Category: alf

Well, I’ll say this up front: for all the concern I had about season three sucking Melmackian anus, it sure opens well. (Much like Melmackian anus.)

No, seriously.

For those of you who don’t know or are tuning in late, folks ’round these parts have let me know that a pretty substantial drop-off in quality comes after season two. Being as I didn’t even like season two, that worried me. And while I’m by no means about to write off any worry about ALF‘s final 50 installments, it sure is nice to open this worrisome season with a mild chuckle, and not, say, a lump of cold poison.

It begins with Willie and ALF at the table, serving themselves dinner. Kate is bringing out dishes and Lynn returns home shortly, so I’m pretty sure we can conclude from this that the Tanners have finally sold Brian to the gypsies.

ALF is annoying Willie, which is nothing new, but what’s nice about it is the way in which ALF is being annoying: he’s rhyming everything Willie says.

This approach is a welcome one. Not only is it one we haven’t seen before on ALF, but it’s one we haven’t seen before anywhere. At least not that I can remember. Usually when characters are childishly annoying each other in some verbal way it’s because they repeat everything the other person says verbatim, endlessly reply, “I know you are, but what am I?” or some kind of garbage like that that ends up annoying the audience more than it does any of the characters.

To illustrate what I’m talking about, in one instance Willie says, “I asked you twice to stop doing that,” and ALF replies (in carefully moderated meter), “What? We’re just having a pre-dinner chat.”

None of it is gut-busting by any means, but ALF taking the time to compose his replies in rhyme means that the writing staff took the time to do the same thing. That, as we all know, is pretty uncommon.

It also means that the comic spotlight is shared. (Also, yeah, pretty damned uncommon.) Instead of Willie standing quietly in the corner with his hands in his pockets while ALF recites ostensibly humorous Melmac Facts or brags about fingering Willie’s unconscious wife, Willie gets to play a part in the escalating joke. It’s an unwitting part, but that just makes it funnier.

On top of that, it makes it feel more natural. For such an obviously constructed conceit — who, really, is skilled enough to rhyme everything they hear with a coherent response? — it plays out very believably. This is where the show’s age actually helps it; ALF’s been on Earth long enough, and therefore been trapped in the house long enough, that he’s bored, and needs to find creative diversions to keep himself from going mad.

I like when ALF is childlike, and this sort of behavior fits that to a T. There’s also an unexpectedly good moment of Max Wright acting when he complains to Kate: “He’s rhyming the last word of everything I say. Go ahead, ALF. He’s been doing it all day.” The look on his face after he realizes that he’s done it to himself is actually quite funny. We’re starting off, at least, in strong territory.

Lynn comes in through the front door with — it must be said — some very fetching curly hair. Not that it matters, but it’s a good look for her, so, yeah, add me on Facebook Andrea Elson.

Kate senses that Lynn and her boyfriend had a fight, so she goes to check on her daughter. I hope she also checks on which boyfriend this is. I can’t keep them straight.

Hey, the new intro! This one I remember, though I guess not as well as I remembered the previous one, as I was shocked to see how many clips from previous episodes are in it. They’re all brief so it’s not as though the intro runs too long, but it sure does seem like an unnecessarily large amount of them.

In the previous intro, ALF runs around the house with a camcorder, and we see all of it through that camera’s lens. Here, ALF is showing the family a VHS of old clips from the show while wearing a suit that I’m pretty sure he borrowed from David Byrne.

Each cast member gets a credit over a shot of them laughing in that obnoxiously phony sitcom way, except for Benji Gregory, who appropriately gets his credit over a shot of him face-palming.

I don’t know if it was intentional that the previous intro led into this one in a thematic sense; ALF goes from recording the family to showing clips of the family, after all. But either way it makes no sense, unless ALF somehow recorded everything that happened in those episodes from the precise angles from which we viewed it happening.

Actually, that makes for a hell of a theory. Perhaps the entire run of ALF is some long-form exercise in found footage horror. We can look back and laugh at the alien hijinx, but our enjoyment must be tainted by the knowledge that these VHS cassettes were retrieved from the crime scene after the Ochmoneks noticed some very suspicious odors coming from the house…

Oh, and the theme song has been re-recorded so that it sounds…jazzier, I guess? I don’t know…it was never great to begin with, but now it sounds like they tried to record a smokey, brassy version for people to listen to while they have sex.

If you try that, let me know how it goes.

After the credits we’re back in welcome territory: Tanner family game night. Lynn’s not present, but it’s so rare that we see these people act anything like a family that I’ll take stuff like this every time.

They’re playing some store-brand version of Trivial Pursuit, and there’s actually a nice character joke when Willie gets to choose between the topics of science and sports. ALF says, “He’ll take science.”

That’s funny enough, and then Willie bristles at ALF’s interruption. ALF asks him who won the previous year’s Superbowl, and Willie, defeated, says, “I’ll take science.”

That is the kind of joke you can make when you have well-defined characters and understandable relationships between them. It’s funny several times before you even get to the punchline. While ALF by no means has those characters or relationships, moments like this are a lovely glance of what the show could be if it put forth the effort: competent.

Lynn comes in with the mail, and she’s still upset. She’s also wearing a UCLA sweatshirt, and I’m hoping that’s a quiet way of resolving the question left by the end of “Varsity Drag.” She couldn’t go to Amherst, but it looks like she’s still continuing her education. I like that thought was given to that detail even though we’re not given an answer explicitly.

Willie invites her to join the game, and Kate helpfully adds, “Take ALF’s place.”

Guys…I’ve enjoyed every minute of season three so far and I feel the need to remove myself from the gene pool.

Lynn declines and goes to her room. Kate explains that she’s still sad about her breakup from Lloyd.

So…fine. I’m okay with that. But what was it with making Lizard the main boyfriend last season? We even met him on camera…which is something we’ve never done with any of the other ones. Why did they bother casting him if he had nothing to do with that episode (it was the one where Willie’s boss loses a Halloween limbo competition, if you need me to remind you of what fucking garbage that was) and wasn’t going to appear again? I wonder if he was the remnant of some abandoned arc.

There’s a book in the mail for ALF, and Willie gets pissed that he ordered one. I don’t know why; isn’t this the first unauthorized expense that’s less than four figures? He should be jumping for joy.

From this angle we can see that the game is called “Tri-Trivia,” which I guess is a visual pun because it certainly doesn’t work as any other kind. Much funnier is the title of the book: Shelly Winters’ Guide to True Love. I have no idea why I laughed at that…but I did anyway, making me the perfect audience for both this joke and all of Family Guy.

Later on ALF tries to cheer up Lynn, and he does get her to open up about what happened. This is a relief, because it’s also where the episode turns to shit.

She tells him about Lloyd (who pronounces both Ls in his name, which fails to get funnier all 652 times we’re reminded of it), and she’s upset that he broke up with her. They were going to get married at the planetarium, and he was going to name a comet after her.

SO YEAH THAT CLEARS UP EVERYTHING

Fucking ex-fucking-scuse me? How long has she been with Lloyd? We don’t find out, but I think we should. Lynn might do the family-friendly equivalent of “getting around,” but marriage isn’t something we’ve ever been led to believe she had in mind.

This is why keeping Lizard as the boyfriend would work. No, we didn’t know much about their relationship, but we’d at least know that they’ve been together long enough that this topic could have come up.

Lizard also had an interest in the sciences (medical science, but still), which would have at least somewhat justified the ODD FUCKING DETAIL that Lynn is sad she won’t be getting married in a planetarium. Then again the audience doesn’t laugh, so I guess we’re not even supposed to find it strange in any way.

I don’t know about you guys, but I never pictured this being something Lynn Tanner would get excited about. Literally never has she expressed even a passing interest in any kind of science, so I guess Lloyd was some kind of amateur astronomer? Who knows.

It’s just strange. Specific details like this can reveal character, but when they’re so far out of left field, all they do is befuddle and pull you out of the show.

Let’s say that Lynn instead revealed that she and Lloyd were to be married in whatever stadium the LA Kings play. (Does hockey even take place in a stadium? I’ll take science, too.) It’d be silly, but “this character you never met before likes a major local sports team” isn’t a stretch for the imagination. Hearing he’s going to be getting married in a planetarium to a girl who has never given a particle of shit about that before and will be discovering comets in his spare time…that’s just too much. The audience takes a step back and clears their head of all the good jokes (and, to be honest, character work) from the earlier scenes, because they’ve just been reminded that they’re watching a heap of shit.

That’s why careful writing is so important. It’s not just about making the script as good as possible…it’s about not losing your audience along the way.

