Philip J Reed, Author at Noiseless Chatter

The Venture Bros. Reviews: “Tanks for Nuthin'” (season 6, episode 5)

It’s too early to say whether or not the one-long-story experiment of season six works, but I am thinking, at this point, that it hurts the show.

Believe me, I look forward to the opportunity to eat my words, but for now, it’s difficult to stay invested in a show that’s content to plod along without bringing anything to a conclusion…or necessarily nearer a conclusion. Without the benefit of rising and falling action (we get those things, just not in structurally significant places) we’re left only with the humor to enjoy. And that’s actually a pretty massive departure for this show.

Before season six I rewatched a load of older episodes, and I was struck by the long, joke-free sections of the early seasons. As funny as I remember the show always being — and, indeed, those older episodes are still quite funny — there was a lot of sitting around. A lot of scheming and expositing. A lot of arranging the pieces now for a bigger payoff later. It worked very well, and it worked very well because the writing and the characters were strong enough to keep us invested. (The tension in many of those stories was impressively generated as well.) We didn’t need every line to be a joke; it was enough to spend time with these characters, in this world.

Now we’re in the middle of one long story, and I can’t even tell you exactly what that story is. We still don’t know what Wide Wale is doing, for instance. He negotiated arching rights to Dr. Venture, but evidently farmed the responsibility out to lesser villains. He’s manipulating The Monarch and Dr. Girlfriend somehow, but is it because The Monarch killed his brother or is that not a story thread we’re actually exploring? And does he even need to be manipulating them right now, from a narrative standpoint? Isn’t The Monarch sewing enough seeds of distrust himself?

What about Hank and Dean? Hank is seeing (or will start seeing?) Wide Wale’s daughter, and Dean’s in college now, but it’s hard to call either of those things stories when nothing beyond the setup has taken place.

Brock has some kind of story unfolding, but I’m not sure how much of it is deliberate. I’m not referring to his infatuation with Warriana — though I like that aspect of it quite a lot — but rather his change in attitude. In the “Hostile Makeover” comments, Casey pointed out something that hadn’t registered with me: other characters got the drop on Brock a shocking number of times. It was a great observation on its own, but the rest of the season seems to bear it out as an actual change in character. Hyper competent, deeply focused, impossibly aware Brock seems to be gone, replaced with a big guy content to distract himself by watching videos on his JPad.

I find that interesting. Brock used to fill his downtime by lifting weights or practicing with his knife, and now he’s sedentary. Characters do get the drop on him, and regularly, including the big scene with Think Tank this week taking place only because Brock was paying no attention at all. Say what you will about Hatred; had he been at that front desk, he’d have known something was coming.

In fact, speaking of Hatred, I remember the backlash to his “replacement” of Brock in season four. At the time Jackson and Doc responded by saying that Hatred allowed them to tell different stories than they could tell with Brock, and they were right. Brock was so effective at his job that in order to put the family in any kind of danger, they’d have to find some way to pull him out of the action. But even more interesting, Brock was disinterested in the world around him whereas Hatred was engaged and enthusiastic. (For a perfect illustration of this, see “Home is Where the Hate Is,” in which Brock detaches from a “bad party” that Hatred himself is throwing. The difference between them — and the kinds of stories in which they could participate — was never more clearly on display.)

I bring this up now because this incarnation of Brock can lead to different kinds of stories as well. He’s neither as competent as he once was nor as personable as Hatred is. He is, in a sense, the worst of both worlds as far as a bodyguard goes, and I wonder if that’s intentional. If it’s not, that’s worrying. If it is, that’s potentially fantastic.

And what’s Dr. Venture’s story? Yes, he’s preparing — off and on — for the Science Now conference, and we see that he cares about it for some reason, but I still don’t have a sense of why it matters to him, or of what’s really at stake. (Surely VenTech is already in the public eye for other reasons; he can unveil a grand new idea any time.) Additionally, it’s not as though the narrative is “building” to anything; it’s just something that comes up now and again and gave him a reason to paw through his brother’s abandoned projects.

Dr. Venture is in an odd place with the show right now. He’s a (arguably “the”) central character, so personal growth for him tends to come in small, temporary flashes. He’s humanized by his tragic past, but his present-day existence is constant, and we always return him to where he was. He can’t change too much, because he anchors the show.

…except that he doesn’t. There’s been very little Dr. Venture this season, and in some of the show’s best episodes he didn’t feature at all. (Or featured very little.) A reluctance to let him evolve as a character is understandable, because you don’t always want to evolve the core of your show, preferring to let growth occur naturally around the fringes. But now Dr. Venture is at the fringes. He has a chance to grow and to change without altering what The Venture Bros. is today…and still he doesn’t, which I think is what’s making it difficult for me to care much about Science Now or, in a larger sense, the future of VenTech.

Here’s why I say that with confidence: we’re watching The Monarch grow and change right now, and it’s not altering what The Venture Bros. is. It’s also the one thing keeping me truly engaged this season, and it’s the single most thrilling development the show has had in years.

Funnily, The Monarch has changed a lot. From the very first season we’ve seen him struggle in his relationship with Dr. Girlfriend. We’ve seen him happy with her, then alone without her. We’ve seen him fight to get her back. We’ve seen them get married. We’ve seen them adjust (with varying success) to new arches. We’ve seen his fortunes rise and fall, and now we’re seeing him explore a new identity altogether. There’s been a lot of change, that is to say, with The Monarch, and it’s been handled quite well. That’s what makes it frustrating that Dr. Venture — his “good guy” counterpart — doesn’t get to take these big leaps as a character, and is confined to a couple of steps in this direction or that.

There’s a rush of excitement that comes with the Blue Morpho material, both for the characters and for us. There’s a feeling of strong forward momentum, of not knowing where the story will take us but of knowing that it will be a great ride. And so far it’s been great stuff, giving 21 a brilliantly natural opportunity to benefit from both his newly-developed physical prowess and his encyclopedic knowledge of comic books…as well as giving The Monarch a fresh new outlet for his outsized theatrics.

That’s the story I want to follow right now, and I’m sad that there are only three more episodes left in the season. We just got to the good stuff, and there are so many other things going on that I have no idea if there’s much Blue Morpho material left. I hope there is, but aside from some good jokes and gorgeous visuals, there’s not much else about season six that’s sticking with me.

I wonder if part of my concern with the season is the move to New York in general. At first, it was bursting with possibility. Now, past the halfway point, there’s only one new development that I truly care about…and it’s the Blue Morpho stuff, which didn’t require a move to the Big Apple at all.

Is this season too muddled? Would there be more to enjoy if everything had a little more space to breathe? I honestly don’t know…nor do I want to make it sound like I’m not enjoying the season. I am…but things feel too crowded and too aimless at once. I don’t really know what’s at stake for most of these characters, or if they’re just killing time because this is their new environment now and they might as well keep busy.

I’ll pose a question for you here: what if Dr. Venture really were the masked vigilante taking out supervillains? He’s not, I know. And that wouldn’t easily gibe with his character, as it stands. But let’s say that he really was offing all of these bad guys, one by one, when nobody’s looking.

Wouldn’t that be more interesting? Dr. Venture getting framed doesn’t seem to be amounting to much yet, and it might not simply because he can’t take an active role in the proceedings. We need to shuffle him off to the side, because he’s not actually involved, and that’s disappointing.

The Monarch gets to do (indirectly) the dirty work, which means we have something to look forward to when he’s on screen. When Dr. Venture is on screen, it doesn’t seem to mean much more than that he got his token scene for the week and we’ll be moving on shortly to whatever actually matters.

I’ve mentioned before that I won’t really be able to judge season six until we see where all of these threads are leading us. And I definitely have faith they’ll lead us somewhere interesting. But, for now, it’s hard not to wonder why we are where we are. And, for now, I don’t know that I have any answers.

It’s still a good show, but I don’t know if I’m watching a great one. At the very least, season six of The Venture Bros. pales in comparison to season one of The New Adventures of The Blue Morpho.

Guest Post: A Look at the ALF Comic Series (Part One)

Last week’s episode was a real garbage pile, and I’ve been busier than a [funny metaphor], so I thought I’d turn some space over to Larry-and-Balki-fucking.gif enthusiast Casey Roberson. And by that I mean I forced him to buy all the ALF comics and suffer through them for our amusement. Anyway, Casey’s a good guy and doesn’t deserve to be treated like that, so please join me in pointing and laughing at his misery.

