Who valued their friendship more?

[Sharop]

I was just wondering, throughout the series, who would you say valued their friendship more, Alex, or Skippy? Personally, I'd say Skippy, because from what I've seen of Family Ties, Skippy doesn't seem to have ANY other friends other than the Keatons. I think it's obvious that Alex is fond of Skip, but he has a lot of other friends as well and spends time with them too; whereas with poor Irwin Handelman, it seems that Alex is his only friend.

I know it was mainly Skippy's relationships with Alex and Mallory that were explored, but does anyone here get any idea of what Jennifer thought of him, from watching the series? Again, from what I've seen, there's not much interaction between them, but I'd say she seems to like him well enough, but probably mainly sees him as a nerdy guy who just happens to be friends with her brother and has an obsession with her sister. I think Steven and Elyse tend to view him as a sort of nephew of theirs (from season three onwards, he seems to come to their house quite a lot.)

Continuing from that, there's a huge difference in appearances of Skippy from the third season onwards - from reading episode guides at TV Tome, I see he appears twice in the first season and three times in the second season. Does anyone know why the people behind the show decided to turn him into a semi-regular? Don't get me wrong, I love Skippy, and I'm glad he showed up so many times - I just wondered about the decisions behind it.