ALF asks Lynn if there’s any other guy she has her eye on, and she tells him about Danny Duckworth, a baseball player. She then pulls out a yearbook to show him his picture, which is a little odd, as I figured ALF must have already seen him every afternoon on Duck Tales.

Lynn, whose solemn duty in this scene seems to be to remind us that the show we’re watching isn’t very good, complains that she can’t call Danny because then he’ll know how she feels.

Remember, since nobody else does, that literally 10 seconds ago she was crying in bed because the man she was going to marry broke up with her.

Again, this is why careful writing is crucial. You can’t have someone be so important to a character that a breakup shatters their entire worldview and have them be so unimportant that they’re forgotten immediately when the plot decides to go somewhere else.

ALF can handle characterization. Really, it can. Which is what makes it frustrating that it simply doesn’t care.

We cut to Willie pulling bananas out of the coffee maker with forceps. Kate asks, “Why would he even try making banana coffee?”

And that moment right there tells me definitively that it’s much funnier when we don’t see ALF get up to his shenanigans. Knowing this happened is funny; seeing him stuff the bananas into the machine in the first place would just be a waste of time…something the show commonly doesn’t realize.

Typically we do see ALF perpetrating his nonsense, often set to jaunty library music, and that’s a shame because this kind of joke is much funnier when we cut right to the result rather than watch it gradually unfold. In the latter case we know what’s coming and we’re just waiting for the damned show to catch up with us. In the former case we see something and then need to piece together what happened…which is always going to be funnier in the imagination than it could ever be on camera.

I remember the show developing toward the end of season one a nice mastery of the visual punchline. Season two, as far as I can remember, didn’t feature much of that kind of comedy. I’m hoping season three reintroduces it, because it’s something ALF does fairly well.

There’s another nice visual gag (even better because it goes unmentioned) when ALF comes in to give Willie his electric razor, which is clogged up with ALF’s hair. The visual gag is a single Band-Aid affixed to the fur on ALF’s jaw…one more example (like the UCLA sweatshirt) of somebody on the staff giving thought to things beyond the bare minimum requirement of getting the show to air.

The next scene has some excellent framing. It’s still just Lynn’s bedroom, but the unexpected angle makes it feel so much more real than the static, square blocking we usually get. This feels like a more dynamic angle, and it gives the scene some nice visual heft.

We also see an AMHERST pennant on Lynn’s wall, which is one hell of a sad detail that belongs in a much, much better show than this.

ALF is prepping Lynn for the date he made for her. She’s upset, though, because ALF didn’t call Danny Duckworth…he called Donnie Duckworth, the geekiest kid in school!

Oh noes!!

Of course, we’ve all been there. Kids in high schools and colleges all across America are familiar with the feeling of accidentally being set up with the wrong Duckworth. What’s odd is that Lynn goes through with this anyway, somehow believing that it’s nicer of her to bitch everyone out about it and make the poor kid feel like an idiot on their date than to call him and say, “You’re very nice, but I’m sorry.”

That’s not the Lynn I knew. Of course, character fluctuates on this show like all get out, so for all I know next week we’ll be back to one whose motives I can understand. I sure as shit hope so.

There’s a knock at the door, and what the hell was Lynn worried about? This guy’s a total babe! Even Willie pops an appreciative dad boner.

However the guy explains that Donnie Duckworth got so nervous about the date that he couldn’t come, so this is Danny Duckworth taking his place.

And what, pardon my French, the cocksucking bullshit is even happening here?

Recap: Lynn was getting married to Lloyd in a planetarium, but secretly (I guess) wanted to be porked by Danny Duckworth, so ALF tries to call him but gets the wrong Duckworth, which makes Lynn upset but she keeps the date anyway, and then the wrong Duckworth worries himself sick and the right Duckworth comes instead.

Why all that shit about the wrong Duckworth then? If the entire episode was Lynn being pissed off and this was the grand reveal at the end, fine. Instead it was just treading water, because we’re not even to the halfway point. Would it just have been too short if we didn’t have all that Duckworth / Duckworth horse shit a moment ago? For fuck’s sake, ALF, just air another commercial in that case.

Danny Duckworth then suggests a drive-in movie, and Willie immediately hands over the keys to his own car. Willie, of course, makes it easy for strange boys to violate his teenage daughter.

Seriously…I’m a pretty liberal guy, but what kind of fuckass dad is this?

Anyway, take a moment to try to guess what we cut to next.

If you said “a scene of ALF passionately masturbating to ‘Walk Like an Egyptian’ in Willie car,” you’re correct.

This is such a terrible, cheap complication that I honestly don’t even know if I have the energy to discuss it. Every ounce of baffled hatred that flooded your mind when you saw that screen grab says it more eloquently than I ever could.

…BUT COME ON NOW IN WHAT FUCKING WAY IS THIS NOT THE DUMBEST GOD DAMNED THING MY GOD

So Davey Duckworth and Lynn come out to the car and ALF says, “Hide like an Egyptian!!” and the audience laughs because that is definitely a thing ALF said.

At the drive-in they’re watching some unedited stock footage of a school bus driving down the street. Then Lynn explains that the movie is Death Wish 11. You know, if you couldn’t find footage that seemed even vaguely like it belonged in a Death Wish film, don’t show us the fucking screen.

I don’t know. Maybe Death Wish 11 is about Charles Bronson giving up vigilantism when he realizes he can make more money by driving slow children to school. Either that or this show sucks. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO KNOW

Declan Duckworth keeps asking Lynn if she wants different kinds of food (stopping, thankfully, before he gets to offering her a big sausage), which makes ALF salivate behind them and, for some reason, pull a pair of novelty chattering teeth out from beneath the seat.

Why did Willie have those in his car in the first place? What kind of shit was Max Wright getting up to when he left the house? (Don’t Google it to find out.)

Anyway Lynn hears the teeth, and Dennis Duckworth does not, presumably because he’s watching a riveting sequence in which Charles Bronson extends that little blinking stop sign before he lets some kids off.

She looks back and sees that fucking shit.

It makes her shriek, but Darren Duckworth chalks it, I guess, up to a thrilling four-way intersection sequence in the film.

She then tells him that she needs popcorn now, is absolutely dying for it, which we know is a ploy to get him out of the car while she talks to ALF, but she delivers the lie in a way that makes it seem more like she’s sweating and vibrating from the force with which she’s spraying diarrhea down the legs of her jeans.

ALF and Lynn bitch at each other for a while and then we cut back to the house, where Brian serves the purpose of notifying two of the important cast members that the two other important cast members are together at the drive-in.

Willie panics because without the car he can’t go and retrieve ALF, but then Mr. Ochmonek comes over, dressed as Kyle from South Park.

I hope this isn’t his new look, because he definitely seemed more like a Hawaiian shirt guy than a flannel guy to me.

It’s not a great scene, but it helps establish Mr. Ochmonek as the right kind of annoying to the Tanners: the kind that doesn’t realize it. Willie immediately asks him if he can borrow his car, but Mr. O feels insulted that they didn’t ask him about his hunting trip.

Out of obligation, Kate asks. Then Mr. Ochmonek starts reciting everything that happened to him, in detail, over the last week.

In the process he flops down on the couch and puts his feet on the table, with Kate diving twice to move something out of the way. I like this, because this would be annoying, especially in a high stress situation. It’s not just the Tanners telling us what a lousy piece of human garbage he is…we get to watch him winding them up. And because he doesn’t realize he’s doing it, he doesn’t come off looking like a jerk.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I absolutely love having John LaMotta on this show. For such a thankless role, he sure plays it perfectly.

Damon Duckworth returns with a bucket of Golden Popcorn, which I think means he peed in it. He puts his arm around Lynn while holding it, because if there’s anything that gets a girl going it’s when you precipitously dangle greasy, hot food near her face.

This of course makes ALF pop up and eat the corn, ho ho ho, but it also causes Darrell Duckworth to look into the back seat like three times, making it very clear he would have seen ALF. In fact, there’s no way he wouldn’t have, since ALF is right in the open back there. Each time Lynn ostensibly “stops” him from looking, but whoever plays Derrick Duckworth didn’t read that part of the script because he keeps looking all the way back, so I guess we just have to conclude that he has terrible cataracts.

Lynn convinces Dagwood Duckworth to leave for some soda and then she talks to ALF again.

She’s angry that he ruined her date, but he says it’s not a date, it’s an oil painting, because he’s disappointed that he isn’t getting a front-row seat to any sloppy teenage fucking.

Lynn reiterates that she doesn’t want to tell Duncan Duckworth that she likes him, because that’s what she did with Lloyd, and “Look what happened.”

