Category: alf

You might remember in my review for “Tequila” that I said the next episode was one I’ve been looking forward to for a long time, but that was bullshit because I’m an idiot. I have no clue what “We Are Family” is about. The one I was thinking of is “Varsity Blues,” which comes next. I’m kind of disappointed, because I wanted to end the season on some kind of ridiculous nonsense instead of one I’m predisposed to enjoy. WOE IS ME

My confusion actually carries through much of the first scene, because Willie is discussing the very issue I’m looking forward to being addressed in “Varsity Blues”: the fact that ALF muthafuckin bankrupts these idiots.

Granted, the dialogue doesn’t get quite that far, but when an episode opens with Willie chiding ALF for racking up a $300 phone bill…well, that seems like a pretty good ingress to dealing with the larger financial problem. It’s not, though. It’s the opening to an irrelevant episode about Jake. Remember him? He’s like Brian, only he has a personality, character traits, and the writers only have to pay him when he has something to do.

Whatever. We’ll deal with that later. Right now we’re covering the phone bill, which is so high because of all the phone sex ALF has been having with Lynn. Then there’s the matter of additional fees for all the photos of his junk he’s been FedEx-ing to Brian. Really this crap is just killing time until the Ochmoneks come over, which is fine, because I actually like them.

I can’t get over how much Mr. Ochmonek has grown on me as a character. Granted, it might be some form of desperation, like in those old cartoons with two characters starving to death in a lifeboat, and to each other they each look like big turkey legs. I’m dying for something to enjoy consistently, so I start salivating whenever I see Porkchop Ochmonek.

I don’t know. I think he’s funny. They come over to invite the Tanners to Jake’s graduation party, and they’re excited because he finished the eighth grade after only one year. “He’s so smart, it’s scary!” Mr. Ochmonek says, and it’s actually a good line.

Jack LaMotta doesn’t get much to do with Mr. Ochmonek, but he makes his lines count. We then get a nice moment when he asks Willie to répondez s’il vous plaît, which I fucking love because Mr. O — with his master’s degree in Art History — isn’t entirely the uncultured boob he seems to be. He’s got a little more going on beneath the surface, even if he doesn’t realize that himself, and I think that’s great. The fact that he didn’t just say “R.S.V.P.,” or “So are you comin’ or what?” doesn’t quite qualify as a joke. It’s funny, but it’s funny because it’s an unexpected reveal of character.

Starving in a lifeboat or not, I’ll take moments like that anytime.

Also, note that the Ochmoneks are inviting the Tanners to one of their family events. This season alone the Tanners hosted a Halloween party and a wedding without inviting the Ochmoneks, who live right next door and probably have to deal with the noise and all the extra cars. In the review for “Something’s Wrong With Me,” ALF analyst Mark Moore left a comment saying that it was understandable that the Ochmoneks wouldn’t be invited to the wedding, as they really had nothing to do with the couple. Which, unquestionably, is true. And yet, the Tanners have nothing to do with Jake. ALF seems to have a relationship with him, but, obviously, the Ochmoneks don’t know that, and ALF, just as obviously, isn’t invited.

The Ochmoneks are inviting the Tanners because that’s the polite thing to do. These people are happy to invite the Tanners, just for the sake of offering. The Tanners wouldn’t be caught dead wishing the Ochmoneks a merry Christmas, let alone inviting them to one of their social functions.

Remind me. Again. Who the bad neighbors are supposed to be.

After the credits Willie comes into the kitchen, and ALF scolds him, asking him if he ignored the sign on the door. It reads GENIUS AT WORK. Willie then strolls over to ALF and says, “I’m sorry. I didn’t make the connection.”

This is another one of my favorite things about the show: Max Wright being given a laugh line that the editors purposefully withhold laughter from.

It’s an odd kind of bleed from the on-set political conflict, and it’s so easily apparent because the show has a laugh track. When an audience response — and the length of that audience response, and the enthusiasm of that audience response — can be controlled with a dial, it means that whenever an actor delivers a line like this without getting a response, it’s a clear and deliberate “fuck you.”

Max Wright was vocal in his irritation that ALF got all of the best lines for himself, while all Willie got to do was walk back and forth shaking his head. So, here, he gets to crack a joke.

I love moments like these, because they reveal a lot about what working on ALF must have been like. Complain enough, and you’ll be given a laugh line to shut you up. Of course, in the edit they won’t paste any actual laughter after it, which will just make you look like even more of a lame idiot to the viewers at home.

It’s a way to get the actors to clam up on set without anyone at home having to believe there’s somebody else on the show as funny as ALF. I sure wonder why everybody hated working with Paul Fusco.

It’s even expanded upon as Willie tries to get ALF to laugh at his joke, and ALF just shrugs him off and says, “Yeah yeah.” You’re not the star, Willie. You’re lucky we even pay you. Now be quiet and let the people enjoy the puppet.

ALF explains that he’s writing a press release. He’s decided to reveal himself to the world so that he no longer has to be in hiding.

Willie, understandably, craps himself.

He’s upset because ALF seems to have forgotten that the government will scoop him up the moment he dangles his face-phallus in public. It’s hard to blame ALF, though, since the show itself also seems to forget this very often. At this point, I honestly think that the number of characters on this show who have seen ALF is larger than the number of characters who haven’t.

But Willie’s impassioned explanation of ALF’s possible fate at the hands of the Alien Task Force (or, as he calls them, “The Government,” because none of the writers can remember what they called the organization) leads to a clip from the forthcoming Project: ALF.

Man I am not looking forward to Project: ALF.

Anyway, it’s an odd fantasy sequence that goes on a lot longer than I would have expected. I guess the writers had some jokes about ALF being in government custody, but didn’t want to actually write an episode in which that was the case. Which, hey, fine. But I’d much prefer a full-length fantasy episode with ALF awakening from this nightmare at the end.

I know, that’s corny, but at least “title character is captured by show’s villain” would be a fantasy episode that had something to do with ALF‘s premise. So far the ones we’ve gotten have been about Kate running for president and a visit to Gilligan’s Island.

This seems like it should play a bit like a Family Guy cutaway. Get there, tell your joke, get out. Instead, we get a protracted sequence of ALF shocking himself by pushing buttons, making jokes about how he hates celery, and then the introduction of a guest character. Which, again, since this is an irrelevant fantasy inserted into the show because Jake’s graduation party is far from adequate material for a full-length plot, is fucking crazy.

Who cares about the fake scientist who doesn’t even exist in the show’s reality? I have hard enough time caring about most of the characters who do. Why am I spending time with this deformed guy?

Like, he actually is deformed. He’s some guy who’s been in a crapload of horror movies, but in this case, why is ALF fantasizing that he’s going to be captured by a guy who can’t grow hair or teeth? Why that specific detail? What’s even the point of this? Nothing horrific is happening…ALF is just fantasizing some shitty dialogue for him and this imaginary scientist to shoot back and forth.

What the hell is going on?

If I’d gone for a bathroom break and came back to find that the Jake’s Graduation episode had somehow become the ALF’s Vivisection episode, I’d have been a confused little boy.

Actually, I’m no less confused as a big boy. What the fuck is this episode? We’re nearing the halfway point, and I couldn’t tell you. ALF racked up a huge phone bill, so it’s time for Jake to graduate, therefore ALF considers writing a press release about himself, and he daydreams about being held captive in a government testing facility.

This…I don’t know, guys. I feel like I’m having a stroke. Nothing here has any connection to anything else.

At least we’re back in the Tanner kitchen. That will give me a chance to reorient myself. ALF’s at his typewriter, Willie’s in his fishing vest, and…

wat

Now ALF is hosting a talk show.

What the actual what fucking what.

What is this episode? He’s on the old David Letterman set, which makes sense, as at this point in time Letterman was still hosting Late Night on NBC. In case you forgot, that’s ALF‘s network. The fact that Letterman himself doesn’t appear goes a long way toward demonstrating his excellent taste in entertainment.

ALF makes some dumbass jokes about eating cats because he’s ALF and ALF eats cats. Then we…

no.

NOOO

Willie is dressed like Paul Shaffer, hamming it up while some actual musician in the background wishes he didn’t need the extra income so badly.

The weird thing is that Max Wright does an actual impression of Shaffer, which itself gave me gallstones, yes, but the reason it’s weird is that he thanks ALF for hiring him after firing Shaffer.

So…what?

What?

WHAT

If Willie isn’t ALF’s fantasy version of Shaffer — and in fact just replaced a version of Shaffer that already existed in this fantasy — shouldn’t Willie still be Willie?

Why is he talking and dressing and acting like Shaffer?

Why is this on television?

Why is any of this happening?

Happy graduation, Jake! I hope you enjoy this series of disconnected bullshit!

Then ALF introduces Sandy Duncan, who comes out and my fucking Christ this is awful.

So, recap: ALF made too many calls. Jake is graduating from eighth grade. ALF is considering writing a press release. ALF is flayed alive by the government. ALF is hosting Late Night. Got that?

Now Sandy Duncan turns up to promote Valerie’s Family.

Like…actually promote it. They talk about the actual show, including the recent plot development of a major character dying, and it seemed pretty fucking incongruous until I looked it up and saw that, at the time, Valerie’s Family was airing right after ALF.

I remember a lot of old shows used to have an actor, in character, say something like, “And now stay tuned for…!” over the end credits, which was a pretty corny way of implying endorsement, but I can understand it.

I don’t often remember the star of a show popping up in the previous one to plead with someone, anyone, to stick around and watch it.

Valerie’s Family now is barely remembered. When it is, it’s mainly due to the fact that it featured a young Jason Bateman. During its fairly short lifespan it actually went through three title changes. Valerie, Valerie’s Family, and The Hogan Family. I barely remember the show existing, so I guess cramming one of its stars into the second throwaway fantasy sequence of an instantly forgettable episode of ALF somehow failed to launch it into the public consciousness.

Then we get a commercial, and I have to admit, it’s perfectly placed. I certainly can’t guess what happens next.

When we come back, ALF is dressed as who cares. He called a press conference, and the family just sits around bitching about how boned they are.

Instead of, you know, calling the reporters or whatever and saying it was a hoax and they’re very sorry.

Or stabbing ALF to death with a corkscrew.

Willie then comes in with a documentary about a Ugandan orangutan, and puts it in the VCR. I was seriously afraid we’d get another fantasy sequence with the Tanners playing the roles of zoo animals. See what you’ve done to me, “We Are Family”?

Also…WHY THE FUCK IS THIS CALLED “WE ARE FAMILY.” WHY IS THIS NOT CALLED “A MISHMASH OF MEANDERING HORSE SHIT.”

Oh good. We actually get to watch it.

This episode is such a stitched together mess, I can’t even believe it. Way back in the second episode, “Strangers in the Night,” I had similar concerns. But, well…it was the second episode. At this point? There’s no excuse.

The narrator of the documentary we’re watching for no fucking reason explains that the orangutan was captured and felt so sad that it died of loneliness.

We actually just watch and hear a clip from a nature documentary. Why is this happening?

When it’s over, the Tanners repeat for us everything we’ve just heard, but at greater length to make sure we understand that ALF is totally like that orangutan, you guys.

What the shit happened to Jake’s graduation party? WHAT THE SHIT HAPPENED TO ANYTHING

Also the Tanners keep pronouncing “orangutan” as “a-rang-a-tang” and I’m starting to understand why Elvis shot his television.

Some reporter shows up, Kate tells him to piss off, and he leaves. Wow. They’re really committed to making sure nothing at all happens in this episode, aren’t they?

ALF then pops up through the plot window and says, sadly, “If Robin Leach calls back, just say ‘ALF who.'” Then the sad music plays and there’s no laughter, so I guess the audience is being asked to weep at a reference to Robin Leach. I can safely say ALF is the only show in history to attempt that.

Willie goes into his bathroom to take a shit, but his shy colon refuses to cooperate while ALF’s eating in the tub. ALF asks Willie how the graduation party was and Willie says fine.

…wait.

That’s it? It’s over? I thought that was the whole point of this episode. It happened off camera? Why did we even have to hear about it? What function did it play at all? Sure, it told us that Jake is graduating from eighth grade. But, if that’s the case, doesn’t that mean Brian and Lynn are graduating from their respective grades, too?

Why are the Ochmoneks throwing a party for their nephew, but the Tanners don’t give enough of a shit to throw one for either of their own children? WHAT IS THE POINT OF THIS EPISODE.

The scene ends, but not before we get the great joke that ALF ate Willie’s soap and as a result filled the tub up with a stream of unstoppable feces.

Kate tells ALF to stop wallowing in his own soapy excrement because she wants to take a bath, and when he comes into the living room everyone yells surprise.

It’s…no.

No.

Please. Fucking. God.

No.

It’s a surprise party for ALF.

But…

Jodie is there. And Dr. Dykstra.

No.

Please don’t do this to them. Please. Please don’t put them in this episode. They don’t deserve this. Take me instead.

Kate Sr. and Jake are here too. Everyone’s trying to cheer ALF up by showing him that his world isn’t as limited as he thinks he is, which definitely feels like a resolution to an episode, but not one that saw ALF interviewing Sandy Duncan on Late Night.

This does, however, accomplish something that I like. It shows that ALF has a circle of friends. That’s something I didn’t realize, and which I don’t think the show realized, until this moment.

Usually he encounters these people one by one. Which, of course, is fine. But it contributes to a feeling of isolation that isn’t actually the case. These people can come over and keep him company any time.

