Noiseless Chatter

The Voices of Depression

I would like you to think about some of the people you love most. It doesn’t matter how many, or how few. What matters is that you care about them. And now, with that person, or those people, in mind, I would like you to read the below.

These are excerpts from some very brave and moving pieces of writing that were sent to me. They are presented anonymously, and that’s important, because these are not things that should be attached to a specific identity. That would make it easier for you to push them away. You don’t know these people, after all.

But you do. Because something like what you will read below is affecting, right now, somebody you care about deeply. I was surprised by a lot of what was sent to me, and I know it only scratched the surface.

What you are being given here is a tremendously important gift: you are being made privy to the things the people you love most are too frightened to say. I promise you that more people than you realize are dealing with precisely the kinds of thoughts you are reading below. As you’ll see, some of them managed to pull out of it. As you already know, so many don’t.

Let those people you love know how much they mean to you. And that you will listen. Not answer, not advise, not guide…but listen.

You’ll never know how many lives you might save by doing only that.
–PJR

I’ve been trained to not try to get attention. It just makes things worse. If they never see you crying, they can’t ignore it. […] As I’ve read more and more posts about Robin Williams on Facebook, the attention he gathers reinforces exactly what it shouldn’t. It shows how many people are willing to crawl out of the woodwork to announce how much they loved the deceased. It also reminds me that if I died, my family wouldn’t be willing to take the trip for my funeral.
–CG

When I say I’m okay, I’m begging for you to help me. […] Every day that I think I’m not worth anything, I’ll remind myself with everything I see. Words like failure and worthless run inside my head and try to chip away. Why can’t I just get rid of it? Why won’t it go away? They told me I can just get over it. Why can’t I? Nobody in this position can choose to get over it, because it’s a sickness. It can be put at bay but it doesn’t end. We just want people to understand and love us in spite of all of what our mind tells us. If we try to push away just pull us closer, because we just need proof that we’re worthy of love. No matter what we try and tell ourselves.
–JB

Looking back, there were a ton of symptoms that I ignored: Trouble getting out of bed at all? Check. Mood swings? Check. Secret crying in the shower for no reason? All the time. At some point, my body gave in and I didn’t function anymore. My doctor (I will always be grateful for that) sent me to a crisis intervention, and I admitted myself to a hospital for some time. It was the best thing that could have happened to me, really, and I will always be grateful to her. […] You don’t have to wait until the very lowest point to get help. Don’t do what I did. I wish I’d gotten help much sooner, and I know now that I could have.
–LK

I don’t suffer from depression, I live with it. I tried to commit suicide when I was 12, and knew it wasn’t the way out since then. I used to cut myself to be able to feel but I replaced that with music and poetry. […] People who have depression have to fight themselves to get out of bed, have to argue within themselves to stick it out at work and keep going even though you’d just rather give up and go home. If I do find something or someone that subsides the feeling I tend to attach to it or them, sometimes unhealthily.

Constantly feeling disassociated and disconnected to people around me, I tend to just want to be alone. Happiness is fleeting and only lasts in moments, so I don’t “fake” it as that would cause more depression. 32 going on 33 and I’ve really just come to the point that it will never change. […] If it weren’t for my kids I’d probably be much worse off. They are literally my reason to keep going…
–SR

There comes this moment, when you’re staring into the abyss, and everything just goes quiet. It’s like suddenly, all of your thoughts quietly silence themselves into nothing but expectation—live or die. Depending on your aim or trajectory or knowledge of bodyweight vs dosage vs nausea vs a stomach pump, you either wake up to the noise and the pounding and the chatter and the fear — or, I suppose you don’t. And then, there is nothing. But if you do, you’re left to sort through, told to cheer up, told to deal with it, told to stop looking for attention, while you struggle to ignore how inviting the darkness feels, how blessedly comforting the idea of the silence in nothingness seems to you, the relief it would be to just…end.

But I never think thoughts like that. Because I’m the funny one, the optimist, fucking delightful at parties and a damn good cook, the poet who writes about hope and change and beauty, with a life that’s been enchanted by fortune and a modicum of fame, because everything goes right for me and I am the luckiest girl in the world—I have no right to feel this despair that comes from nowhere, I have no right to cry or hide in my bed, the world is a beautiful place, and after all, I am so very pretty, I’m just grumpy or in a bad mood or I woke up on the wrong side of the bed, or maybe I’m on my period. I don’t have depression.

Depression is some shameful secret reserved for Lifetime movies, not me– the scars on my wrists are burns from that summer I worked at a pizza place, because there is nothing sinister in my life, nothing to complain about, no deep dark secrets, no real, serious problems so how could I possibly be depressed? I’m just being overdramatic.
–CO

I started seeing a therapist for depression and anxiety when I was 13. I’ve lost count of the number of therapists and medications I’ve tried now over the past 20 years, but it’s safe to say I’ve been dealing with these issues for a long time. […] Depression for me has been like…thinking that your feelings must somehow be wrong – you must not actually feel that way, because John and Sally and Rebecca all seem to have it together and they do all of the same things you do. So, you make the decision to just push those thoughts down, down, down and lather, rinse, repeat until it goes away…that’s better than asking for help, right? […] I am relieved Robin Williams is no longer in pain, and I am also grateful that he was in a position to get so many people talking about depression and mental illness in general. The more people talk about it, the better chance we have at letting everyone know – you’re not alone. You are not fucking alone.
–MR

The feeling of depression is akin to being stuck in quicksand. You can struggle all you want, but you just sink further and further down. The conflicts, the insults, and the challenges thrown at you are just rocks, stones, and spears being hurled at you. And you’re defenseless. Sometimes, a good omen will happen your way and that’s your rope to grab onto to pull you out. However, the rope is slippery or it breaks and you’re back to slipping further into the muck.
–DS

I’ve struggled for years with psychological issues. […] When I was 12, I drank laundry detergent, thinking it would kill me. Obviously, it only made me vomit a lot and I am still here. I’ve been beaten, I’ve been raped. These things add to my daily struggle. Until recently, I didn’t know what true happiness felt like. My life is finally falling together the way it should. But I still frequently have suicidal ideations. I routinely think about jumping in front of a train, or into traffic. Every time I drive, I consider ramming into the median or off a bridge. It’s a daily struggle. […] Very few people know. Everyone at work tells me they love how I am always so happy, so positive, and always have a smile. If only they knew the real me.
–EF

I’ve never been diagnosed with depression, either because I’ve never been clinically depressed or due to the fact I’ve never sought medical diagnosis. In my case I take support from family (with whom I’ve shared a sugar-coated perspective of how I often feel) and primarily distract myself; my daily life is a relentless quest to keep my mind busy, which is probably why I struggle to sleep and why, if I make the mistake of slowing down, I fall into a melancholic, perhaps depressed state. So I keep going, even if it means I approach 30 with a lot of lingering regrets, missed opportunities, failed relationships of various kinds and a career that’ll be lucky to last more than a few years. I distract myself, get bored, dive off into another tangent and keep recycling myself, because slowing down is too hard.

