Author: Philip J Reed

So, we’re here at last. “Do You Believe in Magic?” is the episode of ALF that I remember best, and not for positive reasons: this is the episode that convinced me, even as a stupid kid, that this show was a bit shit.

I didn’t have the most discerning tastes as a child. For every Pee-Wee’s Playhouse or Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory that I fell in love with, I’m sure there were twenty films and television shows that I watched all the time, but which faded immediately from memory the moment they went away.

Memory is the grand curator, after all. It does a pretty good job of retaining that which is worth retaining, and letting the vast mediocre majority slip away.

I remember catching The Great Muppet Caper on television once when I was in high school. I hadn’t seen it for probably around ten years at that point. I was with my girlfriend. We watched a few minutes, and then flipped around during a commercial to see what else was on.

A little while later, after we tried some other things, she asked if I just wanted to watch the rest of that film. I said sure. Then she asked me to guess what part of the movie we’d see when we switched back. I had no idea, so I just said the first thing that came to mind. “The part where Miss Piggy is walking on the desk and falls into a trash can.”

Sure enough, that’s precisely where we were. I was even more shocked than she was.

My mind must have retained more of that film — a deeper knowledge of that film — than I’d realized…so much so that it could estimate very accurately the sequence of individual scenes, and how long it took to get through them.

I bring this up here because there’s one scene in “Do You Believe in Magic?” that I remembered, all through the years, very well. It’s probably the only scene in all of ALF that I can say I remember vividly. It comes later in the episode, and we’ll talk about it there, but I think it says a lot that I remembered so much of what happened in The Great Muppet Caper, but only one scene from ALF: the scene that made me realize that it wasn’t worth watching.

My mind retained that scene because, I assume, it was good justification for forgetting every other one. If I ever scanned my memory for thoughts of ALF and came up largely dry, what I remembered about that scene would explain why.

“Do You Believe in Magic?” opens with ALF attempting a magic trick that he saw on TV. Apparently the first step is to mash a bunch of messy food into somebody’s overturned sunhat. The second step is fuck you.

Brian helps him destroy Kate’s sunhat in this way, and then Kate walks in to see her sunhat being destroyed, and then ALF turns the sunhat over and revels that it’s been destroyed.

I hope you enjoyed this particular joke structure (something happens, continues to happen, and then stops happening because time is up), because it’s going to repeat for the next 22 minutes.

The idea of ALF exploring magic is not a bad one. He’s from space, so he may not understand that it’s all trickery and showmanship. It fits into the childlike wonder we too-rarely see from this character, but it can also be given a series-specific twist: he may see “magic” as a kind of technology unknown on Melmac. After all, when you own a personal spacecraft and travel to other planets for fun, something like food that disappears after you put it in a hat (or whatever the fuck was supposed to happen) probably seems like it’s within the realm of possibility. He may not understand how it works, but it’s not inherently absurd for him to assume that it could work.

Of course ALF is ALF and (ALF is ALF) so we’re not so much exploring the concept as we are giving a puppet an excuse to fuck everyone’s shit up.

I’m actually feeling really anxious about this episode.

I’m embarrassed just thinking about it. I know it’s going to be awful. In fact, “THIS EPISODE IS AWFUL” is the one thing my mind remembers most clearly about the entire show.

And here, now, I’m watching it again. And I feel…stupid.

I liked this crap? What was wrong with me?

After the credits we see ALF writing I WILL NOT PUT FOOD IN KATE’S HAT over and over on the refrigerator door.

Willie comes in, sees him defacing the kitchen, verifies that Kate didn’t ask him to do that, then shrugs and forgets about it. He’s reached that point in his life, I guess, when he’s finally resigned himself to living in alien puppet Hell.

He goes to the table and tells ALF that he has a gift for him. This makes sense, because ALF ruined Kate’s hat and vandalized the refrigerator, marking this as the best-behaved he’s ever been.

Willie got him a magic kit, which is a bit like punishing your child for playing with knives by getting him a bandsaw, but who cares. This episode, perhaps moreso than any other — yes, I remember “Strangers in the Night” — isn’t an episode. It’s just a bunch of stuff that happens. Toward the (very) end there’s a whiff of plot, but it dissipates like the weak fart that it is and the credits roll.

Why is Willie buying him a magic kit? Because that’s what this scene is about. Why did ALF ruin the sunhat? Because that was what that scene was about. How do either of these scenes relate to the rest of the episode? Aside from the superficial fact that “magic” is involved, they don’t. So, have fun, kids.

There is a decent enough moment of quiet visual comedy when Willie tries to demonstrate a card trick to ALF. He tells him to pick a card, and ALF deliberates over his options interminably.

It’s the kind of non-joke Family Guy resorts to often, but I’m a big enough fan of awkward moments and stubborn toying with pace that I usually enjoy it. (Another MacFarlane creation, American Dad! has probably my favorite instance of this: Stan circling the mall looking for a parking space in a climactic moment of “Finances With Wolves.” I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: American Dad! is often brilliant television, and if you’ve only thought of it as a Family Guy clone, give it another shot.)

Unfortunately the absurdly-delayed-response-as-punchline thing happens again later, and not as any kind of callback, essentially underscoring the fact that even this episode in which nothing happens is still crammed with excessive padding.

There’s also a joke that seems like it should play more successfully than it actually does. Willie absent-mindedly says to ALF that he used to have a magic kit when he was ALF’s age…then corrects himself to saying when he was ALF’s height. It’s a good idea for a gag, but, for whatever reason, it falls pretty flat.

Maybe it’s due to Max Wright’s delivery of the line. Or maybe it’s just because it’s marooned in this lifeless shithole of an episode, where everything is far too desolate to amuse.

This entire scene goes on too long and doesn’t accomplish much, but we do at least get another nice moment out of it.

After Willie fails to impress ALF by guessing his card, he amazes the alien by pulling the Ace of Spades from behind ALF’s ear.

That’s a very cute moment, and ALF’s excitement over it is harmless fun. It’s a good, childlike detail, with this immediate, simple dazzle seeming more impressive to him than a much better, more intricate trick.

But that’s about it. By the time this long-ass scene is over we’re a third of the way through the episode, and all that’s happened is that ALF ruined a hat.

Later on ALF wheels a podium into the living room and introduces himself as ALF THE STUPEFYING. We’re in agreement on that, at least.

This is when we get the single most awful line in a show that often seems to be composed entirely of singularly awful lines. ALF says, “It’s showtime!” And Kate, who is watching TV, replies, “Actually, ALF, it’s HBO!!!!”

Not even Anne Schedeen could save that one. Fucking hell…Peter Sellers couldn’t have saved that one.

I have to assume she didn’t even try. Honestly, if you were handed material like that, would you?

Jesus.

Anyway, ALF’s first trick as The Great Dickholio is to smash a flower pot to pieces with his magic wand. Willie and Kate sit there like assholes and watch it happen.

Impressive stuff, truly.

It gets better.

In a way.

It gets better in the way that it doesn’t get any better, and instead gets so much goddamn worse.

Lynn comes in and asks for some money so she can go to the movies. Willie gives her a $10 bill, and ALF says he’ll make it disappear. Why anyone would agree to let him do this is beyond any explanation short of mass, instantaneous brain damage.

So they give him the money. Why the fuck not, right? He already proved that all his tricks result in destroying things, so why not give him actual United States currency for his next prop?

ALF puts the $10 bill in an envelope, and then starts to light a blowtorch. We linger on this shot for a while, and Kate gets some baffling ADR, saying, “Willie, he’s got a blowtorch!”

Does she really need to describe what we’re already seeing for us?

Better question: does she really need to describe what she’s seeing for the person seated between her and what she’s seeing?

This is a really terrible episode. The lack of effort in this show has never been more prominent. At least with crap like “Strangers in the Night” and “We Are Family,” both of which were also disparate heaps of barely-connected nonsense, you can tell that somebody tried, however unsuccessfully, to fit the pieces together.