It’s also telling that the Tanners didn’t invite the Mexican kid from “Border Song” or the forgotten little girl ALF promised never to forget from the Christmas special. Probably the two people who would most like to see ALF again, and who would actually benefit from having a friend themselves.

But, eh, fuck em. As long as ALF is happy, right?

You may notice something strange about these four guests. Kate Sr., Jake, Dr. Dykstra, and Jodie. One of these things, as they say, is not like the others.

Jodie is the only one who doesn’t know ALF is an alien. So what, exactly, does she think is going on here? As far as she knows, he’s just some short old guy. Isn’t she a little curious as to why they’re all there?

The others know that he’s the last of his species and can’t leave the house. Jodie doesn’t know any of that. Potentially, this could turn into a horrific situation in which a blind woman flees the house into oncoming traffic. But the Tanners didn’t bother to think about that. So fuck her, too.

Surprisingly, the show did think about it, and it leads to the best part of the episode. Jodie makes a joke about ALF’s ratty sweater, and everyone laughs. Then Dr. Dykstra does something very human: he makes awkward conversation with the person he’s stuck sitting next to at the party. Without anything else to say to Kate, he says, “She thinks ALF’s fur is a sweater.”

The look of panic in Kate’s eyes is perfect, and also very human. She pulls him aside and explains that Jodie doesn’t know ALF’s an alien, which you’d think would be a pretty fucking great reason not to invite her to this FEEL BETTER ALIEN party.

Sadly, it doesn’t go any further than this. Dr. Dykstra apologizes for having told Jodie earlier about the time ALF ate a tennis racket because he misunderstood the concept of catgut, and that’s that.

It’s a shame, because there are at least a few great episode ideas in here. The party of ALF’s friends could have fleshed out a nice 30 minutes itself, especially if we got to see some old familiar faces while we’re there. Jodie finding out ALF is an alien should also be a fun — and, let’s face it, inevitable — storyline. Or maybe even when that reporter showed up and Kate shooed him away, he caught a glimpse of ALF through the window, snapped a picture, and now there’s a media circus the Tanners have to deal with.

Any of that is better than watching a nature documentary with fucking Willie.

The Ochmoneks come over looking for Jake, dressed up because they always go dancing on Saturday nights. That’s sweet. When, exactly, is the last time Willie did anything nice for Kate? Or, to be honest, vice versa?

This is why I am willing to believe the Ochmoneks are in love. They have a history. They make each other laugh. They spend time together. Willie and Kate are barely roommates.

ALF hides in the kitchen when the neighbors come over, as usual. Jodie asks why, which is a great question, so Willie knocks her unconscious with a wrench.

The Ochmoneks are hurt because the Tanners had a party without inviting them, but that’s okay, because the episode’s almost over and it’s not like their feelings matter anyway. It turns into a joke about how this is a Tupperware party and the Ochmoneks are cheap. It’s as fitting an ending as anything could possible be for this barely coherent mess of an episode.

I know what you’re thinking. “Did this episode really end before we got to listen to Willie and Kate Sr. perform a duet?”

Don’t worry, brother. The pre-credits tag has you covered. Willie tickles the ivories while Kate Sr. bleats out an abbreviated cover of “The Band Played On.” It’s a well-deserved slap in the nuts for anyone who wasn’t smart enough to change the channel well before we got to this point.

I still have no idea what the fuck I just watched. If any of you can tell me, I’ll be forever in your debt.

One more episode. Then we move on to season three. Which, by all accounts, is worse than season two.

Personally, I don’t know how they could top this.

MELMAC FACTS: On Melmac ALF was considered above-average, though they did grade on a curve. Whatever any of that is supposed to mean. When Melmacians are depressed they eat more (with their “spare stomachs” opening up to accommodate the extra food), and gravitate toward cheap imitation porcelain.

I’d really hoped to make it through the end of season two before “needing” another break, so I’m more than a little bummed that last week was interrupted by an unexpected outage. As I mentioned in my previous post, the site went down because I had more traffic in October than my service plan allowed for. That’s not to say it’s never been higher (my “Ozymandias” review of Breaking Bad is probably destined to be my all-time most visited post), but taking a look at Google Analytics, I see that the average number of visits per day has about tripled from this time last year. Over the course of a month, that adds up, and I ended up exceeding my bandwidth as a result.

Mysterious commenter / antagonist E[X] suggested that if I post my screenshots in .jpg format, they’d eat up less bandwidth. And he’s right. (That adds up, too, unquestionably.) But…I don’t know. .jpgs always look lousy to me. I’ll post the first screenshot here again in .jpg format.

Do you notice a difference? Maybe it’s all in my mind, and it probably doesn’t matter anyway, but the fact is that there isn’t a comprehensive screenshot collection of ALF on the internet. I’m the last person who would complain about such a deficiency, but if I have the chance to provide one to actual fans out there while I’m already in the habit of reviewing the thing…I don’t know. I think that’s kind of cool, and they can be put to good use by others. The official ALF Facebook account has even burgled my screenshots lately, which is oddly flattering.

Do I love ALF so much that I feel compelled to present screenshots in their highest quality? No. Do I really think my reviews would be less popular or less well-received if I posted .jpgs instead of .pngs? No. But if I can make some passing fan happy, or quietly provide the ALF wiki with a usable photograph of Wizard Beaver, then I feel like I might as well.

These final episodes of season two should be interesting. Last week we had a surprisingly good episode: “I’m Your Puppet,” which was a fascinating look at the frustrations of working on this show filtered through the rigid format of the sitcom itself. And next week we have “Varsity Blues,” which is an episode I’ve been looking forward to ever since the start of season one. I haven’t seen it yet (unless I saw it as a kid and forgot, which is possible), and I won’t spoil it for anyone out there who doesn’t know what it’s about, but let’s just say that the plot description suggests it will deal with probably the longest-standing issue I’ve had with this show. Successful or not, that’s something I am very excited to see.

This episode was mentioned in a comment by FelixSH as being good. Or…better than “Movin’ Out,” anyway. He also singled out “I’m Your Puppet,” and that one was awesome, so potentially the end of season two might look a lot like its long-missed beginning: better than it has any right to be.

“Tequila” starts out with a scene that’s good without being particularly funny. Kate is preparing for a visit from her old college roommates, and because she wants to make a good impression, everyone has a chore to do. ALF and Lynn are polishing the silver, and this might be the first time that we’ve seen ALF and Lynn assigned the same task. The fact that they’re both bored by it makes it easy for the show to pass it off as an exercise in quiet bonding, and I love that.

ALF makes all the normal jokes you’d expect, and they’re neither more nor less funny than usual, but what I love is watching Lynn’s face. When Andrea Elson actually smiles (as opposed to acting like her character is smiling), it’s adorable. And whether she’s laughing out of turn or not, it suits the context: Lynn doesn’t want to do this, and will take any release she can get. The same tired jokes coming out of the same tired alien represent a small escape, and if you watch her face through this scene, you’ll see that she laughs at every single one of them. It’s sweet, and 100% believable.

Then Willie and Brian come home with groceries, and Willie screams at his wife to drop whatever she’s doing and come open the door for him.

God I hope Kate’s old roommates give her shit for dumping Joe Namath for this guy.

Anyway, ALF wrote shit on the wall, and I’m a bit disappointed by Kate’s over-the-top reaction.

Yeah, don’t get me wrong, this sucks. In theory. But it’s not like ALF wrote anything particularly objectionable…just something stupid. Unless there’s a dirty joke in WELCOME DORM QUEENS that I’m not getting. If he wrote HELLO YOU SHITTY HAGS I’d understand…and it’s not much of a reach to think that he would write something like that.

Kate’s gasp of horror when she notices this rings false. Anne Schedeen does her best with it, but the reveal of the writing isn’t enough to justify it, so it falls flat. Her immediate decision to cancel the dinner is even more out of scale to the problem.

Instantly a wealth of ideas present themselves as alternative solutions, especially since the groceries just arrived and she hasn’t even started preparing dinner. If there’s time to do that, there’s plenty of time to…

…paint over it. It’s high enough on the wall that nobody will accidentally touch it, so it doesn’t matter if it’s still wet.

…hang a sheet over it. Explain that there’s a crack or some water damage there that’s being fixed tomorrow.

…come up with a cover story about Brian doing this, thinking it was a nice gesture. It’s not like the kid has any other role on the show; might as well make him the designated scapegoat for ALF’s shenanigans.

And those are just the first things that come to mind. I’m sure you guys could come up with a dozen more. But because there’s some crayon on the wall and she married a worthless piece of shit who gives up after five seconds of caressing it with a damp sponge, Kate calls her pals and arranges to meet them at a restaurant on their old campus.

They do, and it’s what Alan Partridge would sagely describe as a load of women talking blabbering crap. The conversation is stilted and hollow. They don’t really feel like old friends, to me. They feel like four actresses at a table exchanging background information about the characters they barely get to play.

It just about builds to what could have been a great storyline, though: after her three friends discuss all the rad shit they’ve been up to, they ask Kate what she’s been doing. “Nothing,” she replies, and the delivery is perfect. Schedeen sells the sadness of it without making it feel like Kate’s aware of the sadness. It’s the kind of thing somebody says without thinking that turns out to be more truthful than anything they say when they are.

But that’s about it. It’s a shame, because way back in “Jump” we learned that Kate used to do a hell of a lot. You know. Before she married the sentient pepperoni log we call Willie.

The suggestion that her friends are still living exciting, fulfilling, successful lives might suggest that it’s Kate who took a wrong turn…or, at least, offer enough of a suggestion to that effect that she can explore it throughout the episode before realizing she’s happy where she is, and that that’s what matters.

Nothing groundbreaking, but something recognizable. And it’s a shame that her “nothing” response just sort of gets swept away. I want to see that episode. Schedeen could sell it. I wish they’d let her.

Two of her friends leave — I don’t know who they are, so let’s just call them Pancho and Miffy — and she’s alone at the table with the third, Maura.

It’s an odd scene, and I know Schedeen is a stronger actress than this episode is letting on, so she may have just gotten some very poor — even by ALF standards — direction.

See, as soon as the other two depart, Kate starts telling Maura how proud they all are of her, and of what she’s accomplished, and it sounds so desperately supportive that the same take of this line could play over a scene of talking Maura down from a tall building.

We find out in a moment Maura is depressed, but Kate doesn’t know that, and indeed is shocked to find out. So why is she already talking to her like a suicide prevention operator?

Maura begins to cry, and Kate believably doesn’t know how to handle it. It’s probably been a long time since she’s had to deal with anything like somebody’s real emotions. Certainly before she moved onto a soundstage webbed by deadly puppet trenches.

That much, I buy. What I don’t buy is Maura asking if she can stay at Kate’s tonight, and Kate replying, “Uh…no.”

Sorry. The next scene lets us know that what she’s worried about is Maura finding ALF, but the delivery just makes it sound like Kate’s a bitch. And the thing is…she’s not.

She’s chilly. She’s stubborn. She lacks a sense of humor. But all of this, we’ve seen by now, is productive. She runs a tight ship, and her intentions are good. She’s not selfish, really. Yes, she wants things her way, but she wants them her way because she’s convinced that’s the best way for her family. And considering the pack of idiots she lives with, it’s hard to fault her for arriving at that conclusion.

So, no. Kate would not turn away a crying friend with a callous, “Uh…no.”

She’d make an excuse, maybe, but “Uh…no” is reserved for when ALF wants to dance naked on the roof, or when Willie wants to touch her boobs.

Not a friend in need. That’s not Kate.

She calls home to tell Willie that a friend will be spending the night. While he’s on the phone, ALF climbs a ladder with a bucket of paint so that the ladder can fall over and the paint can ruin the couch.

It’s fucking stupid.

The only funny part is watching ALF fall, which is impossible to catch in a good screenshot, but it looks like they just stuffed the old midget suit with leaves and dropped it from the rafters. Brilliant.

In the next scene, Willie has disposed of the couch…apparently.

Seriously, where the hell is it? He set up the cot because ALF ruined the couch, yes, but WHERE IS THE COUCH? You can’t expect me to believe Max Wright fucking shouldered a sofa out of the house all on his own. And even if he did…why? Wouldn’t it be easier to just drape a sheet over it?

Willie tells ALF that he’s not sleeping in the garage tonight; he has to sleep in Brian’s room. You know, because “you’re not sleeping in the garage tonight” was a such a massively successful plan when Uncle Albert came to stay.

How many fucking people need to see ALF / get murdered by ALF before these morons just leave well enough alone and let the fucking space creature stay in the shed? There’s no reason given at all, and I certainly can’t think of one. Can you?

Why is it smarter in any way to hide ALF one room away from their guest than it is to hide him in a completely separate building? Especially when he wants to be in the other building? Yes, I know he likes Brian, but he doesn’t like spending the night with him. The kid always wants to cuddle afterward and talk about their feelings.

Kate and Maura arrive back at the house, and Kate calls Lynn in to say hello. She doesn’t call her son because to hell with him.

Maura is a lawyer, which I’m only mentioning now because Lynn starts swooning over her performance in the People v. Fusco case. So, yeah, like “I’m Your Puppet,” we get a little dose of meta comedy. Unlike “I’m Your Puppet,” though, it goes nowhere, and just seems bizarre.

Why is a teenage girl with no interest in law going ga-ga over some case we don’t hear anything about? Of course, People v. Fusco does eerily presage the class action suit I’m putting together on behalf of everybody who sat through this season’s Christmas special.

