Noiseless Chatter

With “Hide Away,” we find ourselves at the halfway point of season three. We’re so close to Jim J. Bullock joining the cast, I could spit on him.

From here I’m not sure if I’ve seen any more episodes. I did watch Project: ALF (or at least some of it) when it aired, but after “Do You Believe in Magic?” I don’t know if I ever bothered tuning in again. I might have, but “Hide Away” isn’t at all familiar to me. No memories came rushing back with this one…and that’s kind of a shame. It’s not a great episode, or even a good one, but it’s miles beyond “Do You Believe in Magic?” If I had held out for another week as a kid, I could have at least ended my association with this show on a higher note.

That’s “higher” in a very relative sense, I assure you. “Hide Away” opens with ALF burping. It literally opens with that. It’s the very first thing that happens in the very first frame. Incredibly, it gets better!

Willie comes home and apologizes for being late. Apparently there’s some guy at work who traps people and tells boring stories, and that’s what held him up. The irony of Max Wright trapping us to tell this story boringly is entirely lost on the show.

ALF tells him he bought a satellite dish with his credit card and if he doesn’t like it he can go fuck himself. And, with that, we’re off!

After the credits we see Willie in the car with the boring guy, whose name is Jimbo. What’s the over/under on this guy meeting ALF before the episode is over?

It does get a little annoying that so many characters on this show are defined only by their relationships with ALF, and not by their relationships with each other. It really limits how much we can care about any of them, and how distinct any of them can be from each other. It’s why so few of them are memorable in any way, and it prevents any of them from having a unique reaction to meeting a god-damned midget space bear.

Of the recurring cast on this show, I’m pretty sure only Mr. Ochmonek and Wizard Beaver haven’t seen him. And the latter was only in two episodes. Sure, plenty of one-offs haven’t seen him, but that’s more than made up for by the mountains of one-offs who have. In any other show, this wouldn’t be a problem…but when you decide to build the idea that nobody, under any circumstances, can meet your main character, it’s endlessly frustrating if you don’t adhere to it. It’s a self-imposed limitation, so if you don’t want to be limited by it, why impose it?

Something about the way Jimbo looked made me wonder if he played Father Buzz Cagney in the final episode of Father Ted, but I looked him up and no, he didn’t. He did, however, have a very important role in another show that I couldn’t have possibly recognized him from: he was the PA announcer on M*A*S*H*.

Actually, there were two actors who pulled that duty on the show. One was this guy, Todd Susman. Susman also reprised the role for an episode of Futurama, which is really cool, and it means he got to play the same character in two of the best shows ever made. Not many people can say that. The other voice on the PA belonged to Sal Viscuso, which is the name I would have recognized, but Viscuso was evidently in significantly fewer episodes than Susman.

Interesting. Growing up I had always assumed that Radar was the one making the announcements, but at this point in time I have no idea why I thought that. There are still plenty of episodes of the show that I haven’t seen, or haven’t seen in years, but to my knowledge the announcer was never named, and we never actually “met” him outside of his voice.

The important thing about this scene, though, is illustrated in the above screen grab: check out how clearly Willie is eyeballing this guy’s cock.

It’s a bit odd — but by this point in no way surprising — that after we hear all about how this guy’s such a boring asshole, when we meet him in the very next scene he’s fine. He’s making awkward small talk as Willie gives him a ride home, but it’s certainly nothing that bad. If anything, I’m listening more intently to what he says than I’ve ever listened to Willie, because at least there’s a chance this new guy will say something interesting.

Willie asks him where he grew up, so Jimbo tells him it was in Seattle, and then he went to school at NYU. Willie makes a bunch of faces as though he’s really put out by this guy’s presence, but all it does is make Willie look like a fucking awful human being. You asked, Willie, you sack of shit.

He looks even worse when Jimbo shares more information about himself. His parents died when he was young, so he was an orphan. His car’s in the shop for major repairs. He lives in a shitty little apartment with a busted stove. And, I have to say, that makes him far more believable as a social worker than Willie has ever been. They do tend to have bleak backgrounds, which is what compels them to help others through similar situations. And certainly I’ve known more social workers who lived in efficiency apartments than in palaces on Whites Only Ave. in L.A.

