Category: alf

Long-time followers of this series (and this blog (…and me…)) know that shit happens. I’ll forget to schedule a post, I’ll run out of time to write something, I’ll get sidetracked by another project. The ALF Reviews series is something I really do try hard to keep up with, whether or not it looks that way on your end. I try…so hard.

“Promises, Promises” represents a significant first, then. It didn’t go live last week when it was supposed to, but time, for once, wasn’t the issue. I had all of my screengrabs, all of my notes, and the only thing I had to do was sit down and write about it.

The problem was that “Promises, Promises” was such a shitty, insulting, disturbing, disgusting piece of television that I couldn’t write about it. I needed a break from it. I honestly had to step away for a few days and forget how utterly miserable it made me feel. That’s the first time I’ve had to do that with an episode of ALF. And as you know how little I already enjoy episodes of ALF, this should be telling you something.

“Promises, Promises” is a wreck beyond all comprehension. I’ve come out of television shows feeling despair before (hello, “Ozymandias“), but this is a fucking sitcom. Its worst crime should be that it isn’t funny. That’s also a fairly regular crime for ALF, so I’m almost immune to it. Weeks pass and I look back on some reviews and wonder why I didn’t tear certain episodes an even larger ass hole…but the reason is that I’m used to this show sucking. I don’t think I’ve softened over time…I think I’ve just realized that certain aspects of the show aren’t worth bothering with.

Oh, “Promises, Promises.” How ever did you manage to give me too much to bother with?

I honestly can’t promise you that I’ll do this one justice. I’ll try, certainly…but articulating my feelings about this episode isn’t going to be easy.

Either way…enough stalling. Let’s talk about the episode.

One good thing: after the two-parter we just finished, we’re back to standalone stories. Until next week, at least, when we start another two-parter. For fuck’s sake, ALF. Give me something to be happy about, will you?

Actually, ALF does. The episode opens with the family playing Scrabble; I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I like it when the family does family things. It’s not often that this show remembers that these people are supposed to be related, and, you know, should probably interact now and again. So when it does remember, and when it has the characters saying more than “Gordon Shumway is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful extra-terrestrial being I’ve ever known in my life,” I start paying attention. Sometimes it’s even worth it.

Here, I confess, it is.

ALF plays a word and earns two triple word scores, using all of his letters in the process. Brian, savvier than he’s ever been (not to mention more talkative), dismisses the unfamiliar word as being Melmackian. ALF asks, “So?”

Big whoop, right? ALF played an imaginary word and now we’ll get some interstellar standup about about how things are so much different on Soviet Melmac.

But…no! The word ALF plays is “quidnunc.” My spell check doesn’t believe me, but it’s a real word. I couldn’t begin to tell you where I learned that (probably a Word-of-the-Day calendar, because, honestly, where the fuck else would it be?) but I was all ready to lay into ALF for not knowing that this was actually a word.

The joke works on a lot of levels. Well, a few levels. But anything more than one level is a lot for ALF.

First, it’s the word itself, which is silly. It means one who enjoys gossip. Not a very common word and certainly one that’s bound to win you a Scrabble game of your own. The fact that ALF of all characters played this word is a pretty good joke in itself.

The second level is the family’s reaction. They haven’t heard the word before, but based on ALF’s historical behavior, they call alien shenanigans. We only spend 25 minutes per week with this guy…but they see him every waking minute of the day. If we think he launches into Melmackian nonsense a bit too often, you can imagine how sick of it they must be. It makes sense that by this point, after so much time has passed, they’d be quick to call him on his bullshit and shut it down.

The real punchline comes, though, with the third level of comedy: everyone is surprised, ALF included, when Willie finds it in the dictionary. It really was a Melmackian term, ALF says. He was just trying to be a dick. He had no idea the English language had the same word. (The meaning, at least, is different: there it meant “one who wears meat.”)

My favorite level of comedy here, I’m sure, is unintentional. After ALF admits it’s not an English word (or foreign word that’s been adopted into regular English usage), it’s as good as out of play. That’s how Scrabble works.

But Willie looks it up in the dictionary anyway, because it was challenged rather than dismissed. I don’t think this is deliberate characterization, but it’s good characterization all the same. Of course Willie’s going to consult a reference book even when he doesn’t have to. Those are the rules, and he’s a fucking dork. (I mean that with love this time, Willie; I’d have done the exact same thing.)

“Promises, Promises” is off to a good start. If only the episode had ended right here.

Obviously, it doesn’t, and the incoming cascade of shit is heralded by Lynn entering the living room and telling Brian that his hamster has developed a foot fetish and is currently masturbating inside one of her shoes. He runs off to masturbate into the other, and then we get an exchange that has me conflicted.

See, the episode is about Lynn dating. Fine. But what we set up here — again, probably not deliberately — is a much better episode on that topic than what we actually get.

Lynn is waiting for her date to arrive, and Willie assumes she’s going to see Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and get some pizza. But Lynn corrects him: they’re seeing The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and they’re going to have sushi.

The way her parents recoil just enough, and in silence, drives home very well the idea that Lynn is growing up. Something has changed, and lots of other things are about to as well. The daughter they knew is now a choice of movie and dinner closer to the door.

It’s good. At least it would be, if this was what the episode was actually trying to tell us.

Then Willie says, “Say hi to Patchouli for us.”

At least, that’s what I think he said. Max Wright took elocution lessons from a jammed blender, so it sounds more like “FffsaahyaaAAit-pp-zhjewly ffhhurruss.” Patchouli is my best guess.

It turns out, though, that she’s seeing a guy named Eddie, and her parents get upset because they’ve never met Eddie. I got news for you, Tanners, you’ve never met most of the guys Lynn’s been with. And if this one’s springing for sushi, I’d encourage her to keep him around for a while.

Lynn doing the prime time equivalent of hopping into bed with anyone who asks has been an aspect of her character since before she was a character, so I don’t know why hearing the name “Eddie” makes these idiots freak out the way they do. She’s not with Patchouli anymore — whoever that was — but so what? She’s not with Lizard, or Duckworth, or Chunk, or Sneezy, or Zits, or Pimple, or Rash anymore either. Surely the mention of a new boyfriend isn’t anywhere near enough to set them off like this. She’s always with someone new. Wouldn’t they be going apeshit every three or four days?

Lynn’s evolution as a character has been probably the most satisfying thing to witness through these episodes, so it’s disappointing now that the show is flip-flopping with her. Sweeping away all of that pesky character growth that made her interesting, we’re back at the blank teenage girl we met in season one. And that’s all the evidence we need that the show itself wasn’t aware the character’s growth. It was a happy accident, and now, knowingly or not, we’re going to squash it like a bug.

She was all over town with guys, then she was with Lizard for a while, then she was getting married, then she wasn’t, and then she was over that by the end of the episode, and now she’s…who knows?

I sure don’t. And that’s damned disappointing, because with the exception of a few fumbles along the way, I honestly had a feeling I knew what to expect of Lynn Tanner. The joke’s on me, I guess; every week the writers just do with her whatever they feel like doing, and I’m the schmoe who thinks he sees a character arc in the way the pieces fall.

Anyway, I haven’t talked about Eddie himself. He comes in to get Lynn and he’s some greasy foreign guy with his shirt unbuttoned down to his navel. He speaks with a comedy accent and man, I am absolutely convinced this will be brilliant television. Aren’t you?

Beverly Archer is the credited writer on this. As you might remember, she appeared in “Someone to Watch Over Me” last season (another two parter…fucking fucking fuck, ALF), and we heard her voice in “Breaking Up is Hard to Do.” She’s…well, she’s good.

Aside from what we’ve seen of her in this show, she played Iola on Mama’s Family and Gunny on Major Dad. She’s had too many other roles to list, but those are the shows I remember her from personally. They were by no means very good shows, but Archer put in solid performances every week. She’s one of those actors that seems to have a natural talent when it comes to elevating average material, and she has an impressive sense of how to “inhabit” a character, rather than just dress up like them and say their lines.

I have no idea how much Archer had to do with “Promises, Promises,” but maybe this is proof that she was born to deliver comedy rather than write it.

We get too many jokes about Eddie from the start, and they’re all…bizarre. He has no last name, for one. Or he used to, but got rid of it when he didn’t see a purpose to having one. Ha ha. He’s been to graduate school and he taught history for a while, which means he’s hella old. Oh, and he met Lynn at the mall when he was signing books…but no, he’s not a writer. He’s a substitute novelist who signs books for other authors if they can’t make it. Also, he drinks diet soda! Through this scene ALF is mocking him by singing circus songs in the kitchen — which somehow Eddie can’t hear though everyone else does — and Jesus Christ, how many quirks do we need to pile on this guy we’ll never see again? Pick a fucking joke and be done with it.

Anyway, while Eddie talks he touches Lynn’s hair, which might as well be aggressive fingerbanging for the way Willie reacts.

Look at him. He looks like he just realized he left gay hobo pornography on the dashboard of his car.

All this shit with Eddie is bad enough in the first place — by which I mean it’s simply not funny — but it also undoes what I thought was the nice moment earlier. Sushi? The Unbearable Lightness of Being? Lynn growing up?

Nah, fuck that. She’s just trying to get this substitute author to dip his quill.

This in itself could have still led to a good episode…but I’ll get to that momentarily, when the point is better illustrated. For now, let me just say that for all the potential shown up-front, this becomes probably the worst episode of the series so far.

You got lucky, “ALF’s Special Christmas.”

Anne Schedeen, surprising no-one, is the best thing about this sequence several times over. She gets her first great moment in when she offers Eddie a soda, and then asks Lynn to help her.

“Help you get one soda?” Lynn asks, and the glare she gets in return is a thing of steely perfection.

Honestly, as lousy as this episode is overall, I’m surprised they didn’t have her say, “Yes, help me get one soda,” or some other annoying way of explaining the joke…but they didn’t. The camera holds on Schedeen long enough for it to be both funny and realistic when Lynn’s better judgment kicks in, and she goes to help her mother.

Then, in the kitchen, there’s a lousy moment even Schedeen can’t save (having to deliberately lower her volume as she insists she’s not overreacting), but she still gets another great delivery in. After she gets the soda she closes the refrigerator door just slightly too hard, cramming her tongue into her cheek to keep from saying something she shouldn’t. Then she approaches the table and says, “Let me get right to the point. He’s too old for you.”

All of that happens in just a few seconds…I don’t want to make the moment seem larger than it really is, but it’s certainly the strongest performance in the episode. Granted, that’s saying exactly nothing, but it’s always nice to see Anne Schedeen proving that she at least tries to salvage this garbage.

Then Willie comes in and says basically the same thing, only through the mouth of a man who sounds like a malfunctioning drive-through speaker. He does refer to Lynn as “barely eighteen,” though, even though that’s clearly wrong. It comes into play in a bit (in the worst possible way…), but “The Boy Next Door” revealed that the already-18 Lynn was getting ready to celebrate her birthday…presumably her 19th. Now, about a year after that, she’s “barely 18.”

And if that suggests to you “barely legal,” good. You’d have been an excellent fit for the ALF writing staff.

We get a ONE WEEK LATER caption, which I have to admit I didn’t expect. This time Lynn is getting ready for her date with Joe Piscopo.

While this character — whose name is Randy — doesn’t actually succeed in making me miss Eddie, he brings me damned close. His big joke is that he always says, “‘Kay.” You know…instead of anything else, ever. Is it a rule that all truly shitty sitcoms need one of these characters? Ones that exist to make repeated, irritating punchlines out of words like “Huh,” “Whatever,” and “Whoa”?

I actually feel bad for this guy. I mean, he certainly gives no indication that he’s a good actor, but even the most useless idiot deserves material better than this.

Willie invites him in and he says ‘kay. Kate asks him how he is, and he says ‘kay. Lynn says it’s time to go, and he says ‘kay. If you’re a big fan of hearing one word said several times, Randy is the character for you.

There’s a better attempt at comedy when Willie tries to make smalltalk with this meatheaded football guy. It’s not great, but Max Wright flounders around on this side of believability while Randy shifts his weight back and forth between his legs and refuses to sit down. It’s convincingly awkward, and while the writing isn’t any better, the tension is successful enough that it becomes funny.

What I don’t understand, though, is why Willie and Kate like him. While I clearly don’t give a shit about this guy, it’s essential that I point out that Lynn’s parents approve of him. That’s fine; I don’t mind that on its own. But when taken into account with Eddie, I’m not sure what the difference is. Both of these assholes seem like bad fits for her, and both of these assholes seem like guys that no parent should be thrilled with. It’s odd, and we never get a reason that Willie and Kate like him. If they think he’s better than Eddie, that’s fine. But they seem to think he’s good for their daughter on his own merits…and what are those, exactly?