Massive shocker: the thing that was absolutely guaranteed to happen the moment Willie told ALF he had to sleep in the house happens.

Seriously, I’m all for plot contrivance. I am. I know we have about 20 minutes to tell a story front to back, and if logistical corners need to get cut, so be it. But in this case, it’s not a corner being cut at all. It’s Willie saying, “ALF, we need you to stay out of the way of our guest, so instead of sleeping where she will never in a thousand years find you, you’ll be sleeping a few yards away.” And it makes no sense whatsoever.

It was the same thing in the damned Uncle Albert episode. You can contrive for ALF to be in an easily-discoverable place, but we need reasons for ALF to be in an easily-discoverable place. You can’t just shit him there; you need to do at least a little bit of legwork.

Maybe the garage has caved in from some of ALF’s antics. Maybe he broke his leg falling off the ladder and needs to be in the house so Brian can take care of him. Maybe he’s in the shed, but Maura comes out because she hears him rocking out to “Billie Jean.” There are any number of ways to address this in a way that at least makes some superficial sense.

Instead, the Tanners keep addressing the problem of hiding ALF by making sure he’s out in the open.

No sense is being made. Period.

So far, the contrivance has been no worse than the one in “We’re So Sorry, Uncle Albert.” But the result is worse. At least Uncle Albert did a rational thing when he discovered ALF: he dropped dead on the fucking spot.

Here, Maura assumes ALF is someone named Sammy and invites him to have a drink.

The next morning they’re still chatting. Okay, so, Maura’s drunk. Fine. She sure drank a lot of tequila judging from that screenshot, but an hours-long conversation with a space alien is not allowed.

Sorry. It’s not.

At some point she’d have to realize this wasn’t who she thought it was. Maybe if she just saw ALF in passing. Or if they only spoke for a few minutes. I’d still be a little skeptical at her lack of panic, but rapping with a moonman until the sun comes up doesn’t raise even the smallest flag for this woman?

Drunk or not, I call bullshit.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but any time I’ve been drunk, any warped perception has been in terms of interpretation. You know? Somebody tries giving you a hard time, but you’re so happy you hug him and don’t realize you’re being insulted. Or somebody says something perfectly benign and you suspect you’re the butt of a joke you’re not alert enough to understand and get upset.

In other words, drunkenness causes you to misunderstand things, certainly. (Or at least makes it faaaar easier to do so.) But it doesn’t make you see things that aren’t there. I might hear something a friend says and interpret it incorrectly, but I don’t look at my friend and see Mr. Peanut. I might stumble around, having trouble remembering my address, but while searching for my house I won’t look at a tree and see a lung.

So, no. I’m sorry. You cannot have a protracted conversation with an alien from an undiscovered civilization without batting an eye. God, I have enough trouble talking to regular human beings when I’m sober. I can’t begin to imagine how a drunken conversation with an extra-terrestrial would go.

Later on Willie and Kate hear ALF stumbling drunkenly around the house. At first I was puzzled by their lack of reaction, but then I realized that by this point the Alien Task Force are the only people in LA that haven’t seen ALF, and this is nothing new for anyone.

Maura tells ALF — who she still thinks is Sammy — that he shows up whenever she drinks, arriving around the third margarita and leaving sometime during her blackout. The fake audience of long-dead nobodies doesn’t laugh, so I guess this is supposed to be a sad and tender moment.

It doesn’t work for two reasons, though.

Firstly, we don’t know who this person is. At all. She’s a lawyer, she was Kate’s roommate, and she drinks. Granted, that’s more character development than almost anyone else on this show, but it’s still not enough to make us care about her. See why that “nothing” comment in the bar was so much more enticing? We know Kate. That means that when she is the one working through something, stakes are involved. We’re interested to see how it turns out. Instead, it’s somebody we just met, and will never see again. It doesn’t actually matter.

Secondly, this is not how drinking works. Honestly, it feels a little like the alcoholism stuff was written by a kid who only knew booze from after-school specials.

Alcohol is not a hallucinogen. It has the potential to be a terrible, terrible thing when misused or overused, but that doesn’t mean it makes imaginary people appear and chew the fat with you until you pass out.

I’m curious as to how much drunk acting on television is true to life. It’s hard for me to come up with many examples; typically it’s overplayed for broad laughs (Barney on The Simpsons is a good example, or Jack on Father Ted), or it seems to spring directly from the tee-totaling minds of The American Temperance Society. It’s very rare that any show, even the great ones, manage to do drunkenness right. (The “Thanks for the Memory” episode of Red Dwarf comes to mind…and not much else does.)

I’m going to open up to you folks.

I grew up with an alcoholic father. It was not pleasant. I have terrible memories that I wish I could shed, but I can’t. I’m stuck with them. Alcoholism is an absolutely awful thing to endure. The memories of being around it dig deeply into you, and not one of them will be pleasant.

So I’m not opposed to a didactic “don’t drink” episode. I don’t need one, but if it’s a message a TV show wishes to pass along, well…more power to them.

But instead of building a storyline or a plot point around what can actually happen when somebody’s drunk, these shitty shows have a strange habit of inventing something stupid, and treating that like it’s the reason we should exercise moderation.

In this case, it’s little goblins who visit Maura. Which, with all due respect, what the fuck. I remember an episode of Family Matters in which Urkel drank some spiked punch and fell off the roof, clinging to a clothesline, after having invented a dance named after himself that everyone else at the party spontaneously did along with him. And at some point in school we had to watch a video in which some kid accepted a sip of beer from an older friend, and then he could never shoot hoops again because a fleeting taste of Coors Light is enough to make you dizzy for life.

I’m not standing on the outskirts making fun of ALF for wanting to do an alcoholism episode. I don’t think it’s necessarily lame or quaint or idiotic. But since alcoholism is something that has affected my life — directly, deeply, and irreparably — I’m concerned by how many shows and specials want to address the problem without actually addressing the problem.

Have Maura try to drive home and crash into the mailbox or something. It can be small-scale. She doesn’t have to hit a kid. But have her do something that reveals an actual danger of drinking too much.

Have her say something stupid to Kate, insulting the woman who gave her a place to stay for the night when she needed a friend. The next morning she can reflect back on what she’s said and be horrified.

Have her get drunk and trip on something, falling down and giving herself a black eye. Maybe ALF has to carry her back to bed, so they can still meet if that’s so fuckin’ important.

These shows try to horrify people without even touching upon how these things can turn horrific. Their cautionary tales exist in a sort of fantasy land where even the worst possible outcome isn’t all that bad. Drink too much and some invisible creatures will keep you company? Sounds fun, actually. And god knows I’d drink however much liquor was necessary for a party full of strangers to gather ’round and spontaneously Do The Reed.

It’s bizarre. It’s like a show trying to make a point about gun control, but it uses for its example a scene in which the main character drops a pistol on his toe and it really hurts.

If you want to say something about the issue, say something about the issue.

Don’t invent a harmless version and act like you’re afraid of that. That’s not helpful, and it’s disrespectful. Trying to warn somebody of the reality of a topic like this absolutely requires an acknowledgment of that reality, and if you need to “invent” a different outcome, it needs to be as bad as or worse than what we see in real life. This isn’t advice…this is a rule.

ALF comes into the room and they all talk for fucking ever about how much he needs to barf.

Willie remembers that in college, they used to call Maura “Boilermaker,” because she drank a shitload of boilermakers. So…Willie and Kate went to college together? That’s kind of interesting. I guess. Has this come up before? Of course it hasn’t. Who am I kidding.

ALF goes into the bathroom and we hear him barf for fucking ever.

We cut to Lynn and Maura having breakfast. It’s just basic, time-killing bullshit until it’s time for Lynn to go to school, at which point she tells Maura how proud she is and how she wants to be like her when she grows up and all the same kind of shit her mother was saying last night at the cafe. Why are the Tanners in suicide prevention mode lately?

Yes, Maura’s a fuckin’ wreck, but neither of the characters finds this out until after they deliver their “you have so much to live for” speech. It’s really odd.

Maura starts crying again and Willie guides Lynn out of the room in the first human gesture I’ve seen in the entire episode. It’s something I can see an actual adult doing with their actual child, with the intention of explaining later. Willie, being a shit father, is probably not going to explain later because he’ll be busy staring vacantly at the wall, but this part of the process, at least, is familiar.

Kate confronts Maura about her drinking problem, and it’s…not all bad. Kate gently asks her how much she drank, leading the conversation without being confrontational. Maura defends herself by saying she’s under a lot of stress and is fighting with her husband…which isn’t an excuse, but is a perfectly valid way of explaining a one-off night of stupidity.

Neither wants to push too hard, and both are clearly uncomfortable. It’s actually a decent enough scene, if we didn’t need to keep cutting to ALF doing nothing in the living room because Paul Fusco is constantly paranoid that people will forget who the show is named after.

In fact, y’know what? This conversation is way too close to being effectively relateable, so let’s just send the alien waltzing in without any reason.

ALF announces to Maura that only she can see him; he’s invisible to Kate and everyone else. Maura, in spite of the fact that she’s stone-sober now, believes this. If it was absurd for her to have this conversation last night after a bottle of tequila, it’s upgraded to fucking ridiculous that she could have it again, now, sober, in front of another person who just sits there quietly waiting for this to resolve itself.

ALF, through his talent of spewing nonsensical bullshit that fictional characters flick themselves off to, saves the day. He appeals to Maura’s sadness and desperation, and gets her to admit she has a problem.

Which…y’know, Kate was kinda doing on her own. One friend to another.

These are two people who have known each other for decades. They have a history together. They trust each other and they care about each other. When Kate allows herself to understand that Maura has a problem, she is finally ready to help Maura with that problem.

All of this comes dangerously close to being a logical resolution to a serious subject, so of course it gets interrupted by ALF, the magical booze gnome, strolling in from the living room and tying everything up with a neat little bow.

It would be fine if this was the joke. Perhaps Kate was doing just fine, but ALF comes in with good intentions and fucks it all up. This late in the episode that wouldn’t make much sense, I know, but what happens doesn’t make any more sense anyway.

Why does ALF have to intrude on this scene? Were they trying to make a point about recognizing the problems you have, or were they trying to make a point about how awesome ALF is?

I guess it’s the latter, because the short scene before the credits has a letter arriving from Maura, who assures the Tanners that even though she will never be seen again, she’s doing great and will be forever.

Kate thanks ALF and tells him that they owe him “a big one.” You know. Because he explicitly disobeyed their orders by skulking around the house the night they had a guest sleeping in the living room, and then rudely interrupted a very serious conversation Kate was having with a fragile and desperate woman.

You know, this episode could have been pretty good if it weren’t for this show’s frustrating tendency to cram ALF into as many scenes as possible. And that’s the problem with this show as a whole. ALF, as a character, suffocates everything else. The good stuff happens around the margin — Kate’s background business, Lynn giggling, Willie dropping his crack pipe — because it has to. At the center of the show, whether or not he has anything to do with the story or has any reason to be there, it’s ALF. And that’s draining.

It’s like having your annoying uncle show up at every party you attend. Sure, any one of those nights could be fun, but after a while…won’t you just stop going?

So, yeah. Alcoholism is bad, but you know what’s the opposite of bad?

ALF. He’s just great. His jokes are wonderful, and he solves so many problems that two human beings speaking like adults could never hope to solve.

What’s all this shit about admitting you have a problem and letting the ones you love help you through it? The real solution is the saintly alien who pretends to be an imaginary drinking buddy and sorts your life out, and sometimes rapes the kids.

How many of these episodes are just going to be about how perfect ALF is? It’d be one thing if he was ever actually helping anyone, but instead he just sort of causes problems and sometimes offers up half-assed solutions that only work because the episode has to end sometime.

See, when I was growing up, I always thought that my father needed help. That he needed to open up to somebody — anybody — about whatever it was that made him drink so much. That he needed to look at himself in the mirror and say, “I have to slow down.” That he needed to reflect upon what he was doing to himself, to his friends, to his job, and to his family.

I see now that what he really needed was a wisecracking alien to tell shitty jokes, rip a fart, and tap-dance out of the room.

Fuck you, ALF.

When I started doing these reviews, each one took me about…two hours or so to write. (Not counting the viewing time of the episode, of course, but that’s negligible.) Now they take several days’ worth of on-and-off work. Which, frankly, is insane.

I think, however, that’s because I’ve allowed my writing process to evolve into something very inefficient. Even though my reviews are better now than they were then (feel free to disagree…), I think that the change in writing process is coincidental, and is not responsible for any bump in quality. The improvement is far more likely to be down to my expanded mindset, and increased willingness to engage with the material.

So, what I’m doing with this review is going back to my old writing process. If you think this installment represents a major step backward in quality, let me know. Hopefully you won’t even notice. Or wouldn’t have if I didn’t draw your attention directly to it OOPS

Anyway, this one opens with ALF building some shitty car in the living room. (Don’t worry. It gets better.)

As you can see, the construction of the vehicle is pretty well underway, so I have no idea how nobody in the family knew he was doing this. Why not set this scene in the garage where it would make more sense? I’d be willing to believe he was building some jalopy out there that nobody knew about. The Tanners only have periodic reasons to go into the garage, and that’s sort of ALF’s de facto playground anyway, so why not? Why the fucking living room when we find out in a moment that Lynn and Kate are right in the kitchen? How did they not hear this, or see this, happening?

