Category: alf

We made it to the final DVD in the ALF box set! At long last, the end is in sight. We can do this. Right? There’s no way they saved the best for last — I realize that, believe me — but no matter what they throw at us, we will be able to limp past the finish line. We must be able to. We came this far…surely we can delay suicide for another six weeks. (I plan on committing it sometime during the Project: ALF livestream.)

This one is a Valentine’s Day episode…which is fine. Yes, we already had one of those, but that was about everyone pressuring Kate Sr. to spread her legs for some asshole she just met, so I’m perfectly happy for the show to take a different swing at it.

We open with Willie hanging up the phone and saying “Congratulate me” to his wife, which I like to think laid the sad and pathetic groundwork for Jeb Bush imploring his audience to “Please clap.”

It turns out that Willie managed to snag dinner reservations at a place called Emilio’s, and they talk for a while about how lucky they are, since it’s Valentine’s Day and all. I’ve got news for you: if you waited until Valentine’s Day and still got reservations, Emilio’s has a drive-thru.

You know, and, come on…why the fuck did Willie wait until Valentine’s Day to make reservations? What is it with this guy not doing anything for his wife ahead of time? A couple weeks ago he didn’t know what to get Kate for their anniversary…and by the end of that episode, he still didn’t get her anything. ALF just renewed their vows, which thematically fits just fine, but which logistically makes it look like Willie banked on the situation to distract everyone from the fact that he didn’t do anything himself. Thank god the guy didn’t have to be thoughtful. Making Willie show compassion must be like making a vampire drink holy water.

Now he can redeem himself a bit with some romantic Valentine’s plans…but he doesn’t bother trying to plan anything until 5:30 on the very night they’re supposed to be going out. What the hell is this guy’s problem? Divorce his sorry ass, Kate. I’ll marry you. Trust me, I’m a dickbag, too, but I’ll at least pretend to care about our relationship.

Thinking on it, that’s some more timeline shenanigans, too, I guess. Two weeks ago it was their anniversary…and while we don’t know the date of their wedding, we do know their honeymoon was in July. But now it’s February 14. So I guess that means they got married in January or something, but didn’t take their honeymoon for six months?

I’m sure that happens in real life. It’s probably more common that couples take their honeymoons quickly, but I can imagine plenty of reasons that it might be delayed substantially. Based on the shit I’m seeing here, though, I think it’s more likely that Willie just didn’t bother to plan a honeymoon until half a year after they were married. He’s a real catch.

Anyway, hearing that it’s Valentine’s Day makes ALF sad, so he waxes uninterrupted about wanting someone to fuck.

Yes, he goes on at great lengths about wishing his barbed Melmacian cock could slip up some poor, anonymous woman’s snatch for just one night, and he says this while sitting naked on the living room carpet with three people staring blankly at him because they have no lines.

Cupid, draw back your bow!

After the credits, ALF makes a joke about Willie shitting his pants. Great start.

Together they look at a newspaper and talk about how Louise Beaumont, some old film star, moved into the neighborhood. Is that news? Celebrities buy places in and around Denver all the time, but I’ve never seen a newspaper headline that said STAR OF ______ LIVES HERE NOW. And this is just dumbass Denver. Imagine fucking Los Angeles, where stars basically live by default. The hell kind of newspaper is this?

Ugh, fuck this show. Let’s see if we can identify that Kool-Aid juice box ALF has…oh. It’s Purplesaurus Rex.

That didn’t distract from the episode as long as I’d wished it would.

Like, honestly, I saw the dinosaur and immediately thought “Purplesaurus Rex.” I looked it up to make sure that was actually its name…and I was kind of dismayed to find out that it was. That fucker is obviously a brontosaurus…so where does the “rex” come from?

Ugh, fuck this juice.

Willie and Kate leave, mentioning that they’re taking Eric to a sitter. Which is a pretty good logistical solution to the problem raised in “Baby, Come Back,” I admit. You don’t need to buy a babysitter’s silence after a night of being sexually tormented by a puppet…you just take the baby somewhere else.

But it does raise the question of where Lynn and Brian are. Sure, it’s Valentine’s Day so Lynn’s probably got mime makeup all over her inner thighs about now, but Brian? Is he already hanging around with Jimmy the Gent’s niece?

I’m noticing this because someone mentioned a while back that this is the only episode in which Lynn and Brian don’t appear. I think that’s wrong, though…I seem to recall Brian missing from a previous episode. Fucked if I’ll ever be able to remember which one; the kid might as well be played by a hat rack.

It’s definitely noteworthy that Lynn’s not in this one, though. She usually gets something to do in every episode, so the fact that she doesn’t appear at all is meaningful. You know. As far as anything related to ALF can be meaningful.

ALF spanks off to the newspaper a few more times, and then decides to sneak off to the retirement home and visit Louise, because of course he does. A few days ago I heard a recent interview with Paul Fusco, which was a solid half hour of decades-late damage control. He seems to think the cast should be grateful to have worked on the show that systematically destroyed each of their lives. He’s a great guy, that Fusco. In fact, I’m pretty sure he’s just ALF without a cuddly exterior.

Anyway, he mentioned at one point that he was very careful about which characters got to see ALF, because it was important to the premise of the show that he was kept secret from as many folks as possible.

…and we know full well that’s bullshit.

Literally every recurring character apart from Mr. Ochmonek saw ALF. Seriously, Mr. Ochmonek was the only fucking one. And nearly all the one-off characters saw him, too. Now he’s about to go to a retirement home and meet a boat load of new ones.