That makes me a bit of a coward. I know it does. I should confront how I am rather than run in the opposite direction. Maybe I’m just a narcissist, or bipolar, or depressed. I’m too chicken to find out. My advice – the hypocrite that I am – is that the best way to deal with depression, crippling doubts of self-worth or whatever keeps a potentially great life out of reach, is to have the courage to get help. Talk to someone. I’m sure I will too, just not yet.
–TW

When I was depressed I felt that the lowest piece of dirt on the ground was a million million times better than I was. It was like there was a crushing weight inside my head. I could barely muster the energy to tie my shoelaces and I could only walk to the church at the end of the road. […] I used to lash out at my parents and beat my forehead with my fists to get some release. There was a period of time when I was afraid of sunlight and I used to sleep in the day and use my dad’s computer at night. I thought that I was protected by the night being dark and not many people being around at that time. One night I went downstairs, got a knife from the drawer and placed it on my wrist with the intent to slice my wrist open. I was unable to do this because I knew that if I sliced my wrist open I would die and I didn’t want to die despite how I was feeling.
–DW

Mental illness should be treated like physical illness. The stigma should be removed and people who need help should have that help readily available. No one should feel embarrassed and too scared to reach out.
–AW

Every day I battle what at times can feel like crippling sadness, at its most extreme. […] With me, it’s a negative cycle filled with the various negative thoughts constantly telling me that I’m pathetic, or too weird, or too stupid, or not good enough, or a terrible person, or worthless and will never amount to anything. I have been told that I’m a good or lovely person. I’ve actually had quite a few nice, wonderful, positive things said about myself. But my brain can easily come up with a million reasons why it simply isn’t true.

I think sharing or talking to someone about it is the hardest thing for me and for a lot of people. For me personally, I find that what stops me is this constant feeling of guilt I have every day. That feeling that always tells me that I’ve basically done something wrong and that by trying to tell a loved one what I’m really going through, I’ll be burdening them or putting them in a very difficult position. That guilt-inducing voice will then convince me: “Stop being so selfish, stop being a baby. You’re just gonna worry them over nothing! Just man up, deal with it and keep it to yourself!”

It’s a vicious cycle filled with many harsh words and it’s frightening to think that it’s all just coming from your own head. I think what this recent enormous loss has taught me is that just keeping it all buried inside is really the worst thing you can do. No good can come from it. I know I sound like I’m stating the obvious, but it’s just so hard to fully realize that. It’s just so hard to open up to someone and tell them how much you’re suffering. Again, my brain can come up with a million reasons as to why it’s not a good idea. And the fact that there will be people who don’t understand – or even worse, have a judgmental point of view – will always be one of the biggest reasons not to.
–SF

I have suffered from depression. All of my life. Even when I was little I didn’t feel like everyone else did. My parents got me a fantastic camera and I felt nothing. I was 13. Before that I ate so much because I didn’t feel anything. By 14 I was 180 lbs., I had also been cutting myself for 2 years. Now at 22 I have been cutting for 10 years. Not everyday. Never enough for anyone to notice. All though high school I was the one that my friends leaned on, they came to me. No one noticed me. At 22 I am on antidepressants and a mood stabilizer. I have not cut myself in 7 months. I am still fighting. There are some days I don’t want to keep fighting. I am going to have to live with this all of my life. There are days I don’t know why I should have to keep trying. I can’t pay for therapy. I can barely pay for the appointments to see the doctor who manages my meds.
–SB

These mental illnesses that I struggle with are just like other diseases. You’ll go in to remission. Sometimes for months or more, but then suddenly out of the blue, it slams in to you and you find yourself struggling just to breathe. At the onset of my current battle, I reached out to many people, grasping for anyone to help me stay afloat. All I received in return were responses such as “you really need to get a handle on this” or “well, I hope you feel better soon.”

Finally one person reached out to me. Someone whom I haven’t seen since high school and just occasionally chatted with on Facebook. Through talking, we realized we had a common bond. We both had these same illnesses. She encouraged me and listened to me when I needed someone and felt like I had no one. I will be eternally grateful to her. She was there for me when I had reached my lowest point.
–KS

I didn’t have friends at school (only bullies), but because I had nowhere to go, I spent that intervening time at various classmates houses being tossed from one home to the other like they were playing keep away. Alone, scared and trapped, it was somewhere during that time that I first remember having a sincere and urgent desire to die. […] The desire to die has never been fully extinguished. […] I am not here to compare stories or worry about who has a more difficult time getting up every morning and facing themselves in the mirror, because when you suffer with depression, we are all the same. That is the moral of my message.

I am here to say that you don’t have to hide behind your grief, and if we were all a little more honest that we are merely talking animals on a giant rock hurtling through the universe, and none of us know what they fuck we are doing. We are all scared and lonely and didn’t have to feel the pressure and burden of putting on different masks to gain favor and approval; if we could all, for just one fucking moment, be ourselves and announce to the world that we are petrified of life and existence and success and being loved as much as we are of failure and rejection–because the former is far less common–that these joys and frustrations and the pointlessness and absurdity to work and family and everything we see and touch is all temporal. If we could just accept the fact that most of us feel those things and let go of the fear of realizing it, the stigma that depression is something to hide would go away and the healing might be able to begin.
–JS

Our society has taught us to be strong and not show weakness, so here I am putting up a strong facade to make sure no one knows. If I tell someone I feel like I am put in a box with fragile written on it in huge red letters. If I tell someone else they ask me why, your life is perfect. Extremely high expectations, perceived and real, lost friendships, social awkwardness, the fear of failing, the fear of ending up alone, the fear of success. It weighs and weighs and weighs and some days I just can’t take the pressure, but still I smile and grin and bear it so no one knows. If I open up then it becomes someone’s burden and I can’t do that to them. […]

I want to show the world that our minds can be our biggest weapon, our biggest ally, and that the monster inside isn’t going to win. We can fight back, each day, to take back our lives and create our own enjoyment. Create something beautiful where there used to be darkness. I want to help show people that the world isn’t collapsing, it is merely bending and bowing with the times, and we can strengthen the material to make the bends a little less severe.
–KD

You are not alone.
Do not let that thought take hold
You are fighting something
that is not simply conquered.
Do not let delusions of a dark granduer fester inside.
Do not let this darkness take hold…these chemicals in your brain.
Being brave doesn’t mean you simply have no fear
It means you fear but you advance on.
You are not a coward if you have already attempted
Suicide is not a coward’s way out
because you are ready to step into the unknown to get
far away from the known.
No God in Heaven
or this Hell to call your own?
That simple fact that we don’t know
is why your life is cherished.
You can get through this, I promise it now.
The journey is what makes the ending so much more.
Out of everything you could be, you’re a human being.
Life is beautiful, special and grand.
You just took a breath and your heart is beating.
That’s enough to go on, believe me.
We only have this one life to live.
So live it.
Please seek help not for your family, your friends or me
but yourself.
Be selfish and seek that help.
You deserve it and need it
You will get through this
so just remember always
that you are precious
Let your loved ones know that you need them.
–AO

I’m a relatively young, white middle-class male, and the cards are stacked in my favor. And yet there I was, with the cord wrapped around my neck, thinking that this was the only possible way out. And yet there I was, calling the suicide hotline. And yet there I was, years earlier, cutting myself with a shaving razor for reasons I’d myself forgotten. […]

Clinical depression is not sadness, and I’m extremely fortunate that mine is not as severe as others who I’ve known. Clinical depression is a chemical imbalance that results in a lack of vitality – you literally feel dead. […] Sad thoughts and other triggers can take us to that place, but once we’re there, there is no sadness, only a feeling that we are just going through the motions. Which, of course, makes us wonder “why bother?” Why go on when we don’t feel like we have a living soul?