Fusco’s Four-Color Funnies

ALF’s Got Issues!

Beginning in December 1987*, any kid with $1 could stroll down to their local newsstand or comic magazine specialty retailer and trade it for 34 pages of comics featuring Gordon Shumway, star of the hit television show ALF. (Well, okay, 22 pages of comics and 12 pages of ads, but this theoretical kid obviously wasn’t too picky.) By 1988, ALF the television show was halfway through its second season, and ALF: The Animated Series had also been on the air for four months. ALF’s popularity was an established fact, and Marvel comics knew that they had a winner on their hands. The timing of the comic’s debut couldn’t have been better planned: what child, after watching “ALF’s Special Christmas,” could resist the allure of spending even more time with the one alien who could decide the mortal fates of both vaginally-cancerous preteens and suicidal black Santas alike?

What these brave souls would find, month after month for over four years, were two or three stories per issue featuring ALF’s life with the Tanners, ALF daydreaming, ALF’s former life on Melmac, and stories about Melmacian history and myth. I’ve not watched either of the cartoon series, but those last two categories of story were there for kids who did. Let’s make that clear upfront: this comic was for kids. ALF was (sort-of**) one of many comics in Marvel’s “Star” imprint, which also featured properties such as Police Academy: The Series, Count Duckula, and Heathcliff (you even see ALF reading an issue of Heathcliff’s Funhouse in the episode “It’s My Party”).

My purpose here is to compare ALF the comic to ALF the sitcom (or ALF as seen through this site’s phil-ter. Ha! Don’t kill me). Thus, I’ll primarily be looking at a handful of stories taking place in the same world as the sitcom. When I first started looking through these, I realized that I had forgotten how frenetic kids’ comics in the 80s could be. Everyone runs everywhere, ALF spits out dozens of puns every issue, many of them plays on the Tanners’ names (Katy-did, Lynn-a-mint, they get worse after that). Plus ALF eats just about every funny-sounding thing the writer could think of: peat moss, videotape, styrofoam stew, squid, plastic shopping bags, slug fritters, “Yoda Soda”. It’s very much an approach in the same vein as Will Elder’s “chicken fat” style in early MAD comics***.

ALF the comic series ran for 50 issues, ending in November or December of 1991*. Of particular note is that, with very few exceptions, every story in every issue of ALF was created by the same main team: writer Michael Gallagher, penciller Dave Manak, and inker Marie Severin. Let that sink in for a moment–at least 100 ALF stories written by the same guy, drawn by the same two artists. The sitcom, if you split up the two-parters, had 102 episodes and 45 writers, with writer Steve Pepoon getting credit on the highest number of scripts (12).

Gallagher, Manak, and Severin were established comics creators at that point, with even some family history in comics. Gallagher’s uncle George Gately had created Heathcliff, and Severin’s older brother John worked for Cracked Mazagine for almost 50 years. If you read any kids’ comics put out by Marvel or Archie in the late 80s or early 90s, you’ve likely seen the work of at least one of these three. And if you found this page because you’re a real-live fan of the ALF comic series, it looks like Dave Manak still might be taking on artwork commissions. Comics artists like to eat, too, and while peat moss may be dirt cheap (HA!), squid can be pricey.

Anyway, enough context; let’s move on to the content. Here are 20-odd stories from the ALF comic series that Phil said he would be interested in reading about. If these turn out to be total garbage and Phil loses half his readership, I have email proof that it’s his own damn fault.

Issue 1

The first issue (Dec. 1987) is basically just a recap of ALF’s origin story; the framing story ends with ALF’s spaceship crashing into the Tanners’ garage a second time. A very shruggy–though appropriate–“here we go again!” kind of opener.

Issue 3 – “Travels with Willie”

You could, if you chose, view ALF’s “WOTIF” machine as fitting in Marvel’s long-running title What If…, which explored alternate histories where some tiny change was made. “What if the Dazzler had become the herald of Galactus?”; “What if Elektra had lived?”; “What if artists like Jack Kirby and Stan Ditko got the creator credits they deserved?”. Anyway, thanks to ALF’s “WOTIF” machine, Willie is somehow an astronaut on “exploratory patrol”. When he reaches Melmac’s atmosphere, he passes out, and his ship crashes in the Shumways’ garage, meaning…

…oh, wait, hold on, Marvel decided that holding an issue in their hands wasn’t enough for its readers to realize ALF was a comic now…

The Shumways instantly have to hide Willie from their nosy neighbor, Pete Zaparlor. Willie faces off with the Shumways’ pet, Neep, and we have our first instance of the comic’s reliance on foot-long tongues. He is introduced to Gordon’s family, which at least here, if not in the cartoon, is quite literally a family of ALFs. At their first dinner, they eat “slimeball surprise”, and though he’s initially put off by their cuisine, I think it’s safe to assume that Willie eats a lot of pussy while on Melmac.

Pete Zaparlor instantly reports the Shumways to the USC (the Unscrupulous Scientists Conglomerate), which consists of Dr. Strangeglove and his assistant Ybor. I get that we’re working with cartoon and comic book tropes here, but I do find it interesting that everybody’s super-cool with a mad scientist living basically down the street. Also interesting that Pete is acting more like a human than anyone on the TV show ever did (P.S. cross-dressing is a thing on Melmac, according to dialogue between the Dr. and Ybor). The pair quickly fool the Shumways, absconding with Willie. The story ends with Gordon fixing Willie’s ship and killing Dr. Strangeglove and Ybor. One of the guns shoots right up Ybor’s butt. What a great story for children!

Super-Sized ALF annual #1 – “The Return of Rhonda”

Rhonda crashes into the Tanners’ garage, and she and ALF have a nice quickie before coming into the house. After ALF gets her not to eat Lucky, she sits down to dinner with the Tanners (Rhonda eats her place setting). She recounts the story of how she and Skip, after missing the rendezvous with ALF–the comic mentions the TV episode in an editor’s note–land on a habitable planet and name it New Melmac. She then returns to Earth to try to convince Gordon to come with them, and…wait. So she came deliberately, knew where she was going, grew up on a planet with garages, likely knew the ATF risk…and still crashed through the roof of the garage. It’s enough to make even Brian mad! Rhonda cooks up a batch of styrofoam stew, sprays Lynn’s sweater with “eau de Force Field”, soups up Willie’s car just enough to get him a bunch of speeding tickets. Brian decides he can’t live without ALF, so he attempts to run away and join the circus. Gordon catches him, and because of a misspelling in his goodbye letter (“clone” instead of “clown”)–

…oh, wait, hold on, we’ve got to pause for an advertisement for the very issue I’m holding in my hands…

Okay, Rhonda’s ship is equipped with a Clone-O-Matic, and she will return to New Melmac with one of Gordon’s nose hairs. By the time she arrives, she will have another Gordon. Brian’s so happy that he makes the same face I do when I have a stroke.

“Back to Human Nature”

Let’s take a look at a story that the show had already done: ALF goes camping with the Tanners. Here’s where, in some ways, comics has the edge on the television. TV shows might feel the need to spend two or three minutes in the “default” setting to establish what the characters will spend the next 20 doing. In comics–a world where Spider-Man can deliver a soliloquy while punching the Green Goblin–you can just open with a splash page explaining why the characters are where they are. The fact that you don’t have to saw holes in the floor to make comics helps out, too.

This story begins with Kate reminding ALF that he has agreed to “behave” on their camping trip. Unfortunately, ALF is allergic to some sort of weed and almost sneezes himself off a cliff, so the Tanners spend the beginning of their vacation pulling up weeds instead of, I don’t know, moving their van. ALF wakes up just in time for Willie to tell a ghost story…oh, no, wait, the comic just tells us that Willie tells a ghost story.

A noise wakes ALF in the middle of the night, but instead of this being, oh I don’t know, a good chance to have ALF believe ghost stories, it’s a bobcat. So ALF chases the bobcat. Willie follows him, they get lost in the woods, ALF sneezes some more, and they get rained on. They seek shelter in a cave, and because of the unspoken rule that no character in any piece of mainstream media may be genre-aware, Willie and ALF are surprised to find that it’s a bear cave. Willie grabs ALF and high-tails it out of the cave, only to discover that he took a baby bear by mistake. Willie and the mama bear have a stand-off, but thanks to ALF’s hither-to unknown ability to talk to bears ( ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ), it gets settled pretty quickly.

