Author: Philip J Reed

Season four had two episodes that I was actually looking forward to. One of them was “Mind Games,” which shouldn’t surprise you at all because that was a Dr. Dykstra episode, and I tend to like those. (That tendency was broken with “Mind Games.”) The other was “Fever,” simply because its premise was solid: ALF contracts a common Earth cold…but since he’s not from Earth, he ends up in real danger.*

Obviously, this opens up a lot of reliable avenues for comedy; how many sitcoms have you seen about one of the characters lying around sick, driving the others crazy with his/her requests? It’s a common plotline because there’s a lot that you can do with it, and because it relies on character interaction…interaction which is specific to each show. (Frasier Crane’s cold is going to go differently from Larry Appleton’s, not only because of who these characters are, but because of the characters they’re surrounded by.)

Of course, ALF doesn’t have any characters, and nobody on the planet knows that better than I do, so that’s not what got my hopes up. What got my hopes up is the fact that ALF’s extra-terrestrial origins provide this episode with another chance to explore something that we take for granted.

And, yes, this show has had that opportunity dozens of times by this point, and it’s whiffed on nearly all of them. But “Fever” has something unique on its side: biology. Almost all of the show’s previous explorations of Earth-life were handled through the filter of culture. Christmas, Halloween, birthdays, funerals…erm…soap operas…magic teeth…? I don’t know. This show sucks.

Biology, though? We’re in much better shape there, because it’s involuntary. It doesn’t matter if ALF wants to deliver a standup routine, because it’s not his brain or mouth that will be reacting to this aspect of life on Earth; it’s his body. He has no choice but to make us see the common cold through a new filter…and that’s interesting to me. The writers are being handed an opportunity that they will have to actively work to fuck up.

I’m…setting myself up for disappointment, aren’t I?

“Fever,” additionally, wins me over by sheer virtue of being named after the single sexiest song in all of popular music. (You can pry my lust for Peggy Lee from my cold, dead hands.) So, hey, even if it sucks a dick, I get a pretty great song stuck in my head. Small comfort, I know, but that’s way more than I usually get out of this show.

Oh, and, the end of this episode puts us halfway through the season. So, at the very least, we have that to thank it for.

“Fever” starts out with one of the nicest things I’ve ever seen in this show. Willie’s starting up the grill in the back yard, and ALF gooses him in the side with a pair of tongs.

Big deal, right? ALF is always fucking around with people.

Well, in this case, it’s different because Willie looks at him and chuckles. For the first time ever, ALF’s annoyance actually seems well received by another person. Some little smile or laugh makes all the difference, because usually when ALF jabs something deep into Willie the latter makes an angry face, or yells, or fumbles for his crack pipe. Whatever you do or don’t think of Willie, that makes ALF look like an asshole.

But when the Willie doesn’t seem to loathe the joke, it changes everything. It actually seems…nice. And believable. I like that.

Then there’s some crap where we learn that ALF ate all the raw meat and there’s nothing left for anyone, so I’m really hoping we get another one of those great descriptions of ALF shitting in the tub later.

Then there’s an unexpected storm, which cancels the barbecue over Willie’s protestations.

It’s actually not a bad opening sequence. It does three different things (Willie setting up the grill, ALF eating all the meat, the storm) in just about a minute of screentime, making it pretty efficient, and giving the episode a lot to work with.

It’s a good start.

Then it’s not the start anymore, and it stops being good.

The intro credits give way to the family running into the house, wondering if they brought everything inside. It turns out they forgot Willie, who is pinned under the barbecue grill. If you guessed this is because ALF tipped it over on him, congratulations; you are still alive.

Fine, whatever, ALF is sentient dickcheese. I don’t even care anymore. What I do care about is how much of a fucking asshole Willie is when he comes inside. Kate runs over to make sure he’s okay, and he yells at her that he was “flailing around” and nobody helped. Since he knows ALF is the one who tipped the grill on him, he has no reason to be upset at Kate. He knows she didn’t even see that happen; he’s the one telling her about it. Then she brings him a towel to dry himself with, and he snatches it away from her with such violence that I’m pretty sure he considered busting her on the jaw just to remind her of her place.

He’s pretty mean to her here, and I have no idea why, as she’s the only one trying to help him. What a sack of assholes this guy.

Willie then waves away her concern for his health by saying that it’s an old wives’ tale that people get sick in the rain. In fact, he was just reading a study about that in his scientific journals (which all good social workers subscribe to; why didn’t they make Willie a lab technician or something, again?), which conclusively proved that people subjected to rapid temperature changes were no more likely to get sick than the control group that never experienced them.

If you guessed that Willie’s speech is interrupted when he starts sneezing uncontrollably, congratulations; you are still alive.

Roger Ebert observed once (and I have to paraphrase as I can’t remember the exact quote) that if somebody coughs early in a film, the sickness will likely be fatal by the end. The same observation could apply to sitcoms; we sneeze all the time in real life, but if someone does it even once during TGIF you know they’ll be laid up for the rest of the episode.