[…] I’ll never know if I could have gone through with it, but I tell myself that I could not have, that these were not serious attempts. Because my sadness does not seem as important as that of others. Because I have so much that should make me happy. Because I did not need to pull myself up from my bootstraps, and I have a lot for which to be thankful.

It is that type of thinking that gets people to commit suicide in the first place.
–ZK

You just can’t understand the struggles of chronic depression unless you are a victim of it yourself.

I suffer from chronic depression. I have for almost all of my life. Some days are better than others but the highs are fleeting and the lows can be shattering. Every day is a struggle mentally. It’s not that I don’t have energy, it’s just that I use a vast amount of it keeping my mental demons at bay. I am plagued by suicidal thoughts almost every day. Logically I know that these thoughts are stupid and that to even entertain them is the height of lunacy.

I can’t just brush them away though. My head knows I should not even think of these things much less do them but the mental compulsion can be overwhelming. It is an exercise in willpower and it is so draining to fight it off every day, but I do.

For too long mental illness has been treated with disdain. It’s not something we can just get over. It’s not a fucking Mary Poppins singalong where we can just sing happy songs and be cured. […] It is dismissed, ridiculed, and treated as some bullshit make-believe condition where we are just sad and all we need to do is just cheer up. You can’t take a magic pill and make everything better. Hell, I have been to therapy for over five years and it doesn’t cure it, it just helps you identify what is going on and makes you more aware. It gives you tools to arm yourself with for the battle but it does not end the war. The war never ends.

The thing is admitting you have a mental disorder comes with associated crippling stigma. People treat you like a freak, like you are some psychopath that could come unhinged at any second and murder their entire family. […] The truth is you most likely have someone very close to you that suffers from mental illness but they are afraid to let anyone know because they don’t want to be treated any different. It is possible they tried to feel you out for help and it was dismissed with a wave of the hand as you told them to just get over it and think of a happy thought and they would be fine. It doesn’t work like that. We need more education disseminated and a social shift in how we treat mental disorders and how we treat the people who have them.
–JH

I had my first panic attack when I was 18 years old. My grandmother was living with us and had recently begun to descend into her dementia. Her diagnosis terrified me. Up until then I lived a very sheltered very privileged life. I grew up rich with love, affection, opportunities and financially we were well off too. Then my grandmother’s insanity revealed itself. She scared me. I was terrified to the bone, thinking I might lose my mind when I get older. I felt what it must have been like to not know anyone around you, to have medical professionals hold you down and sedate you. To have your own children and grandchildren be afraid of you.

I panicked. My heart raced, my stomach dropped, cold sweats, and thoughts and images that entered my mind like a freight train. I honestly thought I was dying. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t scream, I thought I would suffocate. My mother came into the room and literally had to hold me for hours until I felt better. Then I would become physically sick, that lasted the rest of the night into the next day. Then the exhaustion. I would sleep for hours during the day. I didn’t know what the hell was going on or what it was that triggered it. So since I didn’t know, I refused to leave the house. I felt like an infant. […] Everyone else was going out, having fun and I was absolutely terrified of life.

I tried to go to dinner with a friend but I started to panic again. For no reason. I felt nauseated again, my heart was racing. She asked if I was okay, which put me right over the edge and I vomited. In the restaurant. And then I cried and all the panic spilled out. Thankfully, my friend was able to help me. She said she got panic attacks too. I had no idea what these episodes were. She was able to describe them to me exactly the feelings I was having. The rush or wave of fear that would cascade over you, felt like your brain was ignited. As soon as she named my demon, I was instantly beginning to feel better. So I talked about it again with another friend, and another, and another. Soon I was able to joke about it. The less power I gave it, the less power it had over me.
–OB

Apparently, it’s uncommon for someone with my spectrum of psychological disorders to live past adolescence. At the time, I’d been diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, Bipolar Disorder, Depression, Mood Control Disorder and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. […] My life was being dictated by a series of mental complications that centered around making me feel hopeless, desperate, worthless and that constantly compelled me to “check out early.” And I mean constantly. Every voice in my head, every emotion I felt, made me hate being alive.

I actually tried to take my own life at least three separate times that I can remember. These all involved overdoses of OTC drugs. Thankfully, I didn’t do any research beforehand and the dosages (or choice of pill) didn’t do anything beyond making me really, really sick. I was hospitalized three times. The second time, I was in a bed for three days and forced to drink some horrible charcoal cocktail that saved my kidneys from failing.

[…] I honestly feel like the worst platitude that ever arose out of the realm of politically-correct bullshit is “there’s nothing wrong with you; you’re fine just the way you are.” If you find yourself living the kind of life that I was living (suicidal, perpetually unhappy except for when you’re manic and self-destructive, hopeless, helpless, angry to the point of violence) then there is something wrong with you.

The thing to remember is that there’s nothing damning, shameful or permanent about it. I didn’t turn my life around until I finally said, “Fuck all of this I’m-Okay-You’re-Okay nonsense…I want to get better!” I accepted the fact that every human being is different from the next and that sometimes those differences are flaws that need to be fixed. Then I set out to fix the flaws.

Any other approach is like standing at the prow of a sinking ship and saying “my ship is just as good as all of those other ones…there’s no way she’s going down.” Good luck, captain.
–JR

I don’t process emotions well. It’s very important for me, for whatever reason, to at least appear as though I Have All Of My Shit Together. Emotion doesn’t figure into that. I am cold and logical and prefer it that way. But past experiences have told me that grief doesn’t work that way. You can push those feelings down, swallow them whole, and never look at them again, but they don’t disappear that easily. No, they live under your skin, just out of sight, but always there. Scratch too hard at the surface, and there they are: messy and omnipresent, and patiently, patiently waiting for you to deal with them.

I lost my school funding for what would have been my senior year of my bachelor’s degree, ten years in the making. I called my father to ask if he might co-sign on a loan for me. He could not. “Keep me posted,” was the last thing he ever said to me. A few days later I got the ubiquitous Midnight Phone Call from Mt Cedar Sinai in Los Angeles. He had had a heart attack at home, and rather than spend the money on an ambulance, put himself on the bus to the hospital. Some Good Samaritan called 911 when he began coughing up blood. My father died surrounded by strangers.

I still have old emotions from years ago that I have not dealt with, and I know that the burden becomes heavier over time. I would spend stretches of time alone, sobbing for good reasons, bad reasons, or none at all.
–SH

Depression and anxiety have been a part of my life since I was a child. First, I want to say I have a wonderful life. I have been blessed with the most amazing, beautiful, perfect, supportive family that anyone could ever ask for, I’ve never needed to worry about food on the table or a roof over my head, I’ve been given just about every advantage you can be given in life.

