Dennis Tufano & Mindy Sterling - Without us (Family Ties Opening Theme)

Family Ties is an American television sitcom that aired on NBC for seven seasons, premiering on September 22, 1982, and concluding on May 14, 1989. The series, created by Gary David Goldberg, reflected the social shift in the United States from the cultural liberalism of the 1960s and 1970s to the conservatism of the 1980s.Because of this, Young Republican Alex P. Keaton (portrayed by Michael J. Fox) develops generational strife with his ex-hippie parents, Steven and Elyse Keaton (portrayed by Michael Gross and Meredith Baxter).
The show won multiple awards, including three consecutive Emmy Awards for Michael J. Fox as Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series.
The show premiered on September 22, 1982, and for the first two seasons, aired on Wednesday nights. In the show's third season, it started airing on Thursday nights. In 1987, for its sixth season, it was moved to Sunday nights where it stayed until the series' seventh and final season on May 14, 1989. Since then, it is considered, along with The Cosby Show and Roseanne, to be among the greatest family sitcoms of all time. The Writers Guild of America named it #95 on their list of 101 Best-Written TV Series, surpassing Lonesome Dove, Soap, Louie, The Fugitive, Late Night With David Letterman, and Oz.President Ronald Reagan named it his favorite TV show, and Entertainment Weekly ranked it among their 100 Greatest TV Shows of All Time.
Set in Columbus, Ohio, during the Reagan administration, the show depicts Steven and Elyse Keaton (Michael Gross and Meredith Baxter) as baby boomers, liberals and former hippies,raising their three children: ambitious, aspiring millionaire entrepreneur Alex (Michael J. Fox); fashion-conscious, gossipy Mallory (Justine Bateman); and tomboy Jennifer (Tina Yothers). Married in 1964, Elyse is an independent architect and Steven, a native of Buffalo, New York, is the station manager of WKS, a local public television station.
Much of the humor of the series focuses on the cultural divide during the 1980s when younger generations rejected the counterculture of the 1960s and embraced the materialism and conservative politics which came to define the 1980s. Alex, the eldest, is a Young Republican who embraces Reaganomics and exhibits conservative attitudes. In contrast to her feminist mother, Mallory is an apolitical and materialistic young woman, presented as a vacuous airhead, fodder for jokes and teasing from her brother. Jennifer, an athletic tomboy and the second-youngest child, shares more of the values of her parents and just wants to be a normal kid. Steven and Elyse have a fourth child, Andrew, who is born in early 1985. Alex dotes on his young brother and molds Andy in his conservative image.
Regarding the concept, show creator Goldberg observed, "It really was just an observation of what was going on in my own life with my own friends. We were these old kind of radical people and all of a sudden you're in the mainstream ... but now you've got these kids and you've empowered them, and they're super intelligent, and they're definitely to the right of where you are. They don't understand what's wrong with having money and moving forward." A recurring theme involved Alex hatching a scheme involving some amount of greedy money-making, which led to a humorous misadventure and ended with Alex being forced to apologize for his choices. According to Goldberg, "We actually had this structure that we'd inherited from Jim Brooks and Allan [Burns], which was six scenes and a tag ... And then the last scene became Alex apologizes, in every show, we just left it up. Alex apologizes. Some version of it." Nevertheless, Fox's portrayal of a likable Alex proved to be an important part of the show's success. Goldberg again stated, "With Alex, I did not think I was creating a sympathetic character. Those were not traits that I aspired to and didn't want my kids to aspire to, actually ... But at the end of Family Ties, when we went off the air, then The New York Times had done a piece and they said, 'Greed with the face of an angel.' And I think that's true ... [Michael J. Fox] would make things work, and the audience would simply not access the darker side of what he's actually saying."