Willie begrudgingly invites him to dinner, but not before he makes it clear how much of an inconvenience this is, because he’s a lonely, unloved, poor person whom Willie has every right to hate.

Come to think of it, isn’t Jimbo’s story the kind of thing Willie should have to deal with every day as a social worker? Yes, it makes the guy sound like more of an actual social worker, but it also makes him sound like one of the clients who would need a social worker.

Why is this the way Willie handles it? How many raises and promotions does he need before he can look at somebody who is worse off than he is (which seems to be most everyone on the planet) and think, “I should at least be nice to this guy”?

I know I keep getting hung up on this issue, but I just want the show to be aware of it. We can do a sappy episode where Willie realizes he’s a shit and starts actually helping people, sure, or we can at least make a winking joke about the fact that he never does. We can’t have all this heart-to-heart bullshit about what a wonderful job Willie is doing and how important his work is when he can’t be bothered to rein in the verbal abuse every time a blind woman needs a place to sleep, a homeless man needs something to eat, or a colleague needs a friend.

Willie Tanner isn’t just a lousy social worker; he’s an absolutely despicable human being.

Back at the house, ALF is installing the satellite dish. By…standing in front of the TV?

I have no idea. I guess the physical labor part is done, but by whom? Did he send Brian onto the roof with power tools and hope for the best?

Brian “Handy Smurf” Tanner, who who is standing beside ALF this entire time, leans over and asks him how it’s coming. It’s…odd. Did they forget to put a stage direction in the script telling him to walk in from another room? Why is he asking if he’s been privy to the entire thing?

ALF tells him it’s not working; he’s getting a lot of static, and for once it’s not from Kate. This actually leads to a cute little moment when ALF says, in an uncharacteristically quiet tone, “Ha.” Then he glances over his shoulder, confirms Kate was nowhere to be seen, and laughs his normal, louder, “Ha! Ha!!”

It’s nice enough on its own, but I especially enjoy that it allows me to believe Kate has taken to beating him when he misbehaves.

She does come into the room shortly and reminds ALF that he’s lucky they’re letting him keep the satellite dish (which leads to another nice moment from ALF as he asks her not to use the words “Lucky” and “dish” in the same sentence, unless she means it), and then tells ALF to get in the garage because Jimbo is coming over, and he’s not supposed to accidentally meet him for another four minutes.

Nowadays I’d just assume Willie called home on his cellphone, but how did he convey this information to his wife so long before they became commonplace? It’s possible that he pulled over and stopped at a phone booth, but it’s a little bizarre to leave that unaddressed. Way back in a previous episode, though I forget which, there was a great, silent moment when someone comes to the door, and one member of the family signals to another that it’s safe to open it; ALF is hiding. I like this because it’s a brief, clean, and believable way of conveying to the audience that the Tanners have developed methods of concealing ALF’s existence. And, once we see that, we can assume forever forward that this is what’s happening every time someone comes to the door, whether we see it or not.

Here, with Willie communicating Jimbo’s presence to Kate via evident telepathy, we don’t have that, and it’s a shame, because it would be nice to know how they do inform each other of these last-minute plans.

Of course, the whole issue would have been moot if instead of setting the previous scene in Willie’s car they set it at the office, close to closing time. Jimbo could request a ride home, Willie could kick him six or seven times in the nuts before inviting him to dinner, and then, without ever having to see it, we could assume that Willie simply called her from his desk phone. It would have also given us some narrow window into his work-life, which the show seems bizarrely reluctant to develop.

First-draft blues, I guess.

Outside the house Willie stands around looking at his shoes while Jimbo babbles boringly. Wait, not boringly…it’s actually pretty interesting. He’s talking about Mark Twain’s contention that there could be no comedy in Heaven, since comedy is reliant on pain and Heaven would have no pain. It’s a potentially fascinating subject — with even my extremely simplified summary leaving infinite room for debate — but all Willie does is dribble on the porch and wait for his guest to die.

He eventually says, “Oh, you’ve finished,” when Jimbo stops talking, which is a pretty rude thing to say, even measured against Willie’s asshole curve.

