Today, we look at when (or if) you folks believe that Family Ties “jumped the shark.”
This is “Just Can’t Jump It,” a feature where we examine shows and whether they “jumped the shark.” Jumped the shark (coined by Jon Hein) means that the show had a specific point in time where, in retrospect, you realize that show was going downhill from there (even if, in some rare occasions, the show later course-corrected). Not every show DOES jump the shark. Some shows just remain good all the way through. And some shows are terrible all the way through. What we’re looking for are moments where a show that you otherwise enjoyed hit a point where it took a noticeable nose dive after that time and if so, what moment was that?
Family Ties was a long-running sitcom that was based around the idea of two former hippies raising kids who were very much of the 1980s. However, their eldest child, Alex P. Keaton (Michael J. Fox) became such a breakout that the series evolved a bit into the Alex P. Keaton show, featuring these other Keatons, as well (including an occasional Jennifer spotlight episode if you’re unlucky). It was very critically acclaimed, and Fox won a number of Emmys for Best Actor in a Comedy Series.
So first…DID IT JUMP THE SHARK? I am going to say no.
WHEN DID IT JUMP THE SHARK Clearly, like any other long-running sitcom, Family Ties got worse as it went on, but Fox was just too good as Alex to let the quality dip too low, and the supporting cast of Michael Gross and Meredith Baxter-Birney as the parents were similarly too good to let things fall apart around him. The show certainly got progressively wackier as time passed (and characters, like Justin Bateman’s Mallory, became more and more cartoonish) and there was a late-in-the-series baby (who got aged up), and the show was sort of stuck with Tina Yothers’ Jennifer, but still, the quality never dipped low enough for me to say that it ever jumped the shark.
Let me know what you think in the comments or on social media!
Feel free to e-mail me at brian@popculturereferences.com for suggestions for shows for us to do in future installments!
I agree that it probably didn’t. The last season is pretty bland, and Brian Bonsai and Tina Youthers get worse at acting as they age, but that’s offset by the Nick and Mallory subplots.
Day One. The show was an irritating clichéfest from the get go. Completely unwatchable.
Never jumped, though it did feel like it trailed off near the end. I do agree that it was sad to see Mallory’s character sort of become this unreal parody of her former self. Would have been nice to see her really come into her own as the counterpart to APK.
I was never a big fan of Family Ties as I preferred British comedies to American ones.
I did see the reruns on afternoon television in the early nineties. I would agree that too many of the story lines in later seasons focused on Alex P. Keaton due to the popularity of Michael J. Fox.