Sure enough, the next scene sees Willie in bed, and his loving wife whom he hates brings him some tissues and a bowl of his favorite soup, cream of crack. He says that he appreciates the way she’s been putting up with him while he’s sick, and she says, clearly joking, “You can’t help it. You’re a man.”

Which causes Willie to pause, take a breath, and say, “I’ll just ignore that.”

Willie, you fuckfart. Some obvious, gentle ribbing from your wife gets this stern, condescending rejoinder? Do you have any clue how much shit comes out of your mouth that she clearly ignores on an hourly basis? What about the previous scene in which you screamed at her for something you knew wasn’t her fault, and ripped a towel out of her hands while she was trying to help? If Kate said “I’ll just ignore that” every time you were a cunt to her, she’d never have any other lines.

Then ALF comes in and he starts sneezing, which means…

:-|

So, yeah, there’s like four minutes of this “strange bedfellow” bullshit. It’s basically just them saying how much they hate each other and then making goo-goo eyes at the camera. At one point ALF rips an implicitly nasty fart and fans it all over the room with the blanket.

I’ve never had anything less to say, and that’s probably due to the fact that I want to get away from the above screengrab as quickly as possible.

There is one part when ALF says that he’d rather have a feather pillow, because he hates foam. And since we watched the “A Mid-Goomer Night’s Dream” episode of ALF: The Animated Series for the Xmas Bash!!! so recently, I know that’s bullshit. The Goomer used to bring everyone on Melmac foam every year. He was their Santa Claus, and that was their gift. Not that I give too much of a shit about continuity between the two shows (the only thing important to me is that all of the characters from the cartoon are dead now and won’t be coming back) but I figured I’d bring it up.

Hey, as long as I’m making stray observations: remember when we met Lynn’s friend Joanie in “Live and Let Die”? I commented then that I’d rather have her added to the cast than Willie’s horny little brother, but God hates us and that wasn’t to be.

Well, I had to refer back to my review of “Lies” recently and noticed that the girl Lynn speaks to on the phone is Joanie…and she was counseling her there about a recent breakup as well, just like she did in “Live and Let Die.” So not only was she referred to before we met her, but in both cases we get a sense that she hops from relationship to relationship, and Lynn’s role is keeping her centered.

That’s a name, a face, and a character trait…at least one thing more than most characters on this show get. I wonder if she originally was meant to be a recurring character, perhaps in those mythical Monday scripts that apparently made a lot more sense and were funnier than any of the crap that ended up being filmed.

In some alternate universe we ended up with Joanie in the cast instead of Jim J. Bullock. I can think of at least three reasons I’d rather live there, and only one of them involves the toga.

We get an establishing shot that ensures us that we’re one week further away from imagining ALF and Willie feverishly grinding their bodies together in tormented sleep. Now ALF is the only one sick, and we get our standard “bothering everyone with requests” jokes. He sent Kate to the store, for instance, to buy him all manner of shit to help him feel better and keep from getting bored. Then he calls Willie out to adjust and fluff his pillow, which Willie does with comic violence.

Here’s why that’s interesting: it’s deserved.

See, the whole sickness thing came about because of ALF. ALF tipped the grill onto Willie, ALF hung around while Willie was sick, and now ALF is pissing everyone off with his demanding behavior. So when Willie lashes out at him here, it’s after at least a week’s worth of direct irritation, illness, and inconvenience.

So that’s fine. That works. ALF caused this shit, and Willie’s over it.

But compare that to his earlier lashing out at Kate, when she had nothing to do with anything, and the worst thing that happened was that he got rained on for a little while. His pillow-fluffing violence is played the same as his towel-snatching violence.

Max Wright either doesn’t know how to or doesn’t care to moderate his performance. He could be snippy in either case, but there’s a clear difference in snippiness between what Kate should have received and what ALF receives here. To Wright it’s all the same, which makes Willie look like a fucking asshole.

Two days later ALF is doing worse. Kate is concerned for him, but Willie is convinced he’s faking it for attention. (His training as a social worker has clearly conditioned him to expect that everyone’s problems are made up and should be ridiculed.)

Then he feels ALF’s forehead and realizes that he’s burning up. He then apologizes, which is fine, but did this moron never think to feel his forehead at any point in the past week and a half?

Willie takes Kate into the kitchen and asks if she’s seen War of the Worlds, because he knows the writers on this show haven’t had an original idea yet and they’re sure as hell not starting now. His concern is that ALF has no natural defenses to a common Earth virus, and will die. Then he beats Kate for several minutes until the commercial break.

And, once again, I like the idea that a relatively harmless Earth virus has more serious repercussions for ALF. But here’s the problem: we never actually find out that it’s dangerous to ALF’s life or safety. It’s just a guess, and it’s a guess rooted entirely in what Willie knows is a work of fiction. He saw it in a movie, this is kind of vaguely, tenuously, possibly sorta similar to a detail from that movie, and now he’s in a panic.