Re-reading the review for “On the Road Again”, what strikes me most is Phil’s comment that the episode is ultimately “just a mess of moments that occur in sequence but have little to no bearing on each other”. That’s an accurate description of this story, too! But that kind of slapdash plotting works–and is expected–in comics. Kids’ comics are much like kids’ cartoons. There’s often no more reason necessary for two different scenes to exist side-by-side than that they take place in the same setting. Gunfights and stagecoaches and Injuns and saloons all take place in the Wild West, so let’s have Woody Woodpecker interact with all of them! Who needs transitions? You chase a bobcat, and then you walk over this way, and now you get chased by a bear. Is ALF trapped? Instead of having him whimper at rednecks, just have him suddenly speak bear! Hell, Superman got a couple new powers every week when he was starting out.

Issue 8 – “The Boy Next Door”

This time, ALF’s WOTIF machine shows us what would have happened had Gordon Shumway’s ship landed in the Ochmoneks’ house. It turns out, first of all, that they would still call him ALF (“Adorable Little Fuzzball”). ALF wastes no time making jokes about how all of his family and most of his friends died when his planet blew up.

The Tanners come over to make sure everything’s all right, proving that comic writers can do in one panel what sitcom writers can’t do in four years. Being a devoted fan of midget wrestling, Trevor says that he’s going to train ALF to become “The Hairy Hobgoblin”. ALF, however, doesn’t want his presence known, and just wants to stay around the house, I guess because everything’s backwards in this story. After that, it’s just a series of jokes: ALF eats Raquel’s Royal Doulton figurines, and then ALF blows up Willie’s lawnmower while Trevor tries to repair it (okay, maybe everything’s not different). It’s implied that ALF and the Ochmoneks establish a new normal over time; ALF even adopts Trevor’s fashion sense. However, when the Ochmoneks watch Carl Waygone’s space TV show they realize they could make billions of dollars off of ALF on movie and merchandising rights.

Fearing for his life, ALF drugs them and leaves in his repaired spaceship. Not knowing where to go, ALF decides to land in the Tanners’ garage because they have a cat that he maybe could eat.

Back in real life, ALF decides to send the Tanners on a Philip K. Dick-style mindfuck by suggesting that maybe they’re in the simulation.

Melmac Fact: The sky is green on Melmac.

Issue 15 – “The Run Run Run Run Runaway”

ALF runs away, meets a hobo, goes to Las Vegas with the hobo, they win a bunch of money, ALF tells the hobo a Melmac story about William Shumspeare, ALF loses their money, ALF joins the circus, and then ALF goes home. That’s it. That’s the story.

Issue 16 – “Surrender Dorothy”

Whiny-ass ALF throws a temper tantrum because he doesn’t want to be babysat by Kate Sr. while the Tanners go “upstate” to Willie’s family reunion. I assume he doesn’t get to go lest he kill off the rest of Willie’s relatives. From the time she gets there until 5 pages later, ALF directs a steady stream of insults at Kate Sr. His response to her initial offer of truce is to electrocute her; when she cooks him a meal, he kicks it down the stairs; when she takes two minutes to have phone sex with Whizzer Deaver, ALF listens in and masturbates.

ALF decides that, since Kate Sr. is SO MEAN to him all the time, he should trot out the tired old plot where you divide up living space by painting all over everything (tape? what’s tape?). But then Kate Sr. starts choking on scrambled eggs, ALF gives her the heimlich, Kate Sr. becomes ALF Fan #1, and the story’s over.

(By the way, penciller Dave Manak must have been a fan of Anne Meara, because she is drawn so much more screen-accurately than any of the other characters in the comic, and that includes ALF, whose head grew and body slimmed over the comic’s 4-year run.)

Issue 17 – “Melmac to the Future”

After playing roller derby in the kitchen (ALF wears a derby while on roller skates…do you get it…do you get the joke), ALF fires up his WOTIF machine to show the Tanners what things will be like for them in the year 2020. It’s quickly established that everyone on earth has a spaceship that looks exactly like ALF’s, ALF lives on New Melmac, and the aged Tanners live in a condo.

ALF says he has a plan to attend the Tanner family reunion so that it won’t be known he’s an alien–the fuck? Then why did you just fly into the Tanners’ garage in broad daylight a panel ago? Anyway, he straps on a “holo-humanizer”, which makes him look like Abraham Lincoln’s long-lost fat red-haired brother.

“Uncle Gordon” meets the grown-up Lynn and Brian and their families. Brian married someone named Ruth and had a daughter named Dottie; Lynn has a daughter named Leslie; there’s other people there, but they don’t get names so there will be room for ALF to meet his pun quota for the issue. Then ALF’s holo-humanizer malfunctions and, after two panels of the extended family not knowing what’s going on, they accept him into the family. Even for the ALF comics, that’s a short resolution! But we really needed three whole panels about how ALF’s planet blew up. There’s a tiny bit of room left for stuff like what Brian and Lynn do for a living (used car salesman; baby machine), but none for having anyone react substantially to the first alien they ever see!

By the last two pages, the artist started doing what I do when I have to draw a bunch of crowd scenes: take the lazy way out with a lot of silhouettes.

Super-sized Spring Special – “Love is in the Hair”

Brian comes home from school one day with his eyes wide and spiraling, like he’s on glint or something. Kate expresses her worry that Brian’s been “preoccupied” lately, so ALF uses his X-Ray specs to look through walls. It turns out Brian’s been masturbating to a girl in his class photo!

After beating the name of the girl out of Brian (“Laura Nelson”), ALF decides to help Brian win over the girl using his tried-and-true Melmacian methods: cologne (Brian ends up smelling like rotten fish) and candy (Brian gives the girl one that tastes like squid, and how either of them figured out that it was squid is beyond me). Brian gets so angry at ALF that he starts emanating, I dunno, stink lines? His spider-sense?

ALF, rather than feeling remorse at screwing things up for Brian, calls up Laura and hypnotizes her over the phone, turning her into a pliant sex doll for Brian’s amusement. Kate launches into a three-page verbal manifesto against blatant sexism in children’s comics and the overall rape culture of late 1980s America, all while bashing ALF’s head in with his WOTIF machine. Nah, j/k, Kate just gets angry in the background of one panel and tells Brian to just “be himself”, which gets him an actual movie date with Laura.

So if you were wondering if the comics upheld the ALF standards of being rapey, and never getting to see boyfriend/girlfriend characters again, there you go.

Issue 19 – “Swimsuit issue”

Kate is silently fuming because Willie just got the swimsuit issue of “Sports Reports” in the mail. ALF uses this as an opportunity to play a power move, roping Willie and Kate into a game of “Let’s You and Him Fight” (see Berne’s Games People Play, 1964).

The writer comes to his senses about three pages in and shifts the story away from the mere idea that Willie could ever achieve erection; to ensure that it doesn’t happen, first Lynn comes home with a bikini, and then ALF wears it. Thanks to the showercams he installed (in issue 13’s “Here’s Lookin’ at You, Naked”), ALF is able to sew a bathing suit that fits Lynn perfectly.

But then we find out that the material ALF used–a seat cover from his spaceship–shrinks in salt water so Kate and ALF race to the beach where Lynn can put on the bikini she bought in the first place.

Knowing that the target audience for this comic (boys aged 8-11) would be too focused on the girlflesh on display, the writer knows he can end the story with ALF just standing around in broad daylight on a public beach and nobody will think twice about it.

P.S. Kate is pregnant in the issues that came out between the end of Season 3 and Season 4.

P.P.S. If you ever wondered just how many of those Melmac facts ALF made up, this issue informs us that his planet had a “Spanish Olive – American War”. “Melmac Facts” my ass.

Issue 20 – “Vanity, thy name is ALF”

ALF inhales talcum powder, which makes him want to be beautiful; he gives himself a full-body perm, then breaks into a cosmetic surgery center in the middle of the night. He fights a cleaning lady and breathes ammonia, which fixes him.