But still, almost every day, I have to battle with feelings of negativity, inadequacy, and feeling on edge for no reason at all. “I’m fine; I’m just tired,” is a saying those with depression know all too well. We are constantly apologizing for things that we have no control over; our feelings, our worries, our stupid random freak outs.

Having depression and anxiety at the same time means wanting to stay in bed because you don’t want to face the day, but panicking because you don’t want to be a failure. Wanting to go see your friends so you don’t lose them, but staying home because sometimes, the mere thought of a social situation is too much. It means seeing everyone else living their lives and making something of themselves, and you feel like you’re stuck in a hole that you can’t get out of (even if it’s not necessarily true).

Sometimes it means feeling perfectly okay when you’re alone, and completely lonely in a group of people.

I think what people without depression fail to realize is that it isn’t just a bad mood. Especially when coupled with anxiety, it isn’t just something you can talk yourself out of. Of course, there are days where I wake up, realize my potential, and feel like I can take on the world. But then there are days where even though there is nothing “wrong,” I can’t bring myself to get out of bed. Or do the things I love to do, or hang out with the people I enjoy hanging out with. Some days, I just feel exhausted and a four hour nap in the middle of the a day where I have tons of obligations seems like the only answer.

For a long time, I tried to avoid taking care of myself. I poured all of my energy into other people, took care of them, worked two jobs, took 18 credits in school every semester, closed at a bar/opened at Starbucks (essentially operated on 2-3 hours of sleep a night for a semester), and substituted stimulants for sleep and food. I still don’t know how I made it as long as I did living that way.

But one day, something happened. And people ask “why?” all the time, but I honestly can’t give a reason to this day. Except that I guess I was just tired of living the way I was. I woke up one day, logged on Facebook, and saw that my friend Wally had been tagged in a weight loss transformation photo by a place called 4Ever Fit. I e-mailed them, and after my now-trainer, Mike, called me two or three times, I finally agreed to go in for a consultation. The rest is history.

I fell in love with fitness, and through building my physical strength, I transformed mentally. I’ve been on medication, I hated it. I’ve tried different therapists, I never found one that I was comfortable with. Losing weight and getting in shape saved my life in more ways than one, and for once in my life, I have a feeling of accomplishment and while there was a time where I couldn’t even envision any sort of future for myself, now I find myself looking forward to the future because I can’t wait to see what else I can accomplish.

But that doesn’t mean every day is all of a sudden easy and full of sunshine and rainbows. When you have anxiety and/or depression, it’s always there, lurking.

It means that somedays, I couldn’t care less if the person I’m seeing texts me throughout the day, because I’m too busy focusing on myself, working, going to school, training, etc. But then another day, I don’t get a text by noon and I’m assuming the worst.

Every day, I wake up and wonder if this will be the day that everything falls apart, and when it doesn’t, I go to bed relieved. But then sometimes… and I never blame the other person, but sometimes my emotions get too intense, and everything does go wrong, and I blame myself. To a ridiculous degree. It means that sometimes, I just want to lay on the couch and have someone tell me “it’s going to be okay”- but usually I’m too busy apologizing for being in a bad mood, or too scared of what someone might think if I tell them I feel like shit- to vocalize my need for comfort.

Most days, I’m strong enough to push through work, school, and training, but some days I am defeated and I cry hours on end because I’m certain the world is ending.

But… the good days far outweigh the bad. And even when I have a bad day now, I tell myself that that’s all it is, and I’ve gotten through it before, and I will surely get through this one, and the next one, and the one after that.

And if I can tell anyone, whether you struggle from a mental illness or not, anything, it is this: put your energy into something that makes you better, not worse. It’s so easy to turn to things like drugs, or drinking, or sex, but at the end of the day, you’re just numbing the pain and pushing it aside for later.

It’s true that when you numb the pain, it just makes it worse when you finally feel it. Whether it’s religion or fitness or volunteer work or cooking or helping others in similar situations, find your passion, and be proud of yourself for doing it. We are beautiful, flawed, incredible human beings, and we are capable of so much more than we give ourselves credit for.

Do not write yourself off. Do not diminish yourself to nothing. Do not underestimate yourself. Do not dismiss your value or write off your feelings or apologize for who you are.

You’ve had bad days. You will have more bad days. On those days, it is perfectly acceptable to sit in bed and drink wine and cuddle with your cats. Or take a hot bath. Or lay on the ground and look at the stars and freak out about how big the universe is and feel incredibly small.

But you are not insignificant.

And in between the bad days, you will see how beautiful this world can be. You will meet people that make you realize that love is still good and alive in this world. You will find people, whether it be a family member, friend, or significant other, that see your broken pieces as cracks to pour their love into. You will realize that you are strong enough to overcome anything. Because you were born to be a fighter.

And you will be okay.
–AB

Reflections on Robin Williams’ Passing

I never expected I’d be writing one of these about Robin Williams. After all, I never really liked the guy.

I don’t mean that in a personal sense. I mean that his “identity” never did much for me. He was good at what he did — that much, it’s fair to say, was obvious — but what he did wasn’t what I was interested in.

And now he’s dead, and I’ve done as much reflecting and soul searching as I’ve ever done. The most since Salinger passed a few years ago. So why is it that the death of an actor / comedian I didn’t even enjoy hit me at least as hard as the death of the man who wrote one of the most important books I’ve ever read?

I know why: the dialogue that’s been opened.

I was out the night the death of Robin Williams was reported. By the time I got back it was all over my social feeds, and well beyond the point that people were wondering if it was a hoax. It was not a hoax. People listed their favorite Robin Williams movies. I went to sleep.

The reason I went to sleep was this: I was depressed.

That night, something happened. I’d prefer not to go into it. Suffice it to say that often when I feel depressed (and when most people feel depressed, I’m sure) there’s no distinct trigger. The dark cloud settles, and I want to shake it, but I can’t. It happens. Some creeping — and then seething — sense of hopelessness, worthlessness, and helplessness takes over. And, all at once, I’m powerless.

That night, though, there was a trigger. I know why I was depressed. But even having a specific point of focus for those feelings doesn’t help. It doesn’t stop them from spiraling further. If depression begins from a rational place, which it sometimes does, it never stops there. If it did, we’d just call it sadness. Instead, it poisons our perception of the world around us. That sunset looks hideous. This drink tastes like sawdust. It hurts to look people in the eye so I’ll look down and wonder why I was born if this is the way I’m passing the night.

Why bother? I am avoiding life. I am looking at the world around me and I am thinking, “I don’t want this.” I hear somebody laugh, somebody far away, and I wish I were invisible.

Why am I here?

When I’m depressed, I go to sleep. Nearly always, that helps significantly. I wake up feeling a little closer to centered, and a new day resets the routine. Alarm clock, shower, get dressed, instant coffee, hit the road, start working. Life on a rail. It sounds like it should be restrictive, but when you’re depressed it’s the most liberating feeling on Earth. It’s a chance to step away from yourself. From the lies your mind makes you believe. It might not be fulfilling, but it’s not destructive, and that’s progress.

I’ve even conditioned myself. So effective is sleep — for me — that I can just about will it. If I’m not tired but I’m already depressed by three o’clock? Good night. It’s easy. I’m asleep before I know it, because I think I realize, on some terrified level, that staying awake is going to bring me places I’ll regret visiting. So my mind, knowing no alternative, has learned to shut itself down.