It’s bizarre. To put this in more human terms, this would be like Lynn eating an apple and then falling asleep, causing Willie to conclude, without an ounce of doubt, that this is the work of the witch from Snow White.

It’s fucking ridiculous.

So, yeah, I love that ALF’s life is in danger. (Do I ever!) But I wish that the danger was established by something other than Willie’s distant memories of something he saw on The Million Dollar Movie.

When we return, Willie calls a Dr. Kramer, and introduces himself as “Wooly Tanner.” It’s not a joke; it’s something that should have been reshot after Max Wright cleared the mashed potatoes out of his throat. But since Paul Fusco wasn’t the one who looked like an idiot, it didn’t get a second take.

Throughout the conversation Willie has his hand partly inside his shirt, like Napoleon. I have no idea why, aside from the obvious fact that nobody cared about anything anymore.

He reports ALF’s symptoms to Dr. Kramer — pretending they’re his own — and I like this aspect of it.

When ALF had emotional issues, Willie could call on his friend Dr. Dykstra. For whatever reason he knew he could trust Dykstra, which meant the family had someone with the proper knowledge and training to help them through whatever problems ALF was having.

Now, though, it’s a biological issue, and Willie doesn’t seem to have a general practitioner friend. That means ALF can’t get the treatment he needs, and the family has to figure out some way to solve it otherwise.

It’s a nice development, and very natural to the setup of the episode and the series as a whole.

The doctor tells him not to worry; there’s a bug going around. Which is believable (aside from the fact that Willie managed to get an actual doctor on the line, and not a receptionist). Coughing and sneezing usually aren’t anything to worry about, and if there’s something going around it’s likely that a doctor would shrug you off. He’d tell you to rest, drink plenty of fluids, and call if it gets worse. There’s no reason to panic over something that people experience regularly.

…except that ALF isn’t people, the doctor doesn’t know that, and Willie can’t tell him that.

I like this part. And I like that Kate is making ALF soup. “His favorite,” she says. “Cream of pizza.”

There are a lot of cool little ideas in this one…I just wish they came together to create a better episode.

The kids come into the kitchen to report that ALF is doing worse. Well, Lynn reports it. Brian’s well into his second week without a line. And Eric doesn’t even exist.**

Then ALF enters the room and briefly collapses with some pretty great puppetry. They help him up and he shows them a picture of Carl Shrub that he found in one of their reference books.

Carl Shrub was the herb in Melmacian diets that gave them their immunity to viruses. See, Melmacians never got sick, at all, and Melmacian scientists suspected it was due to all the Carl Shrub they ate.

The family identifies Carl Shrub as ragweed. Which is convenient both for ALF and for the show, the former because it’s easy to find, and the latter because we get to make fun of the Ochmoneks for being poor and slobby.

Willie and Kate try to sneak around the Ochmoneks’ property to harvest ragweed, but speak too loudly about how fucking fat and awful and stinky and ugly their neighbors are, so they get caught. Also Max Wright does some really annoying pratfall over a garden gnome.

It sucks dick.

Mr. Ochmonek comes out brandishing a hoe because he thinks he’s being burgled. At the last moment he sees that it’s actually Willie and Kate, and then knowingly and happily beats them to death.

…no, he just listens to them make excuses about why they’re standing in his yard at night, loudly making fun of him and his shitty wife. They claim to have come over to weed for them, and they start pulling ragweed.

It’s not a bad excuse, and it moves the plot along. But then Mrs. Ochmonek comes out and her husband explains that they’re weeding the garden. Mrs. Ochmonek shakes her head and says, “Oh, please.”

The studio audience laughs and we fade to the next scene, so I guess that was the punchline. But fucked if I have any idea what the joke was.

Any guesses from you guys? Maybe they don’t have a garden, and therefore Mrs. Ochmonek knows their excuse is bullshit. But then why would her husband believe them? Surely he’d also know that they don’t have a garden.

I give up.

Back at the house ALF has the air conditioner cranked up, and Kate is baking ragweed per his instructions. Which…okay. When ALF said that he had ragweed (erm…Carl) in his diet on Melmac, I assumed it was something used in other dishes. You know, like a seasoning or a garnish or something. Instead I guess they just baked fistfuls of it and ate that? And what if someone on Melmac didn’t like the taste? Or was allergic to it? Then could they get sick?

ALF said earlier that Melmacian scientists (enjoy imagining that) weren’t certain that a Carl-rich diet was responsible for their immunity; they were just pretty sure that was the reason.

But wouldn’t that have been pretty easy to prove one way or the other? Just as Willie alluded to an experiment earlier about subjecting a group of test subjects to extreme temperature changes to see if that made them sick, couldn’t Melmacian scientists have performed their own experiment in which one group was given Carl-free meals for a few weeks to see if they became ill? Ideally they’d believe they were still eating Carl, so that the scientists could rule out the placebo effect.

