Amendments, Corrections, and Recommendations: A Final Family Ties Post*

Before I get to some episode recommendations and suggestions for further reading, here are a few updates, in no particular order:

• I wondered if the Keatons had an answering machine; well, they do get one in season four, and the kids spend one episode changing the outgoing messages on each other, but then it never really figures in the plot again. (It seems to physically disappear, too, but don't quote me on that).

• I wrote that we never see the Obecks - the Keatons' neighbors until they move out and the Thompsons move into that house - or Chrissy, Jennifer's best friend, but neither of those claims turned out to be true. We do meet one Obeck, daughter Liz, in the episode "The Big Fix" in season five. At the end of season five we also meet Chrissy, in a two-part episode about Jennifer trying to change to fit in with a popular crowd. 

"It's My Party" is a great example of a strange and not-great phenomenon on Family Ties: airing episodes out of order. Characters, especially Jennifer and Andrew, are clearly younger in "Party" than they have been for the entire season, and Alex's girlfriend Ellen is still around, even though she left for Paris ages ago. This episode was filmed in season four but - saved? forgotten? deemed subpar but trotted out to fill scheduling needs? It's unclear. (Which is not to say it doesn't have its great moments, my favorites being when Ellen gives Jennifer an old Mondale and Ferraro shirt for her birthday and when the parents try to decipher a note Jennifer has left them; it's a minefield of "like" and "okay?").

What can I say? I'm a sucker for political t-shirts...

…and textual analysis.

• One more update before we move on: I speculated that one reason the show creates a friend for Alex only to kill him off might have been because the actors who had played his established friends were not available. I don't know if the writers or casting director considered killing off Timothy Busfield or Jeffrey Joseph's characters for "A, My Name is Alex" in 1987, but maybe you've heard of a little thing called thirtysomething? That started airing in 1987, as did The Popcorn Kid, a TV series that Joseph had a recurring part in. So these actors were a little busy. (Plus, Busfield had already been assigned double duty on the show; in addition to being Alex's friend, he was also cast in an episode's flashback sequence as one of college-age Steven's friends. But then again, what's two roles for the same actor? The show went higher for others). 

Both Timothy Busfield (top) and Jeffrey Joseph (above) appeared as Alex's friends in two episodes.
That amounted to close friendship in the Family Ties universe. 

Now for some recommendations! Let's start with a few individual scenes and then go to whole episodes. Of course, it depends on what you're looking for:

• Are you looking for some feminist education for little boys? Look no further than "The Way We Were" in season six, which opens with Alex coming home to find his parents asleep on the couch and Andy playing garage. Alex sees a Barbie doll and picks it up. "What's she doing here?" he asks.

"That's Barbie," Andy says. "She owns the garage."
"Barbie owns the garage?"
"Really she's in Congress, but on weekends she's a mechanic."
"I think I see mom's influence here," Alex says.
"She also won the Nobel Prize in Physics," Andy adds.

The debate about Barbie's identity devolves into a tug of war.
These three actors are routinely great together.

• Or maybe you feel stifled on the set and you want to see footage filmed outside?  This happens rarely on the show, and the first such images don't occur until the end of season three in the two-part episode "Remembrance of Things Past." Steven and the family return to his childhood home in Buffalo; his father has died and his mother is thinking about selling the house. Steven visits his father's grave.

• Or perhaps you long for some good old-fashioned miming. When Jennifer gets her learner's permit in the season seven episode, "My Best Friend's Girl," Steven insists on giving her driving lessons. This includes a simulation in the kitchen, during which he says she ran a red light. Jennifer counters that there's a cop behind them. "I'm gonna try to lose him," she says.           

                                            
                                           
                                           

As for whole episodes, that also depends on what you're looking for. But I will say that if you're a teacher or interested in education, you might find the episodes that center around teachers notable.