So my fucking ass, Fusco, that you were selective about who saw ALF and who didn’t. I think they were “selected” on the grounds of whether or not you were cutting them a check. If you had to pay them, they’d better damned well stand still and listen to ALF perform a monologue.

ALF pokes around the outside of the retirement home for a while, dressed as Trayvon Shumway. While he’s out there George Zimmerman and some other unseen nobody shout to each other about the hideous beast they just saw…so, yeah. Fusco was so careful about who got to see ALF that two people without names or faces just saw him for no reason at all. They talk about murdering ALF in cold blood, just to get my hopes up.

Our alien hero stands around and babbles to himself for a while, because if this episode just featured things that happen it would be around 12 seconds long. When he’s jacked off enough to the sound of his own voice, he runs into the retirement home and some old people look at him.

You know.

Because of how selective the show was about THIS SHIT THAT HAPPENS EVERY WEEK.

In a nice bit of real-world resonance, the old folks at home are actually actors who have had long and varied careers. If you check out their filmographies you’ll find loads of parts in high and low profile productions spanning decades, and I think it was kind of cool of ALF to actually cast actors with such rich histories in a story like this. They were never huge celebrities or anything, but it’s a cute touch, and I like the fact that they bothered to find people with actual showbiz pedigrees. Like, I really do. It melts even my evil heart.

The woman on the left is Amzie Strickland, who has over 260 credits on IMDB, and who has a rad name like Amzie. She’s been in The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Andy Griffith Show*, and, most significantly for ALF, The Bob Newhart Show. Eric Christmas is in the center, with around 130 credits and a rad last name like Christmas. He had a recurring role as Father Barry on Cheers, and other regular parts in Wiseguy and The Sandy Duncan Show. On the right is Phil Leeds, who I feel like I’ve seen in everything. Seriously, the guy has a very familiar face, but I can’t pinpoint what I know him from best, because he has almost 120 credits, including a role in the Spanish Inquisition sequence of History of the Word: Part I.

Season four has really increased the number of actors who worked with both Paul Fusco and Mel Brooks. Prior to this I think we just had Cleavon Little, right? Now we have Phil Leeds, Mark Blankfield, and Jim J. Bullock. Am I missing any others? I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I find it morbidly interesting that any actor should have to slip from working with Mel Brooks to working with Paul Fusco.

I might as well think about that for a bit, because God knows none of this other crap deserves my consideration.

The old people talk on and on about whether ALF is a talking dog or who gives a shit. Then one of them suggests that ALF might an alien, and the other old guy says, “Buenas noches!”

That’s…okay. It’s only the second time to my knowledge that the dual meanings of “alien” come into play, and there have been far stupider jokes on this show…but unfortunately it’s the runaway highlight of this scene. As a lesser joke in a better show, it would be fine. As the high water mark…sweet jesus.

The old people talk for a while about Cocoon, and whether or not ALF will make them young. Joke’s on them; all he does is make fun of their poor hearing, their fragility, their clothes, their impotence, their living situation, their poor memories, their odors, their need for medication, their poor vision, and the fact that everyone they’ve ever loved is dead.

What a guy!

ALF asks to see Louise Beaumont, but the old people tell him to suck their saggy sex organs. He then reminds them that the show is called ALF, not Elderly Actors We Could Replace in a Heartbeat, and they agree to take him to her room.

Louise Beaumont is reading Hollywood Babylon, and I’m pretty sure that’s the first real book cover we’ve seen on this show.

I’ve never read it, but it was a pretty notorious book that was at one point banned for reasons of basic human decency.

Seriously. That sounds like a joke, but I’m not kidding. Its big selling point was that it spilled dirt on Hollywood stars spanning every era of film history, but it was poorly researched at best…and knowingly made up at worst. It misrepresented and outright invented scandals for the sake of selling copies, and it was a tactic that, sadly, worked.

That was far from the worst of it, though; Hollywood Babylon contained actual photographs of the dead bodies of celebrities, including Jayne Mansfield and Lewis Stone, against the wishes of their families. It was, unquestionably, awful stuff.

So, yeah, it’s a pretty gross thing to read, and here’s Louise Beaumont flicking herself off to it. What an odd bit of unintentional characterization. (Maybe it’s a good thing they keep taking the dustjackets off of whatever Willie and Kate are reading in bed. God knows what horrific shit the props department would stick them with.)

Anyway, ALF comes in and she immediately tells him to go fuck himself.

So, you know what? She might like looking at unethical photographs of dead bodies, but I’d get along more easily with her than with anyone else who’s ever been in this crap.

Back in the dayroom, some night attendant or whatever comes in, and ALF hides. The night attendant talks about how he’s fucking the tits off a hot chick in the other room, so all these old people better tell their jokes about being old people quietly.

ALF returns with a thermometer in his mouth and says, “A hundred and fourteen point eight. Perfect!” But way back in “Help Me, Rhonda” we learned that 425 degrees was a healthy temperature for Melmacians. Granted, 114 makes a lot more sense (ALF would literally cook everything and everyone he touches if he really were 425 degrees) but for as little as we’ve learned about this fucker, can’t the writers keep something straight?

Anyway, if you guessed that the whole reason any of that happened was so ALF could stick a rectal thermometer in his mouth and make a joke about eating old people’s feces, then congratulations; you’re one with ALF‘s philosophy on act breaks.

After the break we get an establishing shot of the nursing home, which hilariously zooms in to a second floor window when we already learned that the room we’re in is on the ground level.

