Show: Family Ties
Kids: Alex P., Mallory, Jennifer and Andrew
Known for: Being a hippie dad raising a Reaganite son in the 1980s; his beard
Looking back, it’s remarkable how quickly the free-lovin’ 1960s gave way to the greed-is-good materialism of the 1980s. Family Ties, which ran until 1989, deftly captured the dissonance between the Woodstock and Reagan generations. Ohio public TV manager Steven Keaton — a proud former hippie — headed a household that included his equally liberal wife (Meredith Baxter) a conservative free marketeer (Michael J. Fox, in a career-making role) and a ditzy mall rat (Justine Bateman, less so) — as well as two less interesting children. For seven years, the soft-spoken, bearded Keaton (played by Michael Gross) showed a young Generation X audience that a family’s love can bridge even the widest cultural divide.
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