Here they didn’t even get that far. Things just happen, no matter what they are, and no effort is expended in giving them any kind of rational flow at all. As if to demonstrate this very fact, Willie then offers ALF matches to burn the money with.

Actually, he not only offers him matches, but he lights the envelope on fire himself, presumably because ALF is a puppet and Willie is a retard.

The money burns and that’s the joke.

This isn’t even ALF misunderstanding magic. This is ALF slapping the audience in the nuts.

Seriously. “Space alien buys into hokey bullshit with hilarious consequences” isn’t a great idea for an episode, but it’s certainly a valid one. That’s not what we saw there, though. That was Willie volunteering to set his own money on fire, and then doing so. And…being surprised that it was a bad idea?

I don’t know. What’s the joke?

If I’m walking down the street and I slip on a banana peel, that’s funny.

If I’m walking down the street and I decide to throw myself down onto the pavement for no reason, that’s scary and you should hustle your family away from me as quickly as possible.

The net result is the same, but a punchline without a setup is odd at best, and it makes it seem like the writers were so interested in making one specific thing (or a bunch of disconnected specific things) happen that they didn’t bother to wonder why it would happen.

But it gets still stupider, and it gets there fast.

The next day, Willie walks into the kitchen to find a sad ALF. ALF says he’s giving up magic, and Willie decides to cheer him up and encourage him, because if ALF quits setting money on fire it means Willie will have a harder time hiding those crack expenditures from his wife.

Anyway, he cheers him up. ALF concludes that “being no good at something is no reason to give up on it,” which could lead to a really, truly good episode in itself. (In fact, I could name a dozen good episodes of other shows based on that exact premise. I’m positive that you could, too.) But instead ALF just uses it as the setup to some joke at the expense of the ostensibly shitty programming on the FOX network.

Hee-ho.

But, hey, let’s indulge ALF (and ALF) and take a look at what garbage we could find on FOX in 1988, the same year that the no doubt rightfully snobbish “Do You Believe in Magic?” aired.

Married…with Children. It’s Gary Shandling’s Show. The Tracy Ullman Show. 21 Jump Street. Cops. America’s Most Wanted.

Throw another stone, ALF. I dare you.

The criticism is especially unfair, as FOX was still a fledgling network and was only broadcasting twice a week, but as you can see from the first three shows on that list, they definitely had some great programming already. It wasn’t all great, as the last three shows attest, but none of them were any less than competent, and all of them blow fuckin’ ALF out of the water.

It’s pretty annoying when a show that’s not any good in the first place tries to pick on shows that are. I’m thinking of the jokes at the expense of Breaking Bad and Bob’s Burgers (and other shows that don’t have alliterative Bs in their titles) on Family Guy. Instead of making fun of other viewing options, wouldn’t it be smarter to…I dunno…spend that time making your own show a little better?

So, whatever, back to this steaming pile of shit.

ALF asks Willie if he wants to see a trick. Since Willie never tires of seeing his life fall apart before his eyes, he agrees.

ALF asks for a handkerchief, and while digging it out we see that Willie wears suspenders.

Anyone surprised by that fact?

Didn’t think so. Moving on.

Aaaaand here’s the scene. The one I that remember. The one that stuck with me through so many years of not watching ALF. The only real detail that actually stuck with me.

Not his cat-eating. Not his home planet being Melmac. Not the fact that his real name was Gordon Shumway. No, those were just small things that I remembered about the show as a whole. When it comes down to anything that actually happened on this show, it’s just this.

This dumbass motherfucking watch scene.

ALF tells Willie he’ll need his wristwatch for the trick. To Willie’s credit, he hesitates. To his much more significant discredit, he gives ALF the watch anyway.

ALF sticks the watch into a little pouch, then goes apeshit and smashes it a bunch of times with a hammer. Then he gives it back to Willie, and it’s broken.

That’s it.

No pretense whatsoever. No twist.

ALF busts up a bunch of shit, asks for one more piece of shit to bust up, and he busts up that shit.

I remember watching this with my family when I was a kid. I remember my mother watching this scene, and not laughing but asking, confounded, “Why would he give him the watch?”

My mother, with all due respect, was not the kind of woman to question things. She’d watch or listen to something, and either like it or not like it. Hers was a superficial enjoyment, and there’s, of course, nothing wrong with that.

Plot holes never bothered her. Cliches never bothered her. She questioned nothing, and accepted whatever the television told her.

So for her to openly wonder what the fuck logic this show was operating on…that said a lot. And, I silently agreed. Something was definitely wrong.

Sure, asking a show about a space alien puppet to adhere to logic is unreasonable…except that, really, it’s not. It doesn’t have to — and can’t — adhere to our logic, but it needs to have a certain internal logic that drives what happens.

Some shows are deliberately realistic. Something like M*A*S*H* comes immediately to mind, or All in the Family. Those are shows that operate on something very similar to our own reality. If Archie Bunker twitched his nose and turned Edith into a chicken, or something, we’d call foul…not because it isn’t realistic, but because it isn’t true to the specific reality of that show’s universe. Watch Bewitched, though, or I Dream of Jeannie, and something like that happens every week. It’s no more realistic there than it would be at the 4077, but it’s true to those realities.

The Twilight Zone is a great example of this. The aliens of “To Serve Man” wouldn’t make any sense in the world of “Living Doll,” which operates on an entirely different plane of reality from “A Stop at Willoughby.” We are willing to accept any number of twists and cheats and fantastical developments that wouldn’t work in the world we occupy, but we need them to make sense within the context of the world the characters occupy. If they bled over or were constantly reversed, they wouldn’t work. Instead, they need to remain true to the little universes themselves.

We aren’t pulled out of entertainment, in other words, because something impossible happens. We’re pulled out because something incompatible happens.

ALF has every right to set its own rules. But it doesn’t have the right to change them on the fly. Get a Life could change them on the fly, but that’s because changing on the fly was one of its rules in the first place. The same way Aqua Teen Hunger Force can kill whomever it wants for whatever silly reason and bring them back the next week, while The Venture Bros. would have to explain why that character is back, and fit the reversal into its continuing serialization.

So what are ALF‘s rules?

To be honest, I don’t think the show knows. It’s alternately absurd and grounded. Sappy and crude. Creepy and cute. Funny and fuckawful. But usually the fluctuations are within a certain, acceptable tolerance. ALF hasn’t defined itself as a protean, evolving sitcom experience…it’s rather a loose, ropey, weekly experiment that all too often fails to put forth the effort to make itself interesting.

But the one thing that’s been at least vaguely consistent is this: ALF is an alien, and the Tanners are humans.

That changes — abrasively, jarringly so — when Willie ceases to think, act, or react like a human. He’s never been much of a character, but his behavior in this episode demolishes any connection he could possibly have to the human race. The one thing we thought we knew about him is that he at least thought and acted in a roughly, recognizably human way.

“Do You Believe in Magic?” dashes that, breaking the only tenuous piece of internal logic this show has ever had.

And the worst part is that it doesn’t even do it for the sake of a joke. Not unless you consider “Here, Willie, I broke the watch that you gave me to break” a joke.

The next day — because, yes, this horse is still shitting — Willie wakes up with a rabbit on his chest. He looks at it for a while to the great amusement of the laughing dead people, and then he and Kate head out to the garage.

They ask ALF where the rabbits came from, and ALF says “Father Rabbit jazzed in Mother Rabbit’s rabbit cooter.” Willie replies that he knows damn well about rabbit cooter.

What is the plot of this episode? Honestly, it’s almost over, and I couldn’t begin to tell you.

Yes, something happens shortly (thank shitting Christ), but right now, at this point, how would you summarize what we’ve seen so far?

ALF smashes some shit, then there are rabbits?

Fuck this show.

We then see Brian in a box, waiting to be sawed in half. ALF does so, and disposes of the body by tossing it over the fence into the Ochmoneks’ yard.