Now, I can understand that Mark Twain’s quasi-philosophizing about the nature of Heaven and humor would be boring for some people. Maybe even a lot of people. Me, I’d be all over a conversation like this, but I’m a massive dork. I know that. And I can just about get behind the show utilizing it as an example of something that would bore people.

…but that’s people. And Willie isn’t “people.” He’s Willie. A fucking nerd if television has ever had one.

So, no, I don’t buy that this would automatically bore him into catatonia. It’s possible that Willie thinks Mark Twain is beneath him, or something, but it’s not an innate incongruity, so the joke doesn’t land.

Let’s say, by way of reverse illustration, Jimbo had been talking about the night he spent at a strip club. Or the time he won Super Bowl tickets and got to sit in a luxury box. Or a concert that he went to see in which several of the instruments were played by negroes.

Any of those things would seem to strand Willie in a conversation that he’d have difficulty caring about. But literature? Philosophy? Religion? (Remember, just a few episodes ago he was singing Thanksgiving hymns with hobos and space aliens.) His boredom here isn’t comic incongruity; it’s affected, shitty dickheadery.

Jimbo sits down to dinner and thanks them for having him. Which is pretty nice, considering how poorly he’s already been treated by his host. In fact, I’d like to remind you here that this episode would like you to consider him the irritating pest. (It’s a very difficult thing to do when every second of the episode is unintentionally showing you otherwise.) There is a decent little exchange when Kate finds out he’s an orphan. She says, “I’m sorry to hear that.” He replies, “Most people are.”

It’s funny in an understated way, and Jimbo delivers the line well. There’s a necessary undercurrent of sadness to it, but it’s so matter-of-fact that it works very well. (That, for the record, is comic incongruity.)

But then Lynn asks him where he’s from, so he says he’s from Seattle and graduated from NYU, and the fake audience howls with fake laughter as every one of the Tanners rolls their eyes and wish this boring fuckbag were never born.

Okay, I get it, being born in Seattle and going to NYU isn’t the most exciting backstory. But you fuckers keep asking him. Is it his fault that his answer isn’t, “Well, I was born in space, and then discovered the only living unicorn at the age of eleven…”?

Fuck you, Tanners. Jimbo’s lived a dull, and seemingly sad, life. I’m very sorry his basic answers to your basic questions aren’t thrilling you to the core, but if it’s such a problem, start asking ones that might actually lead to interesting stories.

Later Willie goes into the shed to apologize to ALF. Guh.

This family seems to apologize an awful lot to ALF after he does something wrong, and I’ll never understand it. Why is Willie apologizing to the guy who bought something, with Willie’s money, without permission?

Willie says he’s sorry that he wasn’t home to help ALF set up his satellite dish. ALF explains that he handled it just fine on his own, and even climbed onto the roof to install it.

For some reason this doesn’t result in Willie throttling him against the wall and shouting, “Vvvvfffnnnffuuckkkk aa-hhhre you doooh-ing on the vvfffuccck shhitting rooff?” He just apologizes some more, and doesn’t even think twice about the fact that that the naked space alien that lives in the hamper was making home improvements on the roof in the late afternoon, and that might draw some undue attention and danger to his family.

No, it’s better that we apologize, and shore up ALF’s emotional well-being.

That orphan guy who that we invited over just to be an asshole to, though? No, it’s quite right to treat him like shit.

Guys, I hate this show. These are the kinds of things that needle me endlessly, and it’s why I can’t, ever, buy that these people are in any way human.

Back in the living room, Jimbo is ratting off some geography facts, and, okay, yes, I can see how this would be boring. But it’s not like the Tanners are being particularly hospitable. What else is the guy supposed to do? He’s being awkward, yes, but that’s a symptom of the fact that he’s the only one in the room trying to make conversation. These fuckholes aren’t bringing out any board games or snacks or trying to engage with him in any way. They’re the hosts here, but all they do is sit Jimbo in an arm chair and stare at him. I don’t think it’s quite the guest’s fault that this is a dull evening in.