ALF and the old folks are playing poker, and he bitches about how they’re not enjoying life. You know, like he does when he jacks off into that little gap between the couch cushions.

He tries to get them to do something fun, and offers to take them up to the roof and show them where he comes from. Which sure would be interesting, since the planet doesn’t exist anymore, even if Melmac had been somehow visible from Earth.

The old woman says, “This isn’t just a trick to use us as sex drones to repopulate your planet?” Huh. It’s rare that a character makes my joke for me, but I’ll take it.

Anyway, he keeps trying to talk them into going outside and seeing something of the world around them, which is pretty funny since just one episode ago he was being a dick to elderly Willie who just wanted to look out the window.

You’ve got to love how much better ALF treats complete strangers than the guy who’s gone to prison multiple times on his behalf.

ALF tries to get Louise Belmont to join them on the roof, but she won’t even look at him. Man…what a pro. Now I want to track her down in a nursing home and show my appreciation, too.

He feeds her some bullshit for a while, and she tells him to fuck off again.

He tries to let her know that he understands what it’s like to live an exciting life one day and be stuck within four walls the next, but she doesn’t want to hear his story. Great choice, Louise. You’re too old to sit through 500 fucking fantasy episodes about running for president and meeting Elvis.

Then there’s some sad music while ALF tells her that meeting her is still one of the happiest moments of his life and I guess it’s touching to her. But come on. If you were sitting alone in your room and some hideous, pantsless monster waddled in and asked to take your picture, would you be touched or would you beat it to death with your Hollywood snuff book?

Louise Beaumont is played by Frances Bay, who was in loads of things and went on to play Aunt Ginny on The Middle a few years ago. She also played Mrs. Choate in a few episodes of Seinfeld, so this crap was nowhere near the end of her filmography. Good for her. She and the midget are the only ones who managed to escape the career-crushing gravitational collapse of ALF.

Oddly, the IMDB credits for this episode are screwed up; nobody is credited as Louise Beaumont at all, and Bay is credited as playing someone named Virginia Russell. The episode itself credits her correctly, though, so I assume ALF has melted brains all over the internet.

Anyway, the old people come in and announce that they heard the night watchman getting a noisy BJ, so they’re free to go on the roof.

There’s a bunch of boring shit with the old people just standing and looking, like a bunch of crippled Rory Calhouns. I do like the detail — which you can barely see in the screengrab — of the retirement home still having its Christmas lights up. That’s a great, unspoken, sad little joke that I really enjoy. Even when ALF lights them up later, it feels like a subtler, smarter touch than anyone involved with this show usually gives it. And I appreciate that.

Then we get a legitimately great joke. Really, we do! The olds remind him to show them where he’s from, and he points. Then he says, “Yep, right there. See? It’s that cheap white tract home, three houses in from the corner.”

Fuck you. I laughed.

Unfortunately he steps on the punchline by then explaining “OH ACTUALLY I MEANT THAT IS WHERE I LIVE RIGHT NOW ON EARTH REALLY MY PLANET BLEW UP SORRY I MISLED YOU.” And Jesus Christ if that’s not proof positive that the writers don’t know what’s funny, even (especially?) when it comes to their own damn material.

Boo.

I hate ALF. Like, I honestly can’t stand this crap and I’m embarrassed for having ever enjoyed it as a kid. If I could carve out the piece of my brain that contains ALF memories I’d stick a screwdriver up my nose and do it right now. But even with my strong, overpowering hatred of the show in general, you know what I hate most? When ALF is portrayed as some holy being that teaches the world about beauty and wonder.

He used to do that more in the early episodes, I think. “Weird Science” existed just for that purpose, as far as I can tell. And he gave a speech to Mrs. Ochmonek in “Take a Look at Me Now” along the same lines. Then there was the sappy, wall to wall horse shit in “ALF’s Special Christmas,” an episode which was, to put it politely, the single worst thing humanity has ever inflicted upon itself.

For the most part, though, his “Your life is better now for having met me” crap had taken a backseat since then. Which is good, because all he ever does is fuck and murder the people important to Willie, so, y’know, the whole “great guy” stuff sorta rang false. Call me crazy.

Anyway, it’s back now, of course, because the show’s ending, and we really have to make sure nobody will miss it. ALF is a magical space rapist who fixes everything forever, so the old people feel young again and dance.

This show sucks.

Louise Beaumont comes out, also because ALF is a magical space rapist who fixes everything forever. This is a great time to remember, once again, that last week Willie just wanted the curtain open and ALF smacked him across the face with the urn containing the remains of Uncle Albert.

Louise Beaumont asks ALF where he’s from so he can tell the same joke again, which made the writers’ job easier and that’s the most important thing.

But then he lies and tells her he’s from a star, which he points at. I guess he doesn’t want to say his planet blew up because that would depress her? I don’t know where they were going with this…and I don’t know why she’d give a shit if his planet blew up anyway. She wasn’t all that shook up by seeing an alien in the first place. Must have been all those celebrity autopsy photos she was dripping over earlier. She’s well beyond feeling.

And, come to think of it, he didn’t seem too worried about depressing all these other old people if that was his concern, so who knows.

He then forces Louise Beaumont to dance with one of the old guys, because pressuring the elderly to fuck is sort of ALF‘s Valentine’s Day tradition.

ALF talks to a bird and I have no fucking clue what I’m watching.

The short scene before the credits begins with another zoom in to a second floor window even though the scene that follows takes place on the roof, so really the show is just fucking with me at this point.