So far this episode seems like it could turn into a set of revealing little one-acts about Lynn’s bad romantic decisions, but that’s shot dead when the Tanners actually like this one.

Again, why? Maybe Lynn thinks he’s hot, and maybe Kate remembers what it was like to be plowed by a man who, at some point in his life, had a muscle. But what the hell does Willie see in this guy?

That other episode would have been a good one. At least potentially. Cartoons like Eddie and Randy can serve a purpose there; they need to be exaggerated, because we’ll only see them for a few minutes before moving on to the next batch. What ultimately matters is that we get a mosaic of Lynn’s current proclivities, so that we can either learn more about her through them, or so that we can see her come to terms with them and move beyond.

But, no, we don’t get that. As much as it seems like we might.

Nor do we get another potentially great idea, about Lynn discovering who she is. (At least in some small way, and even if the discovery is only temporary.)

I’m picturing something along the lines of Chekhov’s The Darling. It’s one of my favorite short stories, and I recommend you read it if you have the interest. (In fact, read anything of Chekhov’s. None of it could possibly be a waste of your time.)

Here, we’d see Lynn with one guy. Eddie, say. Eddie likes sushi and cerebral films, so Lynn likes them as well. Patchouli or whomever the fuck came before him liked pizza and cartoons. When she was with Patchouli, she liked pizza and cartoons. Then she moves on to Randy, who likes beer and football. Now Lynn likes beer and football.

The episodic format is easy to compare to a series of short stories. Serialized programs like Better Call Saul can afford to span novels, but concentrated, clear tales — ideally with some kind of identifiable statement or observation about the characters — work well in 24-minute chunks. The Darling spins its titular character through a series of relationships. She bends and shapes herself to better complement her current suitor, who inevitably moves on in his life without her. At the end, she’s left alone. In my creative writing class, somebody asked Stephen Dunn (whom I was incredibly fortunate to have as an instructor, twice) what the moral was.

“Don’t be a darling,” he said flatly.

Lynn doesn’t need to come to such a despairing end, but she could still go through this kind of accelerated romantic whirlwind, after which she’s left constantly disappointed and dissatisfied. Why? Because she’s a darling. And she can realize that fact, maybe in a heart-to-heart with ALF, and decide to be herself for a while.

You know.

Something good…

…yeah we’re not going to get anything good. Instead we cut to ALF watching Aliens who the fuck cares when.

ALF’s seen this before. In “Night Train” we learned that he had nightmares from watching it. I won’t take that as a problem (his reactions to what’s happening on-screen could well be due to the fact that this is the first time he’s actually watching it, and not cowering in terror), but I will take as a problem the fact that they say Aliens when they meant Alien. He’s yelling, after all, at Sigourney Weaver, telling her not to go back for the cat.

“This is no time for a snack!” he shouts, in what will sadly be the highlight of the entire episode. It’s a perfectly okay line, but she doesn’t “go back for the cat” in Aliens. She leaves the cat home in that film. Toward the end, she does go back for Newt, and that sequence plays a similar role to the cat one in the first film, but Alien is when she goes back for the cat.

Going back for the cat does seem like a bad idea when you see it happen, but, ultimately, it might be what allowed her to survive. But that’s a discussion for a whole other time.

Right now we’re watching a very different alien, though one that’s just as terrifying. This full-body ALF thing is really fucking creepy to me. Don’t give me this shit. Give me the midget or give me death.

Look at this. It looks fucking terrible. How on Earth does ALF manage to look more like a puppet when you can see his entire body?

GIVE ME MIDGET

Anyway, Lynn comes home and ALF sees that she’s actually been railing the old guy all night. ALF pops up in the window making funny faces, because WHO FUCKING CARES IF ANYONE SEES HIM ANY MORE FUCK OFF

Then Lynn comes inside, and there’s some really odd foley. It took me a few times to realize that we were hearing Eddie start up his car and drive away. It sounds more like we’re hearing Mr. Ochmonek in the next yard playing the washboard.

ALF confronts her about getting plowed by one no-good miscreant instead of another.

Again, why was Randy the superior choice? I get that Eddie’s supposed to be some oily, grabby creep, but why is a vacant numbskull any better? Especially unanimously so?

It’s here that the episode — which has had a few seconds of actual decency — really bursts into flames.

Lynn admits that for the past week, she’s not been seeing Randy. She’s been tutoring him, and then sneaking off to let the substitute author finger through her manuscript.

And that, along with everything that comes from it, is what I hate.

For a family show, this is a pretty awful thing to normalize. I’ve joked before about ALF and other characters acting inappropriately with the kids, but I figured on some level it had to be unintentional. The writing staff must have begun and ended with Tobias Funke if all of it was unintentional, but this episode brings it to the fore. It knows what it’s talking about. It knows what it’s suggesting. And it’s treating it as…well, not as what it should be treated as.

“Promises, Promises” plays off of this reveal as though Lynn told her parents a fib. Which is true, of course. But more true is the fact that her parents didn’t want their teenage daughter to let an older man take sexual advantage of her. She’s letting him anyway, and she’d rather not tell them.

The way it’s normalized as though it’s a standard sitcom beat for a “barely eighteen” (as in, “barely not a victim of statutory rape”) teenager to be fondled and groped by a slavering lech is abhorrent. You can do plots like this, but then the plot has to be about this. It can’t be about the fact that ALF knows a secret and Lynn told a lie. That’s bullshit. The plot is that the Tanners, for fucking once, tried to protect their daughter, and she’s being sexually manipulated by a predator.

If you think I’m reaching when I say that they’re treating this like a standard sitcom beat, never fear; the episode makes it overtly clear that that’s what it’s doing. Specifically, it equates this to a secret ALF is keeping, too: he broke Kate’s porcelain ballerina by dropping it into the toilet.

Equivalency, there. The unseen destruction of a never-before-mentioned knickknack obviously doesn’t rise to meet the gravity of what’s happening with Lynn; instead, it trivializes it. The girl that we’ve watched grow for about three years (during most of which she was somehow 18) is in a tremendously worrying relationship with a creep that I’m pretty sure any rational human being would want to punch in the neck when they found out what he was doing to her.

But, hey, it’s just comedy! This kind of stuff happens all the time. See? ALF dropped a ballerina at some point. What’s the problem?

This scene contains what should probably have been a moment I really enjoyed. ALF mimes the ballerina slipping down the crapper, and Lynn mimes the same gesture back, as though in confirmation. Then both of them, in silent commiseration, mime it back and forth for a while. It’s adorable out of context. In context it’s a massively tone-deaf reminder that this episode is discussing something potentially very horrible — by no means anything kids at home should see as normal or excusable — and yet has no idea that it’s not inherently funny.

Seriously, this bothers me. I know Lynn doesn’t end up naked in the trunk of his car, but the fact that the episode raises the issue and then treats it like a standard sitcom plot is hugely problematic. Lynn at no point faces any danger, and doesn’t even really have to face the milder consequence of lying about it. It’s dismissed by the episode and all of the characters within it…the conflict becomes the fact that ALF inadvertently snitched on her, and her subsequent anger toward him.

You know that infamous episode of Diff’rent Strokes in which Arnold and his pal get molested by Gordon Jump? It was terrible, yes, but it was a Very Special Episode, and it acted like one. It knew it had to be one if it was going to have little kids getting fondled by a bicycle repairman. And while I won’t go to bat for the quality of that episode, I will say that it’s a damn sight better than it would have been if the writers had played it for laughs, and had Arnold and his buddy shrug it off like they did with every other conflict of the week. Can you imagine a version of that episode in which Arnold’s chum is mad at him for ratting out the pedophile, and the actual sexual assault is just a background detail we don’t need to pay attention to?

ALF can. ALF thinks that would be hilarious.

Why aren’t you laughing?

Randy comes over at some point, and the Tanners thought Lynn was with him, so ALF volunteers that the elderly guy they forbade her to see is spraying semen into her. Lynn comes home and gets grounded, at which point she sarcastically thanks ALF, repeatedly, for ruining her life.

Personally, I don’t think interrupting her late-night fuck sessions with an elderly man qualifies as life-ruining, especially in comparison to the fact that he prevented her from going away to college, burned her house down, murdered her great uncle, and god knows what else, but whatever.

It actually got really hard to watch at this point, because this was where it became obvious that the Very Special Issue is Lynn being mad at ALF for finking.

And that’s played straight. Because, hey, why not? Don’t young girls have a right to privacy? Some old man wants to manipulate them into an unbalanced relationship of sexual subservience, and you need to go tell mom and dad on them?

This is…gross. Not least of which because it suggests an entire room full of writers who don’t think this is gross.

That screengrab right there?

That comes about one minute after Lynn is caught engaging in carnal relations with a sex pest.

Just want to point that out, because I could understand if you saw something like that as totally fucking irrelevant and tasteless.

You want to get ALF into some Mexican garb and have him sing a song? Well, fine, but you’ll need a reason.

Anyone got any ideas? What’s that? Lynn is effectively raped? That’s what I was thinking, too! Hilarious! Let’s definitely go with that.

This is a weird episode, and it really is uncomfortable to watch. It took me three days to get through this one, and then when I sat down to write about it…I couldn’t. I stopped. I stepped away and said, “No.” I just…couldn’t do this one, guys.

It gets even worse when we see Willie and Kate in the kitchen, laughing and being silly about the whole thing, reinforcing the idea that the real problem is her unwillingness to forgive ALF.

Kate — this girl’s mother, remember — even says it wasn’t a big deal; Lynn just told a lie.

Very true to life, that. It’s just like the mother of a teenage girl to be flippant when she finds out that her daughter’s been diddled by a guy several decades older than her.

Kate was the one who very rightly told Lynn on no uncertain terms that she was not to see this man…presumably because she was afraid he’d do exactly what she now knows he did. And now that her nightmare has been made reality, Kate seems to think a good chuckle at the breakfast table marks the last time anyone ever needs to bring it up.

What the fuck weird ass parallel universe horse shit am I watching here? And it gets odder.

And, yes, somehow, more repulsive.

Kate brings up the fact that she didn’t tell her parents that she was dating Willie for six months. One might wish to point out the fact that he’s also not 35 fucking years her senior, but it doesn’t end there: Willie was apparently dating Kate’s sister at the time as well.

ALF and the audience of dead people seem to think that’s funny, especially since we learn that Kate’s sister isn’t very attractive. Willie was poking a piggie! Hilarious stuff! How many ways is it possible to simultaneously sexualize and demean women in a single episode? ALF doesn’t know, but it’s determined to find out.

Me?

No thanks. I don’t want to be part of this sex festival.

Lynn is then threatened with further punishment if she doesn’t make amends with the naked alien who lives in the hamper, which is when Lynn blurts out that ALF destroyed Kate’s porcelain ballerina.

In response, Kate does this:

So remember when I observed how absurd it was that the destruction of a heretofore unmentioned knickknack would be treated with the same gravity as the sexual assault of one of the show’s main characters? I was wrong. It’s actually, apparently, much more severe.

Benji Gregory is then tasked with the unenviable duty of pretending to cry over ALF’s impending departure. Yes, Lynn won’t be nice to him anymore, so he’s fixing his space ship and leaving.

That’s the end of the series guys. BYE

…of course fucking not. “Promises, Promises” being the last time we see ALF’s miserable ass would actually count as some kind of redeeming quality, so we can’t have that.

This whole sequence of ALF getting ready to leave is played for embarrassing sincerity.

Just like the broken ballerina is more devastating to Kate (by several orders of magnitude) than her daughter’s safety and innocence, it’s sadder to Fusco et. al. that ALF might leave than it is that Lynn had to go through any of this crap.

In the short scene before the credits ALF and Willie rebuild Kate’s ballerina, undoing the damage. They can’t undo the damage to Lynn, but who cares about her anyway?

Next week ALF meets a magical Thanksgiving hobo. God, I never thought I’d look forward to that.

We ended last week on a riveting cliffhanger: would ALF really devote an entire second episode to showing clips of itself?

Well, breathe easy, dear reader. The answer is yes!

Of course, we can’t hold this against “Tonight, Tonight.” As I mentioned in the last review, this originally aired as a one-hour special. While one hour of continuous ALF clips sounds very much like my own personal hell, it’s not quite as self-indulgent as airing two half-hours of clips on back to back weeks. We also can’t hold it against “Tonight, Tonight” that this particular clip show opens with a recap of last week’s clip show. As fucking bizarre as that is, it’s a quirk of breaking it into time-slot friendly chunks for syndication. I’ll save my venom for the stuff the show actually does wrong, rather than the wrong that gets done to it down the line.

After a reprise of last week’s telephone chat with Johnny Carson, ALF attempts to console the legendary talk show host by offering to spend a night in a hot tub with him. So…that happens. (And I have a revised vision of my own personal hell.)