So, to put this all in perspective for you, Lynn and Lloyd were serious enough to plan a wedding and pick a venue, but not serious enough that they could openly admit to “liking” each other.

Just want to leave that there as a reminder of the importance of second drafts.

Dexter “Diamond” Duckworth gets back with the sodas and Lynn decides to reveal her feelings after all. The two like-birds tell each other how super hot they are. The poor guy barely gets a knuckle deep, though, before they see this at the window:

Man, that outright killed a boner I didn’t even have. I can only imagine what it must feel like for these two.

Willie makes some excuse about needing a blanket in the back seat. Lynn confirms it’s in the back seat. Dylan Duckworth still has no suspicion at all about anything in the back seat.

In easily the stupidest fucking part of anything, Willie stuffs ALF into a sack and carries him away.

I mean, look at that. He’s in plain sight of the other cars. To them it can’t look like anything other than an old man who pulled up, reached into somebody else’s car, stuffed a body into a sack, and immediately high-tailed it out of there.

If that was the joke, fine. But it’s not. The joke is that ALF asks Willie if they can stop at the concession stand.

Meanwhile, everybody in those other cars just actively witnessed an abduction and have no reaction to it whatsoever.

Welcome back, ALF.

In the short scene before the credits ALF and Brian have their own drive-in* in the garage, which ends with ALF violently using him as a sex doll.

I’ll be honest, this episode was pretty fucking bad, but it still wasn’t a total catastrophe. It started very strong, at least. Beyond that I guess it was just dropping turd after turd. But considering how low my expectations were for season three, I am still coming away with a mild sense of relief.

At this point, the episodes that follow could go either way. Some nice care and attention (and performances) are easily found in the opening of “Stop in the Name of Love,” but the rest of the episode implies that the show still doesn’t know how to sustain a good idea.

We’ll see what happens. Either way, I’ll be here…whatever that’s duckworth.

MELMAC FACTS: Jupiter was known to Melmackians as “The Dairy Planet,” a phrase printed on the license plates of Jupitonians. On Melmac (and in the rest of the civilized universe) bowling was known as Talaquoits, and the balls were replaced by melons. ALF was engaged to a woman named Ruby for 58 years. He met Rhonda at a pet bake the day after Ruby dumped him. He was nervous about asking Rhonda out, so he waited 17 years to do it. The day after he did (and she said yes) Melmac exploded. I have to admit it’s nice to have this unseen backstory fleshed out a little more each time; it’s about the only thing the writers paid careful attention to.

—–
* ALF says that the movie they’re watching is The Return of the Son of the Creature from the Big Black Bog, which is way too similar to a skit from Mr. Show for my liking. Of course, Mr. Show came way later, so I’m not blaming ALF. But if I ever find out that The Return of the Curse of the Creature’s Ghost is based on a stolen joke from this fucking travesty, the universe will no longer make any sense to me.

At the end of season one, I decided to do a character spotlight on Kate Tanner. It was an extremely easy decision, as Kate was the only Tanner with any character to spotlight. At the end of season two, the decision to spotlight Brian is just as easy, but for the opposite reason: he’s the only one still without character.

I alluded to this — vaguely — in my overall review of season two a couple of weeks ago. The three best episodes were all built around exploring one of the Tanners:

“Working My Way Back to You” – Kate
“Oh, Pretty Woman” – Lynn
“Night Train” – Willie

Notably absent is a similar episode about Brian. And I don’t mean absent from my list of favorites; I mean that one doesn’t actually exist.

The show’s relationship with Brian is an odd one. I knew that, but just how odd it was didn’t register with me until I was looking for screengrabs to use in this article. Unlike the other Tanners, Brian almost never gets a shot of his own. He’s always in frame with somebody else.

It’s an odd pattern, but, unfortunately for Benji Gregory, it makes sense. Brian doesn’t get the camera’s attention the way the rest of the cast does because he doesn’t do anything. Even when he’s sharing a frame it’s not because he’s toadying up like Smithers, tagging along like Butters, or scheming like Iago; he’s just there.

Brian went from being the potential heart of the show (see E.T. for the obvious template) to being a piece of furniture. Actually, that’s unfair; the furniture is featured far more prominently than he is.

And it’s fascinating to me for so, so many reasons.

It’s impossible for me to say why Brian became such a worthless (literally…in the sense that he has no value) character, but some thoughts do occur. On this blog a commenter whose name I can’t remember posited that they hired Benji Gregory because he was a cute kid…finding out too late that he was a lousy actor and were stuck with him.

I certainly can’t disprove that, and it makes enough sense, but that’s the truly weird part: they weren’t stuck with him. Whatever the reason Brian wasn’t working, they didn’t actually have to keep him around.

Television is littered with the transparent carcasses of abandoned characters. While soap operas in particular see characters come and go (and die and revive) all the time, sitcoms are by no means exempt from the practice. Chuck Cunningham, Richie’s older brother in Happy Days, is probably the most famous example. For a while he’s positioned as a main character. For a much longer while, he never existed. My own generation had a similar vanishing-sibling moment with Judy Winslow disappearing from Family Matters.

In both of those cases, it happened early on. These were characters who were built into the foundation of the show, but then, once the machine was running, they proved to be vestigial. The audience didn’t care about them, the stories didn’t require them, and the writers couldn’t think of anything to do with them. It can seem a little silly (and, if you’re in a particularly playful mood, sinister) that the members of someone’s immediate family can cease to be overnight and nobody asks questions, but if that one flash of logical impossibility occurs for the sake of making the show better as a whole, it’s easily worth the tradeoff.

Other times it happens later. The Brady Bunch infamously introduced Cousin Oliver to the show because the kids were running out of cuteness…but wisely abandoned him when the audience responded with a not-very-Brady “come the fuck on.” Then, down the line, the otherwise cynical Married…with Children aped the Cousin Oliver debacle while simultaneously failing to subvert it. Seven, like Oliver before him, was dropped with the sort of swiftness that resembles silent apology.

So Brian being tucked in at the end of season one and having what’s now a spare room claimed by ALF in season two isn’t out of bounds for the show. If anything, being erased from history would ironically be the most memorable thing Brian ever did.

And of course, you don’t have to make a character disappear in order to say goodbye to him. Great shows like The Office (both versions) and Breaking Bad crafted in-continuity farewells to characters for various reasons, from the death of an actor to a character having exhausted his or her utility.

And then we have examples like Gilligan’s Island and Red Dwarf, who recasted the same character, so that you might tune in next week to see a character you knew being played by an actor you didn’t.

I’m stepping back from ALF, I admit, but I’m doing so in order to make a point: the show is not stuck with Brian.

What’s frustrating is that it acts as though it is.

There are plenty of perfectly acceptable ways of shedding a character that isn’t working. I’ve listed some of them above, and I’m sure I’m missing one or two less common methods. If you begin a show expecting that a certain character will have a purpose that is proven not to exist as the show evolves, you can correct for that.

The really funny thing, though, is that it’s not as though Brian serves no purpose; it’s that the show was at first completely uninterested in exploring it, and later rendered it redundant by introducing Jake.

But I’ll get to that in a moment.

ALF, essentially, crippled itself right out of the gate by making the show not about the family, and not even about the title character, but about the zingers that the title character delivered to the family.

By now, thanks to the episodes listed above, we can rattle off a few character traits for 3/4 of the Tanners. Whether literally any of them will carry over into season three is anybody’s guess, but the fact that it took so long to catch even fleeting glimpses of character shows us that the writers — or, perhaps, just Paul Fusco — weren’t much interested in developing them.

What they were interested in was the stream of hilarious gobbledygook that could come out of ALF.

Which, oddly, causes the show to play like some kind of vanity piece for a stand-up comedian. You know the kind of show I mean; one that takes the comedian’s stage persona, craps it onto a sound stage, and figures that whatever schtick made him famous in the first place will carry the production on its own. Minimal effort, at best, is invested in translating it to a new medium.

It’s actually difficult for me to come up with a recognizable example of this. I’m sure you can name plenty of shows starring ex-standups, but the ones we remember, such as Seinfeld, The Drew Carey Show, or Roseanne, are remembered because they emphatically did not fall into that trap.

They built worlds that were populated with interesting (and rich) characters that had lives and objectives of their own. Perhaps most importantly, the “star” of each show almost never got the biggest laugh of the episode, or even most of the laughs. Other stand-up transplant shows — and there have been literal hundreds — took away the microphone and replaced it with some paper-thin supporting characters to deliver his monologues to, and that was that.