On the one hand I shouldn’t be surprised that a planet full of selfish morons like ALF should have been a bit sloppy with their scientific research, but at the same time they mastered space travel and nuclear fission to the point that they were far beyond Earth in those regards. They can’t have been totally idiotic. Those aren’t advancements you stumble upon with a lucky guess. So why were they shrugging and saying, “Keep eating ragweed, I guess”?

I. Give. Up.

Anyway, they ask what to do with the ragweed, and ALF says that some of them used to stick it in brownies and take them to Stanley Kubrick movies.

Man, season four sure loves its drug abuse jokes, doesn’t it? Also: Fucking Melmac had Stanley Kubrick movies. I GIVE UP.

Brian and Lynn come in, with Benji Gregory getting to announce that they bought some ice for him. Damn. I was really hoping he was going to be inexplicably silent until the show was cancelled.

Lynn tells ALF that if his fever doesn’t break they’ll dunk him in a tub of cold water, to which ALF replies that if they get his nutsack cold they’re “gonna hear one heck of a Little Richard impression.”

I GIVE UP. I GIVE UP. I GIVE UP. I GIVE UP.

Anyway, ALF gets sicker so he starts doing racist impressions of Japanese people, a propos of absolutely god-damned nothing.

Willie and Kate decide to forcefeed him ragweed, which I’m pretty sure has been my solution to this whole ALF problem since episode one. Then there’s some really shitty attempt at physical comedy as she tries to get him to eat from a clearly empty ladle.

This show is fucking terrible. If the ladle is empty, why shoot it so close up? Why go out of your way to let everyone see how half-assed your sitcom is? Shoot it from further away, you dumbasses! Pick a different angle! Do anything to make me believe you give a shit!

In the next scene he’s all better, and he bitches that there’s no pesto to go with his chocolate turkey.

He then says he’s going to market the ragweed cure through his new company. He even belabors his own jokes, making sure that we all know that the name of this company — Shumway — is a riff on Amway. ALFusco, you need to rewrite your jokes if you keep having to explain why they’re funny.

Anyway, Kate tells him that ragweed makes most Earthlings sick, so ALF punches Willie in the balls.

In the short scene before the credits, ALF sets the back yard on fire. Why not.

“Fever” wasn’t a terrible episode, which instantly makes it the second best of season four. But I can’t say there’s much to recommend this one aside from its basic premise.

Oh, and its title. Go listen to that song 15 times. It’ll be a much better use of your half hour. Anyway, I’m out of here. I’m singing “Tutti Frutti” at karaoke tonight and I need to ice down my scrotum.

Countdown to ALF becoming an ex-alien in front of the Tanners: 12 episodes

MELMAC FACTS: Melmacians never got sick, due to an “immunity” they gained from eating Carl Shrub, which we know as ragweed. Also: Fucking Melmac had Stanley Kubrick movies. I GIVE UP.

—–
* Both this and “Mind Games” were apparently holdovers from season three. Read into that coincidence as much as you like.
** Back into the womb with you, kid; we’re doing a season three story again!

So little happens on this show, which I’m sure you know. What you may not know is that this sometimes works in its favor. After all, when ALF might as well be 23 minutes of static, every minor disruption to what we’re expecting is interesting by default.

That’s why background details like a singed curtain or a new shirt on Mr. Ochmonek register. That’s why acting from a competent guest star stands out. That’s why silly jokes — like Jim J. Bullock raising his hand last week — feel like they’re better than they really are.

ALF has cemented such a baseline level of laziness that literally anything that has thought invested in it shines. That’s why the moment I started this episode, and saw the scene above, I started paying attention.

Who are these guys on the couch? They’re in nice suits. Are they the FBI? They seem to be watching something on television. Is it surreptitious footage of ALF raping something in the back yard? Are the Tanners well and truly caught?

…probably not, because we still have 13 episodes to go, and sitcoms around this time weren’t very serialized. But the answer doesn’t matter as much as the fact that the question — a question — is being asked by the very first frame.

Whoever these guys turn out to be, and whatever it turns out they’re doing, is almost insignificant in the face of the fact that they’re somebody and they’re doing something. It could turn out that they’re crack-induced manifestations of Willie’s personal angel and devil for all I care. My point is that I’m watching ALF and for once, something is happening…even if I don’t know what it is. (Do you, Mr. Jones?)

It turns out they’re representatives from a timeshare company. ALF called them for some reason and Willie and Kate are just patiently sitting through their promotional video. When it ends one of the salesmen pulls a pen out of his pocket and Kate says, in one of the show’s long line of perfect Anne Schedeen readings, “Harry. Put the pen away.”