Again, we don’t hear Carson’s voice, which is fully expected in one way (God knows he was well above this shit), and yet really strange in another…but that observation won’t make sense until later, so I’ll get to it then.

Anyway, Ed McMahon’s first line in the episode is “You’re in big trouble, mister,” because he mistakenly believed he agreed to guest star in that show starring the more famous Tanners. ALF tells him to go fuck himself and then shows five full minutes of clips. Wow, we really blasted right through the episode, didn’t we?

This string of clips includes one I’ve never seen before. It’s obviously an outtake, because Brian is smiling, but other than that I have no idea what I’m looking at.

ALF pulls on a rope or something while Kate screams at him to stop. He doesn’t, which is hilarious to the recorded sounds of laughing dead people. Then some plaster falls on the table while she holds her son close, resigning herself to the fact that every one of them will die in this house.

I have no idea what episode that clip is from. When I reviewed season one I was stuck using syndication edits, but since then the episodes have been uncut. Maybe it’s something that was trimmed from a season one episode, or maybe it’s yet another case of an ALF clip show “reminding” us of something that hasn’t even aired yet. Guess where I’m laying my bet.

Then we’re back on the set of The Tonight Show, and ALF says he needs to go somewhere. He asks Ed to take over hosting duties, but thinks better of it when he realizes that he can just show clips of himself instead. That way nobody has to stand around asking, “Where’s Poochie?”

There’s a theme to this set of clips, too. “ALF leaving the room.”

No, I’m not joking. We really do get a string of clips that show ALF traveling from one room to the other.

Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and then answer honestly: did this shit really need to be one hour?

We come back, but ALF isn’t there. Fred De Cordova takes a seat so that he can respect sitcom blocking limitations and asks where ALF went.

“Who cares?” Ed McMahon replies. “At least he’s gone.”

Man, who would have guessed Ed McMahon would turn out to be my soul mate?

Fred’s raising a valid question, but it’s not the question I’m raising. See, I’d prefer to know why the fuck this is still airing. In their universe, The Tonight Show seems to be treated like a live program. I’m willing to accept that as an explanation of why ALF manages to get away with a bit more than he should.

I’m not, however, willing to accept that as an explanation of why they let him go apeshit on their stage for a solid hour in front of a national audience.

I know it’s not good form to interrupt live programming and replace it with something else. You really shouldn’t do it unless there’s some kind of exceptional reason to, but I guess I’m old fashioned because I’d consider a space alien wrecking up the place to fit that definition just fine.

Fred De Cordova shouldn’t be asking where ALF went. He should already have shut down production, and viewers at home should be halfway into a classic Carson rerun.

The number one rule of live television isn’t “don’t stop.” That might be rule number two. Rule number one, however, is don’t, under any circumstances, broadcast a live waste of everybody’s time.

You either need to admit defeat and abandon The Tonight Show with Gordon Shumway, or you need to stab ALF in the brain with a screwdriver and let Ed McMahon take over for the duration.

Anyway, we find out where ALF is and…

I don’t know what this is.

I don’t.

I have no motherfucking clue what the motherfuck I’m looking at.

I’m broken. ALF broke me. I’ve lost all faith in humanity and want to cry.

I assume this is some kind of stolen Carson bit. I’m also assuming, like “Melmac the Magnificent,” there’s no twist given to the original material at all. Paul Fusco must have a motivational poster on his wall that reads IMITATION IS THE HIGHEST FORM OF PUPPETRY.

I’m assuming there’s no twist because nothing in this sequence has anything to do with ALF, ALF, Melmac, or anything else specific to the character. And I’m assuming it’s a pre-existing Carson bit because ALF does a very obvious vocal impression of him while he sells vitamins or who the fuck fucking fuck fuck.

There is an attractive blonde (the screen grab doesn’t do her justice, I promise) who gets to stand there while ALF insults her repeatedly until the skit ends, at which point she’s required to rub him while he quivers with sexual excitement. It’s quality television.

I don’t have any idea who this woman is, but for fuck’s sake almighty she earned her paycheck.

Then we get a commercial break, with one of those illustrated title cards. It’s ALF as the Statue of Liberty, reminding you that there is no God. It’s also a near-exact copy of a title card from the previous episode, and a near-exact reprise of the Mt. Rushmore gag we see in a clip from “Hail to the Chief.” Even by clip show standards, this is some lazy-ass bullshit.

Back in host-mode, ALF calls Ed McMahon “Edipus.” That’s sure to lead to some interesting explanations from the parents of the kids watching at home.

Then he introduces another set of clips and…well, I’ve got to be honest: I like them.

No, I do. I mean it.

They’re clips of ALF reciting a bunch of my Melmac Facts, and that actually works.

See, Melmac lore* is far from important to the show, but it adds a lot of flavor. New viewers may enjoy having this unfamiliar culture fleshed out for them, and current fans may enjoy the reminders of all the little details they’ve forgotten. It’s a condensed history of a civilization that makes up a huge, largely-unspoken part of ALF’s background…and which we’ve never seen, outside of a single scene in “Help Me, Rhonda.”

This is one of the very, very few things that actually deserves to be recapped. What’s more…they’re actually funny. Unlike most clips — which are obviously carved from a larger storyline and therefore feel out of place — these work perfectly well in isolation. They’re setup and punchline in one, not weighed down by their original contexts in the show and perfectly suited to being parceled out.

In one of the clips, ALF says, “On Melmac, some guy called me a snitch just because I turned him in to the Secret Police.” That’s a damned solid line, and it doesn’t matter what episode it comes from.**

By no means am I arguing that ALF needed a clip show, but I will say that as long as ALF is doing a clip show, this is exactly the sort of thing it should contain. Especially when the alternative is clips of ALF falling off of things and burping.

Shockingly, this perfectly-good series of clips is followed by the framing story’s first legitimately funny moment.

Ed McMahon informs ALF that their next guest, Pope John Paul II, is waiting backstage. ALF says, “Great! Let’s bring him out!”

To the strains of Ave Maria, the curtains part to reveal His Holiness.

At which point ALF says, “…right after I play these clips,” and the curtain falls right back in the pope’s face.

It’s an easy visual gag, but it’s perfectly timed. It works because it has exactly the right rhythm. It’s also a great, absurd way to parody the conventions of the talk show format…which is what a better sitcom would have been doing all along, rather than having its lead character buy right into it with no interesting spin whatsoever.

A moment like this belongs…well, it belongs in a comedy. What does it say about “Tonight, Tonight” that this qualifies as an exception? Well, it says what it’s been saying all along: this isn’t a comedy. It’s Paul Fusco’s late night pitch package.

Very strangely, this selection of clips includes one of ALF murdering Willie’s uncle. Is that really something that needs to be spotlighted? Is causing the death of a nice old man truly one of ALF’s most beloved moments?

How strange.

Rich Little*** then shows up on the set of The Tonight Show because Carson called him and asked him to go take over from ALF. I’m sure glad Johnny gave a shit about the fact that they’re broadcasting this trainwreck live, because nobody else working on it seemed to.

But, of course, Rich doesn’t take over. He just shows off his Johnny Carson impression for a few lines and steps back so ALF can have the spotlight again.

…and this is why I’m confused by the fact that we didn’t hear Johnny on the phone earlier. If you’ve already paid Rich Little — and he’s already doing that impression in your episode — why not have him actually play Johnny in that conversation?

It’s weird that we have ALF doing a Carson impression, and then Little doing a Carson impression, but when Carson himself calls nobody is doing a Carson impression.

Maybe having Little-as-Little on the show instead of Little-as-Carson could have worked, but not just to trot him out and forget about him.

Perhaps Little could have done his Carson impression, just as he does here, followed immediately by ALF telling him that his impression sucks dick. Then the two of them could start competitively impersonating Johnny…kind of like Steve Coogan and Rob Bryden with their Michael Caine impressions in The Trip.****

But that would require Paul Fusco having to share the spotlight, and God fuckin’ forbid. Instead Little gets a few seconds to do his thing, and then we’re back to clips.

Jesus.

We get our final title card (mercy of small mercies), and then ALF says, “Let’s put it to a vote. Was this the best Tonight Show ever?”

The audience, of course, applauds wildly. See that, network executives? ALL THIS COULD BE YOURS

And that’s pretty much the end of the show. This half was far more clip-heavy than the first, which makes it feel lazier but also makes it a hell of a lot more watchable.

A friend pointed out to me last week that Fusco’s egotism is in overdrive here and, necessarily, in the “We Are Family” Late Night scene. After all, he doesn’t just make ALF the guest on a talk show — which certainly would have made a lot more sense in either context — he makes him the host. ALF isn’t just popular enough to be featured on great shows…in Fusco’s mind, ALF should be the great show. Not because he earned it, but because he’s ALF.

To Fusco, ALF is already “bigger” than his own show. He appears here not in a fantasy sequence or a dream or anything like that…he’s just ALF, the real-world celebrity. Notice who hasn’t been invited to this networking luncheon? That’s right…literally anybody else from the show ALF. By no means is ALF in this together with the Tanners. The moment he, and Fusco, can shed them, they will be shed.

ALF is a prefabricated icon, designed to be plugged into everything imaginable. That lousy sitcom that bears his name? That’s just one thing of many that he does…or will do. He’s destined for bigger things…not like those limited supporting players Max Wright, Anne Schedeen, Benji Gregory, or Andrea Elson. They should be glad to spend 80 hours a week in danger of breaking their spines for the honor of filming a show with him. They should be thanking him.

It says a lot that only ALF invites only himself to this hour-long celebration of ALF. The other actors could all have been killed in a bus accident (on their way, no doubt, to film on-location in the desert for “ALF’s Passable Passover”) and neither ALF nor Fusco would have been any worse for the loss. They were designed to be disposable.

In the comments for last week’s review, Casey reminded us that Kermit the Frog once hosted The Tonight Show. He was kind enough to leave a link, which I encourage you to click, but I confess I didn’t have the time to watch it between then and now.

I will, however, make a very confident assumption: it was a lot better than this.

Jim Henson was a skilled improvisor. He had to be; he worked with children an awful lot on Sesame Street. No matter how much you rehearse or write in advance, something is going to turn out differently than expected. Henson learned over the course of a long (but still far too short) career how to handle situations as they arose, and I can very easily see him making Kermit a fitting enough host for The Tonight Show.

Also worth noting, though, is that Henson was invited to perform Kermit as the host of that show. That, too, was the result of a career built on talent. Talent for comedy, talent for puppetry, talent for characterization. He advanced step by step through the entertainment world not because he forced it, but because there were people at every landing that recognized his talent and helped him forward.

Compare this, again, to the prefabricated nature of ALF. Kermit was invited to host The Tonight Show because The Tonight Show wanted him there; ALF was foisted upon The Tonight Show because Paul Fusco wanted him there.

But perhaps the most important difference is this: Kermit is a Muppet. ALF was just ALF. This meant that Kermit wasn’t some one-off oddity; he came with an entire world and culture behind him. And that world was populated by other Henson characters, as well as the characters of other performers. Kermit may well be the most famous Muppet, but if you ask 100 people about their favorite Muppet memories, you’re going to hear a lot about Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, Gonzo, Cookie Monster, Bert and Ernie, Big Bird, Scooter, Oscar, Grover, Bunsen and Beaker, Rowlf, Statler and Waldorf…the list goes on.

Henson never wanted to be a celebrity as much as he wanted an outlet for his creativity. He wanted to experiment. He wanted to test his own boundaries. Sometimes, to be totally honest, he failed. But let me be totally honest once more when I say that that doesn’t matter. Henson is — and surely will be for a long time — loved, revered, and remembered. He was by all accounts a great man who cared about the work he did and inspired more lives and careers than we could ever hope to count. He didn’t want to rocket himself to stardom and spit on the people below; he wanted to take everyone along with him.

You know that scene at the end of The Muppet Movie? The one where they reprise “The Rainbow Connection” and we see a massive throng of Muppets crammed together, performing it? That was Henson’s idea of heaven. Everyone was there. Nobody was more important than anybody else. Everybody had something to be thankful for.

By contrast, you know those scenes that I recapped this week and last? The ones where ALF is the star and he gets off on bossing people around and pissing them off? That was Fusco’s idea of heaven.

I’ll end with one more very illustrative (in my humble opinion) difference between Fusco and Henson.

As I’ve mentioned before, Paul Fusco never wanted anyone to see ALF as a character, or a puppet. ALF was ALF. This caused Tina Fey no end of logistical headaches as a minor ALF appearance on the NBC Anniversary Special meant investing far too much planning in ways to get ALF into shot without anyone seeing that he wasn’t real. It also explains why in all of the ALF outtakes I’ve seen (yes, even the racially charged diatribes), Fusco stays in character as ALF; he doesn’t talk to his costars between takes, he talks to them through the puppet. Because ALF is real.