Super-Sized Annual #2 – “Interview with the Hampire”

A Melmacian vampire lands on Earth, and his name is Melmacula. Hampires went around Melmac sucking the cholesterol out of people, leaving them zombies craving saturated fats. At this point, I think I need to get hard (hard sci-fi, that is). Let’s look at some premises here, based on information given. Like the earliest iteration of Cookie Monster, comics ALF eats everything, including tons of regular human food. When comparing humans to Melmacians, there’s some level of evolutionary convergence. ALF poops, has sexual urges, has available cholesterol to be violently sucked out of his neck; he’s basically just like you. So, if Melmacula had been feeding off of Melmacians who had items like bacon, cheese, and palm oil in their diet…why not just capitalize on the obesity epidemic in America? Ah…the comic tells us that–despite being no doubt famished after flying through space for years–he “prefers” Melmen to “foreign food”. So even the undead on ALF’s planet are whiny-ass little shits who demand to get their way all the time.

Anyways, Hampires can be defeated by getting them to bite you after you’ve eaten only foods that let you make shitty puns (I refuse to repeat it, just look at the panels). ALF kills the fourth being to survive the destruction of Melmac, turning him into some kind of shiny sheet. Kate slept through this story. The end.

“Oh, Baby!”

I’ve been impressed so far with the level of commitment that the ALF comics have to the show’s continuity, at least in terms of major events and characters. We don’t see Dr. Dykstra, or Jody, Jake, or even Neal, but we do get Eric Tanner, utilization of the time ALF was supposed to meet Skip, and a number of be-asterisked editor’s notes referencing specific episodes. So it makes perfect sense that, when ALF eats all the food on the way to Eric’s first family picnic, Kate & Willie select a novel way of neglecting their new baby: leaving it alone with ALF and Lynn in the middle of nowhere. (In another bit of continuity, Brian is largely forgotten in the backseat of the car, and doesn’t even get 10 words in this story.) ALF gives Eric a “Getty Bear” (a teddy bear but it’s from Melmac and the name involves some stupid pun or something, who cares).

The toy is a robot and when they turn it on, it runs away with Eric’s carriage and pushes it down a hill into a river. ALF does some weird stuff and saves the baby. When the rest of the family gets back, ALF shakes all of the water off of his fur. The Tanners are oddly happy and amused by this, like ALF didn’t just throw a bunch of polluted water onto the food they plan on eating. Eric slept through this story.

Issue 22 – “Food for Thought”

Lynn gets a job working for “Chris the Caterer”, which is only ever said in quotes, so it’s not clear for awhile if it’s a company, or just some guy who’ll stop by your house with a couple cans of Chef Boyardee. But five panels in and ALF has already jumped to the conclusion that Chris is a pimp (ALF actually says “gigolo”, because you probably couldn’t say “pimp” in comics back then). Yikes! Did ALF ever imply that Lynn was just a whore waiting to happen, Phil? Did he disguise his own opinions under the cloak of concern by projecting them onto her boyfriends?

Anyway, when Willie sees Lynn’s work uniform–a French maid outfit–he buys into ALF’s fear-mongering and they follow Chris’s catering van to spy on Lynn. Well, okay, once they get there, it’s really just ALF spying on her and Willie sitting in the car masturbating. ALF tries to rescue Lynn by throwing a sheet over her head and taking her back to the car–only to find out that he grabbed Lynn’s boss instead! Whu…?! “Chris” is really “Christine”? Oh, well, in that case, of course it’s a legitimate catering business! Women can’t be pimps / gigolos!

Anyway, Willie has to pretend to save Christine from ALF so that ALF won’t be seen, Christine showers Willie with kisses (the first one’s free, kids), ALF eats everything in the catering van, end of story. The fact that ALF caused a struggling independent businesswoman to not be able to deliver a service and get paid is not mentioned, but I’m assuming that Christine could no longer afford Lynn, and this is why her catering job is never, ever mentioned again, even in an asterisk note.

Issue 24 – “Rhonda’s Residency”

Here we go again with another “WOTIF” story. After two years, and with 2-3 stories per issue, ALF the comic had filled in a lot of the empty spaces of the universe it borrowed from ALF the show. I’ve skipped the ongoing story of ALF having multiple run-ins with a “coat burglar” (you’re welcome), as well as how, every few issues or so ALF becomes the mascot for a different sports team (you’re welcome), but there are some stories in the comics that had legitimate, lasting consequences. This WOTIF story is an imaginary sequel to “The Return of Rhonda”–a sequel where Rhonda sticks around for longer than five pages. We do have to waste half a page just so ALF can make one more heartless joke about his family dying, but then the actual story starts. ALF and Rhonda get married, Rhonda runs up the utility bill with her hair dryer, ALF puts down Kate Sr., and the couple settle into their new domestic life in the garage.

Despite having already outpaced the TV show for the number of times ALF has gone out in public, Rhonda gets captured and turned over to the ATF almost instantly when she gets cabin fever and decides to go shopping at the mall. Here’s some comics logic for you: Rhonda walks around the city and gets captured; then ALF flies her spaceship around to rescue her and doesn’t. The difference? Rhonda isn’t ALF, but ALF is. ALF cannot get captured because his name is on the cover. Anyway, ALF saves Rhonda from the Alien Task Force, Rhonda leaves Earth, ALF turns off the WOTIF machine and eats some brownies with fish in them. You know what? This is the first comics story that I’ve just out-and-out disliked. Not just the gender disparity in comics logic (those ditzy dames, always risking dissection!), and not even the fact that it took ALF two minutes to infiltrate ATF headquarters (like, I could go on for probably a thousand words about how simply knowing where the place is would be a total game-changer for the Tanners). But the fact that the writer made this into a WOTIF story rather than an actual in-canon one borders on ridiculous. I mean, Melmacula is canon! Kate being happy that ALF didn’t leave with Rhonda and Skip is canon!

I can only imagine that writer Michael Gallagher came up with the story idea of Rhonda living with the Tanners and then, when he realized he didn’t have enough pages of material, made it a WOTIF story. Also, I hate that damn word. WOTIF. WOTIF I just stopped reading the WOTIF stories.

Super-sized ALF Holiday Special #2 – “Don’t Toy With Me”

ALF is excited that he gets to go to “The Mall” with Willie (that’s right, you heard right, the sign on the building says “The Mall”). Lest you think that this means Willie has figured out from issue #24 a sure-fire way to get ALF captured by the ATF, we quickly find out that ALF is content to sit in the parking lot and floss his teeth. His four teeth. Then some guy breaks into Willie’s car, ALF pretends to be a toy…you know what? We’ve already done this “ALF pretends to be a toy” mess twice: once in the show’s second Christmas episode, and once in the ALF Holiday Special #1.

Does this issue have any other Christmas stories? Let’s see…ALF is a hockey mascot…Gornan the Barb-Q-Barian meets the Melmarx Brothers…ooh, ALF meets Santa! nope, just a dream…ALF tells a story about the “Uncanned X-Melmen”…a story where ALF tries to convince the Tanners that the Melmacian New Year’s tradition is for the eldest child to “skin a snake”.

Those brave souls who trudged through a blizzard to reach the comic shop in December 1987 held out hope for two full years, but by December 1989 it must have been clear to even the most clueless 10-year old: there would never be a good ALF Christmas story.

*throws this issue away*
*remembers plan to sell these on eBay when review is finished*
*curses*

—–
* I don’t buy monthly comics anymore, so I can’t say if this is still common practice; but back in my day, comics and magazines would have a cover date one, sometimes two, months into the future. This was a little way of gaming the system for newsstands and grocery stores, who had procedures directing them to keep titles on display until the date on the cover had passed. Using some internal clues from a few issues, it appears that ALF sported a cover date a full three months out, which if you ask me is just plain greedy.

** Not identified as such on the cover, but the advertisements were predominantly for other Star Comics, and ALF makes mention of his comic as falling within that line at one point.

*** “Chicken fat” – it does nothing for the nutritional value of a soup (that is, does nothing to advance the plot), but adds lots of flavor.

Better Call Saul Reviews: “Amarillo” (season 2, episode 3)

I was far too young to understand the central courtship in Moonlighting. I was just too young to care much about Sam and Diane on Cheers. But let me make one thing very clear: I feel as though I’m genuinely invested in the doomed romance at the core of Better Call Saul.