Anyway, ALF bought all these animals and this equipment because he thought he was going to be a great magician, but then realized he’d never be one, because he remembered that nothing in this show carries over from one week to the next. Wasn’t Kate pregnant? Didn’t ALF move into the attic? Who fucking knows anymore.

So ALF feels sad that he’s a waste of dick hair, and Willie and Kate try to cheer him up and encourage him all over again. You know, just like you would do for somebody who broke a bunch of your things, set your paycheck on fire, and endangered the life of your son.

Then they leave and ALF stands around in the garage watching the rabbits fuck.

Later on, Brian comes back and mopes because he didn’t get to be part of any of ALF’s tricks. To shut him up ALF sticks him in a box. Brian says that ALF is supposed to spin it around three times, but ALF doesn’t do that because he’s a dishrag with Paul Fusco’s hand inside of it.

Then he closes the curtain, opens it again, and Brian’s gone.

Well, that was easy. Now just do that to everyone except Kate, Mr. Ochmonek, and that murderous little girl from the animal shelter and this show will finally be worth watching.

At some point ALF tries the trick again, and there’s a rabbit in there for some reason. Needless to say he assumes Brian is the rabbit, and a mountain of comedy ensues. (Well, as long as by “mountain of comedy” you mean two lame jokes about rabbits eating vegetables and one about them having long ears.)

ALF runs into the house and tells the Tanners that their kid’s gone. No, not Lynn…the other one. Whatever his name is. He is yours, right?

Willie and Kate then call all the neighbors I guess, one by one, and ask them, “Hey, where the fuck is our son?”

Look at Anne Schedeen’s face in the above screencap. She’s finally past the point of giving even the smallest of shits. “Do You Believe in Magic?” has officially killed the last shred of humanity in this show.

ALF dumps a snake in the house, and the snake hides in Lynn’s gym bag, and Willie and Kate check under the bed to see if Brian is playing Cave Dwellers (presumably his favorite Miles O’Keeffe film). All of this happens in around four seconds of screentime, so while they sure took their time introducing any kind of plot, they also can’t wait to be free of it.

I will say something to the episode’s unintentional credit: it’s hilarious that the most significant thing Brian’s ever done on this show is disappear.

Then the kid comes back. It’s not even the next scene…it’s the same scene. He just walks into the house to get a drink.

What a perfect conclusion to whatever the fuck it is that happened.

It turns out he was hiding in the car so that ALF would think he was a good magician. Ta-da! It’s the amazing disappearing shit that anyone could possibly give.

Then ALF hands Willie some flowers and the episode is over.

In the short scene before the credits, ALF brings Willie and Kate breakfast, and stands naked next to their bed, watching them eat it.

I have to say that re-watching ALF has made me realize, with some truly welcome exceptions, how dull and charmless it is. With that in mind, I honestly expected to finally make it through “Do You Believe in Magic?” and conclude that it’s no worse than usual.

But you know what?

Fuck. That.

To say that “Do You Believe in Magic?” is representative of ALF‘s baseline idiocy is an insult that the series doesn’t actually deserve. As bizarre, forgettable, and sometimes unwatchable as this show is, it’s always — always — better than this shit.

And frankly I can’t think of a better episode to walk away from. I might have had some pretty crappy taste as a child, but “Do You Believe in Magic?” cured me of that right then and there.

For that, I appreciate it.

And only for that.

MELMAC FACTS: ALF is 3’2″. Brian has a snake named Captain EO. I’m never going to watch this episode again.

So, here’s an odd one. “Alone Again, Naturally” has me conflicted. To be totally honest, I’m not sure I’ll even know how I feel about it until I finish this review. (How’s that for incentive to keep reading?!)

In most cases, it’s pretty basic, forgettable, baseline dumbassery. In other cases, it’s awful. But in other cases still, it’s really well-done.

It’s a patchwork episode, to be sure. It feels as though there was the germ of a great idea here (indeed, I’ll argue that there was), but not much thought went into building a sturdy episode around it.

As it stands…I don’t really know what I think. But I’m glad I watched it, and that’s a definite first for season three.

It opens with Willie and Kate coming home from grocery shopping, while ALF bitches about how long it took them. So, yeah, forgive me for not immediately throwing my arms around this one.

He starts grabbing food out of the shopping bags and eating it because he can’t wait for them to unpack. It’s pretty tiring to endure ALF in screaming-asshole mode, but it leads to a nicely chosen detail: Kate gets him to shut up and back off by handing him a copy of the National Inquisitor. (I hope to God its tagline is “Ignore Me.”)

Kate has gotten in the habit of picking up this magazine when she goes shopping, because it keeps ALF quiet for 30 minutes at a time. And I love this.

I fully believe that ALF would like this magazine. Heck, I remember when I was growing up and I worked at a campground. I’d pick up a copy of Weekly World News on my way to work whenever I had to run the shop during the night hours. I mainly bought it for the awesome (and massive) crossword puzzle, but I’d be lying if I said I never read the articles. It was silly, mindless fun, and while I don’t fault anyone who thinks that magazines like that are a waste of trees, I enjoyed it, and it helped pass some quiet hours. I can see exactly why ALF would find it similarly useful.

What’s more, he’s from space. He’s probably seen some pretty unbelievable stuff. “Reality” on earth may seem pretty mundane for him, so this should be a nice escape. It’s fictional, but it’s also a collection of fantastic tales that may speak to him of a much more exciting world outside the Tanner house. Accurate or not, it’s a way to do a little mental traveling.

It also fits in with his predilection for cultural “junk food,” such as radio call-in shows and reruns of Gilligan’s Island. ALF likes garbage, and that works perfectly. Why wouldn’t he? He’s a space alien. It’s enough of a stretch to think that he’d understand Earthling entertainment at all…let alone be able to tell high entertainment from low. (And, I might add, it would be even more of a stretch for him to buy into such a hazy distinction.)

Then we hear him bellow in the other room, and Willie and Kate open the door to see the funniest thing ever on this show.

Seriously.

I had to pause the episode because I laughing so hard. That’s never happened before with this show, at least not that I can remember.

Of course I think I was supposed to feel sad or concerned or something, but seeing a lifeless ALF on the floor next to the couch has made this entire review series worthwhile. (It also reminds me of a great sequence in “Homer vs. the 18th Amendment,” in which news of prohibition causes the residents of Springfield to faint, and I really want someone to edit this in.)

The credits then begin, ensuring that this is a cliffhanger. “Why is ALF laying on the floor?” being just slightly more gripping a question than “Why am I watching this?”

During the opening sequence, I happen to notice that the credited writer for this episode is Paul Fusco.

Oh boy.

Yeah…this, more than maybe any other episode so far, represents Paul Fusco’s artistic vision.

I don’t want to give away the ending or anything…but the fact that I’m conflicted at all after a Paul Fusco episode has got to be a compliment in itself.

After the credits ALF wakes up and says, in a panic, “No more portly women!”

The fake audience laughs. I have no clue why.

Was he dreaming about being sexually assaulted by tubby ladies? Who knows. The fact that I even have to ask myself that makes me wish I died weeks ago.

As shitty as that moment was, though, I have to give the episode full credit for the fact that we get a really interesting turn. And for the first time in God knows how long, I’m actually curious about seeing where the episode goes.

I’m hooked. I really am. At long last, I care about what’s going to happen.

At first I had no clue what we were watching. I figured ALF would become a staff writer for this stupid magazine, writing first-hand accounts of bizarre things in the unknown universe which the editors assume is just creative writing. You know. A version of “A Little Bit of Soap” that remembers its main character is a space alien.

But it’s much, much better than that.

See, ALF fainted because of an article on page two, about a couple in Barstow that lives with an alien.

And while I was all ready to complain about this — if he regularly reads this National Enquirer equivalent, surely he’s seen similar stories a thousand times — Kate piped up for me, voicing that very note of skepticism.

ALF assures her that this story is different from the others, and Lynn, reading it, identifies some odd similarities.