ALF asks Louise Beaumont if she thinks he has a big dick. Then Willie shows up to punch ALF to death with a fistful of rusty screws.

This one was garbage. Happy Valentine’s Day, assholes!

Countdown to ALF getting his belly slit and a midget tumbling out: 5 episodes

—–
* This episode sucks a fat one, but there’s a nice joke when she remembers Cocoon as being directed by “Opie.” That’s a cute nod to her work — as various characters — on that show.

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

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

And that screengrab is Anne Schedeen’s silent reaction.

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

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

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

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

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

Which causes Andrea Elson to make this face:

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

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

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

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

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

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

no

no oh no

no fuck no no no FUCK no

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

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

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

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

nope

nope

nope

nope

nope nope

Uh-uh. I’m done.

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

No human being deserves this.

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

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

Time to die.

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

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

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

I hate this show.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Come at me, Fusco.

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

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

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

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

I have no complaints about where that scene ended.

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

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

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

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

Oh for fuck’s sake.

…FUCK

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

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

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

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

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

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

I hate you guys.

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

I hate you guys.

Eric introduces ALF’s replacement.

I really do fucking hate you guys.

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

So he dreams about living with elderly Willie instead and–

OKAY NO THAT IS QUITE ENOUGH THANK YOU NO

NO THANK YOU NO

NO

WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK THIS EPISODE FUCK

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

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

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

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

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

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

And that’s…it.

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

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

And…that’s it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Countdown to ALF saying all of his goodbyes: 6 episodes

Welcome to the second “ALF becomes a _______” episode in as many weeks! I hope it’s as good as the last one, in which nobody seemed to care that Lynn is going to be in debt for the rest of her life in order to attend a school at which she has to sleep with her teachers in exchange for good grades.

Seriously, what the fuck is Willie’s problem? Why isn’t this episode 30 minutes of him curb stomping the guy he learned last week is using his position of authority to sexually manipulate his daughter? And what the fuck is this show’s problem that the moral in that one wasn’t “If a teacher says this to you, rip his nuts off”? Why was it about ALF learning — and then apparently disregarding — the true meaning of being an artist?

FUCK. THIS. SHOW.

Anyway, this week ALF becomes an ordained minister — presumably because he’s fingered Brian often enough that he might as well make it official — and I see no way this can be problematic at all.

The episode opens with Willie wondering what to get his wife for their 22nd anniversary, because he hasn’t bothered to get to know her in that time, I guess. I think this is why “anniversary plots” tend to be about one character forgetting that it was coming up; when the plot turns out to be “I don’t know what to get him/her,” it makes you wonder why they’re married at all. Every human being forgets things; very few of us know somebody — let alone are wed to somebody — for 22 years without having some concept of what they do and don’t enjoy.

Lynn, bless her heart, suggests taking ALF to the desert and leaving him to die. Which, yeah, let’s please do that. It also leads to a funny enough line from Willie when he says that that’s what he plans on doing for their 25th anniversary.

ALF enters the room to remind them that whatever shit they’re talking about, that’s not the plot of the episode. He says that he overlooked something until just now, and it’s causing him great distress: when Melmacians turn 233, they have six months to become a minister. If they don’t, they become outcasts. It sounds at first like he means “outcast” in a social sense, but shortly he refers to being one for eternity, so maybe there’s a spiritual consequence to not becoming a minister.

This…is not a bad concept for an episode, really. Not “ALF will one day go to Hell,” because if you’re going to tease me with that I’d better damned well see it, but “ALF explains what religion was like on Melmac.”

I’ve wondered many times about Willie’s religious faith, as the show keeps alluding to it but never explores how it would have to evolve — if not be outright shattered — by the fact that he lives with evidence of extra-terrestrial intelligence. Now, though, I see I’ve overlooked another interesting angle: how does ALF’s religious faith get shaken by his new life here? He’s encountering evidence of intelligent extra-terrestrial life as well.

It’s not often that the writers of this show beat me to considering interesting territory, but they did it here, which means that this could either be a good episode, or watching this shit has melted my brain.

There’s even a valid reason ALF is only discussing this now, as opposed to…well, any time sooner than this: He turned 233 at some point within the past few months, and needs to take action fast. (Speaking of “forgetting the date” plots…) I can’t remember if placing his age at 233 contradicts anything we’ve been told previously — especially with this show’s insane disregard for any kind of definitive timeline — so if you have any knowledge of that, let me know in the comments.

Me? I’m not nit-picking just yet. I’m genuinely interested to see how this plays out. Melmac has never been portrayed as an especially spiritual place before, so whatever they do with its religious climate in this episode will definitely be the result of graceless shoe-horning…but it still has every possibility of being interesting and clever in its own right, so…yeah. Show me what you’ve got, ALF.

Ugh. Nevermind.

ALF mumbles a bunch of vaguely scriptural bullshit and makes the Tanners sit through it. At one point he begins singing “The Name Game” about Barry, which is what Melmacians called their god. By the way…did you know that that’s an actual song? I learned that a few years ago, and was kind of blown away by that fact. (It’s also pretty impressively funky!) I always figured it was just some kind of schoolyard nonsense, but I guess it’s more standardized than that. It’s always interesting to me to find “patient zero” for stuff like this.

Anyway, the Tanners must read him four questions from the Holy Scroll. (Which I guess he had on his space ship? Yet another thing he went back to get instead of saving any of his friends or family.) It’s a good thing there are only four questions, because if they were five they’d have to age Eric up right quick.