Kim and Jimmy matter to me…and I say this as somebody who usually couldn’t care less about will-they/won’t-they plots. It probably helps that this situation is more of a they-already-have/they-definitely-won’t. But, ultimately, I care. The strong writing and characterization undoubtedly help me to care, but it’s the easy chemistry between Odenkirk and Seehorn that truly makes it work. And it works because we know it’s destined to fail.

Better Call Saul is a tragedy. If you somehow escaped the cultural shockwaves of Breaking Bad, the two black-and-white fast forward sequences on this show make that much clear. There isn’t going to be — and emphatically cannot be — a happy ending, and their chemistry is made more tragic by virtue of the fact that it is so easy.

If Odenkirk and Seehorn didn’t roll off of each other so easily, didn’t complement each other’s comic and emotional strengths so well, didn’t feel so fucking right together, their relationship would just be one of many interlocking gears that keep the series chugging along. Instead, it matters. It means something on its own. And it’s all the more poignant that it’s going to come crashing, painfully, down on them both.

I love, love, love, love Kim. Better Call Saul needed to flesh out its roster beyond Saul and our old friends the Breaking Buddies, so it would be a lie to say that Kim Wexler was born of anything other than narrative necessity. And at first she even felt that way. But it didn’t take long for the show to position her as the singular, most defining difference between doe-eyed Jimmy and cynical Saul.

Jimmy has a heart.

We see it weekly. We see it when last week’s under-table flirtations are rescinded this time around…a rebuff so meaningful it causes Jimmy to double back and undo some of the good will he built up for himself, simply because she knew he built it dishonestly. And we see it again when a high-five turns to a held hand. Jimmy and Kim have already slept together…probably more than once. And yet her hand in his is what feels to him like paradise.

I understand that the language I’m using here can make it sound as though Kim exists simply for Jimmy to react to, as a goal to be reached or missed, as some personified gauge of his success as a human being…and, well, in a sense she is.

But only in a sense.

She is those things because this is Better Call Saul, and not Jimmy ‘n’ Kim: Flirty Attorneys. We will always see other characters through the filter of how they affect Jimmy, because this is the story of who he is.

But Kim doesn’t stop there. The writers invest her with a distinct personality of her own, and Rhea Seehorn’s performance suggests a real, rich human life behind it. She can serve a token role without being a token character, and as the weeks go by and she and Jimmy drift inevitably apart, I think it will become more apparent how autonomous she really is. Right now we see one side of her, because she’s on our protagonist’s side. Eventually she — or he — will permanently pull away, and we’ll see something else.

There is one exception to the rule that all characters are seen through Jimmy’s filter, and that’s Mike, whose own story has barely intersected Jimmy’s so far in the grand scheme of things.

That’s…odd, I have to admit. Sometimes it feels as though we’re watching Better Call Saul with interruptions from a supporting feature. There’s plenty of time — indeed, as much time as the writers would like to take — for their stories to comment on each other more directly, but for now the Mike material feels more like a fun digression than it does an organic component of Jimmy’s rise and fall.

I like Mike. If you’ve read any of my other reviews, you probably know that, but I want to make it clear here, because I was left a bit cold by his stuff this week. Yes, Jonathan Banks is incredible. Period. The man can eat a sandwich and make you feel like you’re watching your father get gunned down. But he still feels like an emissary from a different show rather than a character who belongs in this one.

That was made especially clear by the end of the episode. Mike goes to the vet to get some work. Then we find out that someone requested him by name. And then we see that Nacho wants him to bump somebody off. That’s three separate instances of the show promising tension — the last of which brings “Amarillo” to a close — but none of them made me feel invested the way a scene of Jimmy and Kim whiling away their dwindling hours together with Rock Hudson movies did.

That felt thrilling to me…knowing that their relationship is doomed to sink like that submarine. The Mike and Nacho teamup should have left me wanting more, but, frankly, I could have done with less. The real heart and spirit of the show is with our star-crossed leads, and it says something that the promise of exciting violence to come will also, disappointingly, distract us from the longer, softer, talk-y bits.

Am I down on the Mike stuff? No. I like it as much as the next guy. But I like the Kim material even more…and this episode gave great weight to the fact that she unwittingly enables Jimmy’s worst impulses. He’s seeking her validation so desperately that he’ll jeopardize his standing (as he did in the briefing meeting that opened the episode) and his job (as he did with the commercial). He wants her more than he wants respect, money, security, or anything else that’s being handed to him, and that’s both brilliantly sad and intricately woven into the fabric of the show. Mike’s stuff — at least for now — is just Mike stuff. Great on its own, but dim in comparison.

Season two is heading in an interesting direction, as Jimmy’s climbing that hill and proving, week after week, that he’s good at his job…but he’s also engendering a lot of doubt along the way. First there was Chuck, who knew him from his Slippin’ Jimmy days, but now it’s his new boss as well. Jimmy can get results, and can even use his showmanship to do The Right Thing, but he also loses allies along the way. He starts by flipping a light switch he knows he shouldn’t touch…and ratchets up his behavior until he’s buying airtime for an unauthorized commercial. The consequences are going to catch up to him, and if your enemies are powerful enough, it won’t matter how much good you did along the way.

“Amarillo” was a great episode in spite of the fact that it accomplished very little. It was a reminder that place setting can still be satisfying, that promises delivered deftly can be rewards in their own right. And it had probably my single favorite moment of the show yet, in which Jimmy urges his elderly clients to dismiss thoughts of Sandpiper as an armed robber…right after he himself planted that image.

That’s the show being as playful as Jimmy is…working us the same way he works them. Tricky, knowingly dopey, making us feel smarter than we really are in aid of getting us to come along for the ride.

The true delight of Better Call Saul was illustrated wonderfully by that scene. It’s Bob Odenkirk — along with a team of massively gifted writers — working a room. And just as that bus was stalled, I’m starting to care less and less about whether we ever make it to our destination. I’m just enjoying the show.

Then again, this episode had “I’m ready for my closeup, Mr. McGill,” which can fuck right off.

Better Call Saul Reviews: “Cobbler” (season 2, episode 2)

We got a great episode this week, and that’s very nice. But the lateness of this review means I’ve had more time than usual to think about it, and I’ve found myself with a lot of questions.

That’s not at the expense of the show, or the episode, or anything, really. It’s just that at one point my thoughts came together…and then they had time to drift apart again. So I’ll run through my usual list of the things I enjoyed, but then I’d like to open a few things up to discussion. At this point I don’t think we have any correct or incorrect answers, but I’d definitely be curious as to other peoples’ thoughts.

Firstly, I recant my observation last week that our nebbish, budding drug dealer would be season two’s main client. While that’s still possible, it’s much less likely after the events of “Cobbler,” which see Jimmy clearing him of criminal suspicion by inventing a legal excuse for the man’s nervousness and secrecy. And that could well represent the end of that particular arc.

Which is okay; tying off that loose end doesn’t sacrifice any of that buildup so much as it allows it to feed other stories. Mike now knows where to find Nacho. Jimmy’s further implicated himself as Mike’s quasi-legal fixit man. And Kim — poor Kim — is second guessing, at least in the moment, the support she’s shown Jimmy through the years.

In fact, it’s easy to argue that the rush of confidence she gives him early in the episode is what leads to him accepting Mike’s ethically dubious proposal in the first place. A heartwarming moment flows gracefully and without interruption into a potentially very dark development. It’s a lovely illustration of the way comedy and gravity co-exist in this show, and I loved how easily and naturally that turn came.

Chuck’s temporary return to HHM was also handled brilliantly, with Jimmy’s immediate clench of anxiety when he saw the plastic tub being palpable and painful. It was a great moment, taking one of the sillier aspects of season one (by which I mean no disrespect) and bringing it back as an emotional punch for season two. Chuck’s arrival interrupts Jimmy’s speech…his confidence falters…the lights go out one by one around him.

I’m not sure exactly what Chuck’s motive was for returning. Clearly it was something to do with Jimmy, and he tries to pass it off later on as “bearing witness,” but doesn’t make it clear as to whether it’s witness to Jimmy’s ascent or tumble. From Jimmy’s perspective — the one with which the show aligns us in that scene — it was a dickish thing to do, whatever the motive, and seeing his brother again instantly knocks him off center.