It’s a pretty stupid setup for a sequence of jokes that would have lost nothing (and would not have had to be rewritten in any way) if they just came into the garage instead of the living room to tell ALF breakfast is ready. As it stands, Kate and Lynn walk out of the kitchen at the sound of the shitty car’s horn, which is annoying but not particularly loud. How did they hear that but not the actual construction of the fucking vehicle?

Whatever I SWEAR IT GETS BETTER

You’ll also see that they’re really making sure to get their money’s worth out of those fuzzy dice they dyed green way back in “Help Me, Rhonda.”

The jokes are actually not that bad. For starters, the alien refers to his car as an ALF Romeo. It’s one of those puns that’s exactly stupid enough that it just barely circles back around to being funny. In fact, I’d be willing to give this entire scene a begrudging pass based on that joke alone, but it’s not the only good one.

ALF explains that he’s building a car because it will impress chicks. Then he asks if they like it, and Kate says no. ALF replies, “I was asking the chick. Not the mother hen.”

It’s dickish, but what makes it funny is Andrea Elson’s reaction. As commenter J. Paul pointed out recently, Elson is a bit of a gigglepuss. You can catch her laughing — or trying very hard not to — pretty often. Here, as in “Going Out of My Head Over You” during the brilliant dinner scene, it fits even if it’s not deliberate. It’s a shot at Kate that doubles as a compliment for Lynn, so I buy that the shock of it would make her laugh before she realizes she shouldn’t be doing that.

It’s a nice moment. I think it’s deliberate, but even if it’s not, so what? Most of the stuff this show does deliberately sucks a big cock, so you might as well let it run off the rails now and then.

Lynn asks how he built this piece of shit, and he explains that he used some worthless junk from around the house…such as Kate’s wedding dress for the car seat. Kate rightly gets upset, but ALF replies, “What? Were you planning on wearing it again?”

This…I actually like. ALF did something massively upsetting to Kate, but with one line of dialogue we’re reminded that he didn’t realize it.

Earthlings have this custom of keeping one specific article of clothing that, no, they will never wear again. ALF, an alien, doesn’t know that. He probably sees all kinds of clothing (especially with two growing children in the house) being given away or otherwise disposed of because they won’t be worn again. Why would — or should — he think this old dress is any different? It’s a good way to make ALF an accidental asshole without making him an intolerable psychopath.

Kate tells him to get that monstrosity out of her living room, and he starts it up for some reason without being inside of it, so of course it crashes into some furniture and makes a bigger mess. We linger on a shot of the crashed vehicle long enough that I was sad this whole thing built to a shitty visual “gag,” but then we finally cut back to ALF who says, “Great. Now I have to build a tow-truck.”

And FUCK YOU that’s the funniest punchline these opening scenes have had in a while.

This one has a writing credit for Al Jean and Michael Reiss, which may explain in itself why the dumbass setpiece in the opening scene actually had some good lines in it. It certainly explains why the inane plotline to follow actually leads to a pretty great episode.

“I’m Your Puppet” gets off to a great start in that regard, actually; Willie answers the door, sees a delivery man, and says, “Hi, Pete.”

Those two words say everything, and what follows is a cute little exchange that lets us know the details without spelling anything out too obtrusively: ALF orders so much shit that Willie and the delivery guy come to know each other by name. Of course, the package is COD. Do companies even do that anymore? At the time this aired I’m sure they did (I remember that being mentioned in commercials for mail-order horse shit)…but I can’t imagine Amazon or somebody sending something to your house with the expectation that you’ll pay the postman.

Willie even gets a great line when the delivery guy leaves. He calls out, “Oh, ALF! I have a package and a lecture for you!” When Max Wright gets a laugh out of me so early in an episode, damn me if I can’t help feeling optimistic.

ALF excitedly rips open the box, saying, “It came!” Lynn asks what it is, and ALF says, “Beats me.”

It implies that ALF orders so much shit he doesn’t even know what’s coming, and I thought it was a funny way of doing so, but there’s no laughter so maybe it wasn’t a joke? I have no clue. The artificial audience reactions should make it easier for me to understand this lousy show’s intentions, but all it does is confuse me further.

Then there’s a really odd moment when Willie tells ALF he’s getting “Styrofoam” all over the floor. ALF then eats some and spits it out because “it’s stale.”

Is it just me, or does it seem like Max Wright botched his line and they never bothered to fix it? The joke would have made more sense if Willie called them “Styrofoam peanuts” or “packing peanuts” instead. I really get the sense he just said the wrong thing and they rolled on anyway, disregarding the fact that the gag no longer worked.

Inside the box is a ventriloquist’s dummy, which ALF shakes around a bit and then gives up on, because it’s mute. That makes for a decent line, but a pretty crappy end to the scene, so it’s odd that they didn’t bother to write a stronger joke to close out on.

Just kidding. That’s not odd at all. Even the good episodes of this show are kind of shit.

Later on ALF is still yelling at the dummy to talk. By this point why hasn’t the family beaten him to death with a rake? Or at least explained to him what a dummy is, I guess. This is later in the day, and the Tanners are just wasting their lives in the living room, listening to a puppet yell at a dummy.

Nobody puts a stop to this? Jesus Christ. Shut that fucker up!

ALF threatens the puppet by saying, “Don’t make me get the rubber hose.” The fake audience laughs because if there’s one thing everybody loves about ALF, its his proclivity toward sexual violence.

Willie wanders over and ALF tells him the dummy is broken, which would be a perfect time for Willie to explain what a ventriloquist’s dummy actually is…but instead Jean and Reiss have him do something far, far better.

Willie, eyes half-closed, says: “ALF, I’m not going to raise my voice. I’m not going to threaten you. I’m just going to say, for the 928th time, please don’t ever do this again.”

He then walks away, ignoring ALF’s question entirely.

I’m not even going to type that in phonetic Willispeak, because Max Wright enunciates this both clearly and wearily. It’s actually a really great moment, and it’s kind of sad. Wright plays this very well, with a beaten, hopeless tone to his voice that no doubt plays right out of the actual beaten hopelessness that he feels for being on this show at all.

In fact, the whole “puppet with a puppet” thing may serve as a decent metaphor for ALF as a whole. Just as Max Wright had to deal with one puppet’s nonsense in reality, Willie has to deal with another in his reality. “I’m Your Puppet” might therefore be the recursive nightmare of Max Wright translated directly to film.

ALF then says he’s going to send Willie some flowers, and we cut to Lynn and see that the Styrofoam peanuts are indeed everywhere. Like, all over the living room floor. And, I’m sorry, but that’s a gorgeous little touch.

I really love this. They’re not just in a little pile somewhere…they’re scattered everywhere, and that’s hilarious. It’s just the result of the production crew having some fun. The previous scene mentioned peanuts everywhere, so, hell, let’s give them peanuts everywhere. It’s cute, and ties silently into the frustration on Willie’s part that we just saw.

Lynn then explains to ALF how the dummy works, and demonstrates it pretty effectively. Yeah, you can still see her lips move, but only barely. I don’t know if Andrea Elson had any kind of real-life interest in ventriloquism, but she certainly does it a lot better here than I just did when I embarrassed myself by imitating what I saw on an episode of ALF.

It’s a funny scene, starting with ALF’s astonishment that the dummy sounds just like Lynn.

Then he tries voicing the dummy himself, and his mouth moves very obviously. This I really like, because it’s such a subtle joke. Since the alien himself is being voiced by somebody beneath the floorboards, making ALF an excellent ventriloquist would be easy: Fusco just doesn’t need to work ALF’s mouth. Or maybe he could make its lips quiver slightly. Instead, he operates ALF just as he always does, with big, exaggerated gestures, and I like that. We get to stay true to ALF’s characterization rather than simply rocket the plot along.

Then Lynn tells him he needs to keep his mouth shut while he voices the dummy, and ALF does so…rendering the dummy’s lines muffled and incomprehensible.

So help me fuck this god damned ventriloquism episode is good and I swear to fucking pole-dancing christ I’m going to throw myself out a window.

If you thought I was reaching earlier in terms of the whole puppet with a puppet thing serving as potential meta commentary for ALF itself, you’re not alone. I thought I was, too. But then ALF wonders what to call his dummy.

Lynn says that they usually have goofy names, citing actual examples like Mortimer Snerd and Knucklehead Smiff. This helps ALF decide on a ridiculous name for his own puppet: Paul.

Now, if you’ve been following these reviews from the start, you’ll already know what I’m about to say…but humor me, for the sake of anyone tuning in late.

Paul Fusco is the creator of ALF. He’s also the puppeteer and voice actor behind ALF. On most shows, something like this would be a cute little wink, and little more.

Here, however, things are a bit different. Paul Fusco’s attitude was, by all accounts, why working on ALF was a miserable experience. I’ve joked about his reputation before, but I’ll be completely serious right now and say that that doesn’t necessarily make him a bad person, or even a foolish one. If he had a vision for what ALF should be, it’s respectable, at least in theory, that he committed himself so strongly to it.

In practice, however, there are many more people involved with the production, nearly all of whom seem to have suffered in some way for the sake of what, ultimately, was a pretty shitty sitcom. The filming of each episode took something like ten times as long as that of a standard half-hour comedy, and every one of the actors had to take care as they delivered their lines not to slip into the network of puppet trenches dug through the set.

The experience of filming under these conditions was wearying and unpleasant, leading Jack LaMotta (who played Mr. Ochmonek) to describe it bitterly as one of the worst things ever to air on television, and Anne Schedeen (my beloved, who played Kate) to essentially retire from an acting career that had once been fruitful the moment she was out of ALF‘s contract.

And that’s the good news. Andrea Elson (Lynn) developed a serious eating disorder that I find it impossible not to associate with how often this show treated her like a chunk of meat. Max Wright (Willie), whose conflicts with Fusco were the stuff of miserable legend, became addicted to crack and ended up at the heart of scandal when pictures surfaced of him having sex with hobos in exchange for the drug. After the final day of shooting, before anyone knew ALF had been cancelled, Wright finished his lines, hopped in his car, and drove away without saying goodbye to anybody.

We also know that Jerry Stahl (perennial candidate for the One Good Writer) was battling a crippling heroin addiction that nearly killed him, with suggestions having been floated that squandering his talents on a show like ALF is what kept him in a state of hopeless despondency.

Outtakes from ALF reveal the titular character shouting “NIGGER NIGGER NIGGER” while in the throes of a just-as-insulting impression of people with Tourette syndrome, as well as groping the female actors and making off-color jokes to the visible discomfort of his costars.

All of this is the legacy of Paul Fusco. Again, I don’t think he did any of this to purposefully be remembered as a sack of shit. But, no matter how you slice it, the experience of being involved, in any way, with ALF was one of abject and permanent misery. Paul Fusco, with ALF, put his costars through hell. ALF, with Paul, put his costars through hell.

The naming of the dummy can’t be a complete coincidence. ALF gets a “puppet” of his own…and names it Paul…and uses it to annoy the shit out of everyone around him…with Willie ignoring ALF’s questions, expressing his feelings of dissatisfaction and walking off…with the entire conflict of the episode hinging upon the obnoxious personality of the dummy coming to dominate everything in these people’s lives…it’s pretty damned hard not to see this as an exercise in meta commentary.

And, again, it’s Jean and Reiss behind the typewriter, who would go on to prove through their work on The Simpsons that meta commentary was well within their area of expertise.

Did this turn out to be the best episode of ALF ever? No, but who cares? It’s certainly got the most intriguing, and intelligent, premise yet. And (spoiler!) it handles it well.

The turmoil begins in this very scene, when ALF starts to annoy Lynn so much that she gets up and leaves to do her homework elsewhere. Then Brian comes in asking ALF to play a “computer game” with him. I have no idea what that black plastic thing is supposed to be, but it doesn’t matter, because he’s Brian. ALF tells him the same thing everyone tells him: fuck your dumbass thing. Put that away and do my thing instead.

Brian is willing to help him learn ventriloquism, but then ALF just wants to make the kid do his chores so he walks away.

That night ALF is putting on a puppet show through the plot window. The family is annoyed at first, but then ALF cracks some silly, harmless jokes with the dummy and they laugh. I don’t think they really find it funny so much as they find it cute…the way they would if ALF were some little kid trying his hand at a structured comedy routine.

Of course, the Tanners have a little kid, but I mean a little kid with personality and interests.

It makes sense that this performance would be cute to the Tanners. It’s still a novelty. ALF’s new hobby, for once, is something less than destructive, and they get to see him be happy for a little while. It’s kind of adorable, actually, and if you’ve ever had a little kid try to put on a magic show or something for you, you’ll know exactly how easy it is to be responsive and to play along, even if their skills are a performer are really quite poor and you’re obligated to let them know that.

I’m always so happy with how “real” Anne Schedeen allows Kate to be. When ALF’s performance is over, he calls for applause, and everybody claps. Kate, who is still getting dinner ready, stops what she doing, claps a few times, and gets right back to it. What a lovely little moment. It’s not a joke and it doesn’t advance the plot. It’s just Kate being real.

The fact that the family is only minorly entertained (and majorly humoring him) is revealed when he declares an encore, and they tell him no, it’s time for dinner. He then starts performing “Ebony and Ivory” with Paul, which is quite funny when it calls to mind GOB and Franklin doing something similar on Arrested Development, and not very funny at all when it calls to mind that footage of ALF shouting “NIGGER NIGGER NIGGER.”