Do you remember The Jeff Foxworthy Show? That’s why.

ALF was not a stand-up comedian. Shit, ALF doesn’t even exist. And yet the show is constructed as though he does, and was. People will tune in every week, the writing staff believes, because they already love ALF. They’re familiar with his schtick, so that’s all we’ll give him.

Consequently, every episode is an excuse to get the alien tapdancing on stage, and if that means nobody else gets to do jack shit, then so be it.

In fairness, I certainly didn’t remember anything about the Tanners. That almost proves the worth of that mindset; if ALF is the only one anyone gives a shit about, why bother with the rest of these bozos? Of course, the reason nobody gave a shit about the rest of these bozos is that the writing staff never gave us a reason. Our appreciation for — and enjoyment of — any given character is not innate; it’s something an audience develops because a show earns it.

ALF, surprising no-one, has that backward.

The Tanners are only sounding boards for ALF’s non-existent stand up comedy hits. If ALF wants to make jokes about somebody being nerdy, he’s got Willie. If ALF wants to make jokes about someone being bitchy, he’s got Kate. If ALF wants to make jokes about sexually assaulting underaged girls, he’s got Lynn.

This is also why — in spite of us being reminded frequently that it’s crucial to keep ALF secret — he keeps meeting people.

Like, all the fuckin’ time.

He needs to keep meeting them, otherwise they’d have no business in this show. Again, it’s not a show about ALF…it’s a show about the things ALF says to people, and the self-congratulatory pre-recorded laughter of dead idiots that love him for it.

So, back to Brian. It’s not difficult to see why having a young boy around would provide comic fodder for ALF to play off of. And the show certainly realizes that, because as soon as it gave up on Brian it brought in another little boy to replace him.

Brian’s tragedy isn’t that he doesn’t fit into the show. Brian’s tragedy is that the show refuses to either do anything with him or write him out. And so he’s stuck in this bizarre, almost painful purgatory, where we have to watch him dress in silly costumes, sit quietly in the corner, and do nothing else.

His character arc is roughly that of a soggy paper towel’s. He ends season two no better off than he opened season one, and with one exception — which I’ll get to in a moment — nobody on the writing staff has even tried to give him something to do.

The boy-and-his-alien trope should be right at home here. Indeed, it’s the very first thing that comes to mind with a concept like ALF‘s. I’d even be very tempted to assume that’s why Brian was created to begin with.

Yet that suspicion falls at the first hurdle, as there are no boy/alien storylines to bear it out.

A few token gestures toward bonding (Brian laughs at ALF’s jokes, sits next to him while he watches Gilligan’s Island, and is ostensibly sad when he almost leaves) are all we get. As far as seeing them grow into any kind of relationship — at all — we get nothing. It’s not a boy and his alien…it’s a boy, and it’s an alien.

Judging by what we see rather than what we’re told we should be seeing, neither cares if the other lives or dies.

This was almost made up for toward the end of season one, back in “Aspara Gonna Hate” or whatever that shitty episode was called. For the first time, Brian had a plot, and steps — it seemed — were being made to flesh him out. We paid a visit to his school, gave him an antagonist, and had ALF spin some bullshit about a magical tooth he’d never mentioned before and hasn’t mentioned since.

It seemed, briefly, like Brian was being woven back into the show that nearly forgot he existed.

I know “Pennsylvania 6-5000” must come to mind as an earlier example for some of you, but as much as that might sound like a Brian episode, the kid hardly did anything. He took the fall for ALF’s terroristic threats to national security, and was commended for threatening to blow up the Commander in Chief, but even there, as everywhere, he was just set dressing.

Things happened around him. Not to or because of him.

So the Asparagus Follies was it. The high point for this character was dancing around and singing some awful song about veggies that make your pee smell.

It was somehow all downhill from there.

And, frankly, that’s also when Brian’s mercy killing should have come.

We ended the first season with one lone misfire for the character. The ideas for season two are being spitballed. None of them involve Brian. Several of them involve his replacement, Jake. This is the time to ship him off to Aunt Bonnie, to whom we will never refer again.

But that doesn’t happen. We still have Brian here, in the house, in every episode. This implies that they might have a reason for him being there, but fifty episodes into this shit and it’s clear that they really don’t.

Twice in season two it seems like we just might get some last minute attempts to do something with the kid, but each time it’s just a tease.

First, it’s “You Ain’t Nothin’ But a Hound Dog,” which opens on Brian enamored with a stray dog, and then spends irrelevant twenty minutes reminding us that Anne Ramsey was not very attractive. Then there’s “Hit Me With Your Best Shot,” in which Brian is tormented by a bully and then promptly disappears from his own narrative. Even the conclusion to this plot is delivered by Lynn, while Brian is literally nowhere to be found.

If they don’t want the kid around, why oh why are they keeping the kid around?

At this point, it’s becoming irritating. There are problems with Jake as a character, but he’s superior to Brian in what’s probably the most important way: if he has nothing to do with the story, he doesn’t need to make an appearance.

That means we aren’t subjected to Jake dressing up like a bellhop or impersonating Ted Koppel. He’s not great by any means, but at least he can disappear when the story doesn’t need him.

It honestly seems cruel to keep Brian around while Jake takes away his role and macks on his sister, but the writers may not even realize that. It’s Brian’s portion of the opening credits, remember, that features an embarrassing shot of the set’s lighting rig; and I think it was Sarah Portland here who observed that this was emblematic of how little they cared about the kid as a whole.

Seeing him cursed to amble through this world he no longer occupies, I can’t disagree. It says a lot when the most memorable thing about him this season was the abject horror I felt when I realized they had a puppet blindly pitching glass at him from across the room.

It’s probably also worth mentioning how almost every time we see this kid, he looks fucking miserable.

Benji Gregory’s not a good enough actor to be doing that deliberately, as some sort of improvised character tic. He just sincerely hates being a part of ALF.

This show often reminds me of Jim Henson’s various productions. Specifically, it reminds me just how much better they are. In this case, I remember reading a long time ago about children visiting the sets on shooting days. In the case of Sesame Street this may have been because they were actually going to be featured in a segment, but with The Muppet Show it was just a treat for the kids.

Apparently between takes the Muppeteers would often pick up a Muppet and interact one on one with the young visitors. The interesting thing was that the kids would always focus on the Muppet, and speak to it as though it was alive. The fact that Jim Henson, Richard Hunt, Frank Oz, Jerry Nelson, Dave Goelz, or whomever else was clearly visible, lips moving, hand(s) operating the Muppet meant nothing; the experience of interacting with this character was magical, and the kids adored it.

Looking at Benji Gregory’s face in any given episode, I can only imagine that the experience of getting to interact with ALF was leagues removed from doing so with Kermit, The Count, Cookie Monster, or Gonzo.

It’s sad. Brian Tanner is living every little boy’s dream — in a situational sense — but he’s stuck with writers who aren’t capable of bringing that out…or even giving him any identifiable, let alone memorable, traits.

I’m pretty sure that, depending on the week, I’ve argued that the heart of this show should either be the relationship between ALF and Willie or between ALF and Brian. And, honestly, I can’t decide which it should be. But the fact that they haven’t even tried to explore the myriad possibilities of the latter pairing is a glaring, almost obnoxious waste of potential.

Brian should be captivated by this creature. He should be fawning over him. ALF, in return, should be bonding with him, seeing a new world through fresh eyes.

Either ALF or Brian could serve as the sidekick, depending upon the plot. ALF has more experience and knowledge than Brian does, but Brian’s been on Earth much longer and has a better understanding of its customs and mores.

ALF should be dazzling Brian, regaling him with stories (both real and fabricated) of his life on another fucking planet.

And yet, Brian doesn’t care. He takes no more interest than anybody else does, because ALF isn’t an alien. He’s a hacky standup comic that’s been given a platform upon which to parade his ego.

There’s a long list of crimes of which ALF is guilty, but failing to either take advantage of this ready-made character or to put it out of its misery is one of the worst. It’s beyond incompetent; it’s narratively unethical.

We’ll see what season three (and…uh…season four…) have to say, but right now I feel confident writing Brian off. If they didn’t find a reason for him to exist in the first 50 episodes, I can’t imagine they’ll make up for it in the next 50.

And that’s sad. ALF is a show that needs more characters. More actual characters, that is; not just people who show up and recite some shitty dialogue.

For them to put a bullet in this kid before even trying to do anything with him…well, that’s just cruel.

And, somehow feeling as though it went both way too fast and way too slow, season two is behind us. This puts us at the midpoint of the project, with season three’s 25 episodes, season four’s 24, and the Criterion Collection director’s cut release of Project: ALF still to come.