A few years ago, I read The Wisdom of Big Bird, which is an absolutely lovely little book by Caroll Spinney, who played and still plays that Muppet. He relayed a story that, at the time, struck me the same way it seemed to strike Caroll. I have to paraphrase, so I apologize for any details that I get wrong, but Caroll and Jim Henson were together in an office, talking about some issue or another on Sesame Street. Henson got up to get something, and in doing so he kicked the Ernie puppet out of the way. Caroll was aghast. Reading it, I was too. Caroll said, “You kicked Ernie.” And Jim Henson, flatly, said, “Caroll. It’s a puppet.”

Only now, seeing that as the polar opposite of Fusco’s attitude, does it make sense to me. Henson wasn’t being disrespectful to his creation. To us, yes, Ernie is a character, but to him, it’s a puppet. At least, it’s a puppet until he’s giving it life.

Ernie had no inherent right to popularity or success. He was a creation of felt, staples, and cloth. Whatever audiences saw in him (which was a lot, as evidenced by Caroll’s reaction to seeing him get kicked around) was not innate; it had to be brought about through hard work on Henson’s part.

In other words, Henson knew he had to earn everything. Ernie didn’t have to, Kermit didn’t have to, Guy Smiley didn’t have to. But Jim Henson had to. And the more he let himself remain aware of the fact that the puppets were nothing without his gift of life, the more invested he became in working hard to develop them, and to make them the enduring characters they still are today.

ALF didn’t endure. And ALF couldn’t endure. Because, as far as Paul Fusco was concerned, he was fine on his own.

There was no reason to work at it; ALF had a bright future ahead of him. It was just a question of getting him out there and letting it happen.

We all see where that got him.

—–
* No relation to Adam.
** “Hit Me With Your Best Shot,” though…just in case you were in danger of losing sleep.
*** I was curious about whether or not Rich Little was still alive. It turns out he is. In researching that fact, though, I discovered Rich Little’s Christmas Carol. Forty five seconds of that garbage was enough to make me feel seasonal depression all over again. Look it up if you must…but know this: it’s so bad, even I am not cruel enough to include it in next year’s Xmas stream.
**** Or the same pair with their Al Pacino impressions in Tristram Shandy. Both are highlights of their respective films.

Paul Fusco never wanted a TV show. He wanted a franchise.

I can’t say for certain, but I think I’d be more than satisfied if somebody took note of a character I created and asked me to produce a show based on it. Fusco, however, seems to have had his sights set quite a bit higher. Or, at least, broader.

ALF was a merchandising juggernaut. He was sold as a stuffed animal, a Halloween costume, a set of toys, various terrifying robots that tried to talk to you, and a lot more. He had his own cereal, ice cream pops, video games, and trading cards. He had storybooks and flimsy plastic records and was a hand puppet included with Burger King kids meals.

But that’s not all; characters that appeal to kids are understandably going to be milked for all they’re worth, and ALF was no exception. ALF was an exception in terms of how he attempted to take over not only store shelves, but the airwaves.

Most people know ALF from ALF. But that’s only part of the story. In addition to this live action sitcom, he also appeared in a cartoon spinoff called ALF: The Animated Series, and a spinoff of that called ALF Tales. (Woo-oo.) We’d also eventually get a movie. It was made for TV, but Fusco, to this day, expresses interest in a proper theatrical feature.

Evidence that ALF is meant to be less of a character than he is a brand goes all the way back to the first episode of this show. It was then that we met the other characters who populate this “universe.” Now, cruising through season three, we know almost nothing more about them than we did then.

Paul Fusco wasn’t interested in building that universe, let alone fleshing it out, because it was disposable. It wasn’t where ALF belonged; it was one place where ALF happened to be. One place, if Fusco got his way, among so many. Why don’t we know anything about Willie? Well, why would we? He’s just some guy ALF met, and ALF is going to be meeting so many people in so many other contexts that this one isn’t worth thinking much about.

More specific evidence of Fusco’s multi-format aspirations can be found here, in this very episode. In it, ALF — some fucking how — is hosting The Tonight Show. Why? Who cares? Going from hiding from the Alien Task Force one week to hosting the most popular show on national television the next? Surely that’s nothing worth addressing.

You may remember that this isn’t the first time we see ALF acting as talk show host. “We Are Family” included a pointless (but, in retrospect, mercifully short) fantasy sequence of My Favorite Melmackian hosting Late Night. And, in real life, ALF would eventually host a talk show on TV Land called (optimistically) ALF’s Hit Talk Show. It ran for seven episodes and was then executed by firing squad.

ALF, as a brand, reeks of cold calculation. He isn’t being offered spinoffs; he’s being thrust into them. The more Fusco focuses on grooming the character for broader success, the less marketable he actually becomes. ALF ends up with a shelf life much shorter than he would have had, simply because there’s less in the way of development for anyone to remember him by.

I’m pretty confident in this. I’d wager that even though ALF had impressive viewing figures, relatively few people who watched it would remember today where the show was set. They wouldn’t remember the neighbors. They couldn’t name the Tanners. ALF is from Melmac and he eats cats. That’s all, and that’s all because his creator didn’t want to chain him down to one show.

We’ll talk more about this shortly, but, for now, just understand what you’re watching. It isn’t just a clip show (though it is, for fuck’s fucking fuck, a clip show)…it’s a pitch reel. Even as ALF is at the peak of its success, Fusco is looking to leave the rest of these losers behind.

Supporting characters? Not worth it. They’ll only slow you down.

We get a Tonight Show intro that consists of a pretty straight narration from Ed McMahon, even introducing the band and Johnny Carson (who does not — SPOILER — appear in this heap of cat shit) before identifying ALF as the guest host. McMahon says all of this while some of ALF’s greatest moments glide by in the background, such as that time he wore a funny hat, and that other time he wore a funny hat. Then poor Ed McMahon has to reduce himself to saying “Heeeeeee-eeere’s ALF-ie!” and it can’t just be me who sees a little hope for death in his eyes.

McMahon would actually work again with ALF…on ALF’s Hit Talk Show. The more you dig into it, the more “Tonight, Tonight” feels like a back-door pilot.

Ask yourself this: Does “Tonight, Tonight” exist because it would make for a great episode of television? No. I mean…here it is and it fucking sucks. But even in terms of its intentions, what kid at the time was familiar with Johnny Carson? I certainly couldn’t stay up that late. Sure, I knew who he was, but that was about it. The specific routines and structure of his show were unknown to me, and I’d wager that that was the case for a large portion of ALF‘s viewing audience.

No, I think it’s far more likely that this episode exists because Fusco wanted to rub elbows with as many people as he could to make his dream of a cross-format ALF come true. It’s not a TV show; it’s a networking luncheon.

ALF comes out to a brassy, swing version of his own theme song which, I admit, is a pretty nice blend of both shows’ themes. It sounds fairly true to each of them, which is a nice surprise. He nods a bit to the audience…and then we get a full body shot! Yes!!

That means…

Wait. What the fuck is this? That’s not the midget. Where the shit is my midget?

Instead it’s just this…creepy ALF puppet on really thick legs. And Jesus Christ are those some beefy feet.

He looks terrible. Not that the midget’s costume ever looked good — it certainly didn’t, and that’s why I loved it — but whereas that looked silly, this looks horrifying. It looks like ALF ate some expired cheese and hasn’t gotten over the bloating.

It also moves in this really unnerving way, where only the upper half of his body does anything, so you see his mouth and head and arms working as normal, while his legs stay stock still. It’s like somebody nailed his feet to the stage.

ALF warms up the crowd with a killer opener: a joke about Michael Landon’s hair. That’s two Michael Landon jokes in three episodes. What can I say? These were…simpler times.

Then we see the studio audience pissing itself over the way this character hilariously said the name of a celebrity that they recognize.

And, well, if you ever wondered what the kinds of people who adored ALF looked like…here you go.

ALF quells the laughter of this riotous crowd of widows and pedophiles so that he can joke about what a shithole Burbank is. Ed McMahon laughs politely, secure in the knowledge that this does indeed qualify as overtime.

I wonder if much of this episode was actually filmed in front of the audience. It’s possible. As the boring as shit screengrabs this week betray, nothing happens in this episode. ALF sits behind a desk, which hides Fusco perfectly, and that’s about it. ALF’s Hit Talk Show was indeed filmed with a studio audience, and featured an almost identical setup to what we see here. It’s almost as though Paul Fusco was proving it could be done. Hmmmmm…

ALF then engages in some awkward banter with Tommy Newsom, Carson’s actual band leader. It’s brilliant material. Really top notch stuff. See, ALF jokes about Tommy wearing beige, exactly the kind of razor sharp material he’d be able to provide on a regular basis if he had his own talk show, hint hint.

Tommy has a rejoinder that hangs oddly in the air for much too long. It’s…weird. The audience laughs and so does ALF, who also compliments him on his return jab, so there isn’t supposed to be an awkward silence. And yet the editing is so loose and poor in this episode that it strands Newsom staring stage left, blinking, until they finally decide to cut away. It’s really strange, like some film student used this for their Intro to Editing project and NBC just slapped it on the air.

Anyway, ALF mimics Carson’s famous golf-swing gesture and we cut to commercial.

…wait. No we don’t. We cut to…

The hell? Another title sequence?

Come. The fuck. On.

I take back my earlier compliment about the Tonight Show / ALF theme song mashup. It’s only a good idea if you’re using it in place of the show’s usual intro. Using both that intro and the regular one is just a waste of the audience’s time.

What ridiculous padding…especially since both intros are just different ways of framing short clips of ALF reaction shots. Did we really need two vats of ALF clips dumped over our heads before THE EPISODE FULL OF ALF CLIPS even starts? I swear, “ALF’s Special Christmas” was fuck-awful, but “Tonight, Tonight” seems like it’s actually been bred in a lab to maximize audience disrespect.

Then we cut to commercial, and…

Oh sweet fuck my christ what is this.

That looks…god damn. I’m sorry. Just…god. Damn.

It would be okay — I guess — if this really was an ALF version of The Tonight Show. You know, an actual parody or something, or an April Fool’s episode of the late night talk show. Then these little touches would seem more appropriate and less embarrassingly self-indulgent. Instead, it’s the creator of ALF having ALF celebrate ALF on ALF while we watch ALF in clips from ALF.

It’s downright masturbatory, but at least this clip show is more forgivable than the one we had in the middle of season one (for fuck’s sake…). After all, again, at the time of “Tonight, Tonight” ALF was at the peak of its popularity. More people were tuning in, he was becoming more recognizable, and, in the pre-DVD age, these newcomers wouldn’t have had another way to experience any of the adventures that they’d missed.

But it’s not like ALF is so heavily serialized that new viewers would need to catch up on the story. Do we really need this? Granted, I’m railing more against clip shows in general here, but they’ve always bothered me. Wouldn’t new viewers rather see a half hour of new comedy than a shitty framing device and some out-of-context fragments from scenes that mean nothing to them?

Even when I was younger — well before DVDs — if I stumbled upon a show I wanted to watch and then saw that it was a clip show, I changed the channel. I just didn’t care. Far from serving as a comfortable point of entry — which I think was at least somewhat their intention — the clip show blocked me out. If I didn’t know who these people were, or why they were doing what they were doing, it was meaningless to me. Maybe some of the jokes would be funny…but then again, shouldn’t that be said of every episode?

I wonder how many current shows do them anymore. I do remember being very surprised when The Office (the American one, of course…) did one late in its life. What was the point? The show was successful because people could so easily view it. Netflix, iTunes, DVDs…all of these things spurred interest in a show that, at first, nobody seemed to be watching. Viewing figures increased in measurable waves because people were hearing good things, starting from the beginning, and catching up quickly. What, really, was the point of an Office clip show? To punish people looking for new content when they finally got around to watching it on the night it aired?

There is a fairly good joke that ALF gets here, greeting Ed by saying he hasn’t seen him since he opened his mail this morning. Again, not hilarious, but it’s the kind of thing that deserves a smile.

This of course being ALF and not something good like…um…Carson-era Tonight Show, the joke is belabored and over-explained until we drift out of the conversation and start daydreaming about murder.

Then there’s this exchange, which I’d comment upon, but I honestly think it’s far more illustrative to simply transcribe it. Ready? I’m not embellishing, editing, or altering in any way. This is exactly what gets said:

ED: Well, your show is certainly a hit, ALF.
ALF: What show is that, Ed?
ED: Well, ALF. Right here on NBC. 8 o’clock on Monday nights.
ALF: Oh, that show! Thanks!
ED: I understand you brought some clips. Would you like to set them up?