Besides, what would they be doing if he wasn’t there? Having all-night adventurous sex? I doubt it. As far as I can tell, they’d all be sitting around in silence while ALF jacks off in the shed anyway.

When it comes to the way this show handles the Ochmoneks, my common reference point for how to do it right is Ned Flanders. He’s an obvious one, because the Tanners, like the Simpsons, don’t see how good they have it. They get irritated by the family next door, without realizing (especially in Homer’s/Willie’s case) that they themselves are the bad neighbor. In ALF‘s case, the show isn’t even aware of that fact…but a small tweak of understanding could make all the difference.

Here, they’re irritated by a boring guest…and my example of how to do it right comes from (the coincidentally aforementioned) Father Ted.

Father Ted dedicated its entire second episode to a visit from Father Stone, a man who is incredibly boring, and who for that reason drives Ted, Jack, and Dougal crazy. That sounds a lot like what’s supposed to be happening between Jimbo and Willie, Kate, and Lynn here.

But here’s the thing: on Father Ted the characters don’t just bleat about how boring he is and hope we buy into it; they show us. They invite Father Stone along to things. They try to get him to watch TV with them or join them in other activities. They attempt, repeatedly, to engage him, asking him about mutual friends, and doing their doomed best to make the most of his presence.

In other words, they try. The fact that he remains steadfast in his dull refusal to engage in return is the joke…not that the Craggy Island priests hate him. And that’s why I can believe for myself that Father Stone is a dull man; it’s demonstrated. He has every opportunity to take part what’s going on around him, and he chooses not to. (With the exception of evacuating the parochial house due to a fire…which becomes a brilliant joke in itself. Ted asks, astounded, “You’re going?!” Father Stone replies, “Well, yeah…if there’s a fire.”)

Jimbo, on the other hand, doesn’t work the way the episode wants him to. In fact, he seems to be playing the opposite role. He keeps trying to connect with the Tanners, and they just make fuck-you motions every time he turns his head. He is the one trying, though “Hide Away” wants us, against literally everything we’re seeing and hearing, to believe that he’s the bad guy. It erects its own obstacle to believability, and then spends its entire runtime trying to push it out of the way. Father Ted, by contrast, knew that if it wanted to make that joke, it actually had to…y’know. Make that joke.

Willie and Kate go into the kitchen to bitch about how terrible a houseguest this guy they’re treating like shit is, and ALF is in there; he’s been listening in. He refers to Jimbo as “Little Orphan Whiney” (though sharing geographical trivia is a pretty odd thing to consider whining), and even suggests that it’s Jimbo’s own fault he’s an orphan: he bored his parents to death.

This is supremely nasty stuff. I kept expecting the episode to conclude with the Tanners realizing they’ve been pretty rotten to the guy, but, of course, that never happens.

The Jimbo abuse is almost worse than the way they treat the Ochmoneks. In fact, the only reason it’s not worse is that we know we’ll never see this guy again; the poor Ochmoneks are stuck with it for another season and a half.

Willie, puzzlingly, concludes that Jimbo has “taken advantage” of them long enough. Taken advantage in what way? By trying to make conversation while you assholes snigger and make fun of his dead parents? What the actual fuck am I watching?

Willie heads back into the living room to give Jimbo a heated fisting, but their guest — what a massive jagoff he is! — apologizes for keeping them so late, and even says they don’t have to drive him home. He’d be happy to just sleep outside, in the car.

It would be quieter in there, he says, than in his own apartment…where he’d be kept awake by freeway construction and the all-night bowling alley. (A lovely Frank Grimes kind of detail, there.) But Willie invites him to spend the night inside, being very careful that his disgust at the very idea of taking in a lonely, hurting, friendly man echoes through every word.

Jimbo takes a moment to confide something to the Tanners: his real name is Steve. He’s in the Witness Protection Program, because he turned in a group of counterfeiters years ago…and now this is where he is in life.

It adds a whole other layer of tragedy to the guy who’s just become the most interesting man in the ALF universe. (Now it’s doubly ironic that the episode thinks he’s boring, no? And why do the Tanners never reconsider their idea that he’s boring now that they know some mobster guys want to kill him?)