The day after Robin Williams was announced dead, I did not feel better. Because now it was clear that he’d committed suicide.

The dialogue that resulted was devastating. I’m not referring to those who quickly dismissed it as a cowardly act. (Something else my mind has conditioned itself to ignore.) I’m referring to those who did the opposite: those who opened up.

Depression is the quiet killer. It destroys from within. It starts deep…so deep it feels like it’s the most important part of who we are. It’s not a core component…it’s the core itself. And every decision we make and every emotion we feel and every time we decide to stay in for the night, it’s informed by the core. The times that we get to laugh, or have fun, a real weekend of genuine connection with people we love…they feel like brief little vacations. That’s not the real us. The real us…that’s in the core. And at the end of every vacation, we know we have to go back.

People opened up about that. About a lot. They said it better than I ever could. Depression (and self doubt, and lack of confidence, and anxiety) is something I struggle with almost every day of my life…at least to some extent. Often I can get over it. Sometimes, unquestionably, I can’t.

Apparently, neither can others. That was no surprise.

How many others…and which others…well, those were surprises.

The sheer volume of people laying themselves bare, speaking openly about the things that pain them the most deeply, doing so in unpracticed ways that made it clear that these were things they wished they could have said a long time ago…it was humbling. It was the aftermath of a tragedy…you had the assholes on the sidelines, but nobody was paying attention to them. The truly compelling image was that of the stranger embracing the stranger, bonding, at once, over a shared horror.

The death of Robin Williams was absolutely a tragedy of the magnitude necessary to bring out this desperate need for connection. He’s not the first celebrity death, the first celebrity suicide, or the first celebrity lost to crippling depression. But it hits us all — fans and non-fans alike — because who knew? How could it be him?

It needed to be somebody big enough for the shock to be devastating. It needed to be somebody unexpected enough that when the remarks of “coward” came out, one million voiceless depressed people would step forward and put themselves on the line for sole purpose of proving that it’s not cowardice. It’s pain. It’s agony. It’s day after day struggling to keep one’s self together. And when somebody fails — or gives up — it’s not because they were cowards. It’s because too much of the tide came in at once, and they couldn’t stay afloat. A man or woman who spends every day facing personal demons and eventually finds himself or herself outgunned is not a coward. If anything, they died courageously, fighting to the very end in the face of impossible odds.

My friends were sharing their stories. People I’ve known for years, in some cases deeply. Their friends were sharing theirs. Somebody I haven’t seen in ages, who seemed like she had her life together, at last. Souls were being revealed. Pain was being revealed. Everything that we tried so hard for so long to keep secret and keep quiet and keep inside was now — voluntarily — being laid out for everyone to see.

More people than I can count opened themselves up to me, directly or indirectly. And do you know how many of them I lost respect for? How many of them made me reconsider the fondness I had for them? How many of them I vowed to avoid, because I now knew they were crazy?

Zero.

Think about that.

I sure have.

All the stuff that I keep bottled inside. The stuff that at times has literally almost killed me to keep hidden. The stuff that I won’t let out so it fights its way out and comes out as tears or blood or vomit…that stuff that had to be kept hidden at all costs…was let go.

And there was no abandonment.

And there was no disappointment.

And there was no reconsideration of friendships or relationships.

There were strangers embracing strangers. And it was the aftermath of a tragedy that occurred because — and only because — these were things people were not supposed to talk about.

Seeing so much being posted openly, I asked people in general to share with me (anonymously) any words they wished to contribute for a feature that will run tomorrow.

Within minutes I received a submission from somebody I’m pretty sure I’ve never met. A few minutes after that, there was another. And another. And people were sharing the request. And they’re still coming in, as I type this. In a few cases, people have said, “I don’t even mind if you decide not to use this…I just appreciate the chance to get it all out.”

Think about that, too. If I don’t use their submissions, what did they do? Well, they just sat down and wrote. And felt better because of it.

What was to keep them from doing that in the first place?

We’re so discouraged about speaking honestly and openly about mental health issues that we don’t even want to do it with ourselves. We need a tragedy. We need a request. We need a shock to our systems so severe that we find ourselves reacting in ways we didn’t think we could. Some of us, I’m sure, need even more. Because exactly as deep as that depression is, there’s also the warning that we are not supposed to speak of it.

Because we never speak, we never learn. Those without depression don’t realize how pervasive it is, how many of their loved ones it affects, and how easy it could be to understand. And those with depression never realize how many people they know have faced very similar things, or worse, and are coping with them in their own way. When mouths stay shut, everybody — everybody — loses.

Tomorrow, you will hear depression speak.

And that’s important. Because however it may feel, not one of us has to do this alone.

Please be here.

Pop Questions: Was Mark Raped?

In the Peep Show episode “Jeremy’s Mummy” (series 5, episode 4), was Mark raped?

The answer is yes.

This is an easy one.

And yet…is it?

Some background — though, to be frank, not much is necessary: Jeremy, Mark’s roommate, has his mother visit. In tow is her current boyfriend, and his daughter Natalie. Mark does briefly wonder if he feels anything for Natalie, but pretty quickly decides he does not.

After a night of drinking, Mark wakes up to find Natalie having sex with him. He tells her to stop. He tells her he doesn’t want to. But she continues.

This is rape. If there’s anybody out there who sincerely disagrees, I’d love to hear that argument.

And yet…if it is rape…why don’t I mind it?

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not supporting the act itself, but it doesn’t put me off enjoying the episode as a whole. In fact, “Jeremy’s Mummy” may even be one of my favorites.

But a main character is raped. I can’t even question that. This man is sexually assaulted while we watch. Why am I not bothered by this enough that it casts a shadow over the rest of the episode? Why do I still laugh at the jokes? Is it just down to the writing and the performances? (Top notch, as they nearly always are in Peep Show.) Is it the fact that it’s treated intelligently rather than either flippantly or horrifically?

Later in the episode, Mark dismisses the idea that he’s been raped, though he certainly has. He does this in a desperate attempt to save face with Natalie’s father, who’s offered him a great business opportunity, so his motivation for diminishing the act is clear, but even if we did accept that…even if we did take it at face value that, okay, she had intercourse with him against his will but now he’s okay with it, does that change anything that happened?

No. It doesn’t. Rape is not retroactively undone, and the mindset that it can be is massively destructive. I’m reminded of one of the sourest things I’ve ever read: Seth Rogen defending the rape scene in Observe and Report.

When we’re having sex and she’s unconscious like you can literally feel the audience thinking, like, how the fuck are they going to make this okay? Like, what can possibly be said or done that I’m not going to walk out of the movie theatre in the next 30 seconds? And then she says, like, the one thing that makes it all okay.

But no. There is no after the fact consent. To even suggest that there might be such a thing is to allow rape on the grounds that the person being raped might come around and enjoy it…which is inordinately disgusting.

More recently, Game of Thrones had a rape scene which was probably destined to be controversial, but not nearly as controversial as the defense that director Alex Graves offered, assuring fans that the rape “becomes consensual by the end.”