There’s no laughter during the exchange. There’s a little bit at the beginning, for reasons I can’t fathom at all, but the bulk of it is literally just these two promoting the very show we’re already watching. It’s really odd. Did this air on a special day and time or something? Why tell the audience that the show is on Mondays at 8 if they already tuned in on Monday at 8 to hear that announcement? And even if it did air on a special day and time, did they have to be so artless about reminding the audience when they could watch? Especially since this episode just began and is nothing like the main show anyway?

I can imagine this kind of thing working well enough as a sort of wink to the audience at home, some gentle fun poked at the idea of self-promotion, but in order for this to be considered meta comedy, or a joke at the expense of shitty talk show interviews, they’d either have to acknowledge it openly, or already have earned a reputation for doing these kinds of jokes.

ALF doesn’t and hasn’t. He literally just sits there letting his guest star tell him how popular his show is. Oh, and then we get to watch some pieces of it. Such as a string of out-of-context bullshit like ALF making dog noises, and performing his classic “filling Willie’s tub with liquidy feces” routine. Classic television all around.

Then he tells Ed to get him some fucking water, giving us all a nice display of what it must have been like to work with Paul Fusco.

Before Ed returns, let me ask this: do you expect ALF to perform Carson’s “Carnac the Magnificent” character?

OF FUCKING COURSE WE ALL DID.

He’s Melmac the Magnificent, which doesn’t even qualify as a pun. That certainly bodes well for this famously pun-heavy routine.

Keeping up with the sharp satire that has defined the episode so far, we get a joke about Gorbachev’s head, and then an observation of that some James Bond movies aren’t very good. Whose toes will he step on next?! There’s also some incomprehensible joke whose punchline is palomino. (“What did Trigger sue Roy Rogers for?”) If anyone can explain that one to me I’ll either be forever grateful or sorry I asked.

My favorite part of this sequence is the fact that ALF has so much trouble opening the envelopes. No, that’s not part of the joke…just a logistical bind Fusco & Co. fenced themselves into by deciding to steal this bit.

See, as Carnac, Carson would hold an envelope up to his head and “divine” its contents. Basically this meant he’d think for a second before saying a word or phrase that was meaningless on its own. Then he’d open the envelope and read what was printed inside…revealing whatever he “divined” a moment ago to be a punchline to that joke.

Because it’s such an immediately recognizable piece of Carson’s late-night persona, and because it consists of just a handful of silly jokes spread out over a long period of time, it makes sense that ALF would want to tap into it.

However ALF is operated by two people, with Paul Fusco controlling the mouth and the left hand, and somebody else controlling the right. That’s nothing too strange; almost any of Jim Henson’s creations with two functioning arms were controlled the same way. It doesn’t require much in the way of coordination between the two puppeteers because only one arm tends to have anything important to do; the other is just given “life” by the secondary puppeteer so that it doesn’t hang dead and ruin the illusion.

Additionally, ALF (like, again, most Muppets) is controlled by people who can’t “see” what ALF sees. This means that complex interaction with objects needs to be limited, because, if it’s not, you can very easily end up with the puppet “looking” in the wrong direction because the object isn’t exactly where it needed to be, or seeming to focus on one thing while his hands do another.

So with all of that being said, you can imagine how complicated it might be for ALF to find an envelope, pick it up, hold it, rip it open, pull out a card, and hold that card up to his face before reading it.

The editing makes this difficulty obvious, as each time ALF reaches into the envelope, we cut to a slightly different angle to hide however much time it took Fusco and his unfortunate assistant to perform this unforgiving task. Sometimes before the cuts, though, we see ALF’s hand gripping helplessly at the card it can’t find. What a tremendously shitty show this is.

There’s also the lovely fact that Ed McMahon can’t muster up even polite laughter at this shitty routine, whereas Carson’s performance of it had him bellowing. That must just be coincidental, though, I’m sure, and can’t be worth reading into…

Then we get another one of those title cards. In this one ALF is climbing a factory that makes novelty heroin needles.

ALF brings out some guests that are probably familiar to the Tonight Show audience, and then shows clips of his own show because fuck you. Each guest leaves early, which is very rude because they didn’t take me with them.

One of them is Dr. Joyce Brothers, very well known for her talk show appearances and one of the first “celebrity psychologists,” if not the first. She paved the way for folks like Dr. Phil, but we can’t really hold that against her. She knew not what she did.

The second guest is Joan Embery from the San Diego Zoo. And man, she’s fucking terrible. I feel bad saying that, but it’s true.

I actually had to look her up to make sure this was actually her and not some shitty actress playing her, because I remember her pretty well from old clips, and she was always a delight.

Embery made a habit of bringing animals onto The Tonight Show, sometimes for novelty purposes (a talking bird, for instance, for Carson so spar with), but usually to just talk about it, introduce it to Carson (and the audience), and to let Johnny humorously engage with it.

She was great.

Really, she was. In looking her up I found myself watching video after video of her appearances. She was an incredibly charming and fun personality.

It’s no wonder that she caught on with The Tonight Show; she was a woman who had a true passion for and deep knowledge of animals, and who also happened to be very well-spoken, very warm, and quite attractive. She was made for exactly this kind of borderline-celebrity status. She was an easy pick for a recurring guest, and indeed some of Carson’s most memorable moments involve animals…thanks to Embery.

Here, though, she’s awful. She’s such a terrible actress in her scene that I honestly thought they paid somebody’s niece to come in rather than hire the woman herself.

But I can’t really blame her. Embery wasn’t an actress…ever. She was herself.

She didn’t play a part for Carson; she was a pleasant human being with knowledge to share and unfamiliar animals to introduce to the crowd. We liked her because she was who she was.

It’s not surprising at all that having her recite stilted dialogue to a puppet while an ordinary housecat sits sedate in her lap would be a disappointment. They bothered to bring Embrey on, but only so she could do the kinds of things she wasn’t comfortable with or good at doing. Great job, ALF.

This is actually the problem that “Tonight, Tonight” and its sister sequence in “We Are Family” inadvertently spotlight; ALF doesn’t improvise.

There’s a reason Johnny Carson is legendary. It’s the same reason Stephen Colbert is now, too. And David Letterman. And Conan O’Brien. As much as all of these men benefited from a stock of great writers, scripted quips can only get you so far. Once you get a guest — or an animal — on stage with you, something unexpected is going to happen. That’s when the talent of the host — specifically, the talent for quick thinking that doesn’t sacrifice wit — is really tested.

Embery doesn’t get to be herself or bring an actual animal because that can’t happen with ALF. As much as Paul Fusco is inviting us to view this proof of concept for Up All Night! With Gordon Shumway, he’s showing us exactly why it won’t, and can’t, be very good.

Because ALF isn’t real, ALF can’t react. Because Fusco doesn’t improvise, ALF has to stick to a script. Because ALF is chained to a desk, nothing can happen that isn’t rigorously planned in advance.

People don’t tune into late night television to watch pre-written banter. They tune into sitcoms for that. When they tuned into Carson, or into Letterman, O’Brien, Feguson, or Snyder, it’s because they were tuning in for the host. Sometimes something magical would happen…other times we just wanted to spend an hour or so with them.

ALF, by virtue of the fact that he’s a puppet being operated by an egomaniac, cannot generate magic. And “Tonight, Tonight” proves that nobody in their right mind would want to spend an hour with him.

ALF then goes out of his way to smash “Johnny’s cup,” and Fred De Cordova (Carson’s real-life producer) comes out to beat ALF to death with a red phone.

Actually, it’s Johnny on the other end of the line. We don’t hear him, but it’s a brief phone call anyway. Which is probably good, since he’s apparently chewing ALF out for his misbehavior during the broadcast, which means Johnny’s making a very expensive call from a parallel universe in which The Tonight Show airs live.

Johnny tells him to fuck fucking up, and there’s a freeze frame of ALF in a panic with a TO BE CONTINUED title.

We’re also treated to some narration in which ALF says to tune in next week to see how he gets out of this jam, presumably for the sake of all the illiterate people who are not doubt watching ALF.

So, hey, for some reason this unedited set of DVDs has “Tonight, Tonight” in its two-part version rather than as it originally aired. I don’t think anything’s missing — correct me if I’m wrong — but it means I get a whole week before I need to watch the rest of this shit, so I’ll take it.

That’s right, motherfuckers. There’s…

But before I leave you…what is a clip show without clips? Clips are grand!

Actually, a clips show without clips is an episode consisting of all new content, which is without exception the superior offering.

BUT ANYWAY HERE ARE SOME CLIPS OF MY FAVORITE EPISODES.

ALF secretly breeds Mexicans in the shed so that they will do his chores for him. (From the episode “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard.”)

Willie slowly dies after tumbling into the radiation pool ALF has installed in the back yard. (From the episode “Let’s Make the Water Turn Black.”)

It’s a harrowing half hour when a black man is accidentally admitted to the Tanner house. (From the episode “Mississippi Goddam.”)

ALF drugs Kate in the hopes that he can trick her into sucking him off. (From the episode “I Put a Spell On You.”)

ALF systematically stalks and murders beloved TV icons, and won’t stop until Paul Fusco is given a talk show. (From the episode “Star Star.”)

After stumbling upon Willie masturbating in the shed to a copy of Leisure Suit Larry, ALF becomes addicted to computer pornography. (From the episode “Thank the Lord for the Night Time.”)

ALF escapes his court-mandated castration. (From the episode “Fix You.”)

ALF has a long and meaningless conversation with a character we will never see again while the production crew chokes painfully and coughs up blood in this sealed room full of dry ice. (From the episode “Try Not to Breathe.”)

Having been rendered redundant by Jake’s arrival, Brian is wrapped in a pool tarp and buried in Mr. Ochmonek’s yard, never to be referred to again. (From the episode “Bye, Bye, Baby.”)

Uncle Albert accidentally finds Willie and ALF engaged in a game of Mr. Meatloaf. (From the episode “I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That).”)

That’s all for now! See you after the break!

How do you solve a problem like the Ochmoneks?

Before we watch the episode struggle to answer that, it’s worth reminding ourselves that as much as I’ve griped about its many (many) problems, ALF has at least managed to acknowledge and correct some of its issues. A great example of this is the relationship that developed between ALF and Lynn last season, repositioning the two of them as friends that share a special, honest bond. Another is the introduction of Jake, which was a solution to the problem of the writers not wanting to do anything with Brian (apparently) but still wanting a young boy around. It was by no means a clean solution, but it shows that they were aware of an issue and took some kind of action to correct it.

This week we attempt to address a different problem, whether the show is conscious of it or not: the Ochmoneks.

Originally introduced as a pair of annoying neighbors, they’ve managed to flesh themselves out and develop more character than literally anybody else in this entire show. Mr. Ochmonek, in particular, established himself as more than just an add-on for his wife. It isn’t just me that appreciates what Jack LaMotta brings to his thankless role; the writers must appreciate it as well, because they’ve given him so much more to do that he’s eclipsed Liz Sheridan significantly in terms of screen time.

The “problem,” then, is more of a question: when the sideshow is more interesting than the main attraction, what do you do?

It’s been observed in the comments here that this show would be better if ALF had crashed into the Ochmoneks’ garage instead. I agree. And yet…he didn’t. So what does ALF do instead? We’ll find out in the following half hour that it really has no idea.

Anyway, let’s take a step back. I’m noticing that ALF is wearing clothes a lot more this season. Toward the end of season one we saw ALF in a Hawaiian shirt, which brought back a lot of memories for me. Though it was an exception to the naked norm, it was perfectly in line with what I remember of ALF’s merchandise.

For whatever reason, ALF toys almost always featured him wearing clothes. It’s strange to me, because he so rarely does. (Or…did?) It would be like seeing a bunch of Yogi Bear dolls on the shelf, each of them dressed as a firefighter. I don’t know…maybe it happened once in the cartoon or something, but it would just feel wrong. Yogi gets a hat and a necktie, and that’s it. Anything else and…he’s not Yogi.

With ALF, though, he was nearly always portrayed outside of the show wearing some kind of outfit. Sometimes it was just an unremarkable Hawaiian shirt, and other times it was a fully recognizable costume, such as a chef or Bruce Springsteen. Why? Why was that ALF?

I wonder if the increased frequency of apparel in this season has anything to do with merchandising. It’s not likely to be a standards and practices thing…after all, ALF had already been naked for two full seasons by this point. Additionally, puppets and cartoons are exempt from nudity concerns unless they have recognizable genitalia. (For the record, when I woke up this morning I never expected to type that sentence.)

I think it’s more of a chance to get people (okay…kids) in the habit of seeing the character in costume, so that the dolls and toys wouldn’t seem less like the “real” ALF. Consequently, they’d sell more.