This poor guy got off to a difficult start in life, pulled himself up by his bootstraps, made something of himself…but then stumbled on to some illegal activity, and — because he’s an inherently honest guy — turned in the criminals, found himself forced to relocate, and had start all over again. This time around, he wasn’t quite as lucky with the cards he was dealt, and he lives in squalor, working a low-paying job, without friends or anyone he can connect with.

That’s an actual backstory. And a good one. The episode doesn’t connect all the dots that I just did — and fuck knows the Tanners aren’t interested in doing so — but when you pay attention to Jimbo (er…Steve) and don’t just dismiss him the way the characters do, you find a pretty compelling sub-narrative. I like it, but I like it in spite of the work the episode is doing, not because of it.

Jimbo goes into the next room and ALF pops up through the plot window to tell Willie to throw this guy out, because he’s a dirty rat and the mafia might come and Jesus Christ can you blame me for getting lost in subtext and backstory when this is the shit I have to come back to?

We get some commercials, which is good, because they’re the only thing in this episode I understand.

Then ALF is sneaking around the back yard in the dark, holding a bat. But he recites the intro to Dragnet, which has nothing to do with what he’s doing, what we’re seeing, or, so far as I can tell, anything in the known universe. The music is a string-laden mood piece that creates a tense atmosphere…and also sounds nothing like Dragnet. It’s like the various parts of the episode couldn’t agree on what what supposed to be going on in this scene. It’s odd.

Anyway, I guess ALF is going to beat the houseguest to death, or something. He hears a cat in the bushes and clubs it senseless. He says, “Cat burglar,” and the fake audience yuks it up because ALF just caved a stray animal’s head in and then said something.

Then there’s a scream and ALF runs over to find Willie caught in a net.

How did ALF rig this thing up? Why did he rig it up in the back yard, where the mafia guys would be least likely to approach the house? (At least that’s who I assume he’s trying to catch. Whoever it is, though, I think the back yard, which can seemingly only be entered through the Ochmoneks’ gate, is a pretty odd place to expect company.) Why was Willie skulking around out here in his pajamas, anyway?

Who cares. ALF runs up to him, sees pretty fucking clearly that it’s Willie, and then starts clubbing the shit out of him anyway.

Now that’s comedy.

Mr. Ochmonek comes over to see what all the screaming and beating and broken teeth are about, which regretfully halts ALF from bludgeoning Willie to a slow and torturous death.

This is actually the best moment in the episode, because here is what Mr. Ochmonek sees when he opens the gate:

Willie thinks quickly enough and tells Mr. Ochmonek that he’s doing something that requires all of his concentration, so if he comes back in the morning he’ll be able to answer all of his questions then.

It’s…actually decently funny, if not even slightly believable.

Let’s just pose the question again here: who is the bad neighbor? The one dangling in a net, shrieking at all hours of the night? Or the one who both checks on him to make sure he’s okay, and leaves without pressing the issue?

It baffles me that this show, still, this late in the game, has no idea who its main characters are. Sure, you could ask me to tell you everything I know about Willie, and I’d come up mostly dry. But, I have the feeling that if you stepped into the ALF writing room and put the same question to them, you wouldn’t get much more. (And considering how much rambling horse shit I spin on this blog for the sake of keeping myself sane, you may actually get much less.)

Whatever. As soon as Mr. O closes the gate, Willie and ALF start screaming at each other. There’s no way he made it back into his own house in those few seconds, so this is just further evidence that nobody gives a crap about hiding the alien’s existence anymore.

Then Willie says “Let me down!” so ALF unties the rope and he falls. It’s hilarious if you’re an idiot.

Later on, ALF is still dicking around in the yard. I guess Willie sustained a serious enough concussion that he didn’t think to chain ALF to the radiator before hitting the hay.

A Rob Lowe impersonator hops over the fence, and ALF smacks him with the bat in what looks like the small of his back. Since this is where the human brain is located, Rob is knocked out, and he tumbles into a pretty phony looking hole dug into the soundstage that we used to be willing to believe was the Tanners’ yard.

Willie arrives immediately at the scene, so I guess he passed out next to the shed and never even made it back to the house.