Later that night, ALF and Paul show up to watch Willie and Kate fuck. They tell him to leave, ALF and his puppet do some more shitty jokes instead. One of them involves Paul “impersonating” ALF, which means it’s actually ALF’s own voice imitating itself..

This is interesting, for sure. The fact that an initially cute puppet routine quickly wears out its welcome is meta enough, but now it’s actually the voice of ALF that’s annoying the fuck out of everyone.

The dummy, impersonating ALF, even jokes about how he ate the cat. Willie rolls over and groans out an unimpressed “ha ha,” acknowledging one of ALF‘s actual running jokes as being…kind of stupid, actually.

In just a few scenes, we basically have the entire history of ALF filtered through the episode: someone gets a puppet, that someone figures out a personality for the puppet, his routine is novel if not particularly good, and he ends up drilling the puppet and its catchphrases into the rest of the cast long after they wish they could move on to something else.

Anyway, Willie gets up in the middle of the night and hears ALF’s puppet crackin’ wise, but when he looks into the laundry room ALF is asleep, having vivid sex dreams about Willie’s daughter.

The puppet keeps talking, which makes the audience vocally express their worry for the sanity of the puppet who is operating another puppet. I’d have to double check, but I think this is the first episode of ALF directed by Rod Serling.

It’s kind of a dumb moment, and a hell of a dumb act break, but if we continue to view this as meta commentary about puppet-based shenanigans getting out of hand, then it works brilliantly.

There’s also the suggestion that rather than just serving as an outlet for ALF’s obnoxious idea of comedy, the puppet is allowing ALF to give a voice to his subconscious thoughts…but we’ll get to that shortly.

And this is the first time I’ve noticed that THE MOON postcard on the wall. I don’t know how long it’s been there so I don’t want to give this episode specific credit for it…but fuck if that isn’t a damned cute touch.

The next day we see ALF and Paul packing. ALF asks Paul why they have to run away, and Paul replies that “This place is a suburban Sing Sing.” Being as we know that ALF does feel trapped in his situation (and, in all fairness, he really is), and constantly spends Willie’s money for the sake of diversion (which, in further fairness, set up the action of this episode), this lends credence to the idea that ALF’s performance of Paul is giving his subconscious thoughts a voice.

This is…good, actually. On one level we have the ALF metatextual stuff, which works for me. But, on another level, we have an in-universe explanation for it: ALF’s inner turmoil coming to the surface.

It’s an episode about what ALF the show is, doubling as an episode about who ALF the character is.

Jesus God is this bullshit puppet episode actually good? Fucketty fuck this is actually good.

Brian runs off to get his parents when he hears that ALF is leaving, and then Paul actually smacks ALF around a bit, which is decently funny if only for how unexpected and silly it is. When Willie and Kate come in and see ALF getting up this nonsense, they decide they’ve had quite enough of this puppet garbage and try to take Paul away.

ALF tellingly replies, “No! Don’t take Paul away from me! He’ll die!”

It’s a believable moment of panic. Reverse the names Paul and ALF in that sentence, and it’s exactly as believable.

We know it’s silly. We know that the dummy will “die” only in the sense that the ventriloquist won’t be there to provide a voice for him. But it’s also reflective of Paul Fusco’s attitude toward — and possessiveness of — ALF.

When Tina Fey was organizing the 75th Anniversary Celebration or whatever for NBC fairly recently, she complained that “ALF’s people” were difficult to deal with. Immersed in this show as I now unfortunately am, I know that she must have been talking about Fusco specifically, as the concern “ALF’s people” had was that somebody might see that he’s just a puppet. For that reason, ALF’s brief scene in the special ended and the puppet was whisked off the premises, lest it stick around long enough for a rogue camera angle to destroy the illusion that ALF was real.

On The Simpsons they had ALF turn up in “The Springfield Files.” He only said one word (“Yo.”), but Fusco contacted the show after that episode aired and told them that they should have called him; he’d have done the voice, and if they ever use ALF again, to let him know and he’ll come by to record the lines.

TV Tropes — my nemesis in website form — even has a little section discussing the fact that Paul Fusco believed ALF was real and would refuse to admit it was a puppet. As with everything TV Tropes says, however, it’s a heaping pile of bullshit hiding a kernel of truth. In this case, it’s that Fusco doesn’t present ALF, ever, as a puppet. In interviews and such he refers to the character as though he’s real…but I don’t think Fusco ever actually believed that. The guy might have been a jerk, but he wasn’t mentally ill. It’s more the way people will talk about Santa Claus as though he’s real, even if they know he’s not. It’s done for the sake of preserving illusion.

But with Fusco, as we see with the other examples, there’s an element of possessiveness on top of that illusion. It’s the same possessiveness that makes “ALF’s people” such a nightmare to work with. It’s also probably why ALF has never seen a rebirth. As much as Fusco must feel he’s maintaining the character’s integrity, what he’s really doing is making any kind of resurgence for the character impossible.

If it’s such a dramatic event to feature the character for a few seconds as part of an anniversary special, or in a split-second cartoon lineup, there’s no reason to believe that mounting an ALF reboot would go any more smoothly than the original show did.

Willie even says, “Talk about a puppet dictator” later in the episode. It’s impossible to hear that as anything other than the venting of the writing staff.

“Don’t take ALF away from me,” it’s easy to hear Paul Fusco say. “He’ll die.” And that’s really sad, because, just as it plays out in this episode, that possessiveness is exactly what ensures that the illusion cannot survive. It’s mothering turned to smothering.

Paul tells ALF to come along and he’ll teach him how to smoke. When he’s gone, Willie comforts Kate by saying, “Don’t worry. I’m getting psychiatric help.”

Kate replies, “Well, good for you, honey. But what about ALF?”

Dumb joke, but actually really funny with Schedeen’s delivery, which manages to sound both supportive and flustered. Or maybe I just like it because it leads to…

HOLY FUCK HOLY FUCK DR. DYKSTRA IS BACK MY FUCKING GONADS LOOK

Man, “I’m Your Puppet” is just dying to get into my pants, isn’t it?

My two favorite episodes from season one were “For Your Eyes Only” and “Going Out of My Head Over You.” You probably already know that, given the fact that I can’t shut the fuck up about them.

In each of those cases we met a strong guest character, which helped us view the show through a different — and rewarding — filter. In the former case, it was Jodie, who reappeared in this season’s “We Gotta Get Out of This Place.” That episode wasn’t quite as good as her first, but it was good enough to warrant her return.

The latter case featured Dr. Dykstra, played by Bill Dailey, a psychiatrist friend of Willie’s who dropped by to analyze ALF and provide us with what still might be the funniest scene in the show’s history. In that scene, Willie and ALF impersonated each other as a way of coming to terms with their frustrations. At the time, it played very much like Wright and Fusco coming to terms with their frustrations, and the show was richer for it.

Is it any wonder that I’m over the moon to see this guy show up here? And now? Talk about a perfect reason to bring this character back.

Anyway, before I forget, in the comments to my review of “Going Out of My Head Over You,” Dan the Shpydar had this to say:

I’m surprised you didn’t get into the fact that Daily was also on I Dream of Jeannie, which of course had that same “we have to keep this mysterious being a secret!” theme as ALF. Ironically, I Dream of Jeannie featured far less facial scenes than ALF, despite the fact that they would likely have been much more appreciated to appear in the former.

I didn’t say it because I didn’t know it. But now I do, and so do you. That is indeed a pretty cool bit of resonant casting…deliberate or not.

After a bit of gentle engagement with ALF and Paul, Dr. Dykstra gets bonked on the knee by the dummy. He then goes back into the kitchen, where Willie and Kate ask him if he figured out what’s wrong with ALF. Dr. Dykstra replies, “Yeah. His dummy’s a jerk.”

It’s a great little moment with a perfect delivery, coming off of a way-too-short scene of Dr. Dykstra trying to help the alien and his wooden friend.

He plays along. Laughs at the insulting jokes. He compliments Paul on his sense of humor…and it works. It gets ALF, through Paul, to open up about his frustrations…specifically the rules he has to adhere to when living under the Tanner roof. Dr. Dykstra then turns to ALF and asks if he shares Paul’s frustrations, and ALF says he does.

Whacking Dr. Dykstra in the knee with the dummy is definitely dickish, but I understand it. The therapy was effective, and that made ALF feel threatened. The lashing out is meant to be funny, but it’s also understandable in the context of the situation.

In the kitchen, the good doctor explains to Willie and Kate that since ALF’s arrived, he’s had to be on his best behavior. Both Tanner adults start spouting disbelief about that, which is funny, and culminates in a nice point: that was his best behavior. His worst behavior is what they’re seeing now, through Paul.

The puppet is bringing out the worst in its creator.

ahem.

ahem ahem ahem.

Willie asks what they can do, and Dr. Dykstra jokingly suggests getting the dummy a dummy. “But then you’d be stuck with a really little guy with a really bad temper.”

It’s amazing to me how the presence of a great guest character can kick this show to a whole new level of competence. Why oh why can’t we have more of Dr. Dykstra and Jodie? They have these characters. Why won’t they use them?

Dr. Dykstra decides that ALF needs to have a few minutes of breaking the rules that he feels so oppressed by. He specifically suggests letting ALF eat the cat, but they ultimately decide instead to let ALF break a bunch of shit and throw food everywhere.

Kate, whom I love more by the second, says, “Can’t we just solve this with a buzz saw?” Baby, I been askin’ that question from episode one.

The adults smash up some dishes and encourage ALF to do the same. He’s reluctant, but eventually trusts them enough to do it, and so ALF reverts back to his “normal” bad behavior of breaking things and making a mess.

It’s a bit broad and silly, but it has its moments. Before throwing a plate, ALF asks, “How many points for hitting that picture of Kate’s mother?” Willie, overexcited, replies, “A hundred!!” before his wife scolds him for joining in.

And even though this is nowhere near as satisfying a climax as the first Dr. Dykstra episode had…it’s still decent. “Going Out of My Head Over You” built to a grand statement about its characters. “I’m Your Puppet,” by contrast, opens with such a statement. The fact that it ends on silliness rather than opens with it makes this episode feel like the more hollow one, but really I think it’s just a matter of the journey being inverted.

And, to be fair, though this episode does end up in a fest of destruction, it’s ALF’s enthusiasm for this that allows him to decide to break Paul, so it does lead to its resolution in a relatively natural way. Ultimately, no, it’s not quite as good as the first Dr. Dykstra episode…but it does go deeper in exploring its subject matter, and it gives us more to work with along the way.

It’s also full of wonderful little touches, such as the fact that, in the latter half of this episode, Paul gets his own one-shots when he talks, as though he’s an entirely separate character. It’s a hell of an effective decision, and one I really love. The “smash everything” climax is a bit too clean a solution, but, again, if we view this episode through a metatextual lens, we can’t do anything but close off the episode as quickly as possible. There’s certainly no way we can end with the psychiatrist successfully convincing the other characters that talking through a puppet is insane, because…well, you know. Unless ALF is going to become a show about ALF, we need to put a button on this, however hastily.

It’s twenty-odd minutes of digging into what makes ALF work — and not work — and while I’d love for a longer and deeper examination, I’m impressed that we even got this much out of it. It’s also a bit disappointing that we didn’t get to see the smashed Paul dummy. It’s referred to, and reacted to, but we don’t get to look at it. Maybe it was an expensive prop that they didn’t want to destroy. Or maybe, as the ALF analogue, the image of a “dead” puppet would hit Fusco too close to home.

In the short scene before the credits, Lynn finds Paul’s body stuffed in the freezer.

Who cares. The episode was good. And I was getting very, very nervous that season two got all of its good episodes out of the way up front. The quality of “I’m Your Puppet” feels well overdue at this point, but it was worth waiting for, and that’s all that matters.

It’s also worth addressing a question you probably have at this point: what was so bad about ALF’s behavior through Paul? Why did the review gloss over it?

Well…I didn’t gloss over it. ALF’s normal behavior, to me, is either far worse or exactly as bad as the guff he spouts through Paul. Which, admittedly, makes this episode something of a cheat.

In “Wild Thing,” it was a legitimate problem that we were being told ALF was at his worst without seeing any actual evidence of it. Here…well, maybe it is as much of a problem, but only when you look at it superficially. Taking the metaphor-for-the-sitcom-itself angle, it’s just a means to an end. We can ignore surface-level quirks because when we look a little deeper, we see what’s really happening here.

“Wild Thing” had nothing but its surface. ALF’s confoundingly gentle rampage was a problem because it was the only thing the episode was about. Had it really been about, say, Willie and Brian bonding as they scoured LA for their escaped alien, the lameness of ALF’s shenanigans would have been far less important.

It’s rare that ALF realizes it can do anything beneath the surface. Nearly every time it does, we end up with an episode like this. Or “Going Out of My Head Over You.” Or “Night Train.” In short, it nearly always works…which it what makes it so damned disappointing that the next week has to come, with the writers forgetting everything they’ve learned all over again.

Sitcoms, by design, need to push the reset button at the end of each adventure. But it’s a reset that should apply only to the show itself; it should not apply to the writer’s room.

Anyway, just another quick thought. When I saw the synopsis for this episode (“ALF gets a ventriloquist’s dummy that takes control of him”) I pasted it to a friend of mine. My friend replied, “Oh, right. That’s the top left square in sitcom plot bingo.” I laughed. Because, yeah, that’s a pretty trite and stupid idea.

