If the 80s were defined by network sitcoms, Family Ties surely must be high on the list. Watching an episode online the other day I was instantly transported to an era when cable was a rarity, and for the most part people watched things when they were on TV. If you missed an episode, sucks to be you! (Unless you were one of the few people who had figured out how to program their VCR, and you had a blank tape, and you remembered to put it in, etc etc.)

To quote Wikipedia, Family Ties "focused on a real cultural divide during the 1980s when the Alex P. Keaton generation was rejecting the counterculture movement of the 1960s and embracing the wealth and power that came to define the 80s." The show's hook was that these hippie parents (the mother an architect, the father working for public television) raised these kids who were ultra-conservative as a reaction to their parents' liberalism. (The irony of course being that the hippies were simply a reaction to their own parents' conservatism.)

It did this well, too, or it must have, because everybody watched it. It was the #2 television show in America for the 1985-86 and the 1986-87 television seasons. (This was back when television had seasons, mind you.)

I had a mild crush on Alex P. Keaton, the ultra-conservative stockbroker in training played by Michael J. Fox. Fox was a genius bit of casting, because his demeanor is so adorably cuddly that it helps to undermine his constant presence in a jacket and tie. You could cast a lot of actors in that role and get something considerably more accurate, but considerably less watchable (or interesting).

Personally, I reserved a lot of my love for Alex Keaton's friend Skippy Handelman. Skippy was the hapless nerd eternally in love with Mallory, and eternally destined to go unrequited. Most girls went for Nick Moore, the tortured sculpture artist with the big long hair and the black motorcycle jacket.

Nick was the bad boy, and not the brightest bulb in the lamp, although I concede that he and Mallory were a good match. But Skippy seemed genuine in a way that Nick was not. We didn't have the term "hipster" in the 1980s, but Nick had that air of self-conscious inauthenticity.

But it's always interesting to go back and revisit old television shows you loved as a child. Watching this episode of Family Ties on the CBS website, I was reminded of how Nick's sculptures were a running joke on the show, but honestly today? I think they're pretty cool.

I was also struck by how frankly cruel everyone was about Nick's art, and right to his face, too. That seems like something that wouldn't happen on a television show today. Maybe we have all become a little more nurturing of the creative impulse. Maybe we're a little less judgmental when it comes to art, and a little more accepting of "outsider art" and other non-standard art forms.

Maybe the last thirty years have done us some good, after all.