Greg and Trudy, I Hardly Knew Ye

It's the ordinary things we miss about the dead: hemming a skirt...

…or singing along to "Light My Fire."

If Family Ties and other shows had a phenomenon opposite the recurring-actor, different character one, it was probably the episodes that dealt with death. Here characters are introduced only to die - as with Mallory's beloved Aunt Trudy - or are never actually introduced in life - as with Greg, Alex's friend who dies in a car accident; (the episode opens with the family returning from his funeral -  we see Greg only as Alex imagines and remembers him).

Just as the choice to bring back an actor for a different part now can seem strange (no matter how great the actor), these death episodes can seem strange for how they ask us to care about people we've never met. Not to sound crass, but why not kill off one of Alex's friends whom we actually knew? I mean, I'm not suggesting anything extreme - I don't think they should have killed Skippy Handelman, the next door neighbor - but why not one of the four or five guys who had recurring same-actor, same-character parts? Maybe because only one or two of those characters had a close relationship with Alex; maybe because audiences weren't expected to remember story lines across seasons; or maybe simply because those actors had moved on to other roles. Whatever the reason, we have no ties to Aunt Trudy or Greg, and we're only given a few details: she loved to dance, he loved the Cleveland Indians (only one of those loves would probably be written for a character, now).

Still, within these limitations Justine Bateman and Michael J. Fox give heartfelt portraits of grief. He won the Emmy, in part for emotional scenes not previously given to his character. But I was actually more moved by a moment in a scene where he is visited by Greg's ghost, who starts to leave so Alex can study. Alex pulls Greg to a chair and pushes his textbooks off the kitchen table. His movements may seem dramatic, but his tone is almost matter-of-fact. "This is meaningless," he says. What's the point of studying, he wonders, when he could die at 21 like his friend?

Justine Bateman's funeral home scene is Emmy-worthy too; she gives an impromptu eulogy where she yells, sobs, and laughs, and each of those emotions - and the speed with which she cycles through and back to them - feel true.

The Aunt Trudy story is in some ways more poignant because the actress who played her, Edith Atwater, had a long career and died the following year. I want to write a post about the actors and actresses on this show who have since died, but my mother is flying in to visit tomorrow, and so it'll be a little while before I write again. In the meantime, if there's something from Family Ties, The Grapes of Wrath or another long-ago-and-far-away work you'd like me to post about when I come back, let me know!