But there’s a reason I got excited when season two began and I saw Al Jean and Michael Reiss listed as executive producers, and this episode, which they are credited as writing, makes that reason very clear: it doesn’t matter how stupid the plot is if the writing is solid.

That’s something The Simpsons taught us time and time again. While they unquestionably had original plots on the show, it’s just as obvious that they would deliberately draw from the well of cliche for ideas. Ask anyone to describe their favorite Simpsons episode, however, and the odds are good you won’t hear much about the plot. You’ll hear the jokes that stuck with them. You’ll hear about a great moment or two. The plot is only important — or should only be important — in the way that it facilitates those jokes and moments.

So as much as the dumbass dummy plot seemed…uh…dumb to me, I’m glad we had it, if only because the right men were at the typewriter. It’s a good reminder of the fact that concept means nothing, and execution means everything.

Tune in next week when ALF is raped by a panda.

MELMAC FACTS: On Melmac, spending other people’s money was how you said “I care.” Melmac’s president would say whatever you wanted if you pulled his string. On Melmac, calling somebody “Paul” was an insult. Even worse was calling them a “son of a Paul.”

Here we go…including “Movin’ Out,” only five more episodes remain in season two. When those are done, we’ll be at the actual midpoint of this project. And…wow. I couldn’t be happier about that.

At the same time, though, this week marks one full year that I’ve been writing ALF reviews. Season one was reviewed every week, without fail. Season two…had a few delays, but has been reviewed almost as reliably. So, I guess one year from now, we’ll be nearing the end of this whole endeavor. After that, I don’t know. I’d love to do another show, but we’ll see. For now, I shouldn’t be thinking too far ahead, because I’m about as far from shore as it’s possible to be.

“Movin’ Out” is a long overdue episode about Willie’s job as a social worker. We haven’t had one of those since “Border Song,” in which he kidnapped a Mexican day-laborer for ALF’s backyard plantation.

Because Willie’s occupation was kept an odd secret throughout the beginning of season one, and then had almost no impact on any of the episodes to follow, I’ve had a lot of fun pointing out all the times that his ostensible job looks to be incompatible with his daily behavior. But part of the reason I can do that is that ALF is written by goldfish. If it isn’t in this week’s script, they don’t remember it.

That’s why one episode can remind us that Willie is a social worker, but another will see him turning his neighbors away in their hour of need (“Someone to Watch Over Me”), sitting idly by while his daughter is sexually assaulted (“The Boy Next Door”), making fun of a guy for having a shitty job (“Hit Me With Your Best Shot”), refusing a spare bed to a homeless blind friend of the family (“We Gotta Get Out of This Place”), repeatedly insulting a disabled war veteran (“Come Fly With Me”), making fun of his wife for being an unfuckable hag (“Don’t It Make Your Brown Eyes Blue?”), and allowing the alien that lives in his laundry basket to buttfuck his children (passim).

Willie doesn’t ever act like a social worker, but, every so often, we’re reminded that he is one, either so that he can abduct a child he wouldn’t otherwise interact with, or cripple his boss in a forcible limbo competition. The rest of the time, the show doesn’t want us to remember Willie’s occupation, because, if we did, we’d have certain expectations of who he is, what he’s good at, what he cares about, and how he should be reacting to things.

Here, however, we have one hell of an odd episode: one that relies on the fact that Willie is a social worker, and also at the same time makes it clear that he can’t be one. At least, not a good one. And certainly not one that’s getting yet another promotion this season.

Which is how this episode begins: Willie announces that he’s got a shit-awesome new job as some kind of supervisor or something in San Diego. This makes everyone piss and moan about having to move, but really you’d think they’d be thrilled. This guy’s more sociopath than social worker; they should be excited to pocket that extra pay while they can, before Willie’s incompetence and nauseating disinterest in his fellow man are revealed to whomever signs his checks.

Lynn’s reason for not wanting to move is that next year is her last year of high school. We’ve already established that she’s 18, but now we also know she’s a junior. I’ve asked before, but is this possible without her having been left back a year? I’m not complaining or anything, especially since her character doesn’t seem to be much of a scholar, exactly, but I’m curious.

Also, does this mean she’ll be attending college in season four?

ALF worries that they won’t let him come along, simply because he burns down their house and kills their relatives. Kate says that she’ll consider letting him come along if he stops eating Willie’s dinner. ALF looks at the food on his fork and pauses. Kate asks for his answer, and he plagiarizes Jack Benny: “I’m thinking, I’m thinking!!”

One of the most famous jokes of all time is therefore the punchline to this entire opening sequence. With Benny, as I’m sure you know, the question was “Your money or your life.” Here, ALF rephrases Kate’s question to better suit the joke theft: “Instant gratification, or long term security.” There’s no twist or anything; it’s simply a puppet reciting somebody else’s much better material. When, exactly, did Paul Fusco become Krusty the Clown?

This episode is a bit odd even in a superficial sense, because the opening credits are in German. As you probably recall (since you bought me the fuckin’ thing) I’m watching these episodes on the uncut DVDs that seem to have been released only in Germany…but this is the first time I’ve noticed German credits. I’m 99% sure they’ve all been in English before this, and I’m 100% sure that the closing credits of this very episode are in English.

I don’t know. It’s weird. Maybe they used some off-air recorded footage for the intro for some reason? Say, the masters being damaged? But then I’d assume the dialogue would all be in German, too…ahhhh who cares. I just found it interesting. Leave me alone. Go start your own damn ALF blog.

The first proper scene is Willie’s first day of work. Google Maps puts his commute from Los Angeles to San Diego at about two hours, without traffic, but with traffic that’s clearly another story, and it wouldn’t exactly be a relaxing ride. At the very least Willie should look into train schedules.

Hey, remember when Willie liked trains? If so, you know more about him than the writers do; even though this bleeding dick of a commute becomes a major plot point, Mr. Meatloaf never even considers it.

Whatever. Brian sleepily announces he doesn’t give a shit, and I’m on his side. Willie’s never taken an interest in him, but now the kid has to get up at ungodly hours to see him off? Fuck dat.

Lynn makes some crappy joke about jazzercise, ALF tries to eat the last cinnamon roll before Willie gets it, and the whole thing makes me wonder why the hell we’re watching it.

Seriously. It’s the second scene in the episode and already “Movin’ Out” is so padded I can barely keep focus.

Yes, it’s nice that we get a “slice of life” scene. What are the Tanners like at breakfast when there’s nothing (immediately) pressing going on, anyway? Finding out could be fun. It would definitely be a chance to build character, explore dynamics, and give the actors some decent dialogue that doesn’t have to drag an ungainly plot behind it.

But, like when we got to see what ALF did all night after the family went to sleep and found out he just danced around in the shed or some shit, the writers don’t know what this family is like when they’re not lugging a plot from point A to point B. So they just kill time in what feels like the the dullest improv imaginable.

This, again, is why Gilligan’s Island served as a feasible fantasy setting for an episode earlier this season and ALF will never be able to. It’s easy to imagine what downtime is like on the uncharted desert isle. We know those characters, how they interact, the challenges they face, what motivates them, what frustrates them, and how they go about solving their individual problems. We can plug different elements into that situation and get a sense of how it would play out. (Arguably, that was the entire premise of the show.) Here, in Tannerland, we don’t have characters that interact. We have actors who recite the lines they memorized. Forget about plugging a different element into this context; the elements that are already there don’t even have a purpose.

Brian says they got Willie a present, and I really hope I’m not the only one laughing myself hoarse over the fact that it looks like he’s handing his father a bag of dogshit. They should have lit it on fire and had Willie make a wish.

Anyway, it’s some books on tape, with a Twisted Sister cassette mixed in so that they can make a joke about those kids today with their hair metal and the whatnot. The books are Crime and Punishment and Madame Bovary. Since they come on one cassette apiece I have to assume they’re read by that guy from the Micro Machines commercials.

Mr. Ochmonek comes over to wish Willie a good first day at work.

Yes. Really.

In return, Lynn makes fun of him for being fat and ugly, and Willie asks him what the fuck he’s doing up so early.

Remind me again who the bad neighbors are.

This guy paid a visit just to pass some well wishes onto some asshat who couldn’t care less whether Mr. Ochmonek lives or dies. Willie’s never taken the slightest interest in the guy. Shit, when’s the last time Willie took the slightest interest in anyone who wasn’t him? When’s the last time Willie even said “thank you”?

This is why I don’t believe Willie is a social worker. To succeed in that field, you’d either need to have a great deal of empathy, or be able to fake it very well. Instead, this is what we see: a guy who never seems to care about anybody, ever, for any reason. Usually we’re allowed to forget that Willie’s a social worker, but here it’s driving the entire plot. Would it be too much to show us a Willie who even tries to be nice so that, if only for one twenty minute chunk, we can believe he’s good at the job we keep being told he’s good at?

I don’t know. Based on what I see here, though, I can promise you that if I needed a social worker, I’d hire Mr. Ochmonek long before I went anywhere near Willie.

Anyway, Mr. Ochmonek tells Willie he’d better get his dumb ass on the road because it’s an insane commute. Then ALF pops up to eat Mr. Ochmonek’s danish and the latter doesn’t bother to investigate, because even Jack LaMotta is over this shit.

I know season two is generally held in higher regard than the other three, but ask any ALF fan when the show jumped the shark, and they’ll tell you it’s this scene, in which ALF and Kate finally give in to the long-simmer sexual tension between them. It’s not a problem with the scene itself, really (as it’s shot quite beautifully, and the expression on ALF’s face as he cums conveys genuine pathos); it’s the mere fact that it happened, and now it’s over. There’s nowhere for the show to go but down.

Willie appears in the doorway to explain that he got home late because of his long commute, in case you missed all forty-seven lines of dialogue preceding this, in which it was repeatedly explained that Willie had a long commute.

Kate, vacuuming alien gooze out of herself, suggests that Willie rent a place in San Diego during the week, which inspires ALF to explain the plot of Three’s Company for some reason.

You know, Three’s Company was one of those shows I watched as a kid without understanding a damned thing about it. I definitely got the sense that Jack was living with two hotties, but the fact that he was pretending to be gay didn’t even register with me. I think I had some vague idea of the concept of homosexuality, but I guess I didn’t see it in the humorous light the show did.

I wonder if you could even do a plot like that today. I think the gay jokes would play differently, of course, but I also think there wouldn’t be a point. Jack and his honies went through two landlords that would only allow him to stay if he was gay, and I can’t imagine that setup working at all today. If you rent an apartment, nobody cares who you’re having sex with in it. In fact, it’d be illegal to discriminate against tenants on the basis of sexual preference anyway.

That’s interesting, actually. Three’s Company was a high-concept sitcom (in the same vein as ALF). Its setup allowed the show to make very specific kinds of jokes that other shows, lacking that setup, could not make. And I was around for it, which means I once lived in a world in which a man had to pretend be gay in order to live with women lest the world collapse into a premarital orgiastic black hole of sin.

Whatever. Don Knotts was in it.

Willie says that they’re going to have to move sooner than planned, because it’s been one day and he already sees that working too hard will give him a heart attack-ack-ack-ack-ack-ack. He comes to this conclusion without consulting the rest of his family or listening to his wife’s thoughts on the matter.

SOCIAL WORK

We then see some people walking around the outside of the house, with a FOR SALE sign in plain view.

This was legitimately shocking to me, because I just assumed they shot a bunch of exteriors up front and have been using those same few establishing shots ever since.

I mean, that’s still probably true, but seeing one this late in the game that’s episode-specific…that demonstrates some very rare effort invested in the production.

That’s pretty much it, though. Kate and Lynn complain that they don’t want anyone else living here, and ALF complains that he wants food. Then the act ends.

What a strange place to break it. It wasn’t funny or compelling. It just kind of ended. I guess they used up all their effort for the week by filming that new footage of the lawn.

Then we see Willie at his new job, talking on the phone to a woman who hasn’t gotten her welfare check. He is trying to keep her calm, and he says, “Yes, I know you have five children. I can hear them from here!”

SOCIAL WORK

This scene is a great opportunity to show us that Willie, in spite of everything we’ve seen to the contrary in his personal life, is actually an awesome social worker. It wouldn’t even be much of a cheat to do so, since the few times we’ve seen him at work in the past, he wasn’t actually doing any work. We’re almost halfway through the entire run of the show, but Willie’s professional life is still a blank canvas. He just got this big promotion, so why not show us why he deserves it?

Instead, he insults a needy woman for having kids that are noisier than he would like them to be. Who the fuck does this guy think he is? And why are we supposed to be laughing with him when he makes fun of the woman who now can’t afford to buy groceries for her hungry kids?

I’ll spoil something for you: Willie doesn’t like his new job. That’s fine. He doesn’t have to. But since the central conflict of the episode is whether or not the Tanners move, this sort of undercuts all tension. Maybe instead of Willie hating the living fuck out of his new position, he could like it. And be really good at it. That way there’d be an actual difficult decision at the heart of the episode: nobody else wants to move, but Willie does. Instead, what we get is a situation in which nobody else wants to move, and Willie also does not want to move.

Well then. I’m on the edge of my seat.

Willie goes into the other room to talk to one of his employees about why the check wasn’t mailed. This guy’s supposed to be an idiot, which we know because he has his feet up on the desk, has a phone conversation not related to work, and has a face that looks like it’s growing out of somebody else’s back.