ALF explains that if he can answer three of the four questions correctly, he’ll become a minister. Which…okay. But I have to confess that I really couldn’t care less whether this masturbating puppet does or does not become a minister in a made-up religion that didn’t exist last week and will never be mentioned again. Call me a stick in the mud, but I am somehow not invested in his spiritual journey just yet.

Brian asks the first question: What’s the kindest thing you can do for someone else? ALF replies, “Burp downwind,” and Willie confirms this in what I guess is the Melmacian bible.

More props to the…uh…props guys for making the book look alien, but I’m not sure books with deep, wavy cutouts at the edges are especially suited to any species with fingers. I appreciate the effort, though, and I’m amused by the fact that somebody on the ALF staff took a band saw to a Bible this week. And you assholes thought I was disrespectful…

Lynne reads the second question: What one gesture will prove your undying love for another? ALF replies, “A Mazda Miata,” which Lynn understandably calls bullshit on.

Oddly, she calls bullshit on it not because Mazda doesn’t export cars to Melmac, but because the Miata was only introduced the previous year. (And she’s correct; this aired in 1990, and the Miata was introduced in 1989, for the 1990 model year.) ALF explains that, technically, the answer is “any red convertible,” which isn’t hilarious, but it at least addresses the kind of continuity flaw we’ve had to deal with on this show a lot (ALF was conceived in a DeSoto, remember) and tries to spin an additional joke out of it.

It’s a good impulse.

Question three is read by…oh. It’s Brian again.

There’s nothing wrong with that; I’m just not used to the kid getting two lines.

He asks, “When does track lighting go with Berber carpet?” Nobody calls him on the “Berber carpet on Melmac” shit, of course, but, whatever, they tried. ALF replies, “When you stick with stripes and solids, and stay away from patterns.”

Willie takes great delight in saying, “That’s wrong. You’re wrong, ALF.” Or, more likely, Max Wright does. According to the book, the answer is: “Stick with patterns. Stay away from solids; they’re cold and they don’t create a welcome environment.”

ALF sighs and says, “Religion is so subjective.”

And that…okay. I didn’t laugh, but that was pretty funny.

Lynn reads the final question: “You’ve been dancing all night, and you’ve noticed your partner’s dress shields have given out. You like her, but others are starting to point. Do you tell her?”

It wasn’t clear earlier if female Melmacians could be ministers as well (or, I guess, were passively obligated to be when they turned 233), but this question seems to make clear that they can’t. It may also indicate that homosexual Melmacian males couldn’t be ministers. SO THERE’S THAT QUESTION ANSWERED.

ALF replies that the answer is no; you dance with her and then “reach in and change them without her knowing.” So, basically, only straight male sexual predators could be ministers.

He’s right, so they all congratulate him on this fake imaginary horse shit nobody cares about, but he forces them to start the ceremony all over from the beginning, because he told them to stand without him saying “Barry says” first.

So, basically, only straight male sexual predator dickheads could be ministers.

That whole mess does at least pay off in a really nice — and clearly deliberate — Peanuts homage, with ALF’s confessional taking visual inspiration from Lucy VanPelt’s psychiatry booth.

Brian and Lynn come in, and ALF says, “Come, my flock. It’s time for me to hear your sins and earn a couple of bucks on the side.” Which…again. I didn’t laugh, but I liked that well enough. It’s an effective one-liner, and a decent jab at a very specific kind of religious manipulation.

Lynn declines, as she has to memorize the periodic table. It’s…an odd education she’s getting, isn’t it? Periodic tables, painting, and acting in St. Joan.

Maybe the writers should have picked a major for her after all, because right now it’s just whatever garbage they feel like making a shitty joke about. It’s probably for the best that she’s occupied, though. I definitely didn’t need to see five minutes of ALF masturbating to Lynn describing her “sins.”

ALF hornswaggles Brian into coming over, using some shitty Irish accent, which is a shame because the rest of this exchange is…

…fuck.

It’s…kind of good.

Brian tells him that he doesn’t have two dollars; he only has a quarter. “You’re in luck,” ALF says, taking the quarter. “It’s happy hour.”

Then Brian expresses some dismay at the fact that if he confesses his sins, ALF will know what he did…so ALF offers to close the shutters to maintain anonymity.

And that’s a really cute joke both about the Catholic church and the design of the set. The plot window is a perfect place for ALF to ply his trade, but it also happens to allow for an observation like that, which is shockingly efficient for this show. I know some folks in the comments are going to accuse me of exaggerating, but this episode really is better than contracting genital warts.

When Brian complains about how shoddy ALF’s operation is, ALF says, “Take your quarter. Go to your room.” And it’s pretty adorably dismissive.

I enjoyed a Brian scene. And I’m pretty sure that’s in the book of Revelation.

Then Kate comes in and ALF starts ranting like a faith-healer, which is pretty annoying. I don’t know why this episode is leaning so hard on funny accents. When it’s actually telling jokes about its premise, it’s doing pretty well. But then I guess the writers remembered that Paul Fusco is the Man of 1.5 Voices, and they’d better let him work the crowd.

Oddly, to me, Kate is wearing a sweater vest. I’ve…never seen a woman wear a sweater vest. Have I? It seems odd to me, at least. I always thought it was a masculine thing. Then again, I only see women through bathroom windows…and they ain’t wearin’ much iffin’ you know what I mean!!!

Kate tells him to fuck off.

“I’d rather confess my sins to Jimmy Swaggart,” she says. And since she just left it there I was a little disappointed…the “recognizable name as punchline” thing is pretty lazy. But ALF replies, “You’d have to go to a cheap hotel for that,” and…

Am I liking this one?