Then Willie goes into the kitchen to hatefuck ALF and that’s about it for the opening scene. But, you know what? Something happened. I started watching an episode of ALF, found myself unsure of what was happening, and I ended up paying attention. We got a nice little anti-punchline from Kate and…well, that’s about all that’s worth mentioning, but I was interested.

It didn’t take much. Just some kind of unexpected setup, and a little bit of thought given to an answer.

Any writer worth his or her salt does this without thinking. For the staff of ALF you can almost feel the strain. But you know what?

Good on them. Yes, they probably broke their backs to do what talented writers do naturally, but they got my attention. And, what’s more, they didn’t entirely waste it. (They only wasted most of it.)

Credit where it’s due: good on them.

This week, the part of Willie Tanner will be played by Popeye the Sailor Man.

We find out that ALF has been inviting all manner of salesmen into the house, with the implication being that he thinks he’ll win some kind of prize. It’s…hard to explain, but I do seem to remember a lot of sales techniques exploiting that gimmick in the past, and I’m pretty sure it still happens at car dealerships at least.

As best as I can tell, you need to commit to sitting through some kind of sales pitch, after which you’re entered into a drawing for some prize or other. (ALF alludes to a new car and a vacation package.) Willie makes the point that nobody actually wins those drawings, and while I’m sure he’s right I don’t know how they actually get away with that.

Presumably there’s some kind of loophole exploited, as you can’t legally promise that someone will be entered into a drawing that doesn’t exist. (Well, scratch that…you probably could, but a business could not.) Maybe the companies just choose someone who conveniently forgot to fill out their contact information, so the prize can’t actually be given away.

I have no idea, but ALF has been on this planet for three years and one week, and has worked as a salseman himself, so he should be slightly savvier when it comes to this shit. Instead he’s still misunderstanding the things he was misunderstanding on day one.

To the family’s credit, they’re pretty pissed off at him. They don’t say that he should know better by now, but at least their reaction is understandable.

…until it suddenly isn’t.

Willie sends ALF to the attic, but ALF says, defiantly, “No.”

And he makes a big speech about how unfair it is to live in this house, and he’s leaving. At which point everyone shifts into quietly mocking his decision.

So…a few points. The quickest is just this reminder: this is the umpteenth time this season we’ve been teased with the idea of ALF starting a new life without the Tanners. And, just in case you don’t know by now, this season indeed ends with ALF attempting just that. Should the show have progressed to its expected season five, the Tanners would have been written out, with the setting shifting to the Alien Task Force Base, where ALF is held captive. Presumably he’d be forced to watch cheesy movies and riff on them with some sleepy guy and another puppet…but we’ll never know, because ALF was cancelled between the end of season four and the production of season five.

Therefore all of this “Screw you guys; I’m going home” stuff is likely deliberate foreshadowing. I’ve lost track of how many times this season ALF’s new Tannerless life has been alluded to, but I’m sure it’s at least five. That’s about once every other episode, so I’m fairly convinced it’s deliberate.

Now, my other point:

Fuck this fuckass fuck.

He keeps inviting salesmen over. Even if he somehow didn’t learn not to do this within the past three years, he should certainly have learned it just in the episode so far, since we’re told he keeps doing it against Willie’s wishes. Willie sends him to his room — a very minor punishment — and ALF rebels, turns on the “poor, poor pitiful me” routine, and heads out to lay his head on the railroad tracks and wait for the Double E.

And…fine. Okay. ALF is ALF. I get it by this point.

But moments like this make me wish there was a human being somewhere in this cast, because this dude really needs a spanking. Instead of smirking and saying, “Oh, you…” they should be grabbing him by the shoulders and saying, “What the fuck is your problem?”

ALF’s got a sweet setup here. He’s spoiled, if anything. He knowingly defies Willie’s requests to stop inviting salesmen over, and then flips out when he receives the mildest punishment available to the human race.

Somebody needs to smack him across the face, because he doesn’t seem to realize what the situation actually is, that he has no right to be offended by it, and that this is the best things will ever be. (That holds true for both ALF and for ALF; yes, Paul Fusco could probably do with a good smack as well.)

Instead they all immediately react to ALF’s pity party and seem to forget that he was being punished at all.

But hey, of course they did. That was on the previous page of the script; we’re on this page now, so forget all that other shit.

ALF leaves, and the Tanners demonstrate just how little that bothers them at this point. Remember when he left in “Looking For Lucky,” and they combed all of LA on foot, asking everyone they met if they saw the super secret space alien that escaped from their house? Well, now they look out the kitchen window for a bit and call it a night.

I’m not even exaggerating; that’s all they do. In fact, Kate’s biggest concern here seems to be that the automatic sprinklers are going to turn on soon, and when ALF gets wet he smells like shit.

The episode doesn’t call attention to it, so I doubt much of it was deliberate, but…damn, their diminished lack of concern for ALF could have made for a great episode.