Then some woman comes over and tells Willie he still hasn’t processed payroll, she doesn’t have a parking space yet, and a whole bunch of other shit he hasn’t taken care of because he’s too busy making fun of some lady’s kids on the phone.

After she lays out all the crap Willie needs to do, he says, “No problem, Denise. I’ve got twelve hands!!”

SOCIAL WORK

What a dickbag. Seriously. This guy isn’t just a bad social worker; he’s a fuckawful human being.

If I worked somewhere, and they brought in a new supervisor from outside instead of promoting from within, and he immediately started bitching about having to do all the stuff he was explicitly hired to do, I’d go right over his head and tell whoever hired him that this guy needs to get the fuck out and let someone willing to do the work take his place.

Seriously. What the hell is Willie’s problem? He’s pissy to the idiot who doesn’t do his own work, but then he’s also pissy to the woman who tells Willie to do his own work. What the hell does he want?

Willie finds the check for that lady and fires the guy for losing it. The fake audience of dead people applauds, so that’s our cue that Willie just did something awesome. I’m glad I had the cue, because otherwise I’d have no idea.

I get that a moment like this could demonstrate that even if Willie is terrible at everything else, he at least knows how to lay down the law when his staff fails him, or whatever. Except…yeah. This isn’t really that impressive.

The guy deserved to be fired if he was gabbing on the phone all day and not doing his job, yes, but that’s not something to applaud Willie for. A firing had to happen. It’s not a brave and admirable decision; it’s right to fire a social worker who isn’t actually helping the people he’s being paid to help.

Additionally, we just heard about fifteen other things Willie’s supposed to be doing, and he hasn’t done jack shit with any of those. So, yeah, he fired someone. Great. Unless he accomplishes at least one more thing on his daily goal list, though, I’m not going to join my deceased brethren in a standing O.

Also, before this happened, Willie himself was gabbing on the phone to ALF about personal business, so why is it okay for Willie to dick around and not do his job, but this guy gets fired for it?

On the way home from work, Willie stops to have his neck surgically removed. Then he bitches to ALF about his new job, where they want him to do stuff and help people. That must be pure kryptonite to this putz.

ALF tries to cheer him up with some words of wisdom from his old Skleenball coach.

But…wait.

Okay.

So, in the first episode of this season, ALF taught Brian to play Skleenball. That’s fine. It was basically baseball played with fish. Okay.

Then, in “Oh, Pretty Woman,” ALF was trading Bouillabaseball cards with Brian. Bouillabaseball was baseball played with fish.

I was confused about why we had two names for what sounded like the exact same sport. Commenter of the week Sarah Portland had this to say in response back then:

I’m just going to guess that someone on the staff said “We should talk about that fish-baseball thing again – what was it called?” and no one wanted to bother looking up what they had called it before. However, it’s possible that they pulled a JK Rowling, and found a better name for something further down the line, simply substituting it without explanation. On the whole Bouillabaseball is infinitely funnier, and fits better.

And, you know what? That sounded entirely reasonable. Bouillabaseball is the better name, and the fact that ALF trading cards (in the real world) came with a Bouillabaseball card in every pack suggests that they decided to rechristen Skleenball.

But now, at the end of season two, we find out there is still a Skleenball, so I don’t fuckin’ know anymore.

That’s what you get, Sarah Portland, when you give ALF any credit whatsoever. Welcome to the club. :(

ALF decides to be ALF and fucks up the house so that nobody will want to buy it. Of course, before he can start springing his traps, the Tanners piss and moan to prospective buyers about what shitty neighbors the Ochmoneks are. I wonder why they didn’t provide any examples, though. Like the time they formed a neighborhood watch to protect local families. Or the time they took the Tanners on a free vacation for the hell of it. Or that morning a few days ago when Mr. O got up at the crack of dawn just to wish Willie luck at his new job. THOSE SHITS

Whatever. ALF broke everything, so stuff falls down. Over and over and over. And even though the sale of the house and Willie’s new job are related to one another, it feels like two plots at the same time: Willie adjusting to a new working environment, and ALF desperate to not move. At this point, the episode seems to switch tracks from one to the other, with the big setpiece of ALF’s destruction playing like the big finale…while also not feeling at all related to anything Willie’s ostensibly been going through this week.

It’s odd. Both plots could have led to episodes of their own, so having them crowd each other out for primacy during the waning minutes of “Movin’ Out” just makes a ramshackle episode even worse.

Once the Ineffectual Physical Comedy Follies are over, Willie confronts ALF in the master bedroom about sabotaging the sale of the house.

It would be a great way to tie the climaxes of both plots together, but it’s easier to just end the episode so we’ll do that. Willie says he doesn’t want to move anyway and it’s over.

The reason he doesn’t want to move…well, that’s a little more annoying, so forgive me for breaking it down.

See, Willie already hates his job and doesn’t want to move. We know that. But as in “Weird Science” and some other episode I’m grateful to have forgotten, ALF needs to give an inspiring speech to everyone in the audience dumb enough to have not found something else to watch by now.

He reminds Willie that social workers should be doing work “for the social good.” That’s fine, if a little obvious, but then ALF explains that Willie is no longer doing that. Instead he’s assigning parking spaces and firing people.

And, you know what? I can see a good point being made about how “work for the social good” gets undermined by bureaucracy and red tape, having meetings to schedule other meetings and so on, with good intentions manifesting themselves in such a way that they detract from quality of service.

Here, however, that’s not the case. Willie indeed, as ALF said, was assigning parking spaces and firing people. But they guy he fired needed to be fired, because he wasn’t effectively helping those who relied on him. Isn’t removing an ineffectual social worker so that somebody more helpful can take his place a gesture in service of the social good?

The parking space, too, is a necessary logistical problem. If Willie’s employees have nowhere to park, they can’t do their work. She wasn’t asking for a better parking space, or to trade with somebody else for some cockamamie reason. This lady just wanted a fucking place to park while she worked her ass off and reminded Willie of all the crap he wasn’t doing. If she quits because Willie can’t handle basic administrative duties and she has nowhere to leave her car, how would that serve the social good?

Another thing that ALF doesn’t mention — but which we heard — is that Willie was in charge of payroll. Sure, he fucked it up, but isn’t seeing to it that your social workers are paid a pretty important way to encourage them to keep doing social work? You know…the social workers that ALF just ranted about needing to serve the social good. Stop paying them and they’ll abandon the field. Rightly so, I might add.

So ALF has it backward, and the show doesn’t realize that at all. Sure, maybe Willie preferred the hands-on approach he used to have, and that’s fine. But by no means is the social good better served by one guy with a preference for hands-on work than it would be by an effective leader who can guide and support an entire staff with a gift for hands-on work.

Willie can work with one client at a time. His staff can work with dozens, and potentially hundreds. Willie whining about having to fill out paperwork and pay his fucking employees is what prevented him from serving the social good, not the fact that he was responsible for doing those things in the first place. His new role as administrator didn’t prevent it; if anything it magnified its potential.

If there’s a moral here, it’s that Willie finds it chillingly easy to convince himself that doing almost nothing is preferable to doing an awful lot, because the latter is really hard and the former is so much easier.

The moral is emphatically not what we’re told it is. This isn’t about Willie getting back down to the salt of the earth and helping people. He just had the chance to do that and decided instead to make fun of welfare mothers and be snippy toward better social workers who were actually trying to do their jobs.

So, yeah. Not that this episode was so hot before, but this is a truly botched ending. Also, is this the first episode I’ve had literally nothing nice to say about? Jesus.

Whatever. The point is, Willie decides he’d much rather be here, with the alien who just caved in the roof, than apply himself to sorting out the problems of the less fortunate.

SOCIAL WORK

Willie announces the good news to his family, and, in doing so, stops Kate from scolding ALF. Yeah, how dare that lippy bitch get angry at the creature that demolished her house and created unsafe living conditions for her children.

It’s a damned good thing that Willie — so intent on serving the social good — was there to put his uppity wife in her place.

This episode is fucking horrible.

In the short scene before the credits, some guy comes in to see the house. The couch collapses into the floor, revealing that it’s not a house at all, but the set of some shitty sitcom, and the guy leaves because he doesn’t want to live in a place full of dead people laughing all the time.

It’s a stupid gag, but I kind of like that they bothered to work the deadly puppet trenches into the show somehow. They already spent all that time and money creating them so that Paul Fusco wouldn’t have to timeshare his character with a midget, so you might as well write a joke that takes advantage of them.

On the other hand, this visual joke is really fucking dumb. So, there’s that.

Ever since Jake arrived earlier this season, I’ve been joking that Brian no longer exists. Or half-joking, anyway, because as we saw last week, the kid no longer has anything to do with his own plots. The writers have officially given up on him, which renders him stuck here, like a nail through a thumb that would do more harm to remove than to just leave where it is.

This week, we see exactly how empty the character is. While it takes them a little longer to elbow him out of yet another storyline that should feature him front and center, they know they’ve never bothered to develop him in any way so the episode has to happen around him. He’s just kind of there…and then he’s not…and then they bring him in for the final scene to pretend that he’s learned some grand lesson.

“Hit Me With Your Best Shot” plays like one of those movies in which a lead actor dies during filming, so they try to hide that by padding it out with scenes of other people talking about that guy, and reacting to things he’s done, leaving the audience — hopefully — to just assume he’s on the toilet somewhere, I guess, but is still totally like super important.

And while it’s not the worst episode of ALF (being as it does have a few very good lines), it does sink to depths that even the wonderful Anne Schedeen can’t redeem.

You’d be forgiven for not believing me, though, since we open on a great Kate scene. She walks in on ALF who has apparently been sitting under a sunlamp for five hours. He wonders openly why he isn’t getting a tan…which is a visual joke that works on its own. But then Kate touches him, and he screams. Even funnier.

What I like most about it, though? Look at Kate’s face above. (But…don’t look at her shirt.) Anne Schedeen is acting. Unlike the rest of the cast, she doesn’t just pause and react when it’s her turn to talk. She’s filtering the actions and words of others through her own character, and it often makes her the only thing on screen worth paying attention to.

If she had been in a better show, I think she’d be pretty fondly remembered. Instead she’s in ALF, where she gets nose-fucked by a puppet in her hallway and everyone’s pretty eager to forget any of this ever happened. She really was so much better than this show deserved, and that’s tragic.

She tells ALF that he’s got sunburn, and asks if he wants cold cream. He says, “Yeah, but only one scoop. I’m on a diet.”

I’m not even bothered by the “ALF I AM TALKING ABOUT COLD CREAM NOT ICE CREAM” line that explains the joke, because it feels like Kate is explaining something to the alien, rather than to the audience. There’s a big difference there, and it’s a difference that is only felt when the actor makes you feel it. The rest of these clowns deliver lines for the audience to react to. Anne Schedeen delivers lines for the characters to react to.

So, yeah. Enjoy this while you can, because before long this episode will sink far below her ability to keep it alive.

We get the credits, and then Brian comes in covered in dirt. At first I assumed this was the Halloween episode, in which the corpse of Benji Gregory rises from its shallow grave in the studio parking lot and seeks revenge on the cast…but, no, it’s just Brian. He’s been in a fight.

I love that the late-80s way of showing that a character has been in a fight is to muss up his hair and rub soil into his clothes. Did kids actually fight back then? Nobody ever seems to throw an actual punch. I guess they just rolled around with each other in the garden, like that thing I wasn’t supposed to do with my cousin. :(

Brian explains that he got in a fight with Bobby Duncan. Kate asks who the hell that is, and rightly so, since last we heard Brian’s tormentor was that kid Spencer. Remember? Willie’s illegitimate child and keeper of Dr. Potato Famine. Oh well. I guess when you have a kid like Brian, you just take it as read that every day brings another bully.

Kate washes the implied physical violence off of him with a rag, and ALF offers to eat the kid’s cat as revenge. There’s another nice moment when Kate tells him that he shouldn’t fight, and Brian says that he did it because Bobby called Kate “old, ugly, and dumb.”

Schedeen pauses, but then repeats her advice not to fight…before mumbling, “That little brat.”

It’s good. She’s being a mother, but still being a person. Her feeling are hurt, and she’s upset, but she needs to set the example for Brian…while clearly believing the kid needs a slap. And this is why I love Schedeen; she’s capable of expressing multiple things at the same time. She doesn’t flip back and forth between settings; she’s a human being with complex emotions. What a rarity here.

Speaking of rarity, we then get a good ALF line when he says, “He’s entitled to his opinion.” And that, in itself, gets punctuated by a perfect Kate glower.

Maybe I’m just clinging to stuff like this because the rest of the episode is a pretty massive pile of dickshit, but is there anyone out there who doesn’t appreciate Anne Schedeen? Anyone watching this show or following this blog that thinks she’s not worthy of the praise I give her? Maybe I’ve just been driven insane by the show. If that’s the case, please tell me. You’re my last hope for a healthy perspective on things.

Eh, who cares if I’m crazy. I fucking love her, and she’s about the only thing I can count on from week to week, so sue me.

The next day, or whenever the hell Brian changes his shirt, ALF gives him fighting lessons in the garage. He reveals that he was known as “Sugar Ray” Shumway on Melmac, because he loved shitty 90s pop.

ALF tells Brian that he can’t drop out of school to avoid bullies, because otherwise he’ll end up hanging around the house all day, eating and watching TV. CAN YOU GUESS THE PUNCHLINE AT HOME?

Of course you can. But that doesn’t stop Brian from explaining it by saying, “But I want to be like you!”

