Category: alf

Counting this episode, I have only three reviews left to do in season one. I’m…kind of amazed how quickly this has gone by. I mean, when all is said and done it will still have taken 25 weeks, which is nothing to sneeze at, but it doesn’t really feel that long. In fact, I’m almost sad that ALF only has four seasons.

Almost.

This one starts with ALF calling Willie home from work for an emergency: the TV broke. ha ha. That’s it. That’s the whole scene in one sentence.

Since there’s nothing more to talk about before the credits roll, I’ll take this opportunity to mention something that’s been on my mind for a while: the Tanners really have fuck-all to do with this show, don’t they?

In theory, the premise of ALF should be “a family secretly harbors an alien from outer space.” And you’d be forgiven for remembering the show as actually being about that. I sure as heck did. But now, watching it as an adult, it’s not that. It’s “an alien does whatever the fuck he pleases, with special guests: the other people in the house.”

I get the feeling this was the doing of Paul Fusco. The show itself looks like it’s built around the premise of a family dealing with their extra-terrestrial house guest, but in fact they’re just there. They almost never have anything to do that isn’t directly related to ALF, and even then they’re just passively responding to the shit that he pulls. They seem to have no say in their own lives, because they really don’t; the show is driven entirely by ALF. This is why they wait quietly while ALF delivers long monologues, react to his antics with funny faces or vague bemusement, and stand around asking “Where’s Poochie?” whenever ALF isn’t on screen.

Personally, I think that’s a big reason that ALF hasn’t had a cultural resuscitation of any kind, the way The Brady Bunch, The Addams Family, The Beverly Hillbillies, Dragnet, even the fucking Smurfs have had. Those are all relics of bygone eras in entertainment, and whether you like their rebirths or not — believe me, I won’t argue that you should — the fact is that their formats and universes allowed there to at least be a chance for rebirth.

With ALF, that’s not the case. Its format was nothing special, and its universe is non-existent. There is no universe; it’s just ALF. Unlike The Muppets, ALF doesn’t come with a storied history and limitless potential for comedy. He’s just one character…and not much of a character at that. He headlines the show, but doesn’t have the enthusiasm of Kermit. He’s tremendously self-centered, but not with the amusing vanity of Miss Piggy. He spits out one liners, but lacks the sadness at the heart of poor Fozzie. And he’s constantly pulling off zany shit, but the writers can’t think of anything “zanier” than stealing a lawnmower, which means even his most outlandish moments don’t measure up to Gonzo’s tamest ones.

Why am I comparing him to Muppets? Well, because The Muppets are a perfect illustration of why they were suited for a rebirth, and ALF is not: they’re more than what they do. There are always at least two levels at play with any given Muppet: what they’re doing, and what they’re feeling. Jim Henson and his crew didn’t rely exclusively on jokes to make people laugh…they relied on characterization. That’s why they’re suited for recontextualization; it’s worth putting them in new situations to see how they’ll react. With ALF, there’s no such need; he reacts the same way every time, regardless of context, because neither he nor anybody around him are actually characters.

Fusco clearly wanted ALF to be the star, which is fine. The problem is that by streamlining the rest of the cast — very often to the point of irrelevance — he’s not giving ALF anyone to bounce off of. He never gets to grow, develop, or surprise. He’s always just ALF, because Fusco imagines there’s only room in the spotlight for one.

If Fusco and his cronies were interested in creating an actual world for ALF to play in, we’d remember him more fondly. We’d be more interested in seeing him reinvented and recontextualized. But since there was never any context to begin with, what’s the point? By forcing ALF to be the star — not just of this show overall, but of every moment of this show — Fusco ironically ensured that he’d be completely forgettable.

See? Told you I had nothing to say about the intro.

The broken TV seems to set the plot in motion…but really doesn’t. It’s another one of those episodes that feels like two unrelated scripts got stapled together and nobody cared enough to pull them apart. For most of the episode it seems like it’s going to be about the TV, but then all of a sudden it’s a Very Special celebration of the lovers, the dreamers and ALF.

God. Get Muppets on the brain once and they just don’t go away. Also, I can’t wait to see the new movie. The Great Muppet Caper is one of my favorite films of all time, and this seems like a feature-length celebration of that one. Can. Not. Wait.

Ugh, fucking ALF.

So anyway the TV is broken, which is yet another brilliant example of the kind of magical stories you can tell when your main character is a space alien. ALF paces around the living room at a loose end, because even he can’t figure out what he’s supposed to do with a plot like this. He bitches about the TV to Willie for a while, and then Brian comes in saying he needs help with his project for the Science Carnival.

The running joke is that the Science Carnival has clowns.

Re-read that sentence a hundred thousand times and tell me if it gets progressively funnier. If it doesn’t, you might as well skip this episode.

ALF says he’ll help Brian, but then Willie says the same thing, so ALF talks some smack about the “rain gauge” Willie invented that he found in Lynn’s closet. I don’t even know where to begin with that sentence. So I really fucking won’t.

Willie bristles that ALF made fun of this alleged piece of shit invention because he’s hella into meteorology dudes and totally has been forever, just like all those other hobbies of his that never get mentioned again, and then Brian goes off to do the project on his own because fuck these guys seriously fuck them.

It’s another day and ALF is still pissing and moaning about the TV. Kate tells him he can have the portable TV in their bedroom, but that’s too small for King Dick of Cock Mountain. He wants Willie to have the big TV repaired, but Willie says he’s going to ship it back to the factory in Libya because it’s under warranty. I don’t know where to start with that sentence either SO I REALLY FUCKING WON’T.