The show is winding down (which, okay, the writers don’t know…but they do know the Tanners are being wished to the cornfield), and ALF has learned nothing and continues to infuriate everybody. Why not make that the episode? We’re already pretty much there; ALF has misbehaved, refuses his fair punishment, and runs away instead. The Tanners realize that maybe they’re okay with him leaving, if that’s the way he’s going to be.

Have them — all of them — have to face that fact. That’s the conflict of your episode.

Whatever they hoped to get out of this alien concealment scheme of theirs, it’s not worth it. Willie’s going insane. Kate’s at the end of her wit’s end. There’s a new baby in the house. Lynn is starting her adult life. Brian has finally stopped drinking paint. The family should be at a kind of crossroads here, and ALF pulling this bullshit again, for the third year running, should force their hand to issue an ultimatum. He can either shape up — for real this time — or go fuck himself. For real this time. And if he chooses the latter, they’re realizing that they’d actually be okay with that.

That should have been the conflict for this episode. Instead…well…you’ll see what the actual conflict for this episode is.

I promise…it’s a doozy.

We see ALF hanging out by some trash cans, talking to himself. He’s basically moping because he knows that if he goes back, the Tanners won’t take him seriously the next time he threatens to walk out over petty nonsense and let them rebuild their lives.

Huh…when I write it out like that, it somehow sounds ridiculous.

I don’t know where this is supposed to take place. In a moment ALF leaves and then Willie pokes his head over the fence, so it’s not the Tanners’ yard.

I guess ALF is in the Ochmoneks’ yard? It’s tempting to assume that this is in front of the Tanner house, because that’s where people’s trash cans are often left out, but we’ve seen plenty of establishing shots of this house and there’s never been a fence out front. So…I have no idea.

Anyway, Willie just misses ALF. But then the sprinklers turn on and Willie gets wet, in an unexpected payoff to the setup 10 seconds ago when Kate said that that’s exactly what was going to happen.

Then there’s a scene that really gives away how badly the actors want to be done with this show. Kate says she’s worried about ALF, but Anne Schedeen can’t bring herself to show the proper concern. The “Put the pen away” delivery earlier on is important, because it shows she can still deliver a line when she cares about it. Here, though she should care about it, and claims to care about it, she clearly doesn’t care about it.

Willie then says he’s worried because ALF can’t keep out of trouble, and concludes, “He’s dead.”

But he says that with the smile we see above; the biggest, most convincing smile Max Wright’s ever smiled in his life.

We’re in an episode in which these two characters are supposed to be worried they’ll never see ALF again, while the actors themselves clearly never want to see ALF again. It’s a very interesting and odd viewing experience. And it concludes with Max Wright doing this:

Which is the international sign for “You literally could not pay me to give a fuck.”

ALF finds a new place to live with…

Mother of fuck! It’s Jim J. Bullock!

How did ALF get there? Nobody knows, nobody says, nobody asks. That’s just the state of the show right now.

Remember “For Your Eyes Only”? For ALF to visit Jodie, he had to secretly arrange it with Lynn, wear a disguise, and be immensely careful about every step he took. Remember “I’ve Got a New Attitude”? For ALF to visit Kate Sr., he had to box himself up and hire a courier to deliver him to her apartment.

Granted, one of those episodes was total garbage, but they both demonstrate a willingness on the part of the writing staff to answer a basic logistical question: if the alien can never be seen, but we need him somewhere else, how do we get him there?

“Happy Together” faces that some question, but just says fuck it. Granted, season three had ALF strut around town a few times, but in “Standing in the Shadows of Love” he was with Jake, who presumably helped him to stay unseen, and in “Suspicious Minds” the whole thing turned out to be a dream.

Here ALF, alone, wanders the neighborhood, finds Neal’s new apartment — where he’s never been before, mind you — and somehow makes it all the way inside, up to and through Neal’s door, which we see in the establishing shot is on the highest floor, without being spotted.

Is that possible? Sure.

But how did he do it?

The episode doesn’t care, and, for some reason, neither does Neal. He just shows his grandmother’s antique snowglobe to ALF so ALF can break it and the fake audience of dead people can yuk it up.

Jim J. Bullock shows more concern than anyone else in the episode when he’s sad about his heirloom being destroyed. And even then he’s only sad for two and a half seconds. Immediately after that he’s merrily making tea.

I can’t even blame Bullock for this. He’s told at the end of one page of his script to be devastated that his only memento of his grandmother is smashed on the floor, then at the top of the next page he’s making casual conversation with a naked mole rat. Yes, Bullock’s shift in performance is jarring…but how could it not be? They could have hired Jack Nicholson for this scene and it wouldn’t have been any better. There’s only so far this shitty writing can go. (For those wondering, it never gets cleaned up, either; the snowglobe remains smashed on the floor for the rest of sitcom eternity.)

Maybe I’m just especially frustrated because Neal and ALF reprise their conversation from the end of “The First Time I Ever Saw Your Face.” There and here, Neal tries desperately to get ALF to spit out some Melmac Facts. Which is, obviously, something most human beings would do when encountering a space alien that speaks English.