In Observe and Report, the rape ruined the film for me. It wasn’t a great film to begin with, but a moment like that, such a brutally tone-deaf trivialization of one of the worst things one human being can do to another, made it clear to me that nobody involved with this film had any idea of what they were doing.

Rogen’s character forcibly fucks an unconscious woman, who wakes up during the act, and tells him to keep going. You’d need a far more self-consciously twisted film to pull that off, but I don’t think Rogen believed there was anything to pull off. It’s perfectly fine, apparently, because during the rape she drunkenly shrugs it off. And that’s bullshit.

On the dramatic side of things, we have Game of Thrones. Here, rape isn’t used as a visual punchline. (The fact that I can even type out that phrase makes me feel a little sick.) But it’s minimized in the same way. This act of sexual violence is (at least relatively) excusable because, eh, she’s cool with it later.

These are things that stick in my gullet. An act of rape isn’t something that has no place in entertainment…they can be handled well, and Life of Brian even managed to succeed in making the idea of “after the fact consent” funny. But an artist behind the entertainment should not be telling actual human beings not to get bent out of shape about it…it’s just rape, and, hey, she should be thanking him even, because it was good rape.

So why, I ask again, doesn’t Mark’s rape hit me the same way? I honestly can’t figure it out. Peep Show certainly has a long pedigree of mining terrible uncomfortable (and sometimes brutal) things for comedy, but I have to say that if the gender roles were reversed — say, Dobby waking up to find Mark in the process of fucking her — I’d be mortified. Just the thought of that seems to be in terribly bad taste, and I cannot imagine any amount of good jokes redeeming that.

Is it simply a matter of gender roles? I don’t think so…but I suppose it could be. If it is, I feel pretty lousy about it…as though rape is only tragic if it flows in one direction.

Then again, Rimmer is raped by a woman in Red Dwarf, and that certainly strikes a sour note for me…so it can’t be as simple as gender. Is good writing really enough on its own to redeem a rape scene in comedy? Or is there something else at play here that I’m failing to acknowledge?

I’m genuinely curious.

Was Mark raped?

Yes.

Then why does the episode still work?

Or does the episode still work?

It’s available in three parts on Youtube (starting here). I want to hear opinions.

Some Belated Thanks / Updates

This actually came a while ago, but I forgot to post about it, and only realized as I was boxing stuff up that I owed Phil Malkowski (who sometimes posts here as Another Phil) some genuine gratitude for sending me his copy of Project: ALF.

If you aren’t aware, this was the made-for-TV movie that tied up the loose ends from the sitcom. It aired a few years later on a completely different network, and aside from Paul Fusco it retains none of the original cast. Needless to say, I’m sure it’s fantastic.

I have actually seen this before. In fact, I watched it when it first aired…and may not have finished it. I certainly didn’t ever feel compelled to watch it again. I remember it being awful, and as a kid who liked the sitcom, the prospect of dusting this off after episode 99 is not an exciting one.

Regardless, this was the last piece of the puzzle, and I’ll review this in its proper place, after season four. I may break it into three posts, but we’ll see.

You can click the photo to see it larger, but I’ll point out that the Hollywood Reporter evidently claims this film contains “at least a chuckle a minute,” which both sounds like damning with faint praise and overpromising. I don’t think I laugh out loud 90 times at Dr. Strangelove. Is Project: ALF a better film than Dr. Strangelove? We’ll find out together!

I also want to thank Jeff, our resident curmudgeon / luddite, who chipped in for the German DVD set. He sent a check so it arrived a bit late, but is still welcome, and thanks to that the set was almost completely paid for by readers. Which is…humbling, to say the least. Thank you.

He did, however, see it fit to include a note with the check:

…and I have no clue what I’m looking at. I was an English major. You can’t do this to me.

Anyway, thank you, sincerely, to Phil and Jeff!

Also, you may have noticed something I said above about moving. This is good news. I’ll be in a great place with a champagne hot tub and supermodels and a rocket dog.

No, actually I’m just moving to a much nicer apartment in a much nicer area with a much better amount of roommates. (Zero.) It took a while, but getting back on my feet financially has been great, and I thank you folks for helping to keep me sane.

I really might get a dog, though.

The good news? It’ll probably also give me more time to write stuff here, for reasons that are too boring to list.

The bad news? I’m not sure when my internet will be hooked up in the new place. I doubt it’ll be a huge delay, but the week after next could be a quiet one. Your fair warning.

Anyway, thank you for reading / contributing / being all around incredible people. Onward and upward!

ALF Reviews: “The Boy Next Door” (season 2, episode 13)

Who is Brian Tanner?

I asked a similar question about Willie a few weeks back, and you can probably guess why: that was an episode that, at long last, made a sincere effort to answer it.

This time I’m asking it about Brian. Not because the episode’s going to answer it, but because as of this episode, Brian Tanner is dead.

This stretch of three episodes has had me worried for a while. “Hail to the Chief” was terrible, but not as bad as I had feared. I think the reason is I don’t hate it so much is that it managed to be extremely bland and forgettable. The “Kate dreams of ALF being president” thing was no less stupid than I expected, but the episode as a whole is pretty easy to overlook, which is the nicest thing I can say about it. (In all honesty, though, I’m still glad to say it.)

Then we had “ALF’s Special Christmas.” Which I’d rather not talk about ever again.

Now it’s “The Boy Next Door,” which actually has a lot more going for it than I expected it to have. It’s still, however, problematic, and kind of sad, for the reason I expected: Brian is meeting his replacement.

I’ll come back to that thought, but first we see something kind of nice: a good cold open, with the Tanners having family game night. It’s a great way to get all of these characters together and interacting, which I’m not sure has ever happened before. Even on their road trips, it’s usually one or two Tanners doing something, and everyone else sitting quietly in the background. This, I’m pretty sure, is the first time they’ve resembled anything like a family.

They’re playing charades, and ALF doesn’t understand how it works. While this leads to a funny moment, I was afraid it was also a continuity error. It turns out my memory deceived me, though; while Willie suggested a game of charades in “On the Road Again,” they didn’t actually play it, so this can still qualify as ALF’s first exposure to the game.

The funny moment is that Kate is giving clues and Brian answers, correctly, that the film’s title is The Birds.* ALF, upset, says it’s not fair that Brian got it right, because Kate was giving him signals to help him guess.

It’s a fun moment of naivete, which Willie ruins by saying, “HhhhhALFf, thaat’s hhow…y’ouu plaheyy charaades.”

Whatever. Then it’s ALF’s turn and he indicates that it’s a movie title and then points at himself. Nobody guesses correctly so he reveals that it’s The Man Who Would be King, which is less a punchline than it is a thing ALF says right before the credits.

The episode wastes no time in introducing New Brian.** It’s Jake, Mr. Ochmonek’s nephew, who comes from New York yet still learned his accent from Saturday morning cartoons. The Ochmoneks are letting him stay with them for a while, which once again proves that they’re way nicer than the asshole Tanners.

Okay, granted, the Tanners are letting ALF stay, but I’m pretty sure that’s just because they know if he moves out, they won’t get to be on TV anymore. It’s not a selfless act of hospitality at all.

