DEATH LEAVES SENSITIVE MARK ON ‘FAMILY TIES’

TV lives by the clock and dies by the clock.

Your basic 11 p.m. newscast leads with several violent crimes: Intro the story. Show the crime scene. Squeeze in a sound bite with the cops. Show the body being wheeled away. Slap on a two-sentence ending and dash off to another story.

Whoosh! It’s all over in 45 seconds. No mess. No fuss. No trace.

Meanwhile, the cop heroes of tonight’s premiere of “Houston Knights” on CBS have tragedies in their pasts. One feels responsible for the death of his former partner, the other for the death of his wife. Having briefly noted their grief merely as a plot device, though, the show gets down to business. And that business is carnage. Two hours equal 21 corpses, shot up, blown up, carved up.

Gone! Just like that, shoved out of sight and out of mind, the way TV so often devalues life by so casually dismissing death. Most of TV does live by the clock, measuring in seconds, seldom pausing to reflect or grieve.

Exceptions are appreciated. They include this season’s “Afterlife” episode of NBC’s “St. Elsewhere” and the “Venus Butterfly” episode of NBC’s “L.A. Law,” whose directors, Mark Tinker and Donald Petrie respectively, were nominated for Directors Guild of America awards.

In “St. Elsewhere,” Dr. Wayne Fiscus (Howie Mandel) lingered in a dreamlike death-state after being shot in the chest. The “L.A. Law” episode expressed the profound grief of a man for his lover, a suffering AIDS victim whom he killed in an act of mercy.

Extended extreme anguish is rarely depicted in TV drama in a meaningful way, even more rarely in comedy.

That’s where Thursday’s special hour episode of NBC’s “Family Ties” (8:30 p.m. on Channels 4, 36 and 39) comes in. Always one of TV’s funniest shows, “Family Ties” this week is also one of its most sensitive and thoughtful as self-centered Alex Keaton (Michael J. Fox) is traumatized by the death of his close friend, Greg (Michael McNamara), in a car crash.

Alex would have been in the car, too, had he not turned down Greg’s request to accompany him and help move a piano. Hence, Alex is alive only because he was selfish.

Alex tries to bury his shame in jokes, but his guilt and self-doubt soon surface. “My life was saved out of smallness, out of lack of generosity for a friend,” he says. “Why am I alive?” he asks later. “Why am I alive?”

Written by executive producer Gary David Goldberg and producer Alan Unger, the hour is skillfully staged like a play, with Alex’s visit to a therapist a device to blur the past and present, return him to his childhood and allow him to speak to his dead friend and examine his own values.

Despite intrusive intermittent laughter from the audience, this is bold, risky, thinking, artful TV, with a fine, moving performance by that supreme comedic actor Fox, supported by the usual good work from Meredith Baxter Birney, Michael Gross, Justine Bateman and Tina Yothers as other Keatons.

Few sitcoms are funny. Fewer still have the capacity to occasionally wipe off the smile and be serious without also insulting viewers’ intelligence. “Family Ties” succeeds here in part because of its ensemble contributions, but primarily because of writing that makes sense of life (“Walking in there was like walking into a hug,” Alex recalls about entering his mother’s kitchen as a child) and death.

Searching for meaning in Greg’s dying and his own surviving, Alex realizes that he can best preserve the memory of his friend by using Greg’s attributes as an example and by being the best person he can be.

Oh, yes.

“One moment he was there . . . and then he was gone, and I felt so lost,” Alex says about Greg. Thus do art and real life merge, for the pain of loss is also articulated, even more piercingly and achingly, in “Dr. Art Ulene--On Call,” at 8 p.m. March 26 on KABC-TV Channel 7. Circle the date on your calendar.

The hour preempts ABC’s “Our World.” But the children coping with the dying or death of a parent--which is the subject of the last half of this “On Call” documentary-- is our world.

Because “On Call” airs opposite “The Cosby Show” and “Family Ties,” juxtaposition comes to mind. What would be the reaction of the Huxtable children on “The Cosby Show” if their father were terminally ill? How would the Keaton kids of “Family Ties” work out their feelings if their mother’s life were ending?

Perhaps the answer is on another channel.

The children and dying parents are real, though, in the Ulene segment titled “When Mommy or Daddy Dies.” It is extraordinary TV--and crushing--but also a possible primer for families roughing through similar experiences. Experts in the field--and a Los Angeles program for children who have lost their parents called I Count Too--are heard from. “Children need to go to the funeral,” someone says. “They need closure. They need to say goodby.”

The brave, unforgettable voices, though, are those of the suffering children.

Young Cindy and Charlie Nasser share their feelings about their mother, Maria Nasser, who is shown in bed, wasting away from cancer. “I’m angry at my mom for getting sick,” says Cindy, adding that she sometimes also feels responsible for her mother’s illness and that God may be punishing her.

Scott and Kate Murray speak about the illness of their dad, Michael Murray. When his dad got sick, Scott recalls, “I stopped having fun.”

Ron Katz talks about his own imminent death, his young son, Shaun, at his side. “I think he’s ready,” the father says about the son.

“On Call,” whose first two segments deal with AIDS and epilepsy, was conceived by Ulene and his wife, Priscilla, and the supervising producer is Joe Saltzman, chair of broadcasting at the USC School of Journalism. Their “When Mommy or Daddy Dies” segment is tough viewing, but also TV that honors life as it records death.

Maria Nasser, Ron Katz and Michael Murray are now gone. “I had flashbacks of things I hadn’t remembered for a long time,” Scott Murray recalls of his dad’s death.

Closure and goodby.