That’s my best guess, anyway. Prior to this season, nearly any time we saw him in an outfit it was for story reasons, or because they were using that bright orange “backup” ALF puppet that I’m positive only wore clothes because they were hiding some kind of damage.

Speaking of which, maybe putting both puppets in clothes regularly is meant to keep us from noticing when they switch them out.

My main point here is that I don’t want to talk about what’s actually happening.

…but I guess I have to. It’s breakfast time, and ALF wants all the ham and eggs. Kate says, “No, ALF, you live in this house with like a million other people and we have to fucking eat, too. In fact, the only reason I’m serving you first is so you can sneeze into the pan and ruin breakfast for everyone, so stop your shitty bastard bitching for cunt’s sake.”

Then ALF sneezes into the pan and ruins breakfast for everyone.

Honestly, I can’t even tell if ALF did this on purpose. He’s enough of a dick that he would, but I guess he could also have sneezed coincidentally as he was being told that he couldn’t eat everyone’s food. It’s rare that a show is so poorly written that three seasons in you still don’t know if the main character is an asshole or an idiot.

After ensuring that he’s ruined these people’s mornings in addition to their whole lives, he gobbles up a plate of snot covered eggs, daring the audience to come to terms with the things they’ve chosen to fill their time watching.

We get a shot of Benji Gregory saying something I couldn’t hear because I was laughing at the eggs all over him. This poor kid still has nothing to do with anything that happens in the show, but he had to sit still while stage hands covered him in cold, runny eggs before he delivered his single line.

There’s something perfectly terrible about that. I love it, because I’m a heartless human being.

Then Jake comes over and ALF calls him “Jake Your Booty.” I don’t love that at all for any reason.

Apparently the Ochmoneks have been fighting and they resent each other and blah blah fuck you. It smacks of plot manufacture, especially since they’re the only couple on this show that I’ve ever believed are in love. Yes, they’ve got their problems, and I certainly wouldn’t fix either of them up with anybody I know, but they fit together. The things that most people would consider problematic, they seem to find attractive. And in a genuinely satisfying way, that’s sweet.

I know people go through rough times no matter how strong their relationships are, but this is turmoil for the sake of turmoil. If you don’t think that the Ochmoneks fighting represents a stretch of credibility, then you’ll certainly be swayed when you realize that Jake comes to the Tanner house of all places to get away from familial dysfunction.

That smell, my friends, is bullshit.

We come back after the intro credits to the same conversation in the kitchen, making me think it was originally written as one long scene and was hacked up to give the episode a cold open at a later point. Who knows what the original cold open would have been. Probably something hilarious, like ALF bashing Willie’s skull in with a 9-iron.

I don’t really care that they split the scene that way, but if they were going to plop the credits into the middle of it, I’m surprised they didn’t do it after Mr. Ochmonek walked in and they agreed to let him stay with them. That seems like a perfect stopping point, and the scene basically ends there anyway. But, whatever. I’m thinking about things again. I promise I’ll stop.

ALF hides under the table and stabs his family members in the legs with a fork whenever it sounds like one of them might let Mr. Ochmonek stay over. It’s a kind of annoying detour, and it’s not quite worth it for the fact that it ends with Kate kicking ALF in the fucking face. On the bright side, it does end with Kate kicking ALF in the fucking face.

Anyway, Mr. Ochmonek almost eats the booger eggs but then doesn’t. ha ha?

Later, Willie helps him bring his stuff into the Tanner house, and he gets all pissy that Mr. Ochmonek might have to stay with them for more than one night. The guy’s marriage is failing, Willie. I don’t think you telling him to hurry it up is very productive.

Way to social work, asshole.

I know I’ve dug into this before, but I honestly can’t get over it. Why is Willie a social worker? This is a sitcom. That is to say, this is an invented reality. The writers can make him anything at all. Why choose social work if the character doesn’t fit the profile and has no interest in it?

Make him a lab technician, or a librarian. Or an engineer. (Either kind.) Something that would help to develop character rather than work against literally everything we see him do and hear him say.

Once again, this could work if it were the joke. Plenty of sitcom characters are bad at their jobs, or hate their jobs, but we keep getting told that Willie Tanner is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being we’ve ever known in our lives. He’s some kind of social work savant, one who is so valuable and irreplaceable that he deserves raises and promotions showered on him even after he’s caught kidnapping a Mexican kid.

Come on. If Willie’s even 1/1,000th the social worker we’re told he is, he’s surely dealt with countless people who’ve gone through nasty breakups and / or been thrown out with no place to go.

Yet, as we see here, he somehow hasn’t actually learned anything about getting these folks back on track. Unless “I don’t care what you do, but make it snappy” solves more social ills than I’m compelled to believe it does.

Anyway the whole family bitches about how they’ll need to figure out sleeping arrangements while the recently separated Mr. Ochmonek is in the same room. So, that’s another thing good social work entails: making the victim feel as guilty as possible about the inconvenience they’ve now become.

Jake volunteers to sleep with Lynn. It’s funny because he will stick things in her while she is sleeping.

Why is he spending the night, exactly? Did his marriage to Mrs. Ochmonek fall through as well? What the fuck am I watching?

The next morning Willie and Kate come into the kitchen to find Mr. Ochmonek sitting in the middle of a big mess.

I have to admit, this kind of pissed me off. I was afraid that this was going to be how the show solved the problem of the Ochmoneks being more likeable: we’d get an episode that made a point of saying to the audience, “Look! These people really are trash! All those times you thought Willie was the dickblossom, but it was really the fat, bald, ugly guy like we told you! And his wife’s a bitch!”

Instead, thank Christ, it goes in a better direction. ALF wrecked the kitchen in a feeding frenzy overnight. Mr. Ochmonek had nothing to do with it, and just saw the mess when he came in to eat breakfast.

A few nice things happen in this scene. Firstly, Mr. Ochmonek refers to his little stereo as a “suburb blaster,” which is such a perfect line for him in so many ways. You know, the plot of this episode is rekindling my illogical wish that he and Kate will run off together and star in a much better sitcom than this one.

The other thing I like is that Mr. Ochmonek apologizes for using the last of the milk, and volunteers to go borrow some from Mrs. Bird. That’s Iola from the two part episode “Hostage-O.” Hold on to your butts, folks, because ALF just foreshadowed something that never actually happens. Stay tuned!

Mr. Ochmonek, once again, proves himself to be the nicest human being in this entire terrible universe. It’s first thing in the morning and these assholes were not quiet about their preference that he sleep in the compost heap, but he offers to go out and get them milk. By contrast, how many stars would have to align for Willie to loan the guy a quarter to call 911 if he was being actively murdered?

Willie takes the fall for the mess, which is pretty dumb but who cares. Then Lynn and Brian come in, and the difference in acting ability hits you like a brick. Andrea Elson stops dead in her tracks and looks around before speaking, taking in what she’s seeing and making sure she doesn’t misspeak. Benji Gregory, by contrast, just strolls in and sits down as though it’s only another morning.

Again, that would be fine if it were part of the joke, but it’s clearly not. The stage direction was to come in and sit down, so Benji Gregory does exactly that. Just as Max Wright would have. Andrea Elson, I’m positive, was given the exact same stage direction, but put some thought into the context and reacted appropriately. Just as Anne Schedeen would have. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I’m glad she takes after her mother.

There’s also one really odd bit when Kate and Willie first walk in. Mr. Ochmonek is listening to his suburb blaster, and it’s playing some generic three-chord rock music. He turns it off and says it was his and Raquel’s favorite song, and then says, “That Sinatra sure could sing.”

The audience laughs, of course, because it sounded nothing like Sinatra. Then Willie says it sounded more like Pink Floyd, and Mr. Ochmonek says it was, the Sinatra comment wasn’t related. It’s funny enough.

But there’s a problem: that also didn’t sound anything like Pink Floyd. I have no idea what it was, but I’ll bet a dollar to donuts it’s just some no-name library garbage. You can’t make a joke about the song sounding nothing like Sinatra, and then try to convince us that it’s Pink Floyd when it sounds no more like them.

I understand that licensing a Pink Floyd song for the purposes of this throwaway joke would be ridiculous, but then maybe we don’t need the joke? Or maybe Willie could reference a different band that actually did sound something like what we were hearing?

The script said Pink Floyd, but whomever chose the track dug up something that sounded nothing like them. As usual, the script says one thing, the props department or producer or someone does something different, and nobody — from the writers all the way down to the actors — alters their work to reflect the change. For a show that took an average of six hundred zillion hours to record every episode, I’m gobsmacked at just how little effort seems to have been put into it.

Anyway everyone bitches again and then Willie waves some eggs around.

While Mr. Ochmonek is out of the house, Mrs. Ochmonek and Jake come over with more of his stuff, including a moose head so that Willie can humorously sit next to it and make funny faces in a moment, even though there’s a completely vacant sofa like one foot away if it’s such a big fucking deal to him.

Mrs. Ochmonek says their separation is final, because the script told her to. She says she saw her husband coming out of Mrs. Bird’s house first thing this morning! Through a pair of binoculars, of course. He was there to pick up milk for the Tanners, which we know and she does not, and which the Tanners don’t seem all that intent on telling her about.

Nice family, huh?

There’s the germ of a very good idea here, but I know why the show didn’t go that route; it’d require taking the limited amount of characterization this show has actually done into account.

Remember, Mrs. Ochmonek was first and foremost introduced as the neighborhood busybody. That might have fallen away over the past two years, but that’s okay. Just look at how The Simpsons introduced characters for one very specific purpose, and then found much (much) more interesting things to do with them later. Original roles can evolve. In fact, they absolutely should.

The problem with Mrs. Ochmonek is that nothing’s really been introduced to take the place of her faltering nosiness. That, too, is okay, if a little unfortunate. But “Breaking Up is Hard to Do” is in a perfect position to get the character back to her roots (er…root) and, for the first time, spin an actual plotline from it.

We’ve already got the foundation for it right here: because she’s nosy, she spotted her husband coming out of another woman’s house. That’s the kind of thing that might spill out in the writer’s room, and it would be the perfect reason to go back and revise the previous pages of the script, giving this episode some strong, character-specific resonance.

Specifically, here’s what I’m getting at: have the initial fight between the Ochmoneks come from something similar. Maybe Mr. Ochmonek comes home late, and his wife is convinced he’s having an affair. She starts spying on him and sees things that can be easily enough misinterpreted as evidence of an affair…a problem that doesn’t exist, but which she’s creating in her own mind because she’s the kind of person who butts into other people’s business. For instance, you could see Mr. Ochmonek walking into a jewelry store with another woman. Mrs. Ochmonek kicks him out of the house without giving him a chance to explain, and maybe without even telling him what she saw.

Of course, it turns out to have been a coworker or someone, and he was trying to pick out a nice gift for his wife and wanted a woman’s opinion before he made the purchase.

Groundbreaking? Fuck no. But ALF isn’t interested in breaking ground, and I’m okay with that. When I look at ways to fix the show, yes, it’s easy to say nuke it from orbit. But assuming we’re not doing that, and we’re going to adhere to tried and true conventions of the format, there’s still so much room for improvement. ALF can be better without ever having to be original; all it needs to do is step back, take a look at the universe it’s built (deliberately or not), and create stories from that, rather than spit out whatever first comes to mind and hope for the best.

Mrs. Ochmonek should be a busybody who created this conflict by virtue of being a busybody. Instead we still don’t know what they fought about* or what a reconciliation would entail. That means it’s not only impossible to get invested, but we don’t know why we should want to be invested. Without knowing the stakes, we don’t care. If we don’t care, we probably aren’t laughing.

Once again, the importance of second drafts, ladies and gentleman. It’s not a luxury upgrade…it’s the bare minimum you need to keep an audience watching.

The Willie sits next to the moose and prays to God.

Yes, really.

He asks God why He puts “such ordinary people in such extraordinary situations.”

…which is a pretty strange thing to ask in reference to his neighbors having a spat, as opposed to…oh, I dunno, a giant space roach rampaging through the house, the president sending him to Guantanamo, his uncle falling down dead in the back yard, an alien singing about how nice it would feel to fuck his teenage daughter, his boss showing up at the house for an impromptu Halloween limbo party, film crews stumbling upon the actual flying saucer in his garage, or Anne Ramsey threatening sexual violence against him.

Willie’s got one hell of a strange sense of what’s worth bothering God with, I must say.

Then ALF burps and Willie says, “lol nevermind!!!!!!”

Yes. Really.

The fuck is this show. Who laughs at this?

Later on, ALF is in the garage, calling people in the town to see if they’ll let Mr. Ochmonek stay with them. None of them, I guess, ask who the fuck is calling them. He’s not impersonating Willie’s voice or anything…he’s just a stranger asking a stranger if a stranger can live with them for a while. I don’t care. I hate my life.

