this case, a parade of rock celebrities appear on Rock Heroes, a rockumentary show hosted by none other than Dick Clark, to mostly praise Bruno. This man introduced Ringo to The Beatles, scared Stephen Stills at Woodstock, told KISS to use makeup and costumes, gave the Bee Gees the word "Saturday," and started psychedelia. The show opens with a testimonial from this guy:

Other celebrities include Otis Williams of The Temptations, Bill Graham, Elton John, Clive Davis, Wolfman Jack, Graham Nash, Stephen Stills, Joan Baez, a surprisingly coherent Brian Wilson, Ringo, Don Cornelius, and Grace Slick. Very few say anything negative about Bruno (Baez gets in a couple jabs), yet the man remains a bit of a mystery to all, especially after he "disappears" in the early eighties.

Unlike The Rutles or Spinal Tap (or the more recent Walk Hard and Documentary Now), Bruno doesn't quite hit the mark. Director James Yukich gets the various looks down from the documentary style to an American Bandstand appearance, unused Woodstock footage, a psychedelic film, a local commercial, and more. However, the music (mostly from Willis' Return of Bruno album) never sounds anything but eighties. Keyboard and drum sounds especially jump out as anachronistic whether on Bandstand, at Woodstock, or with The Temptations in 1971. Also, they don't used parody songs (except in the psychedelic section and one mentioned below). Instead, they plug songs into a period, but Bruno appears to have never evolved beyond a cover act, and so we simply hear renditions of existing songs.

That said, Bruno has some laughs. Michael J. Fox plays himself as a Bruno obsessive and collector of "Brunobilia."

The psychedelic film looks authentically silly (the pig head with Fox comes from it).

Bruno also has a late seventies new wave failure--Bruno's Basement, featuring Bruno on blues harp and "four women all playing bass" (and looking a lot like Robert Palmer's "Addicted to Love" "band.") They play a weird version of the Peter Gunn theme.

A little past halfway through, Fox pops in a dusty tape, and we get to see some live (legitimately) Bruno performances. Willis makes a passable R&B singer, plays a mean blues harp, and of course has charisma to spare as he struts and mugs his way through a number of songs, backed by a crackerjack if eighties-looking-and-sounding band. For some reason during "Down in Hollywood," he dons this spectacular outfit.

As someone who normally wants more music in his music documentaries, I didn't want more music in this one...or not all at once. Like I implied, the music doesn't stink, but it kills whatever slight momentum the "funny" part had and makes the show more obviously a commercial for the album. I was a little surprised that the show went back to Clark for a closing statement (hyping Bruno's return natch). The credits run over Willis as Bruno riffing about inventing Gumby.

The flaws in the show suggest its origins--an afterthought once Willis had recorded the album, slapped together from ideas Willis "improvised" with the writers, another idea these writers had that suited Willis' needs, a character Willis had rattling around in his head? Ridiculous as it sounds, I'd like to see documentary about this fake documentary or at least read an oral history. Where did this come from? Why did it ever happen?

Should you watch The Return of Bruno? I guess that depends on your Bruce Willis fandom. If you're a huge Willis fan, well, you've probably seen it or at least suffered through worse from him. If you want to mock him, well, you might find some things to mock but maybe not enough. Ask yourself this. Will you "respect yourself" in the morning? Me, I'm gonna find some more vanilla extract and try to forget the whole thing.

Really, though, how could
you resist this guy?

Show Notes: Family Ties, "Say Uncle"

*This episode aired Thursday, January 26, 1984 on NBC.

*Tom Hanks' first appearance as Uncle Ned was in the first season's two-parter "The Fugitive."

*Brian Bonsall joined the cast as Andy Keaton at the beginning of season 5 when the show accelerated the character's aging to make him a 5-year-old (Andy was born in season 3).

*There was no Family Ties lunchbox--much to our disappointment--but it is true that NBC  exec Brandon Tartikoff suggested Fox be removed from the cast of the series because you would never see him on a lunchbox. After Back to the Future, as Fox recounts in his book, he sent Tartikoff a custom Michael J. Fox lunchbox.

Tartikoff's own memoir says the note inside the box read, "Eat crow, Tartikoff." To his credit, the late exec always owned up to his mistake and told that story with good humor.

*Steven Keaton is the station manager of public TV station WKS, but I still can't figure out what Mr. Wertz's role is.

*Mind-blowing show note of the week: The Family Ties theme song, "Without Us," was performed by Denice Williams and Johnny Mathis for most of the sitcom's run. However, the initial version was sung by...Dennis Tufano of the Buckinghams and Mindy Sterling of Austin Powers!

*You CAN call AA on the phone!

*The Seagram's segment begins at 44:00.

*Bruce Willis and Sharon Stone never co-starred in a movie in their heyday, but they did both appear in 2006's Alpha Dog.

*Willis was reportedly fired from his Seagram's gig after a DUI bust, but his version is that he decided not to re-up because he quit drinking after that incident.

*Here is the clip we watched for this episode:

*Check out our YouTube channel for a playlist for the full show playlist, s episode, including the Seagram's ads, more from Bruce Willis (You have to see "This is where the fun starts"), and some great clips from this episode of Family Ties, including the Shot (and not of vanilla extract) Heard Round the World!

Episode 5: Family Ties "Say Uncle"

Things get boozy this week as we discuss the classic Family Ties episode "Say Uncle" (Season 2, Episode 14) Alex (Michael J. Fox) and Keaton family can't wait for a visit from Uncle Ned (Tom Hanks) until they discover he's become an alcoholic. Rick and Mike reveal their lack of knowledge about AA and vanilla extract. Plus, we examine three of Bruce "Bruno" Willis' Seagram's Golden Wine Coolers commercials. So much star power, so much booze. Drinking game: drink a bottle of vanilla extract every time we mention vanilla extract. 

Check out this episode!

Tomorrow on Battle of the Network Shows: