Ultimately, Alex chooses to look after Mallory rather than complete his interview, thus destroying any possibility of attending the university and getting into the Ivy League. Alex receives a scholarship to fictional Leland University, which is located close enough for him to continue to live at home and commute. Keaton excels at Leland and teaches an economics course as a teaching assistant. Alex holds a disdain for nearby Grant College (which Mallory later attends) and regularly openly mocks their courses. While attending Leland, he has two serious girlfriends. His first is artist/feminist, Ellen Reed (Tracy Pollan, whom Fox later married). After they break up, Keaton pursues a liberal psychology student with feminist inclinations, Lauren Miller, who is played by Courteney Cox. The relationship ends when he has an affair with music major Martie Brodie (played by Jane Adams) while Lauren is out of town. After graduation, Alex accepts a job on Wall Street. Reception and influence The humor of the series focused on a real cultural divide during the 1980s, between the baby boomers and Generation X. According to Stephen Kiehl, this was when the "Alex Keaton generation was rejecting the counterculture of the 1960s and embracing the wealth and power that came to define the '80s." While the youngest, Jennifer (an athletic tomboy) shares the values of her parents, Alex and Mallory embrace Reaganomics and consequent conservative values: Alex is a Young Republican and Mallory is a more traditional young woman in contrast to her feminist mother. In the Museum of Broadcast Communications' Encyclopedia of Television entry for Family Ties, Michael Saenz argues that: In 1999, TV Guide ranked Alex P. Keaton number 17 on its "50 Greatest TV Characters of All Time" list. References in other media When Michael J. Fox left his next series, Spin City, a decade after Family Ties, his final episodes as a regular ("Goodbye: Parts 1 & 2", Season 4, Episodes 25 and 26) made numerous allusions to Family Ties. Michael Gross (Alex's father Steven) portrays Michael Patrick Flaherty's (Michael J. Fox) therapist and there is a reference to the therapist's unseen receptionist named "Mallory". After Flaherty becomes an environmental lobbyist in Washington, he makes a reference to having met the junior senator from Ohio, Alex P. Keaton. Actress Meredith Baxter, who played Alex Keaton's mother on Family Ties, also played Michael Flaherty's mother on Spin City. Florida ska/punk band Victims of Circumstance's