It’s not great, I know that…but I think I’m actually liking this one.

The Swaggart joke, by the way, could use a little context, because it was pretty cutting for its time. The initial Swaggart scandal broke in 1988, but wasn’t a one-time thing. Evidently Swaggart made a big show of exposing some fellow preacher who’d had affairs. Which is bad, yes. In fact, Christianity pretty explicitly forbids that kind of thing. So Swaggart made an example of this guy, and, in retaliation, the guy exposed Swaggart’s hobby of hiring prostitutes to fuck him in scummy motels. Which is…y’know. Kind of worse.

Photos were taken, witnesses came forth, and Swaggart was pretty well finished. The guy Swaggart exposed in the first place probably isn’t held in very high regard by those who know him today, but he’s largely forgotten while Swaggart himself became a global pariah and posterboy for religious hypocrisy…especially at the (frankly disgusting) the pay-to-pray level.

Swaggart, needless to say, apologized for his behavior and swore it would never happen again. So in 1991 he fucked some more hookers and became a laughingstock once more.

ALF had no way of knowing Swaggart would become a punchline again (for the same reason!) the year after this episode aired, of course, but that coincidence made this a very well-timed joke, and I’ll give the show credit for that. It was funny then, it got funnier a year later, and it’s still funny now.

Later, Willie and Kate passionately read-some-books each other’s brains out.

ALF knocks on the door and asks, hopefully, “Are you being fruitful and multiplying?” So it’s great that his obsession with watching people fuck survived the transition into this new life of spiritual fulfillment.

He comes in and tells them that he’s afraid he might lose his ministry. He then hands the Melmacian Bible or whatever to Kate, and tells her to read it. She does so: “Can you find Barry in this picture?”

And I laughed!

I laughed at that!

ALF performed a legitimate miracle!

Granted, Anne Schedeen sold the line, but it was a funny enough idea to begin with. (And I’m very willing to believe that the easily distracted Melmacians would include activity pages in their holy texts.)

ALF directs her to another passage: “If the newly ordained minister does not perform a good deed by officiating at a hallowed ceremony within ten working days, thereby proving his worth as a man of the cloth, the penance shall be dire and catastrophic to all those concerned.”

…rrrrright about now I start realizing how ridiculous it is that Kate can read Melmacian script. It’s one thing for ALF to be able to immediately speak and understand English as soon as he arrives on Earth — it’s absurd but not impossible that he studied the language at some point — but Kate shouldn’t be able to read this horse shit. Unless Melmacian holy texts really are written in English, and I can’t decide which explanation is more ridiculous.

But then the episode does something smart: it makes me laugh again, and I stop worrying about that. Kate finishes reading the passage…she lets “dire and catastrophic consequences” hang in the air…and then Willie says, “There he is. There’s Barry. Right there, right by the big clock.”

Guys, I hate Max Wright, but that was great.

…less great is ALF explaining that the consequences involve him yodeling for the rest of his life.

Willie and Kate fuckin’ hate it as much as I do.

It’s pretty lame, to be honest, but I like where the conversation briefly leads: Willie asks if Barry would even know what he does or doesn’t do. After all, Barry was a Melmacian god…and there’s no more Melmac. ALF is all the way on Earth now.

And that could raise further interesting questions. What does a god do when the world He presides over is destroyed? How long and far is His reach? If there are only a handful of survivors, and they’re cast out into the cosmos, does He still care if they adhere to the letter of His law? Or is He more concerned with their ability to survive? Or is He not concerned with them at all anymore as He pretty clearly has other major concerns?

Forget Willie’s crisis of faith or ALF’s crisis of faith…what about Barry’s crisis of faith? A god without anyone or anything underneath Him. What does that mean for Him? For His time? For His sanity? What does He do now? God can sit back all he likes and lord (ahem) over Earth, and that’s fine, if you believe that’s what He does. But what happens when the inevitable meteor strikes and Earth is gone? What happens when we elect Trump and the Earth commits seppuku? What happens if the population of China stands on buckets and jumps at exactly the same time, knocking us out of orbit and dooming us to a frozen, fatal drift through space?

Without a planet, what’s a god? Without mortals, what’s an immortal?

Was Melmac’s destruction part of Barry’s plan? If so, shouldn’t ALF be pretty upset at him? If not, what the fuck was Barry doing? And what is Barry doing now? Is He beating himself up? Rationalizing after the fact? Whipping up a new race of hairy rapists to pork their way through the universe? Is He the laughing stock of other gods? Did He blow up Melmac because he was as sick of their shitty antics as we are? And if He’s all powerful and this was just a nuclear accident, why doesn’t He use any of his limitless power to turn back the clock and prevent so much needless death, devastation, and horror?

All great questions. All ripe for intriguing discussion.

Instead, ALF yodels.

This is the halfway point. We’ve had some pretty good stuff and the possibility of obnoxious horse shit to come…so, really, this one could go either way.

Place your bets now.

After the commercial, Max Wright silently worries that somebody videotaped that party last night.

Brian gets his best line ever, bar none: “I like yodeling as much as the next guy, but I have my limits.”

Yeah, ALF is yodeling. Why? Who knows. He still has time before his ministry is dissolved, so I’m pretty sure he’s yodeling off camera just to prove how much he hates this family and their happiness.