It doesn’t land, as you might expect, and it serves as a perfect illustration of my earlier point: Schedeen delivered an unnecessary explanation, but because she was acting it made sense: she was explaining something to ALF, not to us. Benji Gregory only knows how to recite half-memorized lines from a piece of paper, so he ends up delivering this particular unnecessary explanation to us.

Big difference, and one that comes down entirely to acting chops. You can speak the words somebody else wrote for you, or your character can do the talking.

I’m not trying to be too hard on Gregory; I just find him to be a good case study. Acting is difficult. Really. It is. And this is a kid without any real experience doing it, being handed shitty dialogue and being made to perform it under shittier conditions. I’ll joke about him, sure, but I don’t dislike him.

It’s not that he’s bad at what he does…it’s that he’s incompetent. I know that sounds insulting, but what I’m getting at is that he never learned what it meant to be competent. Nobody here taught him. “Good enough” was ALF‘s motto, which is why the good actors brought their talent in from the start (Anne Schedeen and Jack LaMotta), and the lousy ones never got any better (Max Wright and Benji Gregory).

Of course, we do have an exception in Andrea Elson, but I’m sure that’s because she worked of her own initiative to get better, likely learning what she could from Schedeen and the other good actors that dropped in for guest appearances. It’s not because the setting was conducive to her learning these things, and it’s definitely not because the director or anyone else bothered to coach her…if she learned anything, she learned it on her own.

ALF tries to steal Brian’s candy bar, which Benji Gregory was kind enough to hold perfectly, rigidly in frame throughout the conversation, like the script-reciting automaton that he is. He then gives ALF the candy bar, and ALF eats it so fast! lol!

Brian even gets to deliver a zinger! “You eat fast, Sugar Ray!” It’d be an embarrassing line for even the best of actors, so if you can make it through Benji Gregory slurring it out without flinching, you’re a better man than I.

In fact, he seems to channel the mushmouthed inflection of Max Wright. “Yhou EEatf-fast shuggeray.” Coupled with the extremely delayed physical reaction to ALF trying to grab the candy, it almost seems like while Andrea Elson was learning quietly from Anne Schedeen, Benji Gregory was stuck at the Max Wright Actor College.

Anyway, ALF chops a board, then he tries to chop another board, but he fails to chop the other board, so he makes a face and vibrates.

Good shit.

Willie comes in to tell Brian that he just heard what a massive wiener he is. Then he sees that ALF has injured the hand that loves him the way his wife used to, so he attempts to massage it back to functionality.

We get a pretty good line stranded amongst all the bullshit when Willie tells ALF, “If you really wanted to help, you’d teach him not to fight.” ALF replies, “He already knows how to do that.”

Good shit.

No…really this time.

Then we get some more Willie backstory. Unlike anything we learned in “Night Train,” though, this is something we probably could have guessed for ourselves: Willie used to get his nuts handed to him. His bully was named Clarence, which I think implies that even Willie’s guardian angel couldn’t resist giving him wedgies.

He tells Brian that once he decided not to fight back anymore, Clarence moved on, because it stopped being fun for him.

I’m pretty sure I’ve heard every sitcom dad in history give this same advice…but has this ever worked in real life? I can tell you for sure that the kid in my school who got picked on the most literally never raised a hand to his tormentors. Ever. And they definitely didn’t stop. Why would they? If anything they’d leave the kid who intermittently stands up for himself alone in favor of a reliable target.

I don’t know. I was never a bully. And — thanks to this other kid serving as a hell of a convenient distraction — I was never bullied, either. But from what I’ve seen, fighting back is the only hope you have. Not fighting back just cements you as a punching bag until you hang yourself in the closet.

Willie mentions that this advice came from his dad, and Brian asks if that’s the same grandfather that used to talk to corn chips. That’s an interesting bit of color. Willie’s dad must have gone through (or is going through) a period of dementia that Brian was around to see. I still don’t know if the guy’s alive or dead, but at least we know that during that ailing, helpless time of his life, the Tanners sat around making fun of him.

Whatever. Willie gets sick of talking to his son and initiates sex with the alien.

The next day, or whenever the hell everybody changes their shirts, Kate is pissed because ALF stuck all of his karate boards in the fireplace. She chews him out for wasting perfectly good lumber.

…and, sorry. But, yeah. Not even Anne Schedeen can sell that bullshit.

Of all the things Kate could have gotten mad at ALF for (leaving splinters everywhere comes to mind, or actually burning the wood but not opening the flue), she’s mad that he wasted perfectly good lumber.

Kate Tanner.

Says, out loud.

That she’s mad at him.

For “wasting perfectly good lumber.”

She tries, dear reader. She really does. But although Kate is large, and contains multitudes, she does not give a flying fuck about the Tanner supply of good lumber. And she certainly isn’t so emotionally invested in it that she’ll fly into a rage if good lumber isn’t put to appropriate use.

Good fucking lumber.

Good lumber my ass. God damn this awful show.

Brian comes home and reveals that even though he didn’t fight back, Bobby Duncan still rubbed a bunch of potting soil into his jacket.

ALF pops up through the plot window and suggests solving violence with violence, like they used to do on Melmac.

And then — you know what? — I just about forget about good lumber. Because there’s one hell of a tantalizing moment.

Willie hears this suggestion, and he pointedly asks him if he remembers what happened to Melmac.

ALF replies, “It blew up in a nuclear holocaust. Why?”

And…wow. That’s both a good joke and some nice, potential shading of ALF’s history. Willie, of course, tries to overexplain the connection to the audience, but I’m not disappointed by that. I want to know more. The fact that we don’t get a clear answer here isn’t a bad thing…if anything, it just shows what a good job the show did (accidentally, no doubt) of getting my ears to perk up.

Is the “violence with violence” approach the reason Melmac is gone? Maybe so and maybe not. The fact that ALF can’t see the connection between what he just said and the “nuclear holocaust” he remembers can mean one of two things:

1) He’s a fucking imbecile, because Melmac actually was destroyed in needless conflict and he’s learned nothing, or…

2) Willie’s wrong, and the nuclear accident that destroyed Melmac was coincidental, not caused at all by any sort of hostile act.

They both give up on the conversation, so that’s where we’re left. Maybe the show wants us to believe that it’s one of those things, specifically, and not the other, but, as far as I can tell, they’re both equally valid in the face of what little we’ve heard.

I wonder if we will get any kind of definitive answer about Melmac. I’m assuming not, but I have to admit that these little snatches of dialogue are interesting.

There’s another good line when Kate asks Brian if the bully insulted her again. Brian says, “No. Dad.” Surprised, Willie asks what Bobby said about him. Brian replies, “He said you must have been desperate to marry someone like mom.”

It’s a legitimately clever moment, and it’s not the last one in the episode. (It is the second to last one.)

That laugh dies pretty quickly, though, because ALF pops up through the plot window again to announce that he called Bobby’s father, impersonated Willie, threatened him, and invited the guy to come over and kick Willie’s teeth out.

Man, what an effortless way to advance the storyline. You’d hardly even notice how this episode was slapped together out of disparate script pages if I hadn’t pointed it out.

Damn that’s good lumber.

Bobby’s dad comes over and Willie stammers out a bunch of padded bullshit until the credits roll.

Well, not really. But that’s certainly how it feels. This Max Wright stutterlogue goes on so long that Paul Fusco starts to feel insecure, and we cut to ALF in the kitchen for no reason except to assure us that he hasn’t ceased to exist.

Anyway, Mr. Duncan starts hitting on Kate and calling Willie four-eyes, which is the single most hurtful insult in the world after all the rest of them. This makes Willie snap, and he calls Mr. Duncan “Shorty.”

The whole thing reeks of false escalation, but it leads to the best moment in the entire half hour. It gets no laugh from the audience, but I love it: Lynn steps into the tension of the living room and says, “Mom? Dad? Is it time for church yet?”

That was the best Lynn moment ever. I know she’s not the most reliable actor on the show, but when she wants to, Andrea Elson gives good lumber.

Willie physically throws the guy out of the house, and we hear the crashing of garbage cans. Though this is pretty fucking stupid even for ALF, there’s a valid sense of Willie having crossed a line.

Or maybe I’m just going easy on it because it leads to the second best Lynn moment ever when she makes this face:

The next day, or whenever the hell everybody changes into a robe, ALF is blabbing about how he called a bunch of people and threatened them on Willie’s behalf.

Remind me again why they don’t just sever ALF’s spine while he sleeps? Why the hell is he not even being threatened with eviction? He’s entering Willie in fucking Bloodsport.

Oh well. The important thing is that we’ve hijacked another Brian plot. There I was, stupidly thinking the episode about Brian getting beaten up would be about Brian getting beaten up. Little did I know it was actually about ALF siccing the city of Los Angeles on Willie’s pasty ass.

A serious sight for sore eyes, Mr. Ochmonek comes over with his wife. Funny how when the show started, it seemed like Mrs. Ochmonek was going to be the “main” neighbor, and her husband might or might not tag along. Liz Sheridan is by no means a bad actress (see Seinfeld, which made much better use of her talents), but Jack LaMotta leaves her in the dust, and I’d like to think that the writers at least appreciated what they had, and started using Mr. Ochmonek more, making his wife the optional add-on.

He congratulates Willie on knocking some sense into Mr. Duncan, because that guy’s kind of a dick. Kate asks how he knows about that, and Mrs. Ochmonek says she told everyone in town.

Tee hee, sure, but I’m only reporting that because it leads to a fucking gorgeous moment.

Mr. Ochmonek says, “Yeah. There’s three ways news can travel. Telephone, telegraph, and tell Raquel.”

On its own that’s nothing, but look at the screengrab again. Mrs. Ochmonek hears this joke — which she knows is coming, and which she must have heard a thousand times before — and turns to Kate with a huge smile as he tells it. “Isn’t he the best?” she’s asking silently.

This joke isn’t just lame, it’s extremely out of date. When was the last time anyone used the telegraph to spread news? Mr. Ochmonek is telling a joke he may well have told back when he was wooing Raquel* in high school.

And she still loves it.

She thinks her husband is hilarious. This isn’t a joke she’s sick of hearing…this is a reminder of why she fell in love with him in the first place. I can’t stress enough how lovely this moment is, and it bears repeating that I believe the Ochmoneks love each other. I do not believe that of the Tanners. These are the people I’d rather spend time with, because they’re at least recognizably human.

Then Mr. Ochmonek jokes about leaving before Willie throws him out “like yesterday’s garbage.” He even makes a little production out of carrying himself to the door by his shirt color.

Give them just a few lines and a little bit of physical business, and the Ochmoneks will show us what a difference it makes when we’re watching actual characters instead of people on a soundstage.

Mr. Duncan comes over again and Willie decides to show Brian that you don’t need to fight in order to resolve your problems. Then Mr. Duncan actually sees Brian and asks if that’s really the kid that gave Bobby a black eye, which is a twist marginally less believable than finding out Willie was formed in a lab accident.

Whatever. The guy’s being pretty nice overall, but he mentions he works as a scrap metal dealer, which for some reason causes the Tanners to make fun of him over and over again. Even Kate, with Anne Schedeen proving again that there’s only so much anyone can do with dreck like this.

The joke isn’t even that the Tanners are awful people. As far as I can tell, the joke is that this idiot works as a scrap metal dealer. What an idiot! Everyone, look at the idiot! This idiot probably wouldn’t know good lumber if it bashed his skull open, the idiot.

It actually makes me feel pretty bad for Mr. Duncan. He might be an asshole, but with no amount of self-awareness whatsoever, the writers are having the Tanners bully him, and hoping we’ll laugh along. When we last saw him, yes, he called Willie “four-eyes.” But, y’know, Willie retaliated by throwing him into a row of trash cans, so I don’t think it’s Mr. Duncan who needs a comeuppance.

He gets it anyway, though, when Kate, for some bullshit reason I don’t care about, grabs him and throws him into the garbage again because fuck you for having a crappy job the Tanners don’t approve of.

Willie then gets down on one knee and asks Brian to marry him. He also delivers this week’s moral to the audience: in spite of what we’ve just asked the folks watching at home to celebrate, violence is totally a bad thing, so don’t throw your neighbors into trash cans…but if you do, do it twice, I guess. I dunno. The episode’s over. If you don’t like it you can suck ALF’s balls.

In the short scene before the credits ALF fights one of those inflatable wobbler things that he calls “Mummy-hammad Ali.”

That’s all you need to know about that.

It ends with Lynn coming into the living room to announce that Brian and Bobby have stopped fighting. Why she’s delivering the news and not Brian himself is a question that can only be answered by the fact that Lynn is not played by Benji Gregory.

Ugh. This one was fucking lousy. And yet, there have certainly been worse. Oh well. This was the first episode on the final disc of season two. The end is in sight.

I can do this.

MELMAC FACTS: On Melmac somebody called ALF a snitch, just because ALF turned him in to the Secret Police. ALF says they used to call him Sugar Ray Shumway, but he never got far as a fighter owing to his “glass nose.” Raccy the Raccoon was a hero on Melmac who taught everyone to wash their food before they ate it. On Melmac they had no respect for good lumber.

—–
* Yes, her name is Raquel. I know I’ve only ever referred to them as Mr. and Mrs. Ochmonek, but that was because I thought it was funny to do so. Now that they’re both becoming characters, though, I may show them some proper respect by using their first names when appropriate. So, here you go. They are Raquel and Trevor.