The alien in the story is short. Fuzzy. Big ears. Long snout. He has an odd fixation on cats.

Brian helpfully blurts, “THAT SOUNDS LIKE ALF,” in case you didn’t associate that description with the creature you see sitting right there in front of you. He might as well have appended “You fucking idiot.” Maybe Brian’s role on this show has sunk to interpreter for the blind.

This is interesting for a number of reasons, and while I’m not jumping to the conclusion that there is another Melmackian hanging out in California, whatever the episode decides to do with this premise, I’m certainly willing to play along.

After all, We know that ALF, Skip, and Rhonda all survived the explosion, but in a civilization that traveled to other planets frequently, it’s certainly likely that other Melmackians survived, too.

Whether or not they’d come to Earth is a whole other story, and the likelihood of that much is definitely debateable, but coming across a story like this in a tabloid is as interesting to me as it is to him. My mind swells with possibilities…and I’m sure ALF’s does, too. This is the promise not of a 30 minute plot, but of possibility, which is something this show as a whole so frustratingly lacks.

My hopes are up, for better or worse.

Lynn questions this alien’s similarity to ALF, though, when she reads that it subsists on a diet of yogurt and lightbulbs. For ALF, though, this is just further evidence: it sounds exactly like his cousin Blinky.

This is a fantastic what-if, and one that actually has something to do with the fact that ALF is an alien.

Those kinds of what-ifs are rare, but they’re responsible for some of the series’ best episodes. What if wildlife from Melmac stowed away on ALF’s spaceship? What if ALF befriended a blind woman? What if ALF isn’t alone on Earth? All rich topics to explore, for sure. Instead, though, in spite of all the spectacular what-ifs that extraterrestrial characters provide, we more often end up closer to “What if Kate’s mom married some guy and ALF had the hiccups?”

For the first time in ages, the show is at least attempting to make good on its promise.

“Alone Again, Naturally,” I’m on your side. This is yours to lose.

Willie, oddly, acts like a human being. He tries to ground ALF in reality, and prevent him jumping to conclusions.

Yes, he says, the details may seem to fit…but it’s still a magazine that prints fiction. And no matter how convincing the story is, the odds are very much against a space alien crashing to Earth and living in secret with a family…

…at which point he trails off.

It’s funny. By this point ALF’s residency in the Tanner home is normalized, and with every day that passes it must get easier and easier to forget that this situation is really fucking strange. In fact, it’s probably not until something like this happens that it really registers, and the face Max Wright makes as the penny drops is perfect.

His first face, that is. For some reason he then makes the second face pictured above, and I don’t care how good a moment this was; once you resort to a string of funny faces to sell your gag, you’ve convinced me your gag isn’t worth selling.

It’s a shame, because the words would have been so much better on their own. But I shouldn’t be surprised that the writers don’t trust themselves. I usually don’t, either.

Willie picks up the phone and calls the family referenced in the story.

He intends to end this fantasy by proving they’re lying, I guess, but all he does is ask, “You don’t really have an alien living with you, do you?”

We don’t even hear their end of the conversation, so we just have to take Willie’s word for it that they said “Yes” in a monumentally convincing tone.

It’s weird. Considering how easily he gives in, and the way the rest of the episode plays out (Willie shows up at their house uninvited, even though this would be a perfect narrative place for him to be invited), I’m not even sure, from a writing standpoint, why he bothers calling.

Anyway, ALF says wants to go to Barstow, but Willie tells him to eat a dick. Then ALF sings the theme song to The Patty Duke Show.

That’s it. He just stands in the middle of the room and sings it for a while.

So, yeah, an irrelevant musical spotlight on ALF? Paul Fusco did write this after all.

This performance of the title theme to a sitcom that no human being alive remembers somehow convinces Willie to take his space alien to Barstow.

Why?

When Willie said, “No, fuck you,” I figured he had some kind of concern about this being a wild goose chase, or a trap, or a prank, or any number of dumbass things.

But really he was just stalling in the hopes that ALF would sing? I…guess so? Jesus Christ.

And of course ALF is in the front seat while Willie drives on a major highway because fuck worrying about revealing this alien to the world anymore. I guess everyone in L.A. has already seen him by now, and two people in Barstow are about to, so who gives a shit?

I’m not sure why Willie is taking him anyway. When they get to the house, Willie makes ALF hide in the car while he himself investigates, which is perfectly fine. But why not investigate alone, and then report back? If Blinky lives there, he could go back for ALF. If he doesn’t live there, there’s no reason to risk any of this crap.

Granted, he does say that Barstow is three hours away, which is indeed a significant two-way drive, but if you’re more concerned about gas money than about the government kicking down your door and gutting your space alien while your children watch, then forgive me for not caring much about that either.

Anyway, ALF hands Willie a cotton ball and asks him to sniff it. Willie, like any rational human being, does exactly this. He takes a big, enthusiastic whiff of this mysterious thing that was handed to him without any context by the naked alien who lives in his hamper.

Then he asks what it is, and ALF says asbestos. Willie throws the cotton ball and makes more funny faces, while the fake audience of hooting retards goes bananas.

It reminds me of a scene in Futurama, when Bender’s “evil” twin sprays toxic gas in Fry’s face and then says, “Get it? It’s chlorine!”

The joke there is pretty clearly the absence of a joke, which is something we can expect the talented writers of Futurama to pull off. Here we just have a few minutes to kill in the middle of an episode, so what the hell, let’s sniff some cotton balls.

Then ALF starts talking about how well Blinky is going to fit into the family, and the scene ends.

…why?

That’s the conversation I want to hear more of.

What does Willie say? How does ALF reply? This is an issue that needs to be discussed, and somehow I don’t think Willie and ALF are going to be in agreement. Why can’t we hear that discussion about whether or not ALF will get to live with his cousin Blinky? Or even get to see him again after this?

We can do things with that. Things that advance the plot and define the characters and give us something to chew on long after the episode is over.

Instead, we get a game of Smell This, Willie. (Thank God for commas, eh?)

God, this scene sucks.

They get to the house and Willie goes to check it out. I know the ALF crew didn’t get along with Max Wright, but did it extend to the a refusal to not iron his shirts?

Look above his belt-line. Just look at that shit.

An old woman answers the door and takes Willie into a room full of bizarre curios, like Billy the Kid’s mustache. She used to run a traveling exhibit until the tent caught fire, so now she just lives with this shit all over her house. It’s a convincingly awkward scene which doesn’t quite tip over into cartoonishness, but it’s also not particularly funny. It’s establishing character, which is certainly good, but it’s unfortunately not going to pay off in any worthwhile way.

Her husband comes in and tells Willie flatly that there’s no alien, but the woman insists there is. The dynamic between she and her husband is an interesting one. At first he comes off as brusque and rude, but before long it becomes clear that his wife isn’t all there, and he’s just tired of having to deal with her delusions. This is best exemplified when she disagrees with him about the pronunciation of his own name. That’s a well-chosen detail, and I now know more about their relationship than I do about Willie’s and Kate’s.

She says the alien is out somewhere, so Willie can’t see it. Then she produces a small box and says a Polaroid of the alien is inside, but Willie has to pay her if he wants to look at it.

Anyone with the barest minimum of brain activity would clock that she’s scamming him, lying to him, or babbling hallucinated nonsense to him, in around zero seconds.

Willie, however, hangs out in the living room, participating in this conversation as though there’s nothing strange at all. He even pays her $10 for a glimpse of the photograph, after her husband helpfully advises him to save his money.

Willie, you fuckbrain.

It turns out to be a picture of a dog with antlers attached to it.

Wow, what a shock. It wasn’t a real alien. Who would have guessed? Fortunately he stops short of paying her to see a picture of the alien’s space ship…but since we later find out that that was his last $10, we probably shouldn’t give him too much credit for learning from his mistakes.

Willie finally begins to tentatively suspect faintly that something might be slightly amiss, and he leaves.