Jake is going to be staying with the Ochmoneks while his father is away, which will be five years. “Unless he gets time off for good behavior,” clarifies Mr. O, which is both a funny line and a fun way of conveying knowledge to the audience without hitting them over the head with it. That’s a combination so rare on this show that I need to point it out whenever it happens.

Kate and Mrs. Ochmonek go into the kitchen to make some iced tea for everyone, and Mrs. O reveals how happy she is to be a mother. That’s…really cool, actually. I’ve liked Mr. Ochmonek for a while now, but this is the first time Mrs. Ochmonek gets to be a character as well, instead of some vague notion of a busybody. So, yeah, the episode that finally gives up on Brian is actually working to flesh out Mrs. Ochmonek. Take that, Benji Gregory.

In fact, at one point in the kitchen, Mrs. Ochmonek asks Kate what she thinks of Jake. Jake’s said exactly two words by that point, so Kate says he seems quiet. Mrs. Ochmonek replies, “Well, Brian doesn’t say much, but you don’t see me making a stink.”

The equivalency there is important, I think. “The Boy Next Door” knows what it’s doing. It knows that Brian is being rendered redundant, and it’s already come to terms with that. Brian was stillborn in his usefulness to this show, and now the writers are finally admitting it to themselves.

ALF never succeeded in finding anything to do with Brian. In fact, I remember only two attempts: his birthday (which was overshadowed completely by the possibility of ALF’s departure) and the fucking asparagus concert. But, here, with two and a half seasons ahead of it — which is more than the show has behind it — ALF is giving up on him, and serving up his replacement in a special introductory episode.

Jake, admittedly, circumvents a lot of the problems the writers had with Brian. For starters, he lives next door, which means they don’t need to dredge up some pointless thing for him to say every week. If he’s not part of any given story, he simply doesn’t show up.

He also comes equipped with a character trait, which is seven character traits more than Brian ever had. We’ll see this soon enough, but Jake is a troubled youth. Boom. Plotlines aplenty. Cliched plotlines, yes, but it at least means we won’t see Jake dancing and singing in a vegetable costume.

Thirdly, he’s not related to Lynn, which means he can talk about how much he wants to fuck her. That might be why Brian was such a difficult character for the writers; they don’t know what to do with a male unless it’s have him talk a lot about porking the teenage girl.

Mrs. Ochmonek explains to Kate that she’s always wanted children, but, ultimately, they decided not to have kids so that Mr. Ochmonek could get his master’s in art history.

That’s treated as a joke, and rightly so; it’s a good one. It subverts (or is subverted by) everything we’d expect of the uncouth Mr. O. And that’s why it can be funny…we actually do expect things of him. This M.A. in Art History detail can successfully go against his character because he has character to go against.

Also, unlike the mean-spirited bitching the Tanners did about him in “Come Fly With Me,” here it’s a joke for the audience to enjoy. Nobody’s making fun of him…it’s just a detail being revealed that registers as humorous to those of us watching at home. There’s a big difference between the comedy of learning that Mr. O appreciates the fine arts and the comedy of Mr. O being a hideous cripple.

Then there’s a part where Kate finds ALF’s hair in a jug of milk, which I’m not sure why she reached for in the first place since I don’t believe any recipe for iced tea calls for that.

Kate makes a friendly offer to Mrs. Ochmonek that if she has any questions, she knows where to find her. Mrs. O immediately pulls out a piece of paper and asks if Jake’s old enough to date, if he should get an allowance, what a proper bedtime would be, and this is good. Yeah, it’s silly, but it’s silliness that reflects a very human impulse. Mrs. Ochmonek doesn’t just want to be a mother…she wants to be a good mother.

Her eagerness is funny, but it’s also sweet, and it seems like a pretty great inroad for exploring her as a character. I wonder if the rest of the season follows through on this. I doubt it, but what a way to redeem the character.

Jake is a bad boy, which we learn when he puts his feet up on the coffee table. He’s 15, and Lynn talks to him for a while about the fact that they’ll be attending the same school while Brian adjusts to the role he’ll play in every subsequent episode: set dressing.

In last week’s review, ace commenter FelixSH said (among other excellent things), “Brian is not a character but a cipher.” He’s right. Maybe a bit too generous by calling him a cipher, even. He’s just a thing that’s on the stage. I could tell you exactly as much about the character of the sofa as I could tell you about him.

Their inability to find a role for this kid baffles me. Brian’s an eight-year-old boy who lives with a fuckin’ alien. What do you need, a road map?

Brian is growing up, so maybe ALF could help him learn lessons along the way. Or maybe Brian, in a role reversal, could actually help ALF learn lessons. Or they could go on adventures together…even if it’s just the two of them playing in the yard. Or maybe the show could acknowledge that nobody in this family pays attention to anyone else, so ALF and Brian bond over being misfits. Jesus Christ, there’s a thousand things you can do with these two, and that’s before we get into any more general “growing up” plots for Brian alone.

But they’d rather write for a teenager, so they can make more creepy sex jokes. Hooray.

Mr. Ochmonek and Willie go into the bedroom to speak in private, and a couple of funny things happen here. For starters, we see ALF climbing in the window. He looks down and says, “Hold still, Lucky!” Which is funny. But then he follows Willie’s lead in the cold open and steps on the joke by saying, “I’ll be off your back in a minute!” Yes, ALF, we got it.

The other funny thing is that when Willie sees ALF climbing through the window, he quickly slams the door on Mr. Ochmonek, who was following right behind. It’s a very, very simple bit of physical comedy, but it works precisely because it’s not overthought or overplayed.

Willie tells ALF to fuck the fuck off, so ALF hops off of Lucky’s back and drops out of frame. You know, it’s been a while since we’ve seen that cat, but I honestly don’t remember it being five feet tall.

Mr. Ochmonek tells Willie he’s nervous about raising Jake. “He talks back. He disobeys. And I think he stole a bag of peat moss from our living room.” Which is funny…so Willie steps on that joke by asking why he’d have a bag of peat moss in the living room YES WILLIE WE KNOW THAT IS SOMEWHAT OUT OF THE ORDINARY THANK YOU

Willie offers to help with Jake, maybe give him a good talk and straighten him out, and Mr. Ochmonek accepts the offer.

Hey, do you remember how Willie’s a social worker? If so, you have a better memory than ALF, which must have forgotten completely because I can’t imagine a more natural place to mention that detail.

His professional experience doing exactly what he says he’s going to do goes unmentioned. I wonder if they’re ever going to mention it again, or if “Willie abducts a Mexican kid” was really the only plotline they could think to spin out of it.

Then we’re treated to some really odd, almost aggressive anti-flirtation between Jake and Lynn, culminating with him asking her to jump out of a cake for him.

She refuses, but the look on her face makes her seem bizarrely flattered, so thank you, ALF, for making it all too easy to believe that she’d enjoy getting plowed by an obnoxious 15-year-old that she just met.

Speaking of cake, Willie invites Jake over for some after dinner, and when we see it, damn is it some shitty looking cake.

I’m not surprised Jake doesn’t show up for this. I wouldn’t either. It looks like one of those filthy chunks of ice you find stuck to the underside of your car.

ALF wants it though, so he pounds the table and chants, “Cake, cake, cake.” I’m not really annoyed by this, because it’s pretty much the kind of childlike behavior I wish he demonstrated more. Later, during the conversation about Jake, he “sneakily” pulls the tablecloth so that the cake moves closer to him. Which is cute.