• "Little Man on Campus" in season three is about Alex starting college and struggling: he considers dropping American Government because he got an F on his first paper - he doesn't think he can hack it in that class. (Notice how it doesn't occur to him to blame the teacher or make excuses for himself). But when he goes to drop the class, his teacher questions him until he gets Alex to understand how to make an original argument. And it's not an abstract discussion - it's a conversation, and argument, about Eugene Debs and Oliver Wendell Holmes. 
• "Paper Chase," the final episode of season four, is about how Mallory nearly flunks her history class and doesn't graduate from high school. But with the encouragement of her family, boyfriend, and teacher, she passes her oral exam and graduates after all. Her requests for extra credit are rebuffed; her only recourse is hard work, and it works. (It's also fun to see the oral exam, which people such as Rebecca Schuman have tried to revive, in messy, Socratic action). 

Skippy graduates too!
How could I get this far with only the merest nods at Marc Price,
who plays neighbor Skippy Handelman?

For instance, this shirt: starting in season five and continuing until the end of the show,
you cannot swing a dead cat without hitting Skippy in this shirt.
I still haven't figured out what that woman in the blue dress is doing.

• There's "Paper Lion" in season five, which I mentioned in my discussion of Mason Adams in the in memoriam post. It's an interesting story: he's a longstanding, well-regarded economics professor, but he feels pressure to publish from the administration, so he pretends the data in his latest work isn't flawed. Alex calls him out on it, and the professor ultimately comes clean. "I am a teacher," he declares from the pulpit at an awards ceremony. "And in a college, there's nothing more important than that." Aw, sweetie, you want to say, reaching across the screen and back through time. What a lovely thought. 
• And finally, there's the two-part episode "Read It and Weep" in season six. Jennifer wants to do her book report on Huckleberry Finn, but the school board has banned it (and a number of other books). She refuses to change her book and is suspended. Her teacher is afraid of supporting her publicly, thinking he'll lose his job, but after hearing her speak up at a community meeting, he and other teachers decide that they're going to stage a walk out to protest her suspension. This episode, like "Paper Lion," points toward the challenges teachers face, but although it also features someone proclaiming, "I am a teacher," it seems less enamored of the lone individual as role model; it suggests that an answer can be found in collective action. 

There's some fairly stilted dialogue in "Read It and Weep," including references to Supreme Court cases and characters reading aloud from Huckleberry Finn, but it's also an interesting portrait of censorship at the high school level and the school board overreach that was not uncommon in the 1980s.  

The vision of teaching on the show is lecture-driven, overwhelmingly male (of the aforementioned teachers, only Mallory's is female), and entirely white. So there are very real limitations to and problems with it - and there were in the '80s, too. But it makes for an interesting artifact with some still-applicable lessons.

On a different note, I'll also recommend "Heartstrings" from season seven, which was the only three-part episode in the show's run. Steven has a heart attack and undergoes surgery. There are flashbacks, but unlike with a clip show, they are to scenes we've never seen before, and they add to the story. Three episodes gives the narrative enough space to move from sadness and fear to humor and strength without feeling cramped or rushed.

Finally, some recommendations for further reading: 

• The 2013 Rolling Stone interview with Michael J. Fox gives a comprehensive, introspective overview of his life and career and where he is now.
• The New York Times Style section profiled Meredith Baxter's wedding last year, at which Michael Gross gave a toast.
• Also in the Times, a great piece in July by Eric Schulmiller about anticipating catching up with the timeline from Back to the Future and the difference between our future as we imagined it and as we live it.   
• And show creator Gary David Goldberg's obituary (he died last year).

* I think this will be my last post about the show. Thanks for reading! 

Cleaning Up and Reaching Out

In the process of trying to decide what I want to do with this blog, I recently brought it into the late 20th century by adding tags (!) and just now I went through my blog list to remove abandoned ones, correct changed addresses, and add new ones. For example, I stopped identifying as a Unitarian Universalist about two and a half years ago, so goodbye to the UU World Blog. And I started reading more critiques of higher ed, U.S. culture, and inequality - if you're interested in those subjects too, I highly recommend Tressie McMillan Cottom's blog.

Also, I saw an old friend yesterday. He wants me to join Twitter. I'm not going to at this point, but if you're there, you should consider following him. He posts smart and funny things.

Doing something new I should know about? Lemme know so I can promote you too :)

Better Late Than Never

"That's my boyfriend," I announced, pointing at the actor on the TV screen.

"Philip Seymour Hoffman is your boyfriend?" my friend laughed, incredulous.