But when he gets back in the car, he looks over and sees ALF doing this:

Which makes Willie do this:

Quite how Willie made it back into the car without passing ALF on his way to the door, or how he didn’t notice the seat was no longer occupied until this moment, I don’t know.

Even less do I know what the living fuck Willie does after he sees that ALF’s missing, since ALF has the time to have an extended conversation with the woman and her husband in their living room.

Get your ass in gear, Willie! Or at least start the car and drive home, confident at last that your troubles are over.

The old lady is excited that she might be able to make some money off of this creature, but her husband doesn’t want his wife starting up her old sideshow days again. Both of which considerations, bafflingly, seem to take precedence over the fact that there’s a pantsless space alien in their living room.

Eventually, after the spousal argument dies down, Willie rings the doorbell. It sure as hell took him long enough.

The woman tells him to buzz off, so he keeps ringing the doorbell and then she answers it again with a crossbow.

And that’s a legitimate laugh.

Really. It’s a perfect bit of visual comedy, and I love it.

Willie backs away, and then calls Kate from a phone booth to explain to her the hilarious Polaroid scam we’ve already seen for ourselves.

If you didn’t like seeing it first-hand, then having Max Wright doggedly relate it, detail for detail, from the inside of a phone booth in the pouring rain is unlikely to enhance its quality in your mind. This guy could be explaining how he saw the towers come down on 9/11 and you’d think he was reciting the side effects of Cymbalta.

Then we cut back to the house and…

Okay, another legitimate laugh. This episode has had a few, but I’m pretty sure only one of them was intentional…and it’s not this one.

The woman babbles for a while about how much money she’s going to make off of him, and her husband tells her to shut up and come to bed.

Neither of them seem particularly interested in or worried about the fact that an extra terrestrial lives with them now, but at least she tied him up for the night. All the Tanners did was show him where they kept the booze and their children.

Willie climbs through the window, and then sits around with ALF babbling about all manner of pointless bullshit instead of untying him. The husband eventually enters with the crossbow, because short of that this scene is never going to progress.

We do get a really fun setpiece out of it, though. Willie attempts to bluff his way through the situation, informing the man that ALF is a creature of unimaginable power…a concept that both the man and ALF struggle to understand.

It’s funny, the way that this bit plays out, with Willie trying to convince the old man that he’s telling the truth, while at the same time trying to get ALF to understand the lie. It’s a funny setup, and the execution is nearly as good, with all three characters struggling to convey or accept what’s happening, without there being time for explanation.

Really, it’s good. And it gets even funnier when ALF catches on and starts moaning and waving his hands at the man, ostensibly demonstrating these powers, while the man just stands there confused.

It’s simple but effective visual comedy…the kind of thing that a low budget sitcom has every right to resort to, and coming at the tail end of a confused episode like this, it works quite well. It’s an absurd, left-field punctuation to a story that wasn’t quite sure what it was about to begin with…and I mean that in a good way.

Since the man doesn’t back off, Willie doubles down on the deception. He says that in ten seconds the man will be “flatter than a flapjack” if he doesn’t let ALF go…which only makes the man more curious. Willie counts down from 10 to one while the stranger stares at him…and then counts back up again.

It’s funnier in action than it probably sounds here. I really like it. Willie’s floundering is when Max Wright’s very particular set of skills, skills he’s acquired over a very long career, come in handy. They enrich Willie rather than distract from understanding his character, and in this case almost — almost — manage to retroactively define who he is.

It’s a fun scene, which would be enough, but it even offers up a nice character moment when the wife comes out of the bedroom…and her husband decides to play into Willie’s ruse.

The husband doesn’t want his wife to start up the traveling freak show again, so when she enters the room he pretends he’s in the throes of ALF’s unimaginable powers, and he tells her that he’ll be killed if she doesn’t let them go.

It works, even if the whole “I’ve decided you can go free” ending is pretty anticlimactic in a show that keeps trying to place the utmost importance on ALF not being seen by anyone, ever.

While her husband distracts her, Willie opens the door to escape, but ALF just stands there watching the argument. Willie beckons to him, and then ALF says, “Oh, yeah!” and starts doing his moaning and hand waving imaginary magic again.

Willie’s exasperated reply (“Not that!”) is delivered perfectly, and the whole scene, batshit crazy as it undoubtedly is, helps to elevate — if not redeem — “Alone Again, Naturally.” In fact, a lot about this episode’s setup and conclusion works just fine. The problem is the connective tissue between them, which just feels…undeveloped.

So Willie and ALF escape, and the episode’s as good as over.

…only, it’s not. At all.

The short scene before the credits is what does redeem the episode. And it takes an absolutely perfect, well-earned turn.

We see the ride home, with ALF and Willie driving in silence through the rain, before, finally, reflecting on what just happened without actually talking about it.

And you know what?

This is good.

This is kind of really good.

It’s probably the best exchange these two have had since “Night Train.” In some very specific ways, I’d argue it’s even better.

There’s something about the way these two dance around what they mean to say…the things they choose to hold back, or to be vague about. Typically these are just the potholes of bad writing, but in certain contexts, deliberately or not, they manage to enrich the material. The negative space between what is said and what is felt defines the conversation. It makes it difficult. It emphasizes distance…however much those having the discussion would like to cross it.

It’s just…I don’t know. It’s a perfect ending for a less-than-perfect episode, and it very nearly tricks me into thinking I’ve been watching something far better all along.

My description can only do it so much justice, so I’ll put some of it here, unbroken, so you can see.

WILLIE: I’m sorry it didn’t work out.
ALF: Me too.
WILLIE: But I’m glad you’re safe.
ALF: Safe and alone. Species-wise.
WILLIE: You know…we all feel alone at certain times in our lives.
ALF: Feeling alone and being alone are two different things.
WILLIE: I’m sorry, ALF. I wish there was something I could say.
ALF: I actually believed it, Willie. I really convinced myself there might be others of my kind here…

And it continues on from there. No jokes. No silliness. Just two sitcom characters driving through the rain, realizing that they have feelings, and wishing they didn’t.

Is it better writing than usual? I don’t know. I’d like to think so…but maybe not. It’s certainly better acting than usual…and the mood has been established better than usual. And I care more about these two characters than usual. So certainly that counts for something.

It’s a lovely scene, and it explores a what-if. In this case, it’s a sad one. It’s a what-if regarding ALF’s excitement being dashed. It’s about the emotional toll that belief takes on him. It’s about how unfair the universe can be, and how uncaring.

And while it deserves a more solid episode ahead of it, the conclusion is strong enough that I’m willing to give “Alone Again, Naturally” the benefit of the doubt.

It’s easily the best episode of the season so far, and I might even go so far as to say it’s a good one.

It’s not without its flaws — not even close — but it raised a question. It gave us a fun shaggy dog story masquerading as an answer. And then it actually answered the question in a satisfying and understated way.

I like this one. God help me, Paul Fusco…you pulled a bait and switch, and I fell for it.

Thank you.

At the very end of the scene, ALF gazes out the window and believes he sees Blinky in the back of another person’s car.

It’s left ambiguous. ALF is convinced he saw this, but Willie says there was no other car.

ALF could be daydreaming, or maybe Willie just didn’t see the passing car through the heavy rain.

Either way, the lack of a definite answer doesn’t make it any less affecting. It’s a nice, mysterious note upon which to end a surprisingly melancholy episode.

It’s left open-ended, with just enough potential for hope, however illusory, that it doesn’t feel tragic.

“Alone Again, Naturally” isn’t the best that ALF is capable of, but I’m okay with that. I like it for what it is. The trip might not have been perfect, but the ride home is downright devastating, and it gives meaning and weight to the experience.

I’ll take that gladly, because it meant somebody cared enough to do this one effectively.

And if that someone was Paul Fusco? Then I just wish that we got to see this side of him more often.

MELMAC FACTS: Melmackian junkfood included “pudding in a shoe,” which was best homemade. ALF had a cousin called Blinky, who was given that nickname because he ate lightbulbs. “I’m so excited I could squirt” was an expression on Melmac, though I sincerely wish it wasn’t.