There I was frustrated that the writers didn’t bother to have ALF answer any of his questions, but it was just about excusable due to the fact that it was the final scene in the episode. A half hour block of television only lets you cover so much ground, and if the writers chose to focus their attention elsewhere — for better or for worse — so be it.

Now, though, we’re not even halfway through the episode. There’s plenty of time for these two assholes to have a discussion, and Neal tries to get one going. But ALF tells him nothing, because the writers didn’t want to think of anything.

Neal asks how far away Melmac was. ALF says he doesn’t know.

Neal asks which solar system it was in, and ALF says he doesn’t know that, either.

Which…fuck you, show. Yeah, it builds to a joke about how ALF majored in P.E., but come on. He was in the fucking Orbit Guard. He flew around in his own personal space ship. He was tasked with defending the planet (which…yeah, that explains a lot). But he doesn’t know what solar system he’s from? That’s like being a long haul trucker and not knowing what state you live in. I don’t care how dumb you are; whether it’s maps or star charts, if your job involves travel you know how to get the fuck home.

And regarding the distance from Earth, ALF traveled that distance himself. Personally. He can’t estimate it? Granted, I don’t know offhand how far Las Vegas is from my house, but because I made the journey I can say it was about an hour and a half by plane. I can provide some idea of the scale of the journey, and I can do that because it’s a trip I took. Just like you could give me some idea of how long it took you to get wherever you went last. ALF can’t provide any information at all.

Yeah, he’s a dumbass. But he’s not incapable of answering these questions. The writers just didn’t want to spend their time figuring stuff like this out, so they don’t.

I can’t imagine we missed much by being robbed of a season five. In it I assume all of the characters would have stood around shrugging at each other.

Willie comes over to get ALF, but ALF pretends that he doesn’t want to go home because Willie beats him. Ha! Wrongfully accusing family members of violent abuse. Classic, wholesome comedy for all.

Neal volunteers to keep ALF, because they’ve been having a “great time.” Even though we’ve seen all of the time they’ve spent together so far, and it’s involved ALF showing up unannounced, breaking an irreplaceable valuable, and refusing to answer basic questions about what the fuck he is. GREAT TIME SHITHEADS

There’s a decently nice moment when Willie agrees to let Neal keep him, and really harps on the fact that he should have a working fire extinguisher, but it’s nothing great. Maybe it would be funnier if Neal had little kids in the house, so Willie could warn him about ALF’s much more horrible hobbies.

After the commercial we see ALF talking to a phone sex operator. Classic, wholesome comedy for all.

He describes himself as tall with great abs, and she does that moany, giggly routine you saw in 976 commercials that aired after midnight.

This is at least the second overt reference to ALF furiously masturbating to phone sex lines, for those keen on reminding me that this is a children’s show.

Neal comes home and sees that the place is a wreck. ALF threw a bunch of shit around and smashed a window, covering the hole with a “Mino’s Pizza” box. Obviously they didn’t want to pay to use the Domino’s Pizza name, but then I wonder why they didn’t just use a generic pizza box instead. Or, ideally, one from Pizza Barge, which was already this show’s royalty-free pizza delivery place.

Part of me is hoping there’s a whole backstory about a passionate pizza chef named Dom Mino who is sick of his restaurant being constantly mistaken for that shitty chain. All of me would rather watch that show.

Neal politely asks ALF why he didn’t clean up the way he promised to, or call the electrician like he promised to, or clean the cum out of the toothpaste like he promised to, and ALF tells him to eat a dick.

Then the doorbell rings, and Neal tells ALF, “Quick, go to the bathroom.”

That’s funny, because Neal doesn’t have a kitchen the way the Tanners do, so the hiding room in this apartment makes for some decent wordplay.

But then ALF says, “Okay!” and makes a face and shudders to suggest that he’s voiding his bowels on the carpet.

…fucking really, ALF?

It’s Neal’s boss at the door, some black lady we will clearly never see again. She chews him out for being a shitty handyman, and I get the sense that we’re supposed to see ALF as the cause of this crap. Yes, the call to the electrician was for another tenant, but she says there have been complaints all throughout the building about sinks and toilets not working as well…and I don’t think we can really blame ALF for that. He’s been masturbating to phone sex lines! It’s the universal alibi!

So…is the idea that ALF was supposed to be calling repair people for all of these problems, and he didn’t do it?

If so, yeah, he’s a dickfart. But Neal is no less of a dickfart. He’s the handyman, so why is he acting like a call center? And what is he out doing all day that’s preventing him from calling these people himself? He’s not going to work; this is his work. He just vanishes until night time because that’s what the script says he does.

Is “Happy Together” actively attempting to set a record for smallest amount of narrative effort?

Then the lady leaves and ALF comes out of the bathroom and does his racist impression of her West Indian accent.