…but Kim is there. Kim, who arranged to be there. Next to him. For him. She cares about him, she believes in him, and she knows what he’s capable of, even when he doubts it himself. And with a touch, she brings him back. It’s a sad and triumphant moment at once, and it both makes him feel better and more bitter. He does his best to blow off Chuck after the meeting, and then immediately agrees to help Mike in what he’s openly told will require him to recalibrate his ethics. Confidence and bitterness are a dangerous combination.

Both of this episode’s legal entanglements show what sets Jimmy apart: he’s willing to get his hands dirty. Just as he crawled around in a dumpster in last season’s “RICO,” and tracked the Kettlemens through the woods in “Nacho,” he’s willing to sit with every elderly Sandpiper resident and dig through their financial records seeking the evidence he needs. Lawyers operate cleanly, need to appear collected and respectable at all points, and send others to do their dirty work. Jimmy is used to the dirty work, and sees no such distinction…which allows him to build the case in ways other lawyers cannot. It also, of course, allows him to fabricate evidence by directing pie-sitting videos starring his client.

The same thing that could make Jimmy a great lawyer already, we know, makes him a criminal.

It was a solid episode, and we got to see more of Mike being Mike, which is always welcome. He’s the kind of character that can brutalize with a glance, and we definitely had our share of glances. His cool, unflustered confrontation with Nacho was a perfect, tense highlight of the show thus far. (Also very interesting: Nacho’s uncle is an honest businessman who respects his customers enough to talk them out of pricey options in favor of ones that would suit their vehicles better and save them money. It provided for a very interesting background commentary to his nephew’s dealings, and illustrates how rich a show we’re dealing with here.)

So, yes, “Cobbler” was great. But I have some questions.

Firstly, what is Chuck’s role on this show? It feels to me almost like his main arc was wrapped up at the end of season one, and while I’m not complaining about having Michael McKean pop up every few episodes, I do wonder what they intend to do with him.

Am I concerned? Not even slightly. But season one built up my expectations toward one thing, and then gave me something else. Here, I don’t know what expectations I have at all, unless it’s that he’ll fluster Jimmy now and again, which doesn’t seem like a rich narrative development to me.

Did Chuck outlast his utility? Or do you guys see something I’m not seeing yet? Again, I’m not writing him off…I’m just not sure where he’s going.

Secondly, the conversation with Kim at the end was fantastic, but only later did something occur to me. Yes, fabricating evidence is illegal. That makes sense to me, and it makes sense that Kim would react in exactly the way she did. But she was laughing at the rest of the story, and enjoying the anecdote. Which implies that she’s okay with actively lying to police officers with the purpose of interfering with their investigation.

Now, trust me, I’ve watched enough television that I’m aware of the grey area attorney characters walk constantly. It’s fine, to me, if Kim is okay with lying but not with falsifying evidence. There’s a point at which that distinction becomes less clear, but on its surface, I understand that.

My question is this: isn’t it still illegal to lie to an officer the way Jimmy did? Kim’s concern at least in part seemed to have to do with the trouble Jimmy could find himself in, but wouldn’t he already be in that trouble by virtue of having lied at all? He spun a very specific story to the police, which could be accepted or disproven just as the “evidence” could have been. Was he not already in trouble from the moment he started telling his story?

I don’t know. I don’t have a legal background, and I could be way off, but I’d be surprised if lying to police officers in that context was okay. And if it’s not okay, I think I buy Kim’s giddy enjoyment of the a little less. Is it more that she’s okay with all lying in the service of a client, but worried that the pie video specifically would make it easier for them to prove he’s lying?

I’m really not sure.

Those are logistical questions, though, and while I’d be interested in hearing peoples’ thoughts, neither of them are especially important to me.

Much more interesting is comparing the world of Better Call Saul to the world of Breaking Bad. In that latter show, we didn’t have to wait long to see blood being spilled, lives being taken, innocents in danger. Bad decisions in Breaking Bad were really bad decisions with really bad consequences…a theme that carried from the pilot to the very last episode.

In Better Call Saul, however, the stakes are lower. These characters are in danger of being lied to, misled, betrayed, taken advantage of, ripped off, intimidated, ridiculed. They’re not in danger of being strangled, gassed, gutted, stabbed, dissolved, blown up, shot.

And that interests me, because this character occupies both of those worlds. At one point, his decisions lead him from one degree of everyday consequence toward another. That’s Jimmy becoming Saul, yes, but it’s also one man choosing — for one reason or another — to open a Pandora’s Box of violence and danger.

And why would somebody choose this? To leave the smaller punishments behind in favor of the larger ones? To turn away from personal slights in favor of being kidnapped and held at gunpoint in the desert? To stop helping a small-time crook out of jam and start suggesting that big-time trouble makers be sent to Belize?

There’s an easy answer: the rewards are bigger as the stakes get higher. But something tells me it’s not as simple as that. That’s the reason for Jimmy becoming Saul, potentially, but not the reason for a man to willfully thrust himself into a more dangerous, potentially fatal, lifestyle.

More likely? By the time he makes that decision, he has literally nothing left to lose.

Remember that when he’s on the bed with Kim, and she’s wearing his University of American Samoa shirt. She warns him against going down a dark path…and we know he’ll do it. We know he’d lose her if he did.

But by the time he does, I don’t think she’ll even be around to lose.

ALF Reviews: “Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades” (season 4, episode 18)

See that screengrab? That’s the face Anne Schedeen makes after ALF delivers his first line.

ALF’s line is nothing phenomenal, or surprising. It’s barely even interesting. Willie asks ALF how he’s doing, and ALF replies, “I’ll be better after I have some coffee and we talk about death.”

And that screengrab is Anne Schedeen’s silent reaction.

She holds that face for a moment. Then she shifts her eyes. Finally, she turns and walks away.

It’s a perfect bit of facial acting. Whatever line she could potentially have delivered in response to ALF would have been a disappointment compared to what we actually got…this lovely moment of implied, quiet frustration. Her look asks the question she’s asking herself internally: “What horse shit am I in for this week?”

Anne Schedeen has been a highlight from the very start of this show. I still remember that dumbass scene at the end of the first episode, with everyone cracking up at ALF’s “great” “jokes” while Kate sat there scowling. We were supposed to see her as some kind of cold, bitchy killjoy. I immediately saw her as my soulmate.

And now, as the show winds down, I appreciate moments like this even more. They’re limited in number. Every one of them subtracts from what we have to look forward to. Each time she silently fantasizes about disemboweling ALF with a ravioli stamp, it brings us nearer the last time she will ever do this. Together, dear reader, we approach the zero. Take a moment with me to appreciate what we have. Enjoy every sandwich.

Anyway, ALF’s big thing today is his realization that he’ll outlive the Tanners by a significant margin, which is better than him getting another job. (By this point I think we’ve exhausted all of them short of “snuff film director.”) He asks what he’s going to do after Willie and Kate pass away, and Kate — in what must be a joke though, sadly, Anne Schedeen doesn’t sell it the way I know she can — suggests that he move in with Lynn.

Which causes Andrea Elson to make this face:

And you know what, Andrea? You’re alright, too. Great facial acting here as well. It’s a perfect way of showing us that her answer is “fuck no” while she’s too polite to actually say so. (She does has a few lines to this effect, so it’s not entirely facial acting, but that doesn’t make it any less good.)

For a show that’s so bad with female characters, I have to admit the Tanners with vaginas are way better than the Tanners without. If I found out that next week’s episode was about Lynn getting hit by a car, I’d feel at least a little sad. If I found out it was about Willie getting hit by a car I’d call out of work and spend the whole day masturbating.

After the credits, ALF bitches that the Tanners are going to die while Willie bitches that ALF bitches too much that the Tanners are going to die. It sucks.

Then the family leaves to go to a bar mitzvah, which is believable because if sitcoms have taught me anything it’s that Jewish people are too polite to ever, under any circumstance, tell others that they don’t actually like them.

Then he picks up a picture from the table and says, “Ohhh, Lynn…” and some music comes on, and I was entirely convinced ALF was going to jack off to her photograph right then and there.

Fortunately, he doesn’t. Whew. I guess I don’t have anything to worry about this w–

no oh no

no fuck no no no FUCK no

Not another cocksplitting dream sequence. What the fuck did I do in a past life to deserve this?

At least tell me this is the last dream sequence in the show. At least give me that small comfort.