Lynn and Kate come outside, too. Not for any reason…just to be there, and to make clear to the audience just how fucking loud and obtrusive ALF is being outdoors at night, after sitting on the roof all afternoon installing a satellite dish. The Alien Task Force sure has their work cut out for them.

Willie hops into the hole to look for an ID on the man, and discovers that he’s an FBI agent.

Sure, why not.

They bring the cold-cocked FBI guy into the living room, where Willie and ALF argue loudly over his body, which is a great way of avoiding detection. Do neither of these shitbrains wonder what they’re going to do if this guy so much as opens his eyes?

Then the actual FBI comes to the door and sees the body. It’s exactly as abrupt as I write it here. Actually, since you very likely could have stopped reading between those two sentences and watched some pornography, it could well be more abrupt than it is here.

Willie explains that the unconscious guy is in the FBI, but they say he isn’t, and his ID must be a fake. The real FBI was here for Jimbo, because the counterfeiters wanted to kill him, I guess, and the fake FBI guy was the killer they sent.

So, that’s convenient. The conflict is introduced and resolved in practically the same breath. Has ALF never heard of rising and falling action? I feel as though the plot diagram for any given episode of this show would be a flat line.

The same thing happened last week, and it’s confusing to me that the writers keep doing this. They have twenty-odd minutes to fill, but keep introducing the conflict in minute twenty and resolving it in minute twenty-one. The rest of the episode is padded all to hell, so it’s certainly not happening because they need that extra space for jokes.

It’s frustrating. ALF assaulting and battering an FBI agent in the back yard because he’s an incurable fucktard could fuel a good plot on its own. Instead it happens, and as soon as the concept is introduced, there’s a knock on the door telling us not to worry about it. He’s not an FBI agent. He is a killer, though…which would also make for a good plot, but don’t worry about that, either, because he’s under arrest.

It’s…really lousy stuff. Just awful.

Jimbo thanks Willie for his kindness and hospitality, and I guess the joke is that Willie can’t even bring himself to say “You’re welcome.” He’s just happy to see this unselfish human being ushered out of his life forever. Bye, Jimbo. Sorry you didn’t get to meet ALF.

Willie and Kate run out to give the good news to their alien, and find that he somehow tumbled into the hole that he himself dug. I don’t know either. He cracked his head on the sewer pipe. Who cares.

How did all these people know to find Jimbo at the Tanner house? The assassin I could maybe buy…it’s possible he was staking out Jimbo’s place and followed Willie’s car. But the FBI? While they could have done the same thing, what would be their motive for waiting so long to knock on the door? Especially if they were there to protect him from being murdered? With the assassin I assume he waited until everyone went to sleep. You know…because assassinating is illegal. But the FBI just wanted to warn Jimbo and get him out of harm’s way. So either they, too, followed Willie’s car in secret — which makes no sense — or they somehow knew the exact address he’d be spending the night at, even though it wasn’t planned in advance — which makes no sense. And it’s not like they waited for the assassin to make his move; they didn’t even know he was there until Willie pointed him out.

And, okay, as much guff as I gave ALF for having every character meet the alien, Jimbo is the one character that should have met him.

The reason I say this is twofold.

First, and probably more importantly, Jimbo and ALF have a lot in common that the script doesn’t realize, because nobody read it a second time before turning the cameras on. Both of them have tragic pasts. Both of them eventually found a place for themselves that they were happy with. Then both of them, against their wills, were thrust from everything they knew and were forced to relocate. They’re both relatively unhappy with their new lives, and they both want something more. Think of the conversation they could have. Think of what they could say to each other. ALF could end up with a commiserating soulmate. Or they could both see the other as a whiny, bitchy fuckball and realize that that’s what they must look like to others, too. There are a lot of possibilities, and all of them are better than what we got, which was nothing.

The fact that the episode does nothing with this — and, again, doesn’t even realize the parallels — is insulting to the brain.

And secondly, it could have been nice to see ALF’s existence being kept a secret for a different reason. See, so far everyone who meets ALF just keeps him a secret because they’re in love with his…whatever he has. Hobos, cancer patients, Mexicans…they all see something in him that causes them not to rat him out. He touches their hearts, and sometimes their prostates. It gets old.