He actually manages to get Mrs. Bird on the line, and it’s Beverly Archer…the same actress that played her last time. Oddly, though, this is it. We hear only a snippet of her conversation with ALF, and then she is neither seen nor heard again. Why did they bother paying her to reprise the character for this? The way she gets name-dropped throughout the episode you almost expect her to play a part in whatever the big resolution at the end turns out to be, but…no. First draft. Always the first draft.

Then Mrs. Ochmonek comes over to bitch Willie out for telling the neighborhood her business, and the joke I guess is that she lists off the last names of all the neighbors and they rhyme or something.

Then Willie goes over to bitch ALF out for telling the neighborhood her business, and the joke I guess is that he repeats the list of neighbors and they rhyme or something.

Willie is actually really fired up, so once again I have to wonder why this situation — of all the fucking situations ALF has dragged him into — has him so furious. Since when is he more passionate about Ochmoneks’ love life than he is about the safety and financial security of his own family? Perhaps being in a position in which he must help another human being is King Social Work’s kryptonite.

Maybe if it was Jake getting upset at ALF, this would make sense. In fact…why isn’t it Jake? He has a significant personal investment in the state of their marriage, and he knows ALF exists, putting him in a position to confront him about his meddling. It’s a far more natural way for this to play out, and, besides, Jake is already in this episode. Why not give him a fucking purpose?

Seriously guys…these are all thoughts I had the first time watching the episode. Could it really be that hard for writers who got paid to do this to come up with something better than they did?

Anyway, Willie leaves and there’s an admittedly cute little moment when ALF reaches for the phone, and then quickly withdraws his hand as Willie turns around. Then he orders flowers for Mrs. Ochmonek because he gives even less of a shit about what Willie thinks than we do.

Mr. Ochmonek sees the flowers later, and he comes into the garage to yell at Willie for sending flowers to his wife. It’s not a great scene, but there are some funny moments, including an unexpected one from Max Wright**: Mr. Ochmonek says he’s upset because no man would send a $79.95 flower arrangement to another man’s wife unless he knew he was causing trouble.

Willie replies, “There must be some seventy-nine ninety-five??”

And, yeah, I’ll give him that one. That was a great delivery, and genuinely funny.

Then there’s a humorless exposition dump, because it was either that or go back and add better jokes to the earlier scenes.

ALF sent the flowers so it’d look like they came from Mr. Ochmonek, but Mr. Ochmonek knows he didn’t send them, so he called the florist and they told him it was billed to Willie’s credit card.

No joke, I wonder how often florists get calls like that. I’m genuinely curious. Anyone out there ever work in a florist? Maybe a jewelry store? Is it a fairly common thing for them to get calls from men asking who the scumbag was that just sent gifts to their significant other?

Mr. Ochmonek then threatens Willie to stay away from his wife, otherwise “I’m moving out of your house.” It’s a good line delivery from Jack LaMotta, lacking all self-awareness and believably upset. It’s good comic acting.

This was probably the best scene in the episode, which isn’t saying much. Or maybe I’m just biased because it opens with Willie cramming ALF into a cardboard box.

ALF and Jake break into the Ochmoneks’ bedroom, because hey, why not. They’re looking for a clue about how to get them back together, which I guess makes sense because they live in a sitcom and the episode is almost ending. Whatever’s going to resolve the plot has to be lying around somewhere.

Yeah, it’s all riding at a fast clip toward whatever disappointing conclusion the writers manage to crap out.

A good joke (ALF seeing a display of little hula girls and being impressed by how much class the Ochmoneks have) even veers immediately back into standard ALF horseshit (ALF lifts a grass skirt to jack off to some sculpted pussy). It’s fucking gross even before you remember that he’s doing this in front of a kid.

Then Mrs. Ochmonek comes home after having had a fight with Mrs. Bird — off camera, apparently — then Mr. Ochmonek comes home after ALF called him saying a terrorist was in the house, then I kill myself.

ALF, hiding under the bed, tosses a scrap of paper out to Jake, who picks it up in his only relevant action in the entire episode. It turns out to be a poem that Mr. Ochmonek wrote to Mrs. Ochmonek way back in a year the writers didn’t bother to figure out.

Actually, it’s the lyrics to Chicago’s “Just You ‘N’ Me,” which goes for some pretty lazy laughs of recognition when it’s read out loud, but Mr. Ochmonek’s “I meant every word I stole” does actually manage to redeem it.

Anyway, now they’re back together. Being as they had no real reason to be apart, I suppose it’s fitting that this just kind of happens and nobody has to work through any of those pesky emotions the writers have heard so much about from their colleagues on better shows.

In the short scene before the credits, ALF comes out from under the bed. Hilarious!

He says to Jake, “You’re more than a life saver. You’re a milk dud.”

And when that’s just about the cleverest thing in the entire episode — and the punchline to which 25 minutes of this shit have built — you know you’ve wasted a lot of time that you could have spent eating a bag of nails.

So…how do you solve a problem like the Ochmoneks? This episode doesn’t know, but it certainly tries a lot of things and abandons them along the way. The odd-couple pairing of Willie and Trevor could have worked, if we got more than a scene or two of it. The home-wrecking Mrs. Bird seemed to be positioned as a willing antagonist to the couple’s happiness…but then nothing came of that either. We were also in a prime position to explore the dynamic of this relationship…learn a little more about them, perhaps, or at least spend some time learning about who they become when they’re no longer together.

Instead of exploring that dynamic, we get an invented and disposable conflict. Jake is there for the sake of being there, but we never get a sense of why this matters to him. (Apart from the fact that he could be shipped off again if they split up.)

The Ochmoneks are the closest thing this show has to reliably good characters. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the show still hasn’t figured out what to do with them. I’d like to give them credit for trying, but all “Breaking Up is Hard to Do” proves is that when you try to weave something good into the ALF universe, that goodness suffers far more than the universe is improved.

If you missed this episode, don’t worry. Next week is a clip show, so we’ll see some of it again. Yep, after a whopping three episodes, it’s time for this season to start resting on its laurels.

I’ll see you then. :(

—–
* At one point we do hear that Mrs. Ochmonek sees her husband as a slob, and that’s the closest we get to an explanation. But that clearly isn’t a new development in their relationship, and she’s never had a problem with it before, so I don’t buy it. Not on its own.

** I’ll take those wherever I can get them.

I have no idea what this episode’s supposed to be about, but judging from the title I’m going to guess that Willie finally finds the sweet release of death, only for ALF to build a stairway to heaven and drag him back down to this miserable, tortured existence.

It opens with an angle on the back yard that I don’t think we’ve ever seen before, and, as you can guess by now, I like it when the show does things like this. The reason is that it’s so easy to simply sit behind a camera and film a scene straight on, especially in a sitcom where there’s going to be more static dialogue than dynamic action. For a shot like this — unnecessary, unique, attention-grabbing — to exist, it’s because somebody, somewhere, decided that instead of just needing to shoot a scene, the scene needed to be shot like this.

That’s the kind of attention and care that I appreciate whenever I notice it…but, to be frank, I tend to notice it more in shitty sitcoms than I do in shows that are regularly inventive. Take Breaking Bad, for example. I could rattle off 20 times the camera work impressed me, but I’m sure another 80 of them slid right past me because the show was so well treated visually that great stuff slipped by without always drawing attention to itself. When a show establishes itself as being visually interesting, “it’s still visually interesting” won’t grab attention. By contrast, every fucking time the camera so much as moves in ALF I fall out of my chair because it’s so unexpected.

And consider what this angle does for the show: it expands its setting. Really, it does. It still looks like a set, but it looks like a set that was built to be this yard of this family in this city. I’ve never been to L.A., but the sunlight, the vegetation, the tiny yard that results from high land demand in a quiet part of the city…it convinces me. Whether or not the Tanners live in the same L.A. as anyone does in the real world is irrelevant, as long as we believe they live in some identifiable version of L.A.

It’s not just a fence and some AstroTurf; it’s the result of somebody thinking about what this particular family’s yard would look like. And I love that.

Everything we see here speaks a little more about the family — who they are — than almost any line of dialogue we’ve heard in the show yet. The limited space for a garden (forget the fact that ALF once ran a plantation back here…seriously, forget it). The collection of pots from plants long dead or relocated. The glasses of iced tea on a tiny table, with ancient little benches that don’t match. The fact that nobody put away the lawnmower…and the ancillary fact that Willie didn’t kick in the extra $30 for one that ran on fuel.

I could write a story about this screengrab that would be if not better than at least more interesting than any given episode of ALF. I’m not bragging; I’m merely trying to draw attention to how much can be achieved with a single frame of an episode when somebody — anybody — puts effort into it.

The opening scene itself is nothing great, but it’s promising enough, and there’s a little moment that makes me fall in love with Andrea Elson.

See, Willie announces (in a convincingly dad-like way) that he and Kate are going to compete against the reigning Tanner croquet champions, Brian and Lynn. The stage directions, I’m sure, instructed the two kids to do exactly what they do: one of those high fives that then continues with a second low five behind the back.

The stage directions, I’m also sure, didn’t outline what happens next. Brian doesn’t quite manage that behind the back bit, and it throws off the routine. Andrea Elson smiles, puts her arm around him, and pulls him close in a reassuring gesture. You know…like a sister who cares about her little brother.

Benji Gregory looked foolish on the sound stage, and Brian Tanner looked foolish in the backyard. Andrea Elson and Lynn Tanner both cared enough about the little guy’s feelings, though, that this tiny improv is just lovely.

You know, the more I watch, the more I’m starting to believe that the sweet relationship Lynn forged with ALF over the past season was less due to the writing and more due to Elson herself. Moments like this make me feel as though she wants this show to work, and that kind of warm optimism carries over into her performance as Lynn.

I don’t know; it’s hard to say for sure. Either way, I’m glad to have her there. Anne Schedeen might have the talent in this sitcom family, but Andrea Elson has the heart.

Anyway, because we’re watching ALF this nice little scene ends with our titular dickbag intentionally shattering Willie’s shin with a croquet mallet.

Fuck you, that’s why.

The family helps Willie into the house while ALF reflects on the fact that today he broke Willie’s windshield, then Willie’s power saw, and now he broke Willie. It’s the kind of thing that probably looks funnier written down than it played in the episode, maybe because there was no real reason for ALF to knowingly assault this man with a blunt instrument in the first place.

ALF then wonders what life would be like if he’d never come to Earth and accidentally conks himself on the head with the croquet mallet, so I guess I know exactly what kind of episode this is going to be. Lucky us. If it’s one thing we know ALF does so well by this point, it’s fucking fantasy sequences.

The show proper opens interestingly enough, with ALF rubbing his head and entering the dining area. The Tanners are eating without him, and for a while it seems as though they’re just ignoring him to teach him a lesson. (A concept South Park had brilliant fun with in “The Death of Eric Cartman;” one of my personal favorites.) The family’s stilted, just-too-proper conversation seems to support this, so I was genuinely surprised when…

Well, wait. I don’t want to get to that just yet, because ALF actually has some pretty good lines(!) while he’s trying to get them to pay attention to him. He first tries to get their sympathy because he took a blow that could have knocked out Mike Tyson. “Alright,” he admits. “Cicely Tyson.” Then, as he grows more frustrated, he declares, “Well, excuse me for bleeding.”

I have to admit, ALF not being the center of attention is actually jarring, and in a very good way. This is not something we’re used to seeing, and it’s actually pretty funny to see him floundering like this. For better or worse, whenever he speaks, everyone in the scene usually snaps to attention. The spotlight — always — is on this guy, which both hampers development of any other characters and causes him to become grating and repetitious. To subvert that is to shake up the closest thing this show has to an identifiable formula, and I really like it.

…but it’s not that. The episode is going in another direction, and we’ll get dragged along screaming behind it.

Of course, the fact that the plot doesn’t go that one way isn’t necessarily a bad thing. There are thousands of ways this premise could play out, and I’d say all of them could at least potentially be worth exploring. But when we cut to Bob the Guardian Angel informing ALF that his wish has been granted, we know we’re firmly in fantasy land, and that feels like a cop out.

Bob is played by Joseph Maher, whom I was sure I’d seen in more things than I could possibly count. His IMDB page supports that suspicion, with roles in a massive number of shows, from MASH to Chicago Hope. They were always small parts, as far as I can tell, but he had a long career full of interesting detours. Most fascinating to me is something called Passages from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, which seems to be a very loose attempt to adapt the unadaptable. (“Unadaptable” is often used as an exaggeration, but being as Finnegans Wake is arguably unreadable I think it’s perfectly fair to use the word here.)

He shows up and explains that due to the Capra Amendment, everyone who wishes for a new life gets one. It’s name-dropping the director of It’s a Wonderful Life. Spinning a plotline out of that film was a bit of a tired premise even back when this episode aired, so “Stairway to Heaven” is not about to score any points for originality.