Right? This fucking show is almost over. Surely we can’t have an episode in which ALF dreams he’s a detective in search of the Maltese Tabby or some shit.

Anyway, he daydreams about living with Lynn when she’s really old and…

nope

nope nope

Uh-uh. I’m done.

I didn’t sign up for this shit. I signed up to review ALF, yes, but not this.

No human being deserves this.

The review series ends here. You’ve been great. It’s been a fine run. But I…I can’t go on.

I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Orbit Guard ships on fire off the shoulder of Xerxes IV. I’ve watched Mr. Ochmonek’s shirts glitter in the dark near the Tanners’ gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears…in…rain.

Time to die.

SERIOUSLY WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS SHIT LOOK AT IT GOD DAMN

Fuck. She looks like Dan Aykroyd in Nothing But Trouble. This is gross. Did they actually need to turn Lynn into some hideous old hag you find in the bathtub at the Overlook Hotel?

ALF alludes to the fact that Kate is dead now, and he tells her aged daughter who just cooked him dinner while he sat pantsless and useless doing nothing that he hopes she’s burning in hell as they speak.

I hate this show.

Then this guy Robert comes home. It’s Lynn’s husband, who’s a mime or who actually gives a fuck. Furienna? Are you out there? Do you even give a fuck? How could anyone? Who would even remember this asshole?

Yeah, he’s been on the show before. It took me a really long time to figure out that this is the same kid we met in “It’s My Party.” So, I guess they grew up and got married in ALF’s fantasy at least. And, at long last, ALF gets to hide under Lynn’s bed and listen to her fuck.

Whatever. I don’t care. ALF can jack off to thoughts of Lynn getting pounded by whatever guy he chooses. But Robert is an odd choice for the show itself to make, isn’t it?

We’ve met Robert only once, five weeks ago. He hasn’t been mentioned since. He was barely in that episode, and it’s not like the story revolved around Lynn’s new love interest; that just sort of barely happened at the end. Lynn hasn’t referred to having a boyfriend in the meantime, but I guess they’ve been dating ever since. That’s a lot for an audience to remember and assume, especially in pre-DVD days.

On top of that, when we do see him again he’s aged up and caked in mime makeup, so it’s not as though anybody on the planet would recognize him even if they were unreasonably invested in some tossed-off romantic development from five episodes ago.

It’s really strange. At least when she was dating Lizard we heard about him a few times here and there. And Danny Duckworth popped up a few times to remind us that she was still seeing him. Now we flash forward to a married Lynn and she’s with this bozo nobody on Earth could possibly remember, in a completely unrecognizable costume anyway.

Why not use a new character? And why did we sub Danny Duckworth out for this idiot anyway? Not that I liked the guy, but I at least would have recognized him.

What’s more, I would have known that becoming a mime would represent a pretty significant personality shift for Danny. For Robert? I have no idea. Is the joke that he’s already on his way to miming for spare change? Or is the joke that somewhere along the way his plans got derailed and he’s stuck doing this?

I have no idea because I don’t know who this dope ever was to begin with.

Oh, who am I kidding. The “joke” is that someone’s wearing silly makeup. Good thing we have an elaborate fantasy episode to get to a great payoff like that.

Look at these fucking screenshots. I feel like I’m suddenly watching a show about a serial killer.

Anyway Robert does some shitty mime stuff for fucking ever. I guess the writing staff had it easy this week. All they had to do was write “SOME ASSHOLE IS A MIME” across four pages and, boom, scene done.

Then the phone rings and it’s the circus and Robert gets a job with them and OH MY GOD WHO CARES. We’re almost 10 minutes into the fucking episode and all that’s happened is that ALF daydreamed about Lynn having saggy tits.

Oh, look. Now they have a knife throwing act. And, believe me, if Robert pierced ALF’s jugular here and now I’d declare “Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades” to be a masterpiece. But somehow I know that won’t happen.

This episode is instead the result of someone saying, “Wouldn’t it be funny if ALF lived with a mime?” and nobody having the heart to club that guy to death with a pillowcase full of broken glass.

Then…

Yeah, for once the show makes good on a promise of putting ALF in mortal danger. For that, I salute it.

But it’s a little disappointing that it’s not…y’know. Funny. It’s just ALF screaming while fake knives appear around him. It’s the kind of thing I can easily imagine coming up in a brainstorming session; it’s another “Wouldn’t it be funny if…?” This time, though, the answer could have been “yes.” It really could have been. But nobody wrote any jokes worth telling. Oops.

The big punchline happens with the inevitable knife-near-the-crotch, which causes ALF to quip, “Couldn’t I have at least worn a cup?”

And this — precisely this — is where you see the difference between a genuine comic mind and somebody cashing a paycheck. ALF’s situation here doesn’t precisely mirror a very famous event on The Tonight Show early in Johnny Carson’s tenure, but it’s close enough to be instructive.

You can watch the legendary moment right here. And you should. Because Carson had almost the exact same setup…but wasn’t prepared for it. It was unplanned. No writing staff. No rehearsal. No guarantee anyone would find his joke amusing.

So Carson worked the moment. He let the inherent, awkward comedy of the situation stand for itself. When Ed Ames goes to retrieve the blade, Carson grabs him and pulls him back, which is funny in itself and allows the humor of the accident to simmer.

By the time Carson opens his mouth and delivers his line — any line — the audience is dying for it.

I won’t spoil the joke — you really should watch the video — but it says a lot that Carson and ALF had the same setup. Carson hit a grand slam with no preparation and only his own wit to work with, and no possibility of a second chance. ALF had an entire writing staff sat in a room to come up with a punchline…and they produced “Couldn’t I have at least worn a cup?”

I’m not going to tell you that ALF’s joke is shitty — though I will tell you right now that ALF’s joke is shitty — but there’s a clear gulf in comic value between the two moments. Carson had no time to prepare and could have whiffed, but he gave American television one of its most famous moments instead. ALF had all the time in the world to prepare, and nobody remembers this shit even happened.

That’s the difference between telling a joke and being a comedian.

Anyway, even ALF realizes that this shitty fantasy sequence isn’t going anywhere, so he boots up another one. Now he envisions his “worst case scenario”: living with Brian. And, man, if you ever wanted to punch a child actor in the balls, introduce his big scene exactly that way.

I might as well mention now — at the very least for the sake of postponing my own worst cast scenario: writing about Brian — that I think this is a solid premise for an episode.

No, not “cut to the actors in pancake makeup doing shitty old people voices.” But “explore what such massively different life expectencies mean for these characters” is great. And, nicely, it flows naturally from the show’s own premise; ALF isn’t from Earth, and we’ve long known that his species lives much longer than we do. On the outside possibility that a Tanner lives to be 100, this barely makes a dent in ALF’s own 650-year lifespan.

There’s a lot you can do with that. In fact, the ratio isn’t all that far off from what humans expect of their canine companions. You adopt a dog and, on rough (rough-rough) average, it will live for ten years. In that time it becomes part of your family. It becomes your friend. It keeps you safe, provides you with company, and wants for very little. It doesn’t judge you or argue with you or ridicule you when you do something foolish. It cares about you. It admires you. It depends on you. It introduces to your life a very specific kind of companionship…

…and then it passes away. The dog’s life is over. Your friend and confidant and a member of your family is gone, all at once and forever.

Many people take that very hard. I’m one of them who does. It’s such a scary and uncomfortable thought that it holds me back from getting another one. Can I really experience that kind of loss again?

I knew a guy who was always in total control of his emotions. At least, as far as anyone else could tell. He was even-keeled and very rational. He gave great advice. He kept his life in order. It was easy to be jealous of the life and family that he’d built around himself. And when his dog died, he fell apart.

He didn’t lose his job. Nothing tragic happened to his wife or his children. He wasn’t evicted from his home.

No…his dog died. Naturally. Predictably. And I saw him sit on the ground and weep like a child, months later, still hurting.

We forge bonds in ways we don’t expect. They happen naturally, and often irrationally. Did you ever have a friend that drove you crazy? Of course you did. Do you miss him or her right now? You may well. Every relationship we experience has some kind of shelf-life. One day, it will be gone. And with very few exceptions, we’ll feel their loss. We’ll miss them. We probably won’t forget the negative aspects, but we’ll sure as hell wish we could have the positive ones back.