…but why, exactly, is he here at all? They’re waiting for Jake. Shouldn’t he be in hiding? I guess he could shuffle off to another room when Jake shows up, but then why invite him to the table at all if he’s not going to be given the cake and isn’t allowed to meet the company?

Whatever. The punchline is that Jake isn’t coming, so Kate gives ALF the cake and ALF drools or something. The episode already gave up on Brian, and from this point on it’s given up on itself.

That night Jake sneaks into Willie’s shed and steals his telescope. I don’t know why that’s what he decides to take, but he makes a bee-line for it, so I assume he already has a buyer. God knows this kid’s not going to turn out to be an astronomy buff.

Jake then has to hide, because ALF comes into the shed. And this — this — is a golden opportunity.

No joke. Usually when night falls, we cut to the next morning. This is done for reasons of keeping the plots — such as they are — scooting along, but it means we never get much of a sense of what ALF does all night. This is a perfect chance to make us laugh, because it’s something we’ve been passively expecting for a year and a half.

What sort of silliness does ALF get up to when the humans are asleep? I can’t believe we’re finally going to find out!

All we find out, though, is that the writers don’t know the answer to that question either.

ALF sings “Billie Jean.” He dances for a while. Then he calls a guy in Scotland and tells Star Trek jokes to him. The Scottish guy responds by playing “Papa Don’t Preach” on the bagpipes.

What the actual fuck is going on here.

Did they actually, finally, naturally get the chance to flesh out some previously-unexplored aspect of their main cocksucking character, and choose to pave over it with nonsense filler?

Jesus God, this show. It’s like it doesn’t even want to exist.

Jake sees ALF and drops the telescope. I’d list all of the characters who’ve seen ALF, but at this point I think it would be quicker to list the people on this show who have not seen ALF. That whole secrecy aspect of the show sure went out the window fast.

ALF makes Jake repair the telescope. I have no clue how this kid is going to repair shattered glass, but evidently he accomplishes it by sitting on the steps for a while while ALF tells him literally everything about himself. Through the magic of editing, it’s as good as new!

Jake says that his dad taught him to fix things. Including shattered glass, I guess. Ugh. It’s not like he broke a vase or a trophy or something he could glue back together. A telescope is a delicate scientific instrument. You can’t just drop one so hard that it breaks and then “fix” it by hand.

Who knows. Maybe it’s not fixed, and Jake and ALF just both realized at the same time that neither of them give a shit about Willie’s feelings anyway.

Later that night, ALF remembers that he has a whole new child to molest, so he spies on Jake through the window. This is when we are made privy to the horrific extent of the boy’s juvenile delinquency: he crumples up some sheets of blank paper and throws them around.

Mrs. Ochmonek comes in and reveals that the vase contained somebody’s ashes, which makes ALF laugh. And, you know, that is kind of shitty. It also works against the main point of the episode, which is that ALF proves that Jake is actually a really good kid.

No, he’s not. Dumping out somebody’s ashes and showing no remorse is not the work of a good kid. And laughing uproariously at this behavior is not the work of someone in any place to judge a kid’s goodness.

Whatever. ALF signals to Jake that he wants to finger his rectum, so Jake gets rid of Mrs. O by saying her husband wants to fuck her. She trots off, dripping with horn. Man, remember those couple of minutes earlier on when she was actually some kind of character? Those were some heady times.

ALF gives Jake a bunch of shit to fix. Mrs. Ochmonek hears him talking to somebody, and he calls to her that it’s just the TV.

ALF, to keep up the illusion, shouts, “Live from New York! It’s Saturday night!” And, man, I am absolutely positive Paul Fusco masturbated himself raw at the idea that ALF would even be considered for hosting Saturday Night Live.

The next day Willie is ignoring his daughter talk about her upcoming birthday*** because he’d rather read some unidentified textbook. This guy is a truly legendary social worker.

Speaking of which, I guess he gave up on straightening Jake out after the rude punk decided not to join them for smashed up crap cake. Troubled youth or not, you only get one shot with Willie Tanner.

Mr. Ochmonek then brings Jake over, because he found a bunch of Willie’s shit in the kid’s room.

ALF reaches through the plot window and hits Willie in the back of the head with a thrown dinner roll. Nobody questions this, including Mr. Ochmonek who saw it happen.

Willie goes into the kitchen where ALF reveals that he gave that crap to Jake to fix, and then they agree that their new friend Jake is one outrageous dude, and totally in their face. Then Willie returns to the living room and apologizes because the episode is over.

Lynn pats Jake on the head, and Jake says, “You want me, don’t you?” Brian, meanwhile, has silently drowned in the tub.

The short scene before the credits is pointless. ALF smacks a puzzle piece into place where it doesn’t belong. And…that’s a pretty good metaphor for this episode overall. It was so weird and disjointed, with everything being forced to happen rather than allowed to happen.

I’m pretty disappointed in the introduction of Jake for a few reasons. For one, it really does represent the show giving up on Brian, which is utterly baffling. The fucking kid’s in the opening credits…you can’t even try to do anything with him?

And isn’t it a bit early to be adding Cousin Oliver to the mix? That’s usually a late-game shakeup to try to bring some life back into a show that’s gone stale. ALF is only halfway through its second season, and already they can’t think of anything to do but toss new characters in?

The worst part is that I know they just keep doing it from this point on. Kate has another baby, Jim J. Bullock moves in, Dr. Potato Famine comes to life and rents Willie’s basement…they keep trying in the hopes that, eventually, something they add will make this shit funny.

Oh well. We’ll see where it goes. It could still prove to be a good decision.

Maybe Jake bullies Brian and we’ll squeeze another plot out of that dead kid yet. Or maybe Mrs. Ochmonek gets to work the “new mother” aspect of her character a bit and actually turn into someone worth having on the show. Or maybe Jake cums down the front of Lynn’s sweater and she has to pretend it’s toothpaste.

Whatever happens, the scary trilogy of awful horseshit is over, and we should be back to normal shit levels from now on.

The fact that that thought is actually comforting to me is worrying.

MELMAC FACTS: ALF had a cousin from the south side of Melmac, the baddest part of the planet, Pretty Boy Shumway. If he didn’t like your shoes he’d point and you and go “ee-ee-ee-ee.” Which is actually funnier than it sounds. ALF has had liposuction. Which is not as funny as it sounds. On Melmac they only had one guy who knew how to fix things.

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* For those keeping score at home, this is the third overt reference to a Hitchcock film. “Strangers in the Night” was (kind of…) about ALF wanting to watch Psycho, and “Lookin’ Through the Windows” was an episode-long pastiche of Rear Window. The interesting thing? All three are Ochmonek episodes. A coincidence, I’m sure, but now I’m really looking forward to the episode in which Mr. Ochmonek and Wizard Beaver agree to murder each other’s wives.

** Yes, I’m deliberately referencing Family Guy. Yes, I hate me too.

*** We learned in “Hail to the Chief” that Lynn was 18, so I guess this means she’s turning 19? And she’s still in high school? Did she stay back, or is there a way to rectify those details that I’m missing?