And…I’ll talk about the season itself shortly. For now, a few general reflections on the project itself.

The value that this series has had to me as a writer is immense. I have no idea what any of you get out of it as readers, and for that I almost feel guilty.

When I first chose ALF to cover, it was because of a few things. One: well, you voted for it. But even if you hadn’t, I probably would have covered it at some point, because two: it’s a show I remember liking as a kid that seems positively insane as of now.

The idea of a prime-time puppet show on American network television seems like a truly foreign idea, but it wasn’t. It happened. And, in spite of how bizarre that now seems, it was also extremely popular.

It’s not entirely without peer, though. The most obvious forerunner would be The Muppet Show, which similarly featured puppets interacting with humans, and post-ALF we’ve had things like Crank Yankers and Mystery Science Theater 3000. In both of those latter cases, however, the puppets were, by their very nature, part of the joke. What we were watching was deliberately absurd, and sticking an obvious puppet in the middle of the proceedings was a method of making that very clear to the viewer.

ALF hews more closely to — and is utterly indebted to — Jim Henson’s immortal creations. The fact that ALF is a puppet is never the joke. We’re meant to see him as a character in his own right, as well-rounded and loveable as any other classic sitcom creation. Archie Bunker, Ralph Kramden, Mary Richards, “Hawkeye” Pierce, ALF.

At least, that’s what Paul Fusco wanted, and, to some extent, what he must have believed. Which leads me to the third reason I’m glad to cover ALF: it’s supremely instructive from a writing standpoint.

For a show that’s rightly remembered for its novelty value alone, ALF could not serve as a better case study when it comes to humor writing. Characterization, dialogue, world-building, social satire, emotional stakes, continuity, interpersonal relationships, evolving roles and conflicts…all of these things are woven into ALF‘s weekly routine, some of them by nature of it being a sitcom, others by deliberate choice.

And, I don’t need to tell you after 50 of these fucking reviews, they’re nearly always bungled spectacularly.

That alone would make ALF a good case study. The distance between what the show wishes to achieve and what it actually achieves leaves so much room for exploration…for consideration…for finding the loose ends and pieces that don’t fit together, and trying to figure out why that is.

But what makes it a great case study is the fact that, tantalizingly often, the show does accomplish what it sets out to do. The pieces do fit. The show, however briefly, works.

That’s an achievement, and it’s a fascinating one to me. Especially since (with very few exceptions) ALF getting something right amounts to nothing more than any decent sitcom achieves regularly: a good joke, and / or some competent storytelling.

On a decent sitcom, however, and certainly on the great ones, such achievements seem to happen effortlessly. The cameras are on, the cast reads their lines, and it’s as simple as that. It doesn’t smack of effort; it feels instead like we’re fortunate enough to watch talented people doing what comes easily.

On ALF, you can practically see the gears grinding. You can see the cast floundering, the writing working against itself, and the logistical incompetence pulsing in the background of every scene.

It makes the small triumphs (a funny line, a snatch of good acting) seem sweeter, in an illusory way, and it makes the massive failures that much more frustrating, because we see them coming. We see the smoke coming out of the machine. We see the parts falling off. And nobody working on this thing seems to want to fix it.

And I love that, in a way. There are a wealth of titles that I love across all media that are riddled, to varying extents, with flaws. The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou. Majora’s Mask. Every single Pink Floyd album. But those flaws exist in spite of artists working extraordinarily hard to correct them, account for them, and control them. The flaws don’t puncture the experience; they simply serve as (often unfortunate) reminders that human beings, fallible, imperfect, up against deadlines, dealing with personal issues, are driving themselves crazy (sometimes literally) to produce the best work they can.

For this reason, ALF is something of a godsend. If a work of art aspires to nothing, there’s very little we can learn from it; the team doesn’t care, but they didn’t try to achieve anything anyway. If a work of art aspires to something and the team tries hard to get it there, the flaws become harder to parse, to dissect, to examine, as our attention is drawn — rightly — to what is working, and to what we are feeling.

ALF is an oddity in the middle. It aspires to much, but has a creative team that’s perfectly content to say “fuck it” and watch the wheels fall off.

Sure, I complain about the show and pick it apart, but it’s because there’s a benefit to doing so. It’s our chance to operate on a translucent cadaver. We can learn so much from a show that’s convinced it’s great and therefore puts forth no effort to actually be great.

That’s why, at this midway point, I’m more excited than exhausted. And I hope you are, as well. While I’ve had more people tell me to press on with ALF than I have had express disappointment that I’m doing so, those latter voices still make me feel bad. Perhaps it’s a question of balance, and I need to just dedicate myself to doing more, different kinds of writing here. In the coming year, I intend to do exactly that, so hopefully that will help.

But I’ll plow through the rest of ALF, because I’ve seen the positive effects it’s had on my writing already. The study of what so clearly doesn’t work makes it easier to see faint echoes in what I produce on my own, which means I can correct those issues much more quickly and organically. In short, the more time I spend with Willie Tanner, the less likely his mumbly brand of irritating horseshit is to sneak into something I’m writing.

As much as I give this show guff about its characters, season two did a very good — if equally inconsistent — job of trying to develop them.

I’d say there were five truly good episodes in season two, and the first three were all about individual members of the Tanner household. “Working My Way Back to You” was the first, and it centered on Kate. By the end of season one, Kate was deeply entrenched as the only Tanner who acted remotely human, so while a Kate episode could have easily coasted on what we already knew, “Working My Way Back to You” did something admirable and reversed the dynamic she has with ALF, showing us another side of both characters, and leading to one of the best episodes yet.

Then there was “Oh, Pretty Woman,” which centered on Lynn. While the beauty pageant setup skirts worryingly close to reminding us that “fuckable” has heretofore been her only consistent personality trait, it’s packed wall to wall with great lines, and we see a vulnerable, desperately hopeful side of the character that makes her seem a lot like the flesh and blood teenagers that actually occupy the world we know.

The third was “Night Train,” which took the single most problematic character in the entire show — which is certainly saying something — and gambled hard on him. Honestly, it’s something I never would have expected the show to pull off. It would have been enough of an achievement to portray Willie as anything we’re already supposed to believe he is (husband, father, son, brother, social worker, anything other than erectile dysfunction on legs really), but to position him in the center of an episode-long emotional journey that concludes with a renewed appreciation for himself…I would have said that’s guaranteed to fail.

And yet, it doesn’t. It works. It works so fucking well that it renders the lousy episodes that much more frustrating.

The two other good episodes in season two are also character-based, in the sense that they reprise the best characters from season one. “We Gotta Get Out of This Place” sees the long-overdue return of ALF’s blind friend Jodie, and “I’m Your Puppet” culminated in a surprise second session with Dr. Dykstra. Both of these episodes, as a kind of bonus, delve into who / what ALF is, with Jodie helping us to explore ALF the character, and Dr. Dykstra allowing us to explore ALF the television show.

Many of the really fuckin’ bad episodes attempt to develop character, too. “Take a Look at Me Now” shattered and rebuilt Mrs. Ochmonek, “Something’s Wrong With Me” was about the culmination of Kate Sr.’s Love Quest, “Isn’t It Romantic?” reenacted Willie and Kate’s honeymoon, and so on. And while none of these episodes were even watchable, I admire what they attempted to do: flesh out the world built, however shoddily, by season one.

I’m pretty sure it’s been unanimously declared ’round these parts that season two is as good as it gets. And while I’ll wait until I finish the next two to pass judgment, I can at least compare it against season one. Overall, sure, I’d say it’s better.

For starters, there were five good episodes in this batch, as compared to the previous season’s three. And the average season two episode certainly had better lines and gags, which is pretty important for a comedy show.

But that also might be the problem. Season one was certainly the shakier of the two, but, to give credit where it’s due, it also attempted a lot of really interesting things. Insane things, yes, but there’s a kind of thrill to watching a show shitty enough that it features an alien prank calling the president, singing about fucking a teenager, stealing cars, writing for soap operas, and staging an episode-long pastiche of Rear Window. These were terrible, terrible episodes, but I remember them better than most of season two simply because they were mad enough to stick with me. Much of season two, by contrast, is neither bad nor good enough to be remembered at all.

The wackadoo approach to season one plotting was fun. I hated the episodes, but I can guarantee I’ll be making jokes about ALF threatening President Reagan on the Air Force One shitterphone for the rest of this series, while I doubt I’ll ever feel compelled to remind you of Kate Sr.’s wedding. And sure, it’s stupid that they introduce Mr. O’s cousin Oliver to pop up whenever they need someone of the same species to squeeze Lynn’s boobies, but it’s not the same kind of stupid as ALF stealing a riding mower and implicitly wreaking tame havoc all over Los Angeles.