ALF and the Tanners have to face that fact, one way or the other. He will outlive them. There’s no way around that, and no concession that can be made. As such, he is in a worse position than they are, emotionally. Just as we have to see the dogs we love pass before we do, ALF has to see his surrogate family age and die at a rate to which he is not accustomed.

That’s a rich vein to explore from a storytelling and characterization standpoint. Even better is the fact that it perfectly feeds a secondary plot: ALF’s mortal fretting can remind Willie and Kate that they will die, too. Which one will go first? (Willie, obviously, because he’s 85 years older than his wife, but, you know, for the sake of argument.) What will the other do at that point? And then can’t Lynn and Brian start to wonder what life will be like without their parents? These are questions human beings already ask themselves at various points throughout their lives. It happens naturally, and it’s relateable for an audience. Having ALF raise the issue — for his own very good reason — would force these characters to consider it themselves, and, suddenly, you have a strong theme for every one of your characters to explore this week.

It’s a series of scenes and conversations that can be both hilarious and heart-breaking.

None of that happens, of course, and instead we get ALF in a collared relationship with a grown man.

It’s Brian, all grown up, and I admire the show for tracking down an adult actor as stilted and incompetent as Benji Gregory. That can’t have been easy. His IMDB profile is pretty meaty, so most likely somebody out there is going to read this and say, “He’s not bad! He was great in xxxxxxx!” And, fine. Maybe he was. I’ll take your word for it. But he’s fucking terrible here.

The joke at first, I guess, is that ALF is treated like a dog instead of a family member. Then the joke becomes that Brian’s wife Roxanne hates ALF and tries to kill him. Then it becomes that Brian thinks she’s an olive oil heiress when she’s actually some powerful Mafia figure or something.

I don’t know. It sucks but at least she’s not a mime.

Roxanne is played by Fran Drescher, and you probably expect me to rip into her, but she’s not too bad here. This was from that bygone period of her career, before she got confusingly famous for being an annoying and grating Jewish stereotype. Right now she’s….just an actress in a sitcom, really. She hams it up a bit, but it’s nothing obnoxious. She does decent work with the little this thankless show gives her, and she’s probably the highlight of the episode, actually. (Faintest. Praise. Ever. But you get what I mean.)

I don’t dislike Drescher. She understands comedy and she gives her audience what it wants. I remember her best from The Nanny, and that was no masterpiece, but it’d be difficult to watch it and conclude that Drescher didn’t know what she was doing, or that she didn’t do it well.

By all means if you thought The Nanny was shit, have at me in the comments. But for what it was — a light, mindless slice of weekly entertainment — it was well enough made, acted, and written that it never bothered me. I probably even laughed at some of the jokes.

Come at me, Fusco.

Their son, Brian Jr., is played by Benji Gregory. And, okay. That’s kind of cute. But what I really like about it is the fact that Brian Jr. doesn’t have any fondness for his father’s naked alien sex pest. When ALF tries to talk to him, Brian Jr. says to his mother, “It’s bothering me again.”

It doesn’t really go anywhere, though. The idea of ALF living with a child who is well and truly disinterested in his antics is great, but it’s only ever that: an idea.

We do hear a bit about Brian Jr.’s cat, Fifi, and ALF doesn’t even crack wise about wanting to eat it, so I guess the change of heart in “Live and Let Die” really was permanent. I’m still keeping an eye out for that change in character to be reverted, but, for now, I like that they’ve stuck with it.

Anyway, Fran Drescher orders a hit on ALF, and some goons come in to shoot him to death.

I have no complaints about where that scene ended.

Then the fantasy ends and, man, I never thought I’d say this, but I really wish ALF were spending the episode masturbating instead.

We do get a funny line in which he laments that adult Brian was a kept man, but “at least he found something he’s good at.” That was…okay.

ALF looks through photos again and arrives, presumably, at one of Eric. (We don’t see any of the photos, because god forbid we get some sense of what memories the Tanners have of their lives or of each other.)

And, yeah, neither Lynn nor Brian got a flash-forward that had anything to do with who they are as people (it sure is odd that the whole episode is about ALF missing them, while his fantasies seem to indicate that he knows nothing about them to begin with), but Eric? Eric’s a baby. The show can do anything with this. There’s no continuity to uphold or expectations on the part of the audience. ALF has carte blanche to do as it pleases, which could actually be…

Oh for fuck’s sake.

…FUCK

Eric is some kind of children’s show host, one half of The Eric and Sparky Show. And man this guy sucks ass. I can’t tell if he’s acting in this clownish, idiotic way because that’s his stage persona, because that’s who ALF thinks Eric will actually grow up to be, or because this actor was told to play a grown-up with the mannerisms and excitability of a baby.

In short, the entire joke of these sequences is “here’s what’s happening,” and I couldn’t begin to tell you what in shit’s name is happening.

Adult Eric is played by Mark Blankfield, who’s been in a lot of things, including Fridays, some Mel Brooks movies, and one episode of Arrested Development, so I can’t imagine he looks back on this crap with much fondness.

In Arrested Development he was the doctor who treated Michael after the wreck in “My Mother, the Car” and I did sort of wonder why they never brought that character back. He would have been a nice counterpoint to the literal doctor, in the same way that Wayne Jarvis was a nice counterpoint to Barry Zuckerkorn.

Oh well. That’s still his most recent role, so maybe the guy retired after that. I only wish he retired before this.

Anyway, they do some kind of mailbag thing and I guess some kid writes in saying that he wants to see ALF get set on fire, so Eric is going to do it until some scary-ass talking clock tells him the show is over.

I hate you guys.

The show ends, and ALF complains that he’s been shitting his box and nobody’s cleaning it out for him.

I hate you guys.

Eric introduces ALF’s replacement.

I really do fucking hate you guys.

The stagehands come over and lock ALF in the box with his own feces. Which, frankly, seems like a preferable fate to watching the rest of this episode.

So he dreams about living with elderly Willie instead and–

OKAY NO THAT IS QUITE ENOUGH THANK YOU NO

NO THANK YOU NO

WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK THIS EPISODE FUCK

Look at that face. He’s planting permanent erectile dysfunction with his mind. WE ARE ALL EFFECTIVELY STERILE

He asks ALF to open the curtain for him, the joke being that he’s too far gone to realize it’s already open, but ALF tells him to eat a dick.

I can’t stop taking screengrabs of this. I want you to understand that I hate you every bit as much as you hate me.

Look at this shit. He looks like a Dick Tracy villain.

By the time we get to the hideous old Kate crone it doesn’t even register. Who fucking cares.

Yeah, she’s old and knits a lot. We get it, show. You have no idea who any of these people are, so you’re stuck doing a half hour of old people sitting around, being old.

And that’s…it.

Like, really. The episode just ends. We don’t even return back to ALF at the table in present day or anything. I’m not exaggerating; the episode literally just gives up in the middle of a fantasy sequence and stops.

In the short scene before the credits, the family tells ALF that his fantasies were way off and they’d never behave that way. So I guess they had to sit and endure the same half-hour of shitty sub-stories that we did. For the first time ever, I sympathize with the Tanners.

And…that’s it.

No crisis resolved. No questions answered. No fun had. No comedy enjoyed. Not even the central question is addressed. (Q: What will ALF do when the Tanners are no longer around to protect him? A: Lynn marries a mime.) It’s just ALF fantasizing about some idiotic nonsense until the scary-ass talking clock says the show’s over.

Which is a shame, because this was a topic bursting with narrative possibility. Even the flash-forward idea could have worked if we were flashing forward to anything worth watching.

You’re in luck, though. Here’s a three and a half minute meditation on mortality in the form of an incredible, perfect little pop song. It’s fun, sad, sweet, insightful, worrying, and reassuring in equal measure. It does in no time more than this episode does in far too much time.

It’s a great point of instructive comparison, just like the Carson example earlier. Same territory being explored, in one case by artists in full command of their craft, and in the other by ineffectual, disinterested workmen who toss out some crap and hope for the best.

The significant gulf in life expectancy between ALF and the Tanners is a point of emotional, psychological, and physiological conflict woven tightly into the very fabric of the show. “Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades” finally realizes it can do something with that…

…and then immediately makes us wish it didn’t.

But, hey, at least it gave use the show’s greatest metaphor in the form of a shriveled up old Willie.

Countdown to ALF saying all of his goodbyes: 6 episodes