Dan Liebke's Astonishing Tales

Buy on Amazon

Surely one of the greatest sitcoms of the much-missed 80s was Family Ties. Not because of Michael J Fox’s comic timing. Or Justine Bateman’s breathtaking prettiness. Or Michael Gross and Meredith Baxter Birney’s flawless portrayal of hippy parenthood. Or Tina Yother’s, um, very large hair…

No, the powerhouse behind the show was clearly the theme song. Often underrated by the more casual Family Ties scholar, the theme provided a mind-blowing, psychedelic, one-way trip into madness each and every week. It began with the ludicrous twin wagers on a relationship both 1) originating in the Acheulean era (‘I bet we’ve been together for a million years’) and 2) achieving ongoing near-immortality (‘And I bet we’ll be together for a million more’). It moved on to startling claims of both life-inducing necrosculism (‘it’s like I started breathing on the night we kissed’) and full-blown Superman 2 pre-snog memory loss (‘and I can’t remember what I ever did before’).

Then, for no clear reason, the theme song went on to ask a logically redundant question whose very premise denied the basis of its own query (‘what would we do baby, without us?’). And then, just in case you didn’t comprehend the synonymic nature of the words ‘we’ and ‘us’, it repeated the question again (‘what would we do baby, wihout us?’).

Then, of course, it hit us with not a double negative… not even a triple negative, but the much-maligned quadruple negative (‘and there ain’t no nothin’ we can’t love each other through’), before repeating the self-denying existential query about what the couple would do if they didn’t exist (‘what would we do baby, without us?’).

And then, just when your brain thought it could take no more of this madness, a final touch of demented genius:

‘Sha la la la’

Frankly, when you have a theme song like that, you can follow it with pretty much anything* and achieve outstanding critical acclaim and worldwide adoration.

*Not The Nanny (obviously).

Related Pages

If you hated this, you'll probably also hate:

1. Fun With Keywords – Special Slightly Delayed ‘Crown’s Mine, Bitch’ Edition - As the heading would suggest, this week’s keyword fun is delayed for reasons that need not be explored outside the state judicial system. But, delay notwithstanding, here are the keywords...
2. 7.15 Porthos Ties It Together - Starring Clark Kent (Tom Welling) as Superlad, Lex Luthor (Michael Rosenbaum) as Sinead, Chloe Sullivan (Allison Mack) as TIAC, Jonathan Kent (John Schneider) as Bo, Martha Kent (Annette O’Toole) as...
3. BJ and the Bear - Why not introduce a new generation to B.J. and the Bear, the ground-breaking series about a man who lived in a semi-trailer with his pet monkey, inexplicably named ‘Bear’. The...
4. I Ache, Therefore I Break - Just listening to Achy Breaky Heart by a certain Billy Ray Cyrus and one question immediately comes to mind. What sort of inner body communications system did he have that...