“My Back Pages” is named after a Bob Dylan song. I’ll get that out of the way right now, since it was bound to happen sooner or later. My all-time favorite musician has an ALF connection. So it goes.

I guess it’s not really anything to get that grumpy about. As I’ve said before, somebody on the staff had pretty solid taste in music, based on the episode titles and on the choices of songs used (and referenced) in the episodes themselves. Alongside the competent (and often very good) puppetry, the nods and winks to music history represent the only observable passion in the show.

It’s an odd choice of title, though. For one, it’s not one of Dylan’s more popular songs. (Though it is one of my personal favorites.) It’s also a title that doesn’t occur anywhere in the song itself, meaning that folks who have actually heard it might not know what it’s called. It’s especially puzzling when the theme of the episode — though by no means incompatible with the theme of the song it’s named after — would have fit perfectly well with the more recognizable “The Times They Are A-Changing.”

It’s also odd because the pivotal moment in the episode occurs when Willie and Kate reminisce about Woodstock…and Dylan didn’t play Woodstock. Crosby, Stills, and Nash played Woodstock, and later released a song called “Woodstock,” so why not just call the episode that?

I bet nobody out there will suspect that I’m stalling.

Blah, whatever. “My Back Pages” opens with the funniest god damned thing I’ve ever seen this puppet do: it shuffles into the room all disheveled and verbally abuses Brian for picking a sock off of him.

It’s wonderful. It’s almost as though ALF really exists, and his time in this shitty show is taking the same toll on him that it is taking on his human costars.

It’s really funny, and for the wrong reasons. ALF’s grouchiness is totally out of scale with the situation, making this seem like behind the scenes footage of an alternate universe recording session, where ALF really was some washed-up comedian starring in a terrible sitcom he thinks he should be above.

This illusion is sustained by the fact that Benji Gregory appears to be legitimately angry in the above screengrab, as though he’s finally snapped, too.

It’s wonderful stuff, because the visible misery of the cast relieves me of a little bit of my own.

Honestly, though, there’s a kind of pulsing anger that flows through this episode, and it’s really odd. This isn’t one of those episodes where ALF pisses everybody off…it’s just a silly story tossed out as an excuse to get Willie and Kate into some dumb costumes. It should be lighthearted and airy. Instead it’s tense and miserable.

ALF fell asleep in the dryer, or something, and I guess someone turned it on. You’d think there’d be some kind of explanation, but there’s not, so it plays more like ALF just rolled out of bed after a long night of binge drinking and is looking for someone’s wife to hit.

He bitches to Willie for a while about wanting a proper room of his own, and Willie tells him to go fuck himself. ALF replies, “Fine. Just remember this the next time you complain about fur in your shorts.”

It’s not much of a joke (if it’s…even a joke?), but I point it out because the line is clearly overdubbed, with an entirely different sound quality. It’s obviously ADR, but the fact that he’s a puppet means there’s no hope of lip-reading what the original line was.

Any guesses as to what the punchline could have been? I honestly can’t imagine anything worse than the one we got.

After the credits we see ALF in the attic. He walks around and then he falls over for no reason and says, “I hate it when that happens!”

The audience laughs.

At what? I have no god damned clue. ALF hates it when he trips? Who gives a shit? What kind of writing is this? That’s not a joke. Is it? What is this show doing to my sense of humor? Why can I no longer identify what does and does not qualify as a joke?

Willie and Kate come upstairs to see what the fuck he’s doing now, and he tells them they really need to look into Public Storage. “We have,” Kate replies. “They won’t take you.”

And, okay, that’s pretty funny. Both Anne Schedeen and Jack LaMotta get a handful of good lines in this episode, which I’d love to interpret as some kind of peace offering on behalf of the writers.

Willie finds one of the leather straps he used to use on hobos in the crack dungeon, and he and his wife reminisce about the good times, before the National Enquirer stepped in.

They also find a dime-store silver peace sign, completely lacking in detail, attached to nothing, and the two of them beam over it like it’s some beloved talisman of the past.

Which it might be…but man, these two must have been some pretty lame hippies if they bought a peace sign at Hobby Lobby and called it a day. Didn’t hippies…make things? And didn’t they like vibrant colors and exaggerated shapes?

It’s a shame that the props department didn’t put any thought into this. An believable memento with personality could have told us a lot about their personalities. Or maybe it does. These two are just vague, flat representations themselves. Why should their cherished knick-knacks be any different?

It does lead to a funny line, though, when ALF sees it and says, “I’m impressed. When did you guys own a Mercedes?” That just about redeems to plainness of what we’re supposed to believe is an important and evocative memento.

Then we get a slightly different angle of the room and see a box of “XMAS GARLAND!” If ever a two-word phrase deserved an exclamation point, it’s surely that one.

ALF tells them to throw all their old shit away so he can expand his shrine to the Tanner ladies into the attic, and I’m okay with that seemingly dickish request. ALF might not understand human sentiment, and it makes sense that he’d ask why boxes full of crap they haven’t looked at in years gets to hang around while the family is facing space concerns.

Then again, ALF went back to gather up all of his mementos instead of using that time or that space in his UFO to rescue any of friends or family members before his planet exploded.

So, no, he’s not confused. He’s not even just dickish. He’s a massive pile of dicks.

Willie and Kate explain that it’s not junk…it’s part of who they are. “Or who we were,” Kate adds.

And…I don’t buy it.

We’re three years into knowing these people, and we’ve been told who they are (and were) several times already. “Hippie” was never one of these things, and nothing we’ve been told has stuck anyway.

This is just an excuse to get them into silly costumes, which is an approach to comedy writing somewhere on par with having a character fall over and then say, “I DO SO HATE TO FALL OVER!!”

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but it’s sad that the idea of learning more about these people used to fill me with hope for the next half-hour, and now it just makes me want to skip the episode.

Part of me, admittedly, was defensive because “Night Train” already told a story about the difference between Willie the Idealist and Willie the Murmuring Scrotum. What’s more…it told that story really, really well. It’s a firm contender for my favorite episode of ALF, and while that sounds like I’m damning it with faint praise, I’ll say this clearly: I really did enjoy that episode on its own merits.

To have “My Back Pages” rip that very welcome backstory out of the character and replace it with love-beads and some silly wigs…well, it’s fighting an uphill battle to say the least.

However, since this episode shows us Willie at Woodstock, and we assume he was around 45 at the time this aired (his age as of “Jump,” anyway), that would have put him in his late 20s when he attended the legendary outdoor music festival. Since “Night Train” told us that he rode the rails at 17, both of these backstories can slot comfortably next to each other.

The fact that I still hate “My Back Pages,” then, is entirely down to its own internal failures, and not due to any kind of conflict with a superior episode.

Rest assured: you’re watching shit.

Willie and Kate find some old filmstrips (and I admit I know very little about late 60s filmstock, but this sure looks a fuck of a lot like a spool of thin, white ribbon) which are, we are told, the home movies they shot at Woodstock.

…and fuck off.

Really now. Fuck the fuck off.

What “home movies” were shot at Woodstock? Honest question. In 1969, on Max Yasgur’s farm, where for one long weekend the closest thing we’ve ever had to a functional utopia came and went, who was shooting home movies?

I’d be glad to be proven wrong, but as far as I know there really isn’t that much footage of Woodstock outside of the professionally-shot stuff, which largely became the documentary Woodstock. I’m sure there were at least a few amateur videographers in attendance, but there is not much film in existence to prove it.

Additionally, any film equipment back then would have been extremely expensive (which is probably why hippies wouldn’t have had it in the first place). It wasn’t until the late 80s or early 90s that camcorders became popular, and even then they were quite expensive. That the Tanners could afford one in the present day of the show is believable, but “My Back Pages” wants us to assume they had one two decades before they were invented.

