Indeed, characters describe the medication only as “diet pills.” For Alex P. Although Ritalin ( methylphenidate) had been used to treat ADD/ADHD since the 1960s, this use remained sufficiently limited in the early 1980s not to merit a mention on the show. If anything, the cultural reference seems more likely to be cocaine, the elite drug of choice in the late 70s and the Reagan Era.
ALEX P. KEATON LOVE SONG CRACK
The show aired in 1983, as crack was just beginning to unleash its devastation across America’s cities. He begs for more, and on the fateful day of his big test, Alex crashes, sleeps late, freaks out, and rummages through the garbage like a crazed crackhead. Without speed, Alex becomes agitated and angry, railing against “smut” (a television program about human reproduction Mom, of course, has no problem with her young daughter learning about sex). “Thank you for showing me the error of my ways.” (Of course, the teacher would have to be at least 71 to have voted for FDR in 1932, but the New Deal cast a long shadow.) Things start to come apart, though, when he runs out of pills. “I voted for Roosevelt four times,” a teacher comments on his paper.
He writes a brilliant disquisition on “Herbert Hoover, the Lost Savior” for his US government class. He builds trenches in the backyard, though the reason for that one is never explained.Īt first, Alex’s experiment with neural enhancement seems like a success. When little sis Jennifer wants a do-over, Alex calls it “a sin against capitalism!” He wants to wax and buff the kitchen floor. Fidgeting restlessly, he asks if the dice are in fine working order, moves people’s pieces around the board and generally reacts overexuberantly, like a junior Alan Greenspan in glee club. “Midterms and exams come and go, but the family unit is the one true constant in life!” a suddenly animated Alex says, to the wonderment of his family. Later on, Mom invites Alex to a game of Monopoly, which the budding capitalist can’t resist. They can help you study! All he has to do is whore himself out, promising Effy a date, and break his conservative principles by indulging in drugs – the failing, one suspects, of his parent’s generation, not the Reagan Youth.Īfter asking his framed photo of Richard Nixon if he would ever do something he knew was wrong if his career depended on it, Alex caves and decides to take the drugs. He is, however, open to the idea of trying some “diet pills” that Mallory’s obese friend Effy has to offer. Given the pressure, Alex is little interested in watching the PBS special produced by his loser dad. In the episode “Speed Trap,” Alex is worrying about his big term papers and final exams – being the end of the first semester senior year, these were the last grades that Harvard would see on his transcript before deciding whether to usher the aspiring Rove/Gekko into the halls of power, where he rightly belonged. The formula was to be “hip parents, square kids,” but test audiences warmed much more to the conservative offspring producers decided to shift the focus of the show toward the antics of Alex P.
ALEX P. KEATON LOVE SONG TV
TV lore tells us that Family Ties was originally meant to center on the liberal parents, played by Meredith Baxter and Michael Gross, showing how 1960s refugees dealt with raising a family in the Reagan Era. Fox as an ambitious, greedy young Republican, brother to a ditzy shopaholic sister, Mallory, and son of aging boomers. The sitcom gave us one of the worst TV theme songs of all time, but it also consciously exemplified the age, as symbolic of the 1980s as Cheers or The Cosby Show. So I was surprised to catch a relatively early portrayal of “neural enhancement” in a 1983 episode of Family Ties. Even the Hold Steady touched on the trend with their terrific song, “ Ask Her for Adderall.” The New Yorker has written worryingly of “ neuroenhancers,” which permit college students, like athletes on steroids, to bolster their performance by studying longer and better than their peers. Barely a day goes by without someone commenting on the dangers of overmedicating our kids, giving restless nine year olds any number of addictive stimulants to get them to sit down and shut up. This time around, maybe amphetamines have something to do with it. Much as Americans did when faced with the telegraph in the 1840s, or Future Shock in the 1970s, people oft remark that everything seems to be happening faster, changing more rapidly than ever before.
Speed, it seems, is a part of everyday life.