Family Ties Had an Awful Take on A Christmas Carol

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https://popculturereferences.com/fam...ristmas-carol/

We continue our look at some notable 1980s Christmas episodes by looking at an awful Family Ties Christmas Carol riff.



We continue our look at some notable 1980s Christmas episodes by looking at an awful Family Ties Christmas Carol riff.

Family Ties, the popular family sitcom about two former hippies, Steven and Elise Keaton (Michael Gross and Meredith Baxter) who struggle with raising kids in the 1980s, including their oldest child, Alex P. Keaton, who rebelled against his parents by being a Reagan-idolizing conservative. The role made Michael J. Fox a sitcom star. He won three straight Emmys for Best Lead Actor in a Comedy Series for the role.

Fox WAS excellent as Alex, but the show had some problems, as well. There were three Christmas episodes. The first season had a quasi-Christmas episode, and the sixth episode had an OKAY Christmas episode, but the most notable one was this Season 2 one, “A Keaton Christmas Carol” from 1983 (written by Robert Caplain and Rich Reinhart, directed by Will Mackenzie), where they do the standard sitcom riff on A Christmas Carol.

The problem is that Alex’s attitude towards Christmas is just ludicrous. The whole conceit of the episode, that Alex doesn’t believe in Christmas is just DUMB. It makes Alex look like the biggest ******* imaginable. It was just silly.

You could do a Christmas Carol riff. Obviously MANY shows have done them, but you have to set it up better than this, where Alex is a monster who doesn’t accept Christmas (despite celebrating Christmas just the previous season, of course).

Once they go into the actual Christmas Carol riff, though, the show is fine. Jennifer (Tina Yothers) as the Ghost of Christmas Past and Mallory (Justine Bateman) as the Ghost of Christmas Future were cute, and Alex’s future as a cruel businessman allowed Fox to do a fun piece of acting (along with a bald cap). It was sort of a preview of Fox doing a similar bit playing his older self in Back to the Future Part II.

But when you have to make your character a monster for a gag to work, just don’t bother.