The solution to the problem — at least the one ALF proposes — is that he should preside over the renewal of Willie and Kate’s wedding vows. Which, of course. ALF has been a major component of just about every milestone in their lives — childbirth and their honeymoon, for instance — so he might as well get his grubby, shit-caked claws sunk into their wedding as well.

What I like is that Willie and Kate don’t just blindly allow this week’s setpiece to descend upon them; in fact, they disagree pretty strongly about it.

“It’s just that I think this may be another trick of ALF’s just to get us to do what he wants us to do,” Kate argues.

Perfectly valid, and — importantly — something a mother should take into account. Parents must always find the balance between giving in to everything your child demands, and ignoring everything at the risk of serious problems going unaddressed. Those are the two extremes, and finding the middleground is both urgent and difficult. It can’t be easy to know if your child is faking illness because he or she wants to stay home from school and play video games, but you need to make sure you aren’t letting them stay home every time or assuming they’re faking every time. There needs to be a balance. Kate is considering that balance right now.

“I say, who cares,” Willie replies. “Let’s just do it.”

And while that’s shitty from a parenting perspective, it’s…pretty valid from a human perspective. Yes, you run the risk of rewarding bad behavior, but you also stop the naked sex criminal from yodeling…so, swings and roundabouts.

“Do it because it’ll shut him up” is a pretty bad mentality to rely on long-term, but I can’t fault him for considering it in the moment.

I can fault him for being a dick to his wife, though. (Seriously, when’s the last time you heard someone say “Who cares?” when his wife raised a concern? If you did hear it, did you not immediately follow it in your mind with “what a dick”?)

But I guess that’s nothing new. Assholes gonna asshole.

ALF comes to the plot window, hoarse with yodels. He says, “Only 400 more years of this. Then I get to die.” And, sure enough, that aligns with what we were told way back in “We’re So Sorry, Uncle Albert.” There we learned that Melmacians live to the age of 650…and, yes, 400 years from now ALF will only be 633, but it’s close enough that I suspect the writers did their homework.

Also, oddly, that episode suggested — knowingly or not — that Melmacians couldn’t die until that age; there was no shock of death. So does that mean that the explosion of Melmac just sent this civilization of butt-fucking assbags spiraling off, individually, for four centuries into the dead and lonely abyss of space? Are their conscious but destroyed bodies doomed to float through cosmic emptiness with no hope of rescue or reprieve for six fucking centuries?

No matter how you slice it, this is a fucking morbid-ass show.

Anyway, Kate says “Fuck it, nobody listens to me anyway, I’ll ruin the memories of the only happy day I’ve ever had in my life.” ALF throws up on the carpet.

Then ALF takes his place in front of the Muslim Prayer Curtain.

There’s a lot of Brian stuff in this scene. In this whole episode, actually, what with him having things to say and do throughout, but in this scene he actually gets a lot of focus. And it’s…weird.

He asks Lynn if she thinks he can get his parents to buy him a new Nintendo game if he yodels for a bit. (I guess he finally upgraded from the Atari.) She replies that he’s more likely to get some new teeth, so he does this weird thing where I think he’s trying to get her to hit him, and he says, “Come on. First one’s free.”

At least, I assume he’s gesturing at his mouth so she’ll hit him. It’s possible he’s offering oral sex.

Then she asks him if he has the rings, and he says, sarcastically, that he sold them for magic beans.

Jesus…who did mother Gregory let finger her?

ALF tells Willie that if the couple isn’t genuinely moved by the occasion, it doesn’t count and…I dunno. He’ll have to do it again, I guess? Thank Christ that wasn’t a requirement for the viewers of “ALF’s Special Christmas.”

Mrs. Ochmonek comes over and makes the same face I made when I realized Kate would marry Willie a second time.

This is Mrs. Ochmonek’s final appearance on the show, as she at last follows her husband into that good night. This isn’t completely surprising; it’s often the case that when one spouse passes, the other follows fairly soon. Living without the person who’s helped you make it through so much of your life isn’t easy. The same, I’m sure, can be said for the time you spend acting on ALF.

I’m glad that this is her last appearance, because it’s a good, final reminder of how much nicer the Ochmoneks were than the Tanners, no matter how often the show tried to tell us otherwise. She comes over because she saw so many flowers getting delivered, and was worried someone had fallen seriously ill. True to the end, those Ochmoneks. God knows the Tanners haven’t stopped by to make sure everything was okay when they stopped seeing their nephew, or when her husband disappeared without a trace.

Liz Sheridan did what she could do with the character. I wouldn’t say she excelled with her material the way John LaMotta did with his, but in her other roles — Seinfeld most notably — she made it very clear that she has the ability to be quite good and quite funny. The fact that she didn’t hit a grand slam on ALF is meaningless; she was up against a truly incompetent pitcher.

Mrs. Ochmonek never became the “episode highlight” the way Mr. Ochmonek did, but she’s had some good lines, and seeing her and LaMotta bounce off each other — and lovingly, convincingly fawn over each other — was great. It was also nice to have a recurring character who wasn’t a walking cockhole with teeth, but now she’s gone, and…yeah, I don’t think there are many characters I look forward to seeing left on the show. Hooray. We’re trudging onward to the end with only the worst of the worst.

Anyway, the family spins some bullshit excuse about Brian’s turtle Gabby passing away. Mrs. Ochmonek sees through it, after the family gets way too long a sequence in which they try to convince her of this turtle crap.

She finally says, “If you want me to leave, why didn’t you just say so? In fact, don’t even say so. I’ll leave on my own.”

Then Willie says, “I think that would be best.”