So this footage should be extremely valuable. Like, urgently valuable. This film represents a newly discovered angle (at least) on anything that Willie and Kate caught on camera. And in some cases — say, had Willie been filming while Pete Townshend cracked Abbie Hoffman in the head with his guitar — it would represent the only angle. This is a reel of immaculately preserved gold.

This episode aired around twenty years after Woodstock. If the Tanners have really been sitting on never-before-seen footage of the event, they should easily be able to sell copies of this to the media, to documentarians, to hobbyists…to absolutely anybody with any kind of interest in American, musical, or cultural history at all. The question of how they managed to film it on a spool of white ribbon in the first place is one thing, but the question of how valuable it is never occurs to anyone. And that’s driving me insane.

I can’t wait for next week, when Willie and Kate remember that they recorded the Kennedy assassination with their iPhones.

Whatever. They set up the filmstrip that we’ll see once and which nobody will ever refer to again. Lynn comes home and ALF smacks her in the face with a fistful of peanuts.

Fine. Who cares. This is Lynn’s thing now, getting hit with food and raising her arms in dismay. (The latter half of that is certainly my thing now.)

It can’t be a coincidence that this occurred in back-to-back weeks, can it? Like…this has to be a conscious attempt at a running gag.

…right? Please tell me they didn’t write LYNN GETS HIT WITH FOOD OR SOMETHING I DON’T KNOW in two consecutive scripts without realizing it.

ALF throws peanuts fucking everywhere because who the fuck fucking fucks. At least Lynn grabs a handful and throws them back at him. That’s my single favorite moment in all of season three so far.

I told you, everyone’s pissy in this episode. It’s automatically the most realistic installment yet.

Mr. Ochmonek comes over, and before he hides ALF complains about never getting to meet anyone. Which is pretty ridiculous, since by this point ALF has directly interacted with more people than any of the humans on this show. The writers don’t realize that they can’t pull this shit anymore, do they?

Mr. O busted up Willie’s weed whacker, which would probably make him a dick, but after all the crap Willie’s said and done to him, this is nothing. Mr. O could decapitate Lucky on Willie’s porch and he’d still rank as the better neighbor.

Anyway, the Ochmoneks are off to play bridge with some other people, and Mr. O asks if he can borrow some bridge mix. Willie says he doesn’t have any, so Mr. O says, “I guess we can’t play bridge.” Then he thinks and asks, “Got any gin?”

It’s a stupid, stupid, stupid joke that begins and ends with a pun…but it works.

Jack LaMotta’s delivery sells it, as it so often sells things like this, and the fact that he only pops up to make the joke and then disappears helps it a lot. It’s an interlude, and a welcome one, before Willie begins his filmribbon. (Funnily enough, ALF even refers to this exchange as the cartoon before the main event. It’s a nicely observed bit of meta-humor.)

I don’t think the writing for LaMotta is any better than it is for anyone else on this show; I think it’s just a matter of the fact that he, like Anne Schedeen, studies his lines, and decides how to give them heft. In Schedeen’s case, that often comes down to good acting. In LaMotta’s, it’s more about being as funny as possible in as little time as possible. Two very different executions, but they come from the same place: the all-too-rare desire to do good work.

Then we see the film and suddenly I understand how Willie obtained it: he ordered it from a stock footage company. It’s just a bunch of clips of hippies standing around, shuffling around, looking around. Great stuff, Willie. Maybe eventually we’ll see some examples of his photography, like a smiling black man and a smiling white man shaking hands in a boardroom.

There’s some sitar noodling in the background, which is unbroken through the scene transitions, so I guess Willie not only had expensive film equipment, but an entire editing suite at his disposal. Fuck this show.

Conveniently, ALF cuts to a different angle before Willie says, “Look! There’s Mama Cass!” Because that would have cost something, as would playing any actual Woodstock music instead of the pack-in disc from Sitar for Dummies.

We see Kate on the screen, with Willie helpfully pointing out who we’re looking at, because it’s not like her own children or the alien who tries to fingerfuck her every time she takes a shower would recognize her.

And okay, okay. I know; she’s dressed a lot different in the film than her children or her lodger have seen her. That’s okay. But it leads me to wonder what future generations will do for their flashback episodes.

The Simpsons might provide some kind of answer, as Homer and Marge’s backstory involved similar late-hippie culture, and Principal Skinner’s involved a stint in Vietnam. At least, that was the case at first. Later on the show had been on long enough that these things no longer made sense for characters their ages, and another flashback episode showed Homer and Marge coming of age in the 90s instead.

The thing is, though, that the latter didn’t offer much in the way of opportunity for humor…or for sweetness. The culture of the 60s (and the specific iconography of Woodstock) stood for something…even if it was something intangible. (Or, if you’re being less generous, false.) It was representative of a conscious turning away. It was an entire generation standing up and saying, “No, I don’t want that. I want this.”

Volumes will continue to be written about what this actually meant or did not mean, but it’s fair to say that it meant something. It was liberty, and it was irresponsibility. It was the celebration of a future that never got here, and a denial of the present that already was. It was a chance for the young to spring forward into a childish idea of adulthood with the ability to make all of their own choices, but with none of the experience or foresight to make them intelligently. It wasn’t a culture of contradiction, exactly…it was more like a culture of often beautiful confusion.

…which is why it makes for such a nice setting when it’s time to visit “the past.” The fashions may look silly, but much of the music is timeless. And the entire backdrop serves as both a wistful dream and a cautionary tale. It’s a rich and evocative setting.

The 90s? Well, according to The Simpsons when it dipped a toe into that possible past, it was grunge music and slow internet. Ha ha.

There’s a reason That 70s Show was actually pretty good, made stars out of much of its cast, and continues to have a life in syndication, while That 80s Show barely staggered through a single, abbreviated season. And it’s because, to be totally frank, some generations are simply more culturally rich than others.

As sitcoms move forward — and as we grow older — we’ll see more and more of them building backstories that involve the Gulf War, the dot-com bubble, the Furby. But that will be out of necessity, and it will happen by default. It won’t happen out of love in the same way that the endlessly revisited 60s do. Or the similarly revisited 70s. Or even the ironically revisited 50s.

And so we beat on, boats against the current, away from richer kinds of culture. What we move toward remains to be seen. And I’m not particularly looking forward to it.

Oh, shit. We’re still watching ALF?

…alright.

We see Willie in the film, so either he and Kate handed the camera back and forth to each other a shitload of times, or there’s a third person who filmed this for them whom Willie and Kate couldn’t be arsed to name. ALF says that Willie looks like a fucking idiot and the family does this:

What an insightful episode.

It’s extremely disappointing that “My Back Pages” just goes for the sight-gag of Willie looking like a dolt (and then has ALF say as much, presumably for the benefit of the blind), instead of mining any comedy from the contrast between the Summer of Love and the Me Decade.

No, it’s enough that at Woodstock some of the guys had long hair and that’s hilarious.

Viewing this event through alien eyes should have been interesting. For all the great music and provocative imagery that came out of 60s counterculture, we so often end up boiling it down to a handful of symbols and touchpoints. We accept that it was something, but if you weren’t there (and, surely, in many cases even if you were), it’s impossible to know what it meant. How it felt. Its human impact as opposed to its accepted social impact.

The absolute best way to explore that significance? Through the eyes of somebody who, somehow, has never even heard of Woodstock. Somebody like…I dunno…a cunting SPACE ALIEN?

We don’t get that, though. While ALF indeed raises questions about it, they’re answered (in a moment) by a simpleton. Willie isn’t just a bonehead who himself couldn’t identify with the movement beyond the symbols and touchpoints; he’s a voicebox for the writers who seem to believe that there really wasn’t anything else to it.

There’s no reason to believe that the staff understands what they’re talking about, and that’s frustrating. Vineland, a novel by Thomas Pynchon, explores exactly this territory…specifically, the distance between 1969 and 1984. How did America let its idealism falter so severely? How did we go from peace, love, and rock and roll to the War on Drugs? What shift of cultural complacency occurred to change the world once, and then let it change right back without interference?