The one shining exception to this — and you know what I’m going to say before I say it — is “ALF’s Special Christmas.”

I mean come on. Just look at this shit.

This pandering, obnoxious, insulting kick in the emotional nutsuck not only hearkens back to the worst impulses of season one, but it surpasses them in every conceivable way. Its self-importance is suffocating from the very first frames, with the higher film quality, new title card, and super-sized running time all promising that you aren’t watching ALF; you are watching a major television event.

As much as I hated it, it’s memorable for that reason alone. It’s a prime example of an episode falling apart as we watch, straining beyond its own abilities to reach something it should have never bothered with, and splitting open to spill its innards everywhere for the world to see.

This is the kind of bad episode that circles back around to being worth watching. Not because it’s good, but because when you have a space alien saving Christmas from suicidal black Santas and ineffectual gynecologists, you do sort of have to watch. You won’t come away from it feeling the warmth that Paul Fusco intended, but you’ll talk about it, laugh about it, and years later probably even reflect upon it.

But that, sadly, is a bonkers exception to the forgettable norm. While season two is overall better, it rises from “bad” to simply “bland.” Of the two, there’s a kind of honor to the former. You’ll remember everyone who flips you the bird, but almost nobody who politely nods. It’s improved, but not enough to really count.

Looking back on the season as a whole is frustrating, because it hit both higher highs and lower lows than season one did…yet it didn’t do either consistently enough to carve out an identity for itself.

It did, however, do a respectable job of trying to find humanity in the hollow, braindead caricatures we met in season one. It failed as often as it succeeded, but the impulse was sound. Al Jean and Mike Reiss ran the show this time around, and their mission seemed to be to actually introduce us to the characters that we ostensibly “met” last season.

It’s not their fault that they inherited a world of lost causes. It is, however, to their great credit that they managed to redeem any of them, however temporarily.

With that, we have a few more bonus features before we move on to season three. And there, I get the feeling, I’ll find myself longing for these heady days of forgettable weekly blandness.

Roll on, season three.

And so, dear readers, we come to the end of season two, and the midway point of this entire project. I’ve been thinking about it, recently, and I have a few things I’d like to say about the experiment as a whole, but since Season Two Reviewed is coming up so soon, I think I’ll save it for that.

Before we dig into this — an episode I’ve been looking forward to since we started and the last episode before the precipitous drop in quality that is season three — I do want to make an announcement. Next week there will be no ALF. That’s because next Thursday is the day that The Lost Worlds of Power is finally getting released. So tune in for that. I promise, it’ll be worth postponing the season two bonus features.

After that, we’ll be back to business as usual. A handful of wrap-up articles, and then we dive headlong into the shallow pool that is ALF‘s homestretch.

Also, I will very soon be announcing the details of this year’s Noiseless Chatter Xmas Stream. If you were there last year, thank you. It was a genuinely great time, and I look forward to surpassing it in every possible way this time around. It’s also going to be a charity event benefiting The Trevor Project, so be sure to stop by!

Anyway, “Varsity Drag.” When I first started doing this project, I saw a few plot summaries. Nothing too spoilery, thankfully…just a sentence here or there about the main thrust of an episode. This one stood out to me immediately, because from the very first episode of this show, there’s been a serious logistical concern that’s never been directly addressed: the Tanner family’s finances.

The first thing ALF did on Earth was destroy their garage, and it’s only gotten worse since. Cars have been wrecked, hotels have been burnt down, and the home has been demolished many times over…often deliberately. ALF has been steadily bankrupting these people, whether the show wanted us to notice that fact or not.

And, here’s the thing: that’s okay. I don’t turn on a new episode of ALF and rage myself hoarse over the fact that it doesn’t open with Willie living in a cardboard box. It’s a sitcom, and you expect a certain elasticity. Especially when…y’know…it stars a naked alien that lives in the hamper.

But I’m interested in this, because it’s a legitimate angle for the show to take. 50 episodes in, it’s understandable that fresh ideas are harder to come by. That’s the case even on great shows. So for ALF to stumble upon something that’s not only fresh, but which digs into a largely ignored tension at the very heart of the show, well, that’s really cool.

Los Angeles isn’t a cheap place to live. The Tanners own a large home in what seems to be a quiet and safe part of the city, which implies that they’re paying more than the vast majority of people who share that city with them. On top of that, they’re a single-income family. And on top of that, Willie is a social worker. Social workers are important, and it’s a noble calling. But if you’ve ever known one, you already know that their salaries are insultingly low. In reality, there’s no way that the Tanners could stay afloat with ALF buttfucking all their earthly possessions to hell and back on a weekly basis.

Not that ALF’s drag on the family’s cashflow has never been mentioned before. It has…but only as the setup to a single joke or sequence. It’s never driven an episode the way it promises to here.

I don’t require “reality” in my sitcoms. I require some recognizable conflicts and dynamics. Good writing helps. Good acting helps. Beyond that? Go nuts.

But here the introduction of this “realistic” problem is tantalizing. It feels like “Varsity Drag” means something, and it’s something that’s been building for the past 49 episodes while we weren’t paying attention. It even ties in with something else that feels suspiciously like forward motion: Lynn going to college.

This could be good. And…a lot of it is.

The episode opens with Brian coming home and cheerily greeting ALF, who barely looks up from his reading material to say hi. It’s remarkable how clearly the lack of interest in this kid shines through. Brian all but ignored by ALF in person, and then when ALF looks through the mail he panics on the grounds that Lynn got an acceptance letter from Amherst College in Massachusetts. If Lynn goes there, she won’t be around anymore, and ALF is devastated.

ALF tells all of this to Brian, who stands there quietly absorbing the knowledge that even the lonely spaceman refugee of an extinct civilization wants nothing to do with him.

The sight of ALF in a t-shirt and sweater vest is hilarious to me in ways that I can’t even begin to express. He’s doting over Lynn, making sure she understands how sad he will be when she goes away, because the Tanners don’t have any other children. Maybe if they had a son, or something, things would be different. Especially if he was young, because children are full of wonder. It would be easy to forge an exciting relationship. In fact, you’d almost have to work not to. Children are always surprised. Everything’s new to them. An alien playmate from a distant world would be so welcome!

But, alas, it’s not to be. Kate’s womb has shriveled with resentment, and Willie’s penis can only discharge puffs of crack smoke.

A few very nice things happen here. Andrea Elson is still not a great actress by any means, but she’s gotten better at tipping into “very good” territory. Her promise to keep in touch with ALF is adorable, and perfectly in line with the sweet relationship these two passively formed once ALF stopped trying to fuck her. And there’s a little moment of internal giddiness that she plays perfectly when she explains that moving out will allow her to make her own decisions…and her own mistakes.

That’s wonderfully observed. So much of the time, yes, teenagers think they know everything. And that gets them into trouble. But the rest of the time…well, they know they’re getting into trouble, and they do it anyway. Making mistakes is fun. There is a giddiness to it, and coming from a family in which listening to Willie cry himself to sleep qualifies as a hobby, Lynn has a lot to look forward to.

Should she drink too much? Sleep around? Lie about where she’s going? Cheat? Backstab her friends? Slack off on the school work? Spend grocery money on things she doesn’t need?

No, she shouldn’t. And yet…of course she should.

Teens need to make mistakes. Those that don’t…well, they end up making those mistakes as adults, when it’s too late to get away with them.

There needs to be an element of moderation, of course. Lynn waking up with a hangover, for instance, is a mistake…but it’s not as bad as her driving drunk and killing someone. Which is why that level of awareness — and, yes, giddiness — is useful. If she knows she’s making mistakes, she’s aware enough to regulate their severity. She can push the limits of her morals and good sense without pushing the limits of outright stupidity. It’s an important part of growing up, and Lynn barely suppressing her excitement at the fact that she’ll soon get to experience it is one of the highlights of the episode.

Oh, and to go back to the relationship she’s forged with ALF: much like the premise of this episode itself, isn’t it funny how when the writers stop trying to force ideas on the show, something far more natural and enjoyable fills the void?

ALF has potential…it’s just not in the direction the writing staff wants it to be.

Willie and Kate come in and shoo ALF out of the room, which is usually the best part of any episode. And, snarky as I meant that to be, it really does lead to a pretty great scene.

They need to talk to Lynn alone, because they have some bad news. No matter how they slice it, they can’t afford to send Lynn away for college.