The implication, unspoken, was that Hoffman was a weird choice. Unattractive. I don't remember what I said in response, but I don't think I defended him articulately.

Who was the friend? I can't remember, except I know it was a guy. What was the movie, even? Probably The Big Lebowski; there was a time there when it felt like I watched that film every five minutes, and even with Hoffman's small part, his presence was one of my favorite things about it. I loved his nervous laughter, his bared teeth, the way he pronounced the word "Dude."

Like a lot of people, I have felt surprised at how much his death has upset me. I had all these immediate, ridiculous reactions, such as, "But I never knew that he struggled with addiction!" and "But I never got to write anything for him!" One of my dear college friends, a longtime New Yorker, knew where he bought his coffee, but even though my parents lived in the city, I lived 3,000 miles away: Hoffman was not in my life on the boyfriend nor coffee-level, not even in 2007, during the height of my love. (The Savages, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, and Charlie Wilson's War - every five minutes that year, he was brilliant in a completely different way). And I don't really have anything to add to the conversation about his great work or heroin addiction. But I do have something to say about his appearance.

I've read a lot of articles about him this past week, and even in some of the ones I've liked the most, such as Anthony Lane's tribute, I'm struck by how often the writers claim that Hoffman was unattractive. It's often presented as a qualification, an acknowledgment before moving on to his range or the humanity he brought to even the smallest roles: "He wasn't a handsome actor, but..." Lane, for instance, uses the word "unbeautiful." I know he just means "not George Clooney," "not Tom Cruise" when he writes that - not cast in romantic, hero roles. But still.

I'm here to argue with the central claim. He was beautiful. He was handsome. He was cute. It's a late defense, but I wanted to say it. (Even if it's not a thing that needs a name).

And I know I'm not alone. I know I'm not the only person who pointed at him on a screen and declared him mine, or who thrilled to see him on lists like this one. I originally read the 2007 New York magazine "Reasons to Love New York" list in my parents' living room in Forest Hills, and I remember how the period after each part of his name felt like a declaration of the self-evident. Of course he's in the top 5 reasons, that punctuation seemed to say.   

So maybe I shouldn't be surprised at how I, and so many of us, were so sad. Of course I miss him. Of course we miss him.

Iowa Imposter

Today I wore my IOWA t-shirt, a gift from a friend who grew up there and knows without being told that the black and gold of my shirt are Hawkeyes' colors. As I neared the hub that is my local post office, an elderly gentleman walking past me said, "Go Iowa!"

"What?" I called back, not sure if I'd heard him correctly.

"I grew up in Nebraska," he explained, "right next to Iowa."

"Nice!" I said, because I like pleasant interactions with fellow pedestrians even when they turn into unsolicited educational moments, and turned back toward the post office.

This conversation was another example of quietly letting someone - usually a stranger, usually during what promises to be only a brief exchange - assume something about you that you know to be incorrect. I was born in North Dakota, grew up in Connecticut, went to college in Illinois, and have lived in Washington for almost 10 years; I've barely even visited Iowa. But I didn't yell this to the man in front of the post office; I let him believe that we were former state-neighbors.

Nannies and babysitters have a lot of these moments, and the challenge is in deciding when to tell that complimentary or chummy mom on the playground that this kid? Not mine. Sometimes it's clear-cut, as when a woman trailing behind me and a toddler-age charge announced, as we all entered the bathroom of a fancy restaurant, "These years go by so fast! Mine are teenagers now."

I smiled and said, "I'm the babysitter," and that was that. But other times it's not so clear what anyone is thinking, and it can feel awkward to halt the flow of a conversation to vocalize a distinction that might change everything - or, conversely, nothing - for the other person.

The best-worst example of this for me was on a playground two years ago. I was hovering near the little girl I nannied for, and a woman said, "I love her haircut."

"Yeah," I agreed. "Her mother did a great job."

"Her mother?" the woman asked, clearly confused. "You're not her mother?"

"No, I'm her nanny," I said, in a tone I hoped sounded cheerful.

"But you're so good with her!" the woman exclaimed.

Well. You can be good to a kid without being his or her parent. And strangers - and even family and friends - don't need to know everything about you. Go Hawkeyes!