Here, though, Jimbo would have a very good reason not to turn ALF in: ALF could also turn him in to the bad guys. There’d be a kind of stalemate in effect that would fuel a new dynamic on this show; something very much unlike anything we’ve seen it explore yet. Yes, it would require a slight cheat (Jimbo would have to somehow believe that ALF could get in touch with the counterfeiters) but I’d prefer that relatively small plot hole to the gaping shit hole that we got.

So, yeah. Thanks, ALF, for addressing my concern the only time I’d wish you hadn’t.

In the short scene before the credits, we see ALF being awarded the Tanner Medal of Honor. I think when I’m finished with these reviews I deserve the Tanner Purple Heart.

I do like that ALF is being rewarded for his all good deeds in this episode, which include buying a satellite dish without permission, foolishly installing it himself on the roof in broad daylight, repeatedly insulting an orphaned house guest, killing a stray cat in cold blood, beating Willie about the head and neck with a baseball bat, and brainlessly assaulting a stranger. What a shitty lesson for kids to pull from this episode.

Regarding that orphaned house guest, he’s just gone. At no point do the Tanners have to reconsider their behavior toward him, because as far as “Hide Away” is concerned, they treated him just as he deserved to be treated: poorly, because he’s not like them, and lives a more difficult life than they’ll ever know. That actually manages to be an even shittier lesson.

Mr. Ochmonek comes over because he’s tangled up in Willie’s net or something. It’s shit, don’t worry about it.

He does suggest that he thinks it’s a trap to stop people from stealing avocados from their tree, which is a nice callback to “Take a Look at Me Now.” And earlier in the episode, ALF says that he doesn’t want Willie going to jail for something he did…again, which is a nod to “Pennsylvania 6-5000.” I’m a fan of inter-episode continuity, but the fact that “Hide Away” decides to remind us specifically of two of the worst episodes just makes this feel like the third leg of a shithouse trilogy.

“Hide Away” could have been much worse, but it also could have been a hell of a lot better. It’s odd, though. I come away from this one recognizing it as a heap of garbage…but I don’t entirely hate it. Maybe it’s because Susman is a decent enough actor that it was refreshing to have him around. Or maybe it was just because the episode introduced some interesting possibilities. It didn’t see any of them through, at all, nor did it care to…but it’s better than nothing, I guess.

Or maybe it’s just because it’s not “Do You Believe in Magic?” Which was worse than accidentally eating your own scrotum.

MELMAC FACTS: ALF was conceived in a DeSoto. Quite how ALF’s dad was jazzing into ALF’s mom three centuries ago in a car that wasn’t introduced until 1928 and was never — to my knowledge — shipped to Melmac is a question you’ll each have to answer for yourselves.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I’m actually feeling really anxious about this episode.

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

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

I liked this crap? What was wrong with me?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jesus.

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

Impressive stuff, truly.

It gets better.

In a way.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The money burns and that’s the joke.

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

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

I don’t know. What’s the joke?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hee-ho.

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

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

Throw another stone, ALF. I dare you.

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

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

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

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

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

Anyone surprised by that fact?

Didn’t think so. Moving on.

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

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

This dumbass motherfucking watch scene.

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

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

That’s it.

No pretense whatsoever. No twist.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So what are ALF‘s rules?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ALF smashes some shit, then there are rabbits?

Fuck this show.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But you know what?

Fuck. That.

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

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

For that, I appreciate it.

And only for that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Seriously.

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

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

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

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

Oh boy.

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

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

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

The fake audience laughs. I have no clue why.

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

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

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

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

But it’s much, much better than that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My hopes are up, for better or worse.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

…at which point he trails off.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

…why?

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

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

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

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

God, this scene sucks.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Willie, you fuckbrain.

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

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

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

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

Which makes Willie do this:

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

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

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

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

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

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

And that’s a legitimate laugh.

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

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

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

Then we cut back to the house and…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

…only, it’s not. At all.

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

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

And you know what?

This is good.

This is kind of really good.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thank you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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