It’s a great novel, and while I don’t expect an episode of ALF to measure up to high literature, Pynchon’s novel itself stoops to low comedy, slapstick, winks toward the popular culture of the time. In short, even though Pynchon is writing a work of art, he’s able to craft better sitcom material along the way than a sitcom aspiring to nothing else is able to craft.

Do yourself a favor. Buy Vineland. It’s brilliant.

Later on, Willie comes into the kitchen to find ALF eating fuckin’ everything. He starts to wax nostalgic about his college roommate, Snout. Snout also ate a lot, so at least now we know the writers consider that a valid sole personality trait for characters to have.

Anyway, Snout was awesome. (At least, that’s what I assume the show wants me to assume.) Everyone loved him, including Willie, who thought he was just the kitten’s tits.

He talks about a time that Snout took off all of his clothes and burned them, in order to stop the war. ALF asks if that worked, and Willie says yeah, he’d like to think it did, which shows not only what a fucking nincompoop Willie is, but exactly how simplified this important and unique cultural movement is treated by “My Back Pages.”

ALF, channeling the charmless political idiocy of “Pennsylvania 6-5000” and “Hail to the Chief,” asks why people don’t pull these stunts for peace anymore, what with Central America and the Middle East being war-ravaged hellholes.

Willie explains that he can’t do that stuff nowadays, because he has a family to support and he needs to pick his battles.

This proves he’s learned nothing in his half-century on Earth, because what he should be explaining to ALF is the fact that we can shape our country by voting, by contributing to causes, by volunteering, and so on. Instead he buys right into the same idea that he just sold ALF on: that, yes, you can change the world by doing ridiculous, tangential things with no demonstrable relationship to the thing you’re trying to affect.

It’s weird. Like, so weird that if this were a radio show, I’d have no idea which of these idiots was the alien.

ALF says Willie sold out, and Willie storms off to bed. Man, if you are what you eat, then ALF must have eaten Grumpy Cat.

But, you know what? Fuck Willie.

Seriously. Fuck him.

If he really believes that he can change the world by setting his clothes on fire or painting FREE HUGS across his paunch, and he still chooses not to, then he’s just a selfish asshole.

Either he doesn’t believe those things, in which case this conversation needed to take a very different turn, or he does, and he needs to start pulling his weight as a member of the human race.

Then ALF eats a big sandwich and the scene is over. HOORAY!

In the next scene, Willie is pacing around, complaining that he can’t sleep. Kate suggests that it might be because he’s pacing, which is a very human response, and which I like…probably because it reminds me of a similar joke on Father Ted. (Albeit one that was pulled off far more artfully.)

“I used to organize peace marches, now I organize coupons,” Willie bitches, while his wife goes unlaid. Really, though, Willie should be distressed by the fact that he used to organize peace marches, and now he verbally abuses, kidnaps, and assaults those in need of his help as a social worker. But, hey, potato potato.

ALF comes in and does some ALF shit, and then Willie lays down and…

NO

fucking NO NO

fucking fucking fucking NNNOOOOO

God shitting dammit.

A dream sequence. What is it with this show and dream sequences?

Typically dream sequences exist in sitcoms so that you can put the characters in fantastic situations, and have them do and say things that are beyond the reach of its normally grounded reality. It’s a cheat, really, but one that can be fun for both the writing staff and the viewer. And the cast, come to think of it. It’s a chance for everyone to enjoy an expanded playing field, and it temporarily opens up the context of the show, letting it feel a little less constrained and stuffy.

In ALF, though, the title character is a centuries-old intergalactic pederast. That is its normal, grounded reality. Zany situations are built in. We don’t need to do this…especially since the dreams are never any less dull or more creative than anything we get in the show proper.

Oh well. At least this dream sequence contains the Ochmoneks. More specifically Mr. Ochmonek, who welcomes Willie to the bar by saying, “All you need is love! There’s a two drink minimum.”

It’s rock solid delivery. Seriously. No snark from me at all on this one; LaMotta’s a fucking ace.

Sadly, though, the dream isn’t about him. It’s about Willie being Willie while everyone else around him gets to be a hippie and smoke a lot of drugpuffs and rub each other’s nipples and exchange patchouli recipes, or whatever the hell the ALF writers think hippies did.

Nightmare Hippie Kate starts telling Willie about this awesome guy named Snout, and if you can’t tell where this is going you should probably have that head injury looked at.

Yes, it’s ALF dressed as flower child icon Bruce Springsteen.

Wait, why Springsteen? His first album wasn’t released until 1973.

Well, you see, there actually is a really clever connection here: they already paid for a puppet-sized jean jacket for “Don’t It Make Your Brown Eyes Blue?” and they wanted to make damn well sure they got their money’s worth. Also, Springsteen played music, and Woodstock, the writers are pretty sure, had some music, so, really, it’s a seamless fit.

ALF says a bunch of vaguely hippie things like “sit-in” and “hey man” and “you can’t rebuild without tearing down first.” To which Willie says a bunch of Willie things like “Hnnnggghymmn pffyyvr fsstmnrm.”

It turns out everyone in the Hippie Tavern agrees with whatever the fuck ALF says and disagrees with whatever the fuck Willie says because one of them is wearing a suit and holy shit I could not possibly care less about any of this.

Then it turns out that Willie and ALF are going to be roommates, which causes Willie to shit the bed and wake up.

Actually, no, he doesn’t. We just watch him toss and turn for a bit and then…

Oh fucking suck my god damned taint.

A time skip? In a dream.

I…

WHY

Why are we leaping forward four years in a dream? What kind of dream has establishing subtitles? Is Willie actually asleep for four years? What the pissing shit are they going for here?

Mr. Ochmonek — who goes by the name Big Daddy in this sequence, suggesting a subconscious attraction that I truly do not want you discussing in the comments — is updating the specials board.

Wow, he sure couldn’t have done that four years ago. Thank Christ for the time skip.

Willie comes in and…wait. Why wasn’t he already there? This is his fucking dream. Was he dreaming of a restaurant owner writing on a chalkboard for a few minutes before he himself entered the room? What kind of dream is this?

Ugh, who cares. He’s turned into Shaggy from Scooby Doo I guess.

Willie reveals that he’s graduated with honors, even though he’s a hippie, then ALF comes in, and ALF also graduated, even though he’s a hippie. No, I have no idea what we’re meant to glean from this, and it only gets more confusing.

ALF says he has a job lined up for him, which makes Willie flip out and accuse him of abandoning his ideals, which makes ALF lecture him for wasting his life…

…but I don’t see why any of this is happening. They’re acting like there’s this big gulf between them, but if they both graduated and have jobs and accolades to carry them into the workforce, why are they accusing each other of anything? Didn’t they both end up in the same place?

I honestly have no clue. They’re each upset at each other, which makes it seem like they’ve each revealed something that the other finds unpalatable. And yet…they both kind of revealed the same thing. And it’s nothing bad. And…they were still both hippies. And they’re both graduating and going to work. Why is this a conflict?

Fuck that…why is this a dream?

Who the fuck knows. It’s such a manufactured complication and it adds nothing to anything. Good thing we jumped four years ahead to get to it.

Six years later Willie wakes up and heads to the kitchen to speak with ALF.

He either stretches or does the Chicken Dance, I can’t tell which. Then he says that ALF can have the attic, because he used to be a hippie, but then he wasn’t anymore, and he had a dream about not being a hippie, and then later in the dream he was a hippie again.

With that trail of sound logic followed to its obvious conclusion, Willie eats a cookie and the episode ends.

In the short scene before the credits ALF puts on some library disco music and bops around.

COOL

Personally, I’d have far preferred an episode about Willie accidentally eating the brown acid.

MELMAC FACTS: Willie is from Decatur, Illinois. Melmackians had a word for guys who pierced their ears: pirates. The fact that ALF swears it’s not a gay joke doesn’t make it any less of a gay joke.