CLASSIC WHOLESOME COMEDY FOR ALL

Later that night we get what might be a deliberate callback to “Looking For Lucky.” In that episode ALF danced around a wrecked living room to a shitty cover of “Old Time Rock and Roll.” Now he’s dancing around a wrecked living room to to a shitty cover of “Tutti Fruitti.” So, just in case you thought ALF might have learned something in three years on Earth, it’s made unmistakably clear here that he has not.

One thing I do like: there’s another pizza box on the window, meaning ALF broke it again sometime between the last scene and this one. See what I mean about small details standing out when the show’s baseline is so low?

Anyway, that’s all I like. Neal and ALF yell at each other for a bit, and while it’s not a bad idea to have a new character for ALF to annoy, it’s a shame that ALF really is pulling the literal first things he pulled on Earth anyway. It’s not him annoying someone new in a way unique to that person; it’s him repeating himself because that’s easier.

Life on Earth is a rich experience. I’ve been through things and seen things and done things that you never will. And I’m a fucking nobody. And you guys…no matter how dull or pointless you think your life is, your experience is something I’ll never know.

We have overlap, sure, but right now, as you read this, your mind is working differently than mine is while writing it. And all of us here, right now, combined, don’t have the personal experience that anybody else has. Some guy at a desk in Moscow lives a life we’ll never understand. Somebody who lives down the street also lives a life we’ll never understand.

As small as the world feels and as limited as our day to day activities are, there’s enough in the way of variation that no two lives will ever be the same.

ALF, by disarming contrast, can’t go three years without repeating himself note for note. So unimaginative is this writing staff that they keep treading over the same plots and jokes endlessly. The premise of this show is that an alien experiences life on Earth for the first time, but somehow the human beings writing this show heard “life on Earth” and could only think of about 10 or 15 things that that entailed.

And that’s infuriating. Human beings should know how rich their own planet is with potential, and this is someone experiencing all of it for the first time.

This guy can do anything. Why are they dead set on having him do nothing?

Then cops come to the door and Jim J. Bullock shits himself.

Surprisingly, we get a moment of pretty good physical comedy. Great, even, by this show’s standards.

Willie and Kate hear something in the night, and pad into the living room. Kate asks, “What if it’s a burglar?”

Willie says, “Don’t worry, honey. I’ve got the lamp.” He picks up the lamp and Kate absently flips the light switch…which causes the lamp to turn on and scare the shit out of Willie, who drops it.

It’s basic stuff, and it’s nothing you haven’t seen other sitcoms do better, but it largely works, and it’s nice to see somebody who isn’t made of old carpet samples getting laughs.

It’s Neal, of course, but he was sleeping so I don’t know what they heard that panicked them so much. Maybe he farts a lot.

Lynn comes out too to see what’s wrong, making this another in a long line of scenes in which everyone forgets there are more members of this family. (I seriously can’t remember if Brian’s had a line yet. I had to look back over my screengrabs just to reassure myself that he was in the episode at all.)

Jim J. Bullock overacts for a few minutes, bitching about ALF.

Which, okay, fine. ALF sucks dick. But really it’s just a repetitive way to pad out the episode. We know ALF is annoying. The Tanners know ALF is annoying. Neal knows ALF is annoying. To have the characters sit around and repeat “ALF is annoying” to each other is just evidence that they had no idea what to do with this plot.

…which makes me wonder, again, why the fuck it’s not about the Tanners and ALF coming to terms with their strained relationship.

Once again, we have an episode that stumbled over a solid premise worth exploring. Once again, the writers decide it’s too much work to explore it, so they have characters sit around and talk about Poochie.

Anne Schedeen does her best to sell a recurring joke in which Kate tries to convince Neal to keep ALF, but it never really goes anywhere, and Willie eventually yells at her to shut up, just to remind readers here what a great guy he is.

Eventually Paul Fusco gets antsy with all these “other” “people” delivering lines and stuff, so we cut to ALF and see that he shat fucking everywhere.

Aaand that’s pretty much the punchline of the whole episode. We knew ALF made a mess of Neal’s apartment, and the grand reveal is that when we cut back to him the mess is slightly larger.

Brilliant.

Willie and Neal come over to inform ALF that he’s going to have to live with the Tanners again, so he burps a bunch of times. Then Neal hugs him and he burps again.

It would be more respectful to the audience if these assholes just gave the camera the finger for three minutes.

In the short scene before the credits, ALF dicks around at the table. He asks Lynn to get him a beer and calls her “Legs,” and, man, this show has been so repulsive over the years that I expect the next episode will see him bending her over the table and buttfucking her while the rest of the family reads the paper.

Willie sends ALF to the attic, because that was his earlier punishment, from way back when the episode might have been good. Neal presumably spends the next 18 months cleaning alien shit out of the carpet.

Countdown to ALF getting a Colombian necktie in front of the Tanners: 13 episodes

MELMAC FACTS: ALF majored in Physical Education.