Only an Onscreen Ending

No discussion of Family Ties would be complete without looking at Tracy Pollan, the actress who played Alex's girlfriend, Ellen Reed, in season four, and who would marry Michael J. Fox a few years later. I do remember the character of Ellen from when I originally watched the show as a kid, but I had imagined that her goodbye was much more emotional than it seems now. For one thing, although the whole second episode of season five is devoted to Ellen's absence, we don't actually see Ellen leave; we join the story after she's already accepted a dance scholarship in Paris, and we see the aftermath with Alex trying to date again. And we don't get any flashbacks in that episode, either, or montages of Alex and Ellen's relationship. It's an interesting choice, especially since we saw a montage when they first got together, and the show has already begun the process of using clip shows, or flashback-based episodes. (The first use of the clip episode was with Ellen, actually, near the end of season four - the family sits around in the living room telling her stories about Alex's past antics - two episodes' worth, in fact. Maybe I'll write more about the use of the clip show later, but for now I'll just say that it's a shock of self-awareness - this family remembers its own past and sees connections between seemingly disparate events! - that goes beyond mere attention to continuity. Too bad it feels only like an easy way to deliver new episodes and pointless, narratively).

Is this great old tech or what?

This lack of flashbacks and montages is doubly surprising because without them the show relies uncharacteristically on audience memory. For example, at the campus snack shop juke box, Alex selects the Billy Vera & The Beaters song "At This Moment," which played during the school dance where Alex and Ellen first kissed. But the show doesn't replay that scene, and it doesn't have Alex remark on his choice - "This was our song," or the like - perhaps simply trusting that viewers would remember the earlier, pivotal scene, which took place 25 episodes before. (Or perhaps recent summer episodes reminded viewers; the Ellen's-gone episode, "Starting Over," was only episode two of a new season). The show rarely seems to expect us to remember anything about the characters beyond the most important biographical details or relationships, so if it was expecting viewers to remember Alex and Ellen's song, that would indicate a storyline that was unusually popular and therefore memorable.

Another example of a makeover, btw.
Mallory and Jennifer helped Alex look "hip" for a date.

My own memory of this storyline does suggest that it was notable, but then my memory seems to have given it an extra gloss of romance, probably influenced by Pollan and Fox's real-life romance. For example, I remembered the scene where Alex sits at the kitchen table and writes Ellen a letter, but again, I'd remembered it as being more emotional, a plea to return to Ohio that went unanswered or denied. But that's not the case at all; he's telling her that he's moving on and he wishes her well. He considers several joke closings - "Your pal," "Your son" - before choosing "Love." Alex is not over her yet - that date, with Sharon (played by Haviland Morris, who would have been familiar from 1984's Sixteen Candles) did not go well, mostly because he kept trying to get her to order her food, look, and smell like Ellen. But ultimately he accepts that Ellen is gone.

Spraying your ex-girlfriend's perfume on your date? A no-no.

Although the love story didn't end the way I remembered it, there's a lot to like about the ending. The show gives Ellen a good reason for leaving, a reason that fits with her character as an artist. When we meet her, we learn that she's a painter, and in later episodes we see her as a dancer, too. I might write a post specifically about how art is represented on the show - Elyse is a singer; Nick is a sculptor, etc. - but for now I'll just say that I think it's cool that Ellen pursues her art, which she was shown to be committed to, even if it takes her away from her serious boyfriend. She's not gone from the picture because of some other possible reason - her rich father doesn't fall sick, for example. Characters leave to tend to sick relatives all the time, but that kind of reason would have been inorganic to her character.

I also like that she's gone, period. Don't get me wrong; I love the character, Tracy Pollan is great, and the chemistry between her and Michael J. Fox is so good that I find it hard to believe that they didn't actually become romantically involved until they reunited on the set of Bright Lights, Big City. (I recommend reading that New York Times story about Tracy Pollan's guest appearance on Spin City; in addition to the Fox-Pollan information, it's worth reading to catch the before-he-was-famous reference to Michael Pollan). What I mean is, I like that the writers didn't make Ellen stick around just for the sake of Alex having a girlfriend or transform her into the kind of person who would stay in spite of a scholarship offer because she is loyal to him, can't bear to leave him, etc. Of course, Pollan herself may have had other commitments, which could explain why the character was written off the show, but whatever the reason, I like the way the writers handled it.

George Eliot has this great passage in Middlemarch where she writes that we don't often discuss how people - well, she's focused on men, but I'm expanding the range for my purposes - find their vocations, even though arriving at work we're passionate about that can make an impact on the world requires "industrious thought and patient renunciation of small desires" in the same way that arriving at love does. But instead, Eliot writes, it's love that is the focus of our narrative energies: "We are not afraid of telling over and over again how a man comes to fall in love with a woman and be wedded to her, or else be fatally parted from her." Onscreen, vocation wins out over romance for Ellen, which feels like a triumph, writing and gender-wise; offscreen, acting and love could co-exist. This impulse to recount a love story seems like it would be particularly pronounced with two people like Pollan and Fox, who met in what turned out to be breakout work for both of them and are still together more than 26 years later. We love love stories, and we admire love stories that last.

I once read an interview with Kate Hudson where she talked about how fun it was to watch movies like Overboard to see her mom, Goldie Hawn, and Kurt Russell when they were young. I hope that Fox and Pollan's four children get a similar kick out of seeing their parents on Family Ties, a show that ended up as a home movie of sorts, offering the earliest images of them together.