Family Ties Season 1 DVDs - First 5 episodes

I got the first season of Family Ties on DVD today. The prints look good. They sound fine and I’m seeing a lot of footage I never saw due to the fact that I only saw them in syndication - where they are cut so that more commercials can be included.

However, one episode is cut due to those damn music rights. In ‘I Know Jennifer’s Boyfriend’ the few seconds where Steven and Elyse sing ‘Eddy My Love’ is cut out - very obviously. This was the only thing that has really bothered me. I know why it was cut - noone wants to pay for music rights. It really bothers me because this was a very nice character moment and both Michael Gross and Meredith Baxter-Birney had fairly decent singing voices.

All background music is different. This doesn’t bother me very much, however. Only one song is really important in the Family Ties series run and that doesn’t happen until season 4. Hopefully they’ll at least spring to buy rights for that.