5 Reasons I Am Mad At "Family Ties"

Family Ties is my favorite sitcom ever. In the 1980’s, I would immediately stop playing Barbies or admiring my Lisa Frank stickers as soon as I heard Johnny Mathis and Deniece Williams start singing the Family Ties theme below.



Even now, I would leave a pile of laundry to rot if I caught it on TV. Really, any excuse to do that to my laundry would do.  But, sadly, I am mad at "Family Ties" and I have been for a while. Here are 5 reasons why:

#1: It was cancelled. This one should be obvious. It aired from 1982 to 1989. Seven years wasn’t long enough. I am one that gets hooked on TV shows and never want them to end. When Felicity ended in 2002? Dagger in my heart.

Apparently, this dramatic change wasn't good for Andy/Brian either.
http://www.warmingglow.uproxx.com/

#2: It featured a REALLY, REALLY, REALLY fast growing boy with a bowl hair cut. Andrew came on the scene in 1986 as a four-year-old. This stressed me out. I caught no episodes with a baby Andrew because there were none. He was age-advanced and I wasn’t having it. I don’t like dramatic changes in my favorite shows. I still haven’t gotten over Vivian Banks changing to a completely different woman in season 4 of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.

I may change my name to Mallory, which means this blog
will change to Mallory's Break Room.  Still sounds okay,
right?  http://www.shine.yahoo.com/

#3: It made me fall in love with the name Mallory. If it wasn’t for “Family Ties”, I probably wouldn’t have fallen in love with the name and wouldn’t have been so disappointed I couldn’t use it. Both times I was pregnant, I was set on naming the baby “Mallory” if it was a girl, even though the name means “luckless, unfortunate” and was given to the most superficial character on the show. Both times I had a boy. Get a pet?

#4: It never told me it was going to be featured on The Today Show in 2008. As a devoted fan, I thought the least they all could do was text me to tell me the special was airing. I would have had a huge party, made everyone wear ties, gotten nametags with "Alex P. Keaton" written on every single one of them, alerted everyone I knew, rented a Blimp with the message "TURN YOUR TV TO THE TODAY SHOW NOW!" blazed across it and everything.  I missed the reunion and I'm still sick over it.





I'm telling Steven!



#5: It made me believe Elyse & Steven were really married. Family Ties won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing in a Comedy Series in 1987 for a good reason: they could make you feel like you were actually sitting in the Keaton kitchen with Nick, Mallory, Jennifer & Alex. They could make you feel like this was a REAL family.  There wasn’t a day that went by that I didn’t hope to meet APK. So, when I discovered that Elyse was really a lady named Meredith Baxter-Birney (Meredith Baxter since 1989) who was married 3 times, a mother to 5 children and a grandmother to many, I had to stop myself before trying to track down Steven to break the news of her infidelity. Seven years ago, she decided life would be better with her partner Nancy Locke. All of this news comes as a shock to me given that, up until this post, I thought she was a lady named Elyse happily married to a man named Steven and touring around the country in an RV on their way to Mount Rushmore to meet up with Jennifer, her husband and their gaggle of kids. 

Whew!  It felt good to get that all out.  I'm not mad anymore.