So much about this exchange is perfect. The way the realization dawns on Andrea Elson before she’s told, causing her to turn slowly away from her parents and retreat inwardly to keep from crying. Willie speaking euphemistically about what drained their finances, even though they all know it’s ALF. Kate explaining that the plan was for her to get a full-time job…until their unexpected house guest showed up and needed ’round-the-clock supervision.

These are things that make sense within the reality of the show. I spoke in the “Tequila” review a few weeks ago about the necessity of contrivance. But whereas “Tequila” contrived a situation by saying “fuck it, who cares” and throwing logic out the window, “Varsity Drag” contrives its situation by linking it up with unexpected answers to questions that we should have been asking all along.

Here, at this point, “Varisty Drag” feels like we’re checking in with a family. We can imagine what this might have been like. There’s no way this financial catastrophe is only being recognized by Willie and Kate right now…but what could they do? Tell her sooner and breed resentment? Or wait and hope that she changes her mind about wanting to travel so far for school?

It’s a question with no right or wrong answer. There was no way to come out of this situation on top, so you can’t fault them. Especially when they don’t beat around the bush. They know this is going to upset their daughter…but they tell her anyway. Flat out. ALF’s name doesn’t get mentioned until she calls them on it, but everything else they tell her is honest and direct. They’re doing the last thing any good parent ever wants to do: admit that they’ve let their child down.

Elson’s performance is marvelous here. The news hit me like a gut punch, not because it was unexpected — I’d read this synopsis, remember — but because I believed that it devastated Lynn. From suppressed giggle to suppressed anger in the space of just a few lines, and Elson actually manages to make us believe in it.

Again, she’s not great, but watching her grow so much as an actress has been one of ALF‘s most consistent pleasures.

There’s another great moment toward the end of this scene, when Willie begins with “If it’s any consolation…” and you just know it’s going to be painful.

He tells her that they’ve had a rare, one-of-a-kind opportunity to live with and observe a creature from another world. One of the far too rare acknowledgments of just how fucking batshit nuts the premise of this show is. And it gives Willie a chance to nerd out about it for the first time since…I don’t know. The pilot?

His excitability is palpable…and it overrides his awareness of what his daughter is feeling. There’s no laughter here, which means this is being played straight, and that sells the absurdity even better. This is a painful moment…and “Varsity Drag” is smart enough to let it be painful.

At breakfast (or whenthefuckever) the next day (or whenthefuckever) Brian gives a lecture on how to eat an Oreo cookie, so you really know they’ve given up all hope for this kid. There’s a decently funny line when ALF says that twisting to top off and licking up all the gooey stuff is the same method he uses to eat a jar of mayonnaise. What really impresses me is that they take such a throwaway line (funny though it is) and tie it right back into the plot, having Lynn sarcastically highlight this as an example of the great education she’ll get by staying home.

It’s undercut by some more first-draft writing, though. In “I’m Your Puppet” there was this weird moment where it seemed like Willie was supposed to say “packing peanuts” instead of “Styrofoam,” as only the first would make sense in the context of ALF’s joke that they tasted stale.

Here, ALF concludes that everyone’s upset because they want Lynn out of the house, and he asks if it’s because she drinks milk straight out of the carton.

It makes sense, except that throughout the scene, we see Lynn carrying milk in a glass jug.

This is the kind of thing that’s likely enough to happen. The writers are doing their thing in one room, and the props department is doing their thing elsewhere. The writers ask for a milk carton, the props department gives them a milk jug. Why not, right? They don’t know there’s a joke relying on it unless they’re told there’s one. And if this lack of second takes and simple rewrites for the sake of continuity tells us anything, it’s that nobody cares enough to get these things right.

Many things could have been done here. Paul Fusco could have changed the word “carton” to “jug” when he said his line. Somebody could have run out for a real carton of milk and swapped out the prop. Or they could have just told Elson not to carry around the jug at all since the joke doesn’t require the visual.

All very simple solutions. And yet, they just keep rolling.

It reminds me of a moment in one of my favorite shows of all time: Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace. It was a parody of poorly-made television, done both lovingly and brilliantly. In one episode, the main character’s superior chastises him and then asks, “Understood?!” The main character sternly replies, “As crystal.”

The joke — not spelled out for the audience — is that the superior got his line wrong, and there was no retake. He was supposed to ask, “Clear?!” But they kept rolling, nobody seemed to notice, and the line that was meant to build upon it was rendered nonsensical.

I am reminded of that moment a lot watching ALF. You get their intentions, much of the time anyway, but the distance between those intentions and the reality of what we’re watching is comically wide. ALF, as much time and agony as it took to make, comes across as hilariously inept. ALF itself is its own best joke.

Lynn reiterates her frustrations and storms off, which spurs some nice lament on the part of her parents. It hurts them that they can’t give their daughter what she wants, and there’s a nice dynamic at play here: ALF is the reason they can’t give her what she wants…and they also don’t want to upset ALF.

Put aside the bizarre fact that this, logically, cements ALF as more important to them than their own daughter, and focus only on those points. The ALF writers even at their best aren’t up to the challenge, but that should make for an interesting episode of television. The emotional conflict between letting someone down and trying to avoid letting someone else down would raise the stakes, allowing the jokes to hit harder.

There could also be some fun had with the fact that ALF isn’t quite their child, but they vow not to make the same mistakes with him as they did with Lynn. Again, this show isn’t the one to pull it off, but what a great punchline this episode could have in Willie and Kate scrimping and saving for ALF’s college fund instead.

Whatever. I shouldn’t complain yet, because up to this point, “Varsity Drag” isn’t half bad. It won’t quite remain that way, and the ending is an insultingly massive cop-out, but when even half of an episode of ALF is worth watching, that’s impressive.

ALF starts digging through the budget for the family, which is how he finds out he’s the cash-sink. Kate tells him that the $10,000 expenditure labelled “miscellaneous,” which he directly questions, is what it costs to support him. This leads a nice visual of ALF being taken aback, as well as the first ever good line given to Brian: “I would have guessed higher.”

Then ALF says, “So what you’re saying is…I’m the reason Lynn can’t go away to school.”

And like the pain in Lynn’s bedroom, “Varsity Drag” is smart enough to let this linger. Nobody offers a verbal response at all, which I like well enough. What I like even more is the silently sarcastic “oh well” gesture we get from Kate, immediately before she stands up and walks away:

There’s some good acting in this one. I’ll give it that.

Later on ALF summons Willie and Kate the most effective way he knows how: he politely asks where the fire extinguisher is. It’s a good gag, playing into the characterization and moving the plot along.

In fact, this whole first half of “Varsity Drag” just feels so effortless. Like a little bit of magic can seep through when the staff stops trying to force things. Before long we’ll even get to watch it fall apart when they do force something. It’s a pretty striking contrast.

He tells Kate that she will have to get a job, and tells Willie that he’ll need a second one. He even set up an interview for Willie, as a men’s room attendant.

Willie angrily asks, “Do I look like a men’s room attendant?”

To which ALF replies with the last great line in the episode: “No. You look like a Scrubbing Bubble.”

And, dudes, he totally does.

Like, that’s a hilarious comparison on its own. But then you realize it actually sort of fits, which is a whole other layer of comedy.

There’s a moment here in which Willie says that nobody’s getting another job, and they’ll just have to make sacrifices. ALF asks if that means they’ll throw him in a volcano, and the joke is that Willie waits too long before saying no.

But it doesn’t really work. Max Wright doesn’t lose himself in consideration the way Anne Schedeen has (such as the scene in “Can I Get a Witness?” when she and ALF lock eyes in what seems almost like a psychological game of chicken). Instead, he just pauses. He knows he’s supposed to wait before delivering his line, so he waits. And that’s all he does. He waits for a while, yes, but since that’s all he does it took me a bit to understand why it was even supposed to be a joke.

ALF suggests getting a job himself, to which Willie replies “Nigga plz.” Then the adults go to bed, secure in the knowledge that leaving ALF alone with the want-ads will lead to no wacky developments whatsoever.

OOPS

Later that night ALF wakes Willie and Kate up to show them the living room, which is full of newspapers. I feel as though ALF leading people into the living room to show off his latest dumbass attack is an unsung hallmark of this show. I know it happened in “Oh, Tannerbaum” with the ruined tannerbaum, and in “We Gotta Get Out of This Place” with the relocated furniture, but I’m sure I’m missing at least a half dozen more examples that I’ve successfully erased from memory.

Willie asks what they’re doing there, and Kate — sagely — says “Let me guess,” correctly positing that ALF has become a paperboy. I like that Kate has become aware of her own show’s wackadoo approach to plot development.