What. A fucking. Asshole. I’m glad Mrs. Ochmonek’s final scene on this show is calling the Tanners on their bullshit and walking away from them for good. It’s pretty cathartic. The only way it could be better is if she kneed Willie in the balls.

She leaves, and ALF starts the ceremony. He mentions that Willie and Kate met 22 years ago…but thanks to Willie’s exposition at the beginning of the episode, we know that that’s also as long as they’ve been married.

Nobody corrects ALF, so maybe those two really did get married immediately. That would certainly explain why she married him at all. Had she taken even a week to get to know this guy, she would have gone running back to Joe Namath.

Willie gives some half-assed speech about how much he loves her, and Max Wright clearly is not invested in this. He’s saying all this crap to her quietly, but that doesn’t automatically mean it’s romantically. The words are there, but none of the emotion. At some point he even mentions that she’s given him “three beautiful children,” and none of these clowns seem to realize that the third beautiful child wasn’t even invited to the wedding.

Then Kate does the same thing, and you realize pretty quickly that the failing of Willie’s speech can’t entirely be laid on Max Wright’s shoulders; Anne Schedeen’s is unintentionally funny, too, and she’s a far better actor. The failings of the scene are especially apparent when she refers to Willie as “my rock, and my strength.” You know. All the stuff that literally any clip from literally any episode of ALF would disprove instantly, but we’re supposed to buy it. And we’re supposed to buy that she buys it.

We don’t, and she doesn’t, and he doesn’t. Give me a scene of the Ochmoneks renewing their vows, and they’d not only be funnier (they have actual character traits and personal quirks to play off of), but I’d be much more likely to believe them. After all, the Ochmoneks have actually acted like they’re married. And they’ve touched each other. And they’ve enjoyed each other’s company, as crrrrazy as that sounds!

What have Willie and Kate done together? Aside from ignore each other and stare at opposite walls of the living room? This scene is clearly supposed to be moving and emotional, but it isn’t because these aren’t characters, and speeches like this can’t retroactively grant characterization. (Not that it even really tries to do that — there are no “cute” memories or observations sprinkled throughout, as there would be for actual humans in actual love — but it still goes to show how doomed this scene was from the start.)

It’s a lot like Neal and Margaret’s little moment at the end of “Love on the Rocks.” We weren’t invested in their relationship, so the emotional beats floundered. This is Willie and Kate, whom we’ve known for almost 100 episodes now…and the emotional beats flounder just as much. In the former case, we could shrug and say, “We’ve just met these people.” In this case, we can’t do that, and we’re faced instead with irrefutable proof that we’ve spent four years of our lives with a totally incompetent writing staff.

I’m a sucker for love stories, but this is less love than it is two sexless action figures carelessly tossed into the same toybox.

Then the ceremony ends and Anne Schedeen remembers she’s stuck on this show for another seven weeks.

I love Anne Schedeen (srsly Anne call me) but those are the fakest fucking crocodile tears I’ve ever seen. It’s even less realistic than ALF’s tear in the Christmas special, and that was just a peeled grape stapled to his face.

There’s some bullshit about how ALF didn’t get to say all the romantic stuff about Willie and Kate that he wanted to say…after all, who cares that those two characters just shared a moment? If ALF doesn’t share a moment, too, it literally doesn’t count.

So, yeah, ALF talks about how incredible Willie and Kate’s marriage is, and then Kate cries. And — fucking hell — did this episode crash and burn. Remember when it was about religion and was both interesting and funny? Now it’s about Willie and Kate renewing their vows, which could have been great except that it’s got nothing to do with either of their characters. It’s just some standard, vague nonsense about being in love, and we’re treating it like it’s revelatory.

The fact is that ALF could have waddled over to the bus shelter and married any two people there and the same speech would have been exactly as specific to their characters.

The show hurtles onward to its conclusion, and we still don’t know who the two main human characters are. Neither do the writers. They’re married, and that’s about all anybody involved with production knows, so we get some all-purpose palaver about marriage.

What a waste of an episode that was so close to doing something fun.

In the short scene before the credits, ALF asks if they fucked a lot last night.

Fuck this show.

Countdown to ALF being sacrificed to Barry in front of the Tanners: 7 episodes

MELMAC FACTS: Willie and Kate have been married for 22 years,* and the sex was just as good the third time as it was the first! When a Melmacian turns 233, he has six months to become a minister. Otherwise he will become “an outcast.” Melmacians pray to a god named Barry, and they kiss the first two fingers on their right hand whenever they invoke his name. ALF’s religion is considered “Reformed.” The Melmacian Bible states, “He who burps downwind can party with Me any time.” Melmacian ministers must officiate at a hallowed ceremony within 10 working days of being ordained, or else they must yodel for the rest of their lives. Earth is located on the side of Barry’s good ear. ALF’s religion is for ages three and up. Melmacian ministers only have to serve one weekend per month, two weeks in the summer, and whenever there’s a national emergency. And while I’m down on this episode as a whole, that last joke is pretty fucking good.

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* This puts their wedding in 1968, if we assume the episode takes place in 1990, the same year it aired. (If it doesn’t take place in 1990, then we have even more timeline madness to sort out, so let’s just assume it does.) At first I figured the big continuity flag would be Woodstock, which they both attended…and that was in 1969, so that checks out. However I happened to read back over my review of “Isn’t it Romantic?” and that episode gave the date of their honeymoon as July 11, 1967. So, yeah. The writers did their homework about the life expectancy of Melmacians, but didn’t bother to research their main human characters. That…sounds about right, actually.