That’s especially true when you consider that ALF already dipped into that well last season, when Our Alien Savior talked a suicidal man named George out of jumping off a bridge on Christmas Eve.

This means that ALF himself is in a very unique position, as I’m not sure any other character in TV history has experienced this story from the perspective of both the guardian angel and the guy visited by the guardian angel. I guess ALF’s writers were uniquely disinterested in what they were doing.

Also, since there’s no Christmas episode this season, why wasn’t “Stairway to Heaven” just retooled to be one? It’s already leaning heavily on a common holiday trope. How odd that it’s attached to a croquet plot instead of a yuletide one.

Whatever. ALF doesn’t believe a word of this guardian angle shit, and tries to convince the Tanners to talk to him, but Bob says it’s useless, and advises him to look in the mirror.

Seeing neither himself nor Bob reflected, ALF says, “Strange! I thought I broke that mirror.”

The fake audience of dead people doesn’t laugh, and I have no idea why. It’s a really good line. Genuinely funny and, I have to admit, clever. But because the laugh track doesn’t kick in, maybe we’re supposed to be worried that ALF’s been erased from existence or something. I have no idea.

This show so rarely has a solid punchline like this that I’m baffled as to why they didn’t give it a laugh. Maybe laughs are only for truly clever things, like ALF beating Willie half to death with a croquet mallet in the yard.

ALF tells Bob that the poor Tanners must be miserable without him, and we cut to Willie gushing about how perfect their lives are, which is timed perfectly and manages to be funnier than it strictly should be. The family then proceeds to revel in how much extra money they have and how happy they are, culminating with Kate swooning over “this big house with no aliens living in it.”

It’s such an absurdly specific line that I couldn’t help but laugh, and though it goes on too long I also like ALF laying into Bob for that one, arguing “You made them say that!”

Ultimately Bob tells ALF to stop fucking around; he’s going to take him…somewhere else.

And that’s very intriguing to me. After all, if you’re going to show ALF (and the audience) what the world is like without its favorite intergalactic sex pest, I’d think you’d be pretty much limited to the fucking living room. So when Bob says they’re taking a trip, my ears perk up.

What’s Bob going to show us? How different Willie’s workplace is? We didn’t know anything about it to begin with, so that’s out.

How differently Brian and Lynn act at school? Again, what are they like at school? We have no idea. We’ve never even met their friends, so there aren’t any conclusions we can draw.

How much different Kate’s daily routine becomes? We didn’t know what it was when ALF was around, so how would we pick up on anything different when he’s not? Maybe she sucks up fewer shitballs with the Dustbuster. Aside from that? Who knows.

A reality-manipulating premise like this can be a lot of fun, but only if there’s a reality to manipulate. That, of course, is where ALF falls down. Instead of getting excited about all the silly things we are about to see, we instead concentrate on how little room for fun there is to be had.

Indeed, “Stairway to Heaven” validates those concerns. It’s the clearest example yet that ALF limited its own potential by not giving a shit about anything but ALF.

Before they can leave, the doorbell rings. It’s Brian’s friends. (“Brian has friends?!” exclaim both ALF and I in unison.) Bob explains that he couldn’t have friends when ALF was here, because they’d never be allowed to come over. It’s a more palatable but less honest way of saying “The writers never gave two shits about this kid, and it was easier to pretend he didn’t exist than to give him any peers.”

The non-existent anonymous neighborhood kids disappear into the back yard to see Brian’s new pool slide. ALF comments that the yard isn’t big enough for a pool, and Bob says that the Tanners bought the Ochmoneks’ house and demolished it.

Which means…

Oh, good. It’s nice to see that Willie and Co. still treat the Ochmoneks like the scum of the Earth, even in this Perfect World fantasy.

Yep, the Ochmoneks live in the servants’ quarters and dote on these assholes all day. I guess it’s only fair, since the Tanners were kind enough to destroy their house for the sake of installing a swimming pool.

I’ll never understand the way this show treats the Ochmoneks. They’re nosy and a bit uncouth, but they’ve never been anything but nice to the Tanners, many times overly so. Again, if the joke was that Willie was such a prick that he couldn’t overcome his totally unfounded hatred (see, as ever, Homer and Flanders), that would be fine, because it would demonstrate some amount of self-awareness on the part of the writing staff.

Instead, there is none. We are supposed to hate them…and I honestly have no idea why. What a terrible fucking show.

Speaking of which…

Angel Bob takes ALF to see what his life is like without the Tanners. Because the world doesn’t and never did exist outside of the living room set, we’re taken to a cosmetics factory, because fuuuuuuuuuuuuck youuuuuuuuuuuu.

There’s a sign in the establishing shot that I can’t quite read. I was hoping against hope that it said Terry Faith Cosmetics, just to provide some amount of continuity with that otherwise completely disposable episode, but nope. Angel Bob informs us that it’s Cosmique Cosmetics.

These two run out the clock by talking back and forth in non-humorous circles about the boss of Cosmique Cosmetics, drawing it out long and painfully enough that you know what the big reveal is going to be far before Angel Bob takes them into the boss’s office…

…at which point the boss has his back turned to the camera and they still shit out vague, repetitive nuggets of nothing about who the boss might be.

Eventually an end is put to this daring experiment in anti-suspense, and we see who it is!

Oh mercy me! I never would have guessed it would turn out to be ALF, even though the entire reason Angel Bob brought ALF here was to show him what he was doing with his life without the Tanners.

So we get another unintentional nod to “Keepin’ the Faith” (or, rather, another unintentional reminder that the writers have no recollection of anything they’ve already done) when we have ALF selling makeup over the phone.

Yep. If you thought an idea like that was a waste of an episode in a show about a space alien, then you’re bound to throw up your hands in defeat when you see that it was actually a waste of two episodes!

This, honestly, could have been okay. It could have worked. Let’s say, for instance, that this was Terry Faith Cosmetics. In reality, back in that bukake happy episode, ALF was some lowly salesman working for the company. Here, maybe Angel Bob is showing him that he owns the company. That could be pretty cool…seeing old events from the show through a new filter, and illustrating how different ALF’s lot in life is by a simple flash of contrast.

Not that ALF’s makeup salesman days need to be revisited for any reason, but I think the idea could be sound. Explore old plot details with the twist that ALF is now the man on top. Instead of writing for that shitty soap opera, maybe he’s acting in it. Instead of burning the hotel down, he’s the manager kicking the Tanners out for fucking with the toaster. Again, the lack of anything interesting in this show’s history means none of those specific ideas sound very appealing, but it could at least be an interesting concept.

Certainly more interesting than blindly robbing “Keepin’ the Faith” and “ALF’s Special Christmas” in one fell swoop with nobody involved even realizing it.

We get some long, pointless explanation of how rich ALF is, and then he calls in two of his assistants who sit on his desk and cross their legs. The audience laughs uproariously at the absurd thought that ALF would be sexually harassing adults for once.

Then Angel Bob goes into an even longer explanation of how ALF got the job. I’ll skip over most of the names-of-celebrities-substituting-for-jokes and just say that instead of crashing into the Tanners’ garage, he crashed into the makeup department at Bloomingdales. His radiator fluid leaked into some bottles (we’ve all been there, right??) and it turned out to be the most popular fragrance in the history of whatever who cares.

ALF wonders how he’s able to operate in public without the Alien Task Force jamming needles up his urethra. Angel Bob explains that ALF paid off the national debt with his fortunes, so the president called them off. How ALF managed to amass those fortunes without the Alien Task Force jamming needles up his urethra remains unaddressed.

I do have one thing nice to say about this scene: ParallALF is referred to by his assistants as “Mr. Shumway.” This might seem odd if you remember the fact that he doesn’t like his name, and prefers to be called ALF. However, since Willie is the one who gave him that name in the first place, and he’s never met Willie in this reality, he’s stuck with being Gordon Shumway.

I don’t know if this was intentional, and I slightly doubt it. But that doesn’t matter; accidentally or not, it’s a nice — unaddressed — nod to the show’s continuity.

Regardless, I kind of love the fact that the Tanners, as little as Paul Fusco is interested in acknowledging them whenever ALF pops up somewhere else, are inextricably woven into the character. He wouldn’t even have his name if not for them, and I find that hilarious. Neither party can truly be free of the other.

Anyway, ALF pops a boner and says, “Yeah, this is better than humping Willie’s leg while he sleeps, I’ll take this life plz.”

It’s easy to see how limited ALF is. Take better shows, and frame a plot around the “what if?” that comes from two main characters having never met. What if Felix Unger never met Oscar Madison? What if Radar never met Henry Blake? What if Homer never met Marge? What if Gilligan never met the Skipper? What if Billy Quizboy never met Pete White? So many ideas come from those simple what-ifs, and, indeed, many shows have toyed with it.

Here, the “what if” is ALF having never met the Tanners. And because none of the characters involved in that scenario have anything like personalities, hopes, dreams, defining traits, fears, secrets, ambitions, worries, or anything else that actual people have, the answer is “I dunno, maybe ALF has a lot of money.”

It’s not a failure of imagination in itself…it’s a reflection of the failure of imagination in all 51 of the preceding episodes.

Angel Bob snaps his fingers and they go to Heaven or some shit. I guess they need to stop there so that Bob can fill out the necessary paperwork for ALF’s new life, which I’m willing to allow as a logistical necessity, but why did anyone think that a good idea for a scene in a fantasy episode — in which the characters can go literally anywhere and do literally anything — would be watching an elderly man slowly peck things out on a typewriter?

ALF is on hand to keep the audience rolling in the aisles, which he does by name-dropping more celebrities for no reason — hello, Sheena Easton and Kelly LeBrock! — and incessantly quoting songs (he’s seen clouds from “both sides now,” tee hee, and he later yells at Michael Landon to “get offa my cloud!” in an unwelcome combination of both kinds of non-jokes).

Then he’s informed that he won’t remember the Tanners in his new life, and he gets all weepy eyed because he’ll miss them. Which is a pretty odd development in an episode that opened with him clubbing the family patriarch senseless.

Bob agrees to take ALF down to see the Tanners one last time.

Things sure are different! Willie smokes a much more legal kind of pipe, Kate plays chess, Brian plays golf, and Lynn plays the bassoon. A real one…not “the purple bassoon” she got a reputation for playing in high school.

There’s a lot of hammy nonsense with their too-formal speech and shit like that, and Willie tells a joke to Kate that I think only exists because they could count on Max Wright’s strained delivery to pad the episode out by another six minutes, and then ALF concludes that the Tanners are boring without him.

Anyway Mrs. Ochmonek burps.

Fortunately ALF awakens from this nightmare in which everyone is happy and he’s not the center of attention. Whew! I was getting worried that somebody might learn something.

If you look at that screengrab and don’t immediately conclude that it turns into an extended Wizard of Oz pastiche you’re a fucking idiot.

ALF recites a bunch of lines from that film instead of any of the horse shit his own writers might come up with while Willie does to most awkward half-squat in television history.

Then, because the episode isn’t quite over, ALF recites a bunch of euphemisms for being dead, such as buying the box condo, and taking a dirt nap. When he’s done he smashes a glass of water on the floor as a big fuck you to the family.

Thanks for watching!!

The short scene before the credits actually has a pretty clever idea: ALF calls Bloomingdales and tries to sell them on the idea of his radiator fluid perfume. It’s a perfectly okay way to end an otherwise kind of craptastic episode. After all, he already saw how rich he can get off of this stuff, so even though it’s a dumbass idea it’s not — in his mind — without precedent. I like it.

It’s funny enough, and would have been a great way to end the episode, except that — totally out of character for this show — it gets funnier.

We hear Kate scream as she’s getting ready for date night with Willie, and then she steps back out into the living room.

I’m sure the writers thought that the sight gag of blue ink everywhere was the big reason this ending worked, but you and I, dear reader, know a lot better. We know it works because Anne Schedeen burns fucking holes through that puppet.

ALF might have been a big pile of shit, but in terms of pure hatred from a sitcom mother, it’s got a clear monopoly.

So, yeah. For such an “out there” episode, it sure didn’t stray very far from its weekly norm. I think it says a lot that the show opened it up for the kind of plotline that would allow the writers to do anything…and they decided to put ALF in a suit and call it a day.

Sometimes I wonder if ALF is some brilliant experiment in self-parodic anti-comedy. I wonder it while I’m eating lunch.

Alone.

MELMAC FACTS: On Melmac croquet was called Mucksucking, and it was the most popular sport. It was played similarly to the way we play it on Earth, but it required four newlywed couples and Bob Eubanks. (That’s a Newlywed Game reference, I know, but commuting to Melmac must have been hell on that guy.)