ALF…yeah. Somehow he’s a paperboy with ten paper routes already. And he has all these newspapers even though he can’t leave the house. So I guess somebody just walked into the living room and left this shit here without waking anyone up or seeing ALF. It’s a hell of a leap over several important logical points, but I’ll come to that in a moment.

It’s not a great scene by any means, but there are a few cute bits in here. One example is ALF telling Willie that the newspaper company gave him five hundred and one copies by mistake, followed by a conspiratorial little laugh. Another is Kate telling him that he can’t deliver the papers. He replies, “Sure I can! You haven’t seen my throwing arm,” followed immediately by Willie grabbing ALF’s wrist so he can’t demonstrate.

But that’s also where the episode goes off the rails, because next we see…

This. And you can feel the writers forcing something that is doomed not to work.

It’s the big setpiece of the episode, dominating the second half, and yet it’s really not that funny. It’s not even that funny an idea. Willie and Kate deliver papers while ALF sits in the back seat cracking jokes? It’s the kind of thing that might have worked as a vague pitch (“How about, I dunno, ALF gets a paper route?”), but by the time someone sits down to type it, it’s painfully apparent that they had no idea where to go from there.

Consequently, a massive chunk of the episode is consumed by watching Kate and Willie cruise around for no actual reason. I’ll say more about this shortly, but for now, I remember a while back that a commenter said that every time we see the Tanners driving around, it takes place at night.

With only one exception (“On the Road Again”), I think he’s been right. It stands out to me, and I’m not sure why they did this. Maybe just because they get to save on the money they would have used to light a daytime set. Whatever it is, it’s odd.

So, yeah, the writers take a natural — and overall quite good — narrative, and reduce it to an excuse to get these idiots in car delivering newspapers…even though they don’t have any good jokes to go along with it.

But, unlike last week, I don’t hate it.

I want to take a moment to spotlight this comment left by kim, who might be the only person to have commented on all of my ALF reviews to date. (The rest of you slackers need to catch up, stat.)

ugh. obviously you didn’t get this episode at all.okay, I’ll explain it for you. jake’s graduation party is mentioned because it is party ALF would like to go to, but he can’t because of the fear being seen by the public. ALF gets really bummed about it and finally had enough of hiding, so that we he decided to reveal himself to the world in a press release. the first dream sequence is suppose to be what willie is imaging would happen to ALF if he reveal himself to the public. the second dream sequence is what ALF imagines if he would reveal himself to the public, he thinks he will become famous and host is own talk show I guess? which really would of made better sense if the roles were revised, david letterman was the talk show host and ALF just be the guest host. the point of the documentary with the orangutang was to show ALF would only make things worse for himself if he decided to go public, the orangutang was last of it’s kind and died because it spend the rest of it’s life in captivity without any interaction to the outside world, willie thinks the same thing will happen to ALF once he gets captured by the alien task force. then ALF realizes the big mistake he just made and decide to call off the press release, i think Robin Leach refs to one of the reporters or talk show hosts is was going to meant i guess. ALF becomes depressed because he now realizes he is forever struck to a life of loneliness and isolation and the tanners throw him a surprise party with all his friends to show is not as lonely as he thinks he is. *phew*

And I’ll admit that I was playing up my confusion for the purposes of being funny. “We Are Family” was a shitty episode, but I understood its theme, and I saw it carry through the episode.

The reason I was being so snarky and hard on it was…well, read that comment. That comment is a summary, and it’s still absurdly long. Even poor kim has to take a breath after getting through it.

I don’t hold this comment up to laugh at it. Not at all. It’s a valid comment, but I do think it unintentionally illustrates the problem with that episode. While its main theme was clear, its method of exploring that theme was preposterous.

There’s no reason for a simple “ALF is lonely” concept to incorporate hallucinations of government custody, interviews with Sandy Duncan, and Ugandan orangutan documentaries. These are disparate pieces forced to serve the hazy idea of a plot, as opposed to natural outgrowths of what we’re watching.

So, yeah. I’m aware that ALF was sad, and I can make an argument for how all of that might — in some distant way — tie into that theme. But “Varsity Drag” shows us how it should actually be done.

As much of a letdown as the second half of this episode is (enough of one that I’m going on this rant instead of even talking about it), the theme is explored through natural, identifiable progression:

Lynn is accepted to college. Lynn is excited about it. The family can’t afford to send her, because ALF’s drained their finances. ALF feels bad, so he gets a job to make up the difference.

That’s every plot beat. Kim’s comment above contains every plot beat of “We Are Family,” but, by contrast, it’s far longer, and any given part of it needs an explanation of how it ties into what the fucking episode is about. If you need that many plot beats in a half-hour sitcom, you’re not telling a story; you’re just showing us a bunch of stuff.

“Varsity Drag” has no such issues. It has other issues, but as far as organic plot development goes, it’s perfect. Even the throwaway jokes tie, for the most part, into its theme. We don’t need to be reminded about what we’re watching, because the episode never forgets it.

That’s why I’m so hard on episodes like “We Are Family” and “Strangers in the Night.” This isn’t a great show, but it certainly doesn’t need to slide so deeply into incompetence. Whether it’s funny or not, it has every ability to tell a coherent story, and I don’t think that’s too much to ask from it, either.

The only delivery that matters at all is the final one, to Mrs. Ochmonek, who catches Kate dropping it off. She comes out and tells her with a tone of serious concern that she didn’t know the Tanners were so hard up for money. Kate says that they’re just trying to earn a little extra money to send Lynn to college, but Mrs. Ochmonek is still worried, and offers the Tanners a place to stay if things get worse.

In the next scene, she comes over with canned goods to help them out financially. It’s a big joke to the show, because Mrs. Ochmonek is such a stupid busybody!!!

And yet, once again, when’s the last time the Tanners have done anything nice for anyone? Willie’s a social worker, but the Ochmoneks seem to be the only ones who care about their fellow man. He wouldn’t save them from a burning building, but they’ll drop everything at any time of day to bring the Tanners food if they think they need it.

It’s even more nice of them when you remember that the Ochmoneks have never been portrayed as well-off. To give away a box of food is probably a grander gesture for them than it would be for most families.

And yet we’re supposed to side with the Tanners, who look through the shitty selection of cocktail onions and chickpeas, and snicker and guffaw and say THOSE FUCKIN TARDS.

The show has no idea what it’s doing. I’ve used the Flanders family as a counterexample before, and I’ll use them again now. Only in rare cases was the joke on the Flanders family. More often, the joke was that Homer hated them so much in spite of what great neighbors they were. If Ned was ever the butt of a joke (at least in the golden years) it was because he was too much of a pushover, or too devoted to his religion. Neither of those things, it’s important to note, are inherently bad things. That’s why, most of the time, he and his family were able to serve as model citizens…much to Homer’s undeserved chagrin. That’s funny.

ALF wants us to think of the Ochmoneks as the neighbors from hell, but they are inadvertently painting the Tanners with that brush. These are the people we’re supposed to identify with: these people who laugh and tease and put down those who step in to help them. We’re not meant to identify with Homer when he’s mean to Ned; we’re meant to laugh at him. Here, we are asked to identify with the people being so rude and dismissive.

And that’s massive shitness.

Not quite as shit as the end of the episode, in which everything is wrapped up with Lynn saying, “Fuck it, I don’t need to go to Amhert, I don’t know what came over me, I was totally riding the cotton dildo.” Then they all hug and fuck it.

In the short scene before the credits ALF makes a joke about eating the cat.

It’s a shame to see such a great opening half fall apart so catastrophically. And, yet, it does follow a kind of internal logic. The resolution is a bit pat, but we get a sense that Lynn’s flattered enough by what her family did (worked for like, two hours, yippee shit) that it’s put some things into perspective for her. It’s only a sense, as the episode doesn’t leave it any room to breathe. Much better to eat up all that time of Willie and Kate pretending to drive while ALF babbles nonsense at the back of their heads.

The plot, unlike last week, holds together. It’s just a shame that the writing, by contrast, falls apart. It’d odd to look at the first half of this episode, and then the second, and believe that they came from the same show, but, again, I’ll take half a good episode than the wall to wall garbage we usually get.

And that, my friends, brings us to the end of season two. Join me soon for the recap…before we trudge on into murky depths of season three.

I can’t thank you enough for sticking with me through the first half of this project. May the second half be even better. I love you all.

MELMAC FACTS: On Melmac, $10k could support a family of four for one year. Willie went to Amherst, and judging by some lines in “Tequila” we can conclude that Kate went there as well.