Growing Up with Family Ties - Part Two

This was Originally Posted on December 11, 2009, penned by Josh. This is germane to Episodes 166 and 167.

Having already touched on the patriarch and matriarch of the Keaton family [Editor Josh looking at this more than 13 years later: We haven’t hit the Michael Gross episode that inspired the referenced blog entry here, so it’s not been re-posted yet.], we now turn to the first woman Alex P. Keaton fell in love with. If you need a refresher, here is a YouTube tribute video to spark that warm feeling in your heart.

Now I'm operating under the assumption that you watched the episode of Family Ties that I put up on Sunday here. [Editor Josh: Not gonna bother changing that for posterity’s sake.] Moving on from that point, we know that Alex went into New York, leaving his family on unsteady ground. His parents soon divorced with his mother realizing later in life that men were not for her. His younger brother was left adrift and has once again run afowl of the law.

Having strained the bounds of the ties of family with distance, Alex, too, veered off his seemingly preordained path, became obsessed with a coma baby, and had an ugly downfall after getting hung up over Buddy Lembeck's desert girlfriend.

Next thing we know, he is a plastic surgeon (the ‘80s materialistic mindset is clearly still strong with him) stranded in a rural Southern town where he ends up staying for an indeterminate amount of time after having been seduced by the simpler, quieter small-town life. I guess that's what happens when you almost hit loose livestock.

There were rumblings of a return to the Nueva York a few years later. Finally in the late 1990s, he took to city politics for a few years, only to gracefully bow out, allowing Ricky 'Wild Thing' Vaughn to take his place.

Then he disappeared again, perhaps to find a cure for his werewolfdom. Clearly these were dark times, and it would seem that the darkness enveloped him. In 2009, Alex P. Keaton finally resurfaces. A spectre of his former self, he is now wheelchair-bound and is popping pills and sucking down booze like it's nobody's business. He is also sleeping with a crazy hot (crazy having more than one application here) soon-to-be ex-wife of a New York firefighter.

He was obviously always drawn to the Big Apple but at the same time was unable to avoid falling victim to its seamy underbelly.

In “Closure (Parts One and Two)”, Alex P. Keaton's reason for gravitation toward is illuminated. As we find out in “Closure”*, Ellen Reed, who now apparently goes by Harper Anderson, has been living in New York.

*As if there weren't enough bombshells being dropped in this episode, Closure is also the episode where (in the second scene of the teaser) a pager goes off in a bedroom and Detectives Benson and Cassidy reach for their clothes on the floor. As we know, there was no relationship that came from the liaison. Nevertheless, this is a development that is far too large to fit in tangentially to a blog post about something else equally as important.

And she's just been raped.

Ellen/Harper* sits through a grueling night in which she is subjected to a rape kit in an ill-equipped clinic, implored to rehash the minutiae of her attack in demoralizing detail, and dropped off at her boyfriend's where the beginning of the long and drawn out end of a relationship is surely going to take place as the emotional trauma is too much for nearly any couple. Unbeknownst to her, she's actually dodging a bullet because her boyfriend likes going to Slovakia to kill young women in weird prison/murder clubs as is documented in Hostel: Part II. Now I am not about to make a statement as callous and crass as to suggest that there would be such a thing as a silver lining to a rape, but one could at least make a case that the fate the girls meet in Hostel: Part II is worse than having been raped and the ensuing psychological and sexual trauma. If ever something good were to come from something as awful as rape, the avoidance of being horribly tortured, maimed, and murdered might be it.

*It is best that I refer to her as Ellen from here on out to avoid confusion. After all, we all know she is Ellen Reed, not Harper Anderson. Additionally, by repeatedly referring to her as Harper (not her real name), I will elicit such a groundswell of emotion related to the film with the greatest trailer ever that you will be unable to continue on with this post as you'll have no doubt run out to the video store. [Editor Josh: A what?]

But I digress. As post-coital tensions mount between Benson and Cassidy, the team erroneously believes themselves to have found the rapist only to have the trail go cold from lack of evidence/leads. Having lost her faith in Benson, Stabler, et al., Ellen moves on with her life or more precisely erases all traces of her pre-rape life.

Months later, a rape fitting the modus operandi (identical down to the fact that the rapist leaves no hard evidence linking him to the attack) of Ellen's is brought to Olivia, who immediately recommences on the task of tracking down the attacker. That path leads back to Ellen's doorstep—or rather her new doorstep, which takes them a while to find—who they need to help identify the common assailant. After a healthy dose of reluctance stemming from her misguided belief that she has moved on, Ellen is unable to do so (the rapist was very deliberate in keeping himself unidentifiable), and the Wall Street douchebag rapist walks and the credits roll.

For eleven months, we are to believe that Alex P. Keaton's first true love will not see her rapist brought to justice. Then “Closure (Part 2)” comes around, and we see that Ellen—still the strong feminist that she was while dating Alex back in Columbus—is taking back the night (well, at least control) by keeping tabs on her attacker, placing him at the scene of another rape fitting the bill of her attack.

Despite her efforts that work well enough to turn his own wife against him, the prosecution isn't able to question his wife about anything on the stand past the date that she received his victims' jewelry despite her desire to put him away because of spousal privilege. His wife ends up stepping over the line on the witness stand, detailing his arousal (often leading to him masturbating) when she tries on his freshly nabbed trophy jewelry, resulting in a mistrial.

While awaiting retrial, there is a report of a shooting at the serial rapist's household. When they arrive, Ellen and Mrs. Cleary (who have befriended one another in the throes of crisis) are on the scene, and Kenneth Cleary, D-bag, has been shot dead. They claim that Beverly Cleary's son attacked his wife at the house, and that he was killed in self-defense. While the situation reeks of justifiable homicide, it is clear that they will skate.

Now given what Ellen Reed has gone through, it is painful to think what may have been prevented had the fates not intervened and kept them apart. On some subconscious psychic level, Ellen and Alex were clearly drawn to one another. As often as Alex left New York, the gravitational pull of his undying love for Ellen Reed brought him back.

If only they had been able to circumnavigate the muddled streets of NYC, perhaps her attack could have been avoided. At the same time, it is the strong, determined Ellen Reed that ultimately takes an egomaniacal serial rapist from this world, so perhaps that is why those unknown forces kept them apart.

Regardless, we can hope that destiny will soon bring Alex P. Keaton and Ellen Reed back together. Theirs is a love for the ages.