Brian comes in with his model of the solar system which is a big pile of shit because nobody helped him with it.

Why didn’t anyone help him with it again? Were ALF and Willie arguing about the TV for 24 hours a day? I know Brian walked off in the last scene, but couldn’t one of his god damned parents check in on him and offer to help at some point? What if he choked to death on one of these styrofoam balls? How many weeks would pass before these assholes even noticed?

They make a point of the fact that he did it alone, and I guess I’m glad they did because he entered the room with Lynn, which would have made me think she helped him. But, nope. I guess they just stuck her in this scene because they had nothing else to do with the character.

Why does she even exist? Nothing against Andrea Elson, who sure as hell doesn’t get much to work with, but if they killed off the character between episodes, would anything actually change in any way?

ALF says Brian is missing two planets out past Pluto: Dave and Alvin. Willie tells Brian not to listen to ALF, and so ends another extraordinary day of sitting around the living room with a space alien.

The next afternoon Brian comes home and gives ALF some serious ‘tude. Turns out he put those extra planets in after all, and now he’s banned from the Science Carnival. I can’t even take any joy from ALF being on the receiving end of some bitching for once, because Benji Gregory delivers all of his lines with a bizarre, misplaced inflection that makes him sound like the raw audio from a Peanuts special.

There is a good joke here, though: after Brian leaves, ALF picks up the phone — SEE HOW THERE WAS A PHONE ON THE TABLE SO THE PUPPET WOULDN’T HAVE TO MOVE THAT IS THE MAGIC OF HOLLYWOOD FOR YOU — and dials information, requesting the number for “Brian’s teacher.”

That’s funny! Just like the speed-reading joke from “Ochmonek of Darkness” was funny! And just like that joke, they immediately piss all over it. In this case it’s ALF realizing his mistake and correctly asking for the elementary school’s phone number. Hilarious. I’m so glad he figured it out; the last thing I’d want is for a sitcom to keep me laughing.

Then, after the commercials, we see this:

Uh…what? This scene was in “Try to Remember.” You know…that clip show from halfway through the season. I even had a caption contest about it.

At the time I thought it was some dumbass gag snipped from syndication — as, indeed, many of the clips in that episode were — but I guess they included a clip of an episode that wouldn’t even be shown until the end of the season? For crying out loud, the whole conceit of that episode is that the family is reminding ALF of the things they’ve been through so that he can get his memory back. In this case they reminded him of something that hadn’t actually happened yet.

My brain hurts.

So I guess this episode was filmed a long, long time ago…and just sat in the can until now. I’m not surprised; it’s certainly not a very good one. Maybe they were hoping to bury it toward the end of the season where nobody would notice it.

Anyway, yeah, you already know what happens here. Willie is fixing the TV, so ALF plugs it in while his hands are inside, reminding Max Wright of who’s boss around here.

Lovely stuff. The fake audience whoops it up over the near fatal electrocution of a sitcom dad.

Somebody comes to the door, and ALF thinks it’s Consumer Ed, some TV personality who reports on scams and flams. He called the guy, apparently, even though the broken TV has nothing to do with any kind of scam at all as far as I can tell.

And I really thought it would be Consumer Ed, because this is ALF and who the fuck cares who comes to the door on what flimsy pretense anymore.

But, no! It’s…

Marcia Wallace! Holy shit!

I’m genuinely surprised we get to see her again, because usually when I like a character on this show, Paul Fusco hits them over the head with a shovel and buries them under the shed. But, wow. Here she is.

She introduces herself as Principal Lyman, and since this episode was shot before the clip show in the middle of the season, I guess this is “technically” the introduction of the character, meaning we should have recognized who she was in “It Isn’t Easy…Bein’ Green.” But who cares…she’s always Marcia Wallace to me.

She wants to talk to Willie about the phone call he placed earlier to Brian’s teacher…one “Miss Larva.”

…yeah. Miss Larva. And the last time we saw Marcia Wallace, she was in an episode with something called Dr. Potato Famine. Man, ALF writing staff…save some hilarious names for the rest of us!

There is actually a really good moment when Marcia Wallace asks if Willie’s family is home. He says no. Marcia Wallace then says that she thought she heard him yelling at somebody before he opened the door.

Willie replies, “Oh, that was probably the TV.” And then we cut to this:

…which is the single funniest sight gag ALF has done.

It’s actually good. The rhythm of the joke is great, the timing of the cuts to and back away from the smoking TV is perfect, and the uncommon angle of the room helps it to stand out as a legitimately strong comic moment. Everything about this small gag works…it’s this show’s equivalent of cutting to Homer’s spice rack. It’s that good. Who let the One Good Writer into the editing room?

But, as they say, all things must pass. We still need to wade through the horse shit that constitutes the rest of this episode, so I hope you enjoyed your brief moment of fresh air.

Marcia Wallace sits down and refreshes Willie’s memory of the phone call, where he learns that he threatened to pull Brian out of school. Willie excuses himself and heads into the kitchen to hatefuck ALF.

ALF, however, pulls out his Melmacian star chart, and proves to Willie that Dave and Alvin exist. In fact, Willie is able to identify Planet Dave as being “Chiron,” which was discovered in the late 70s — really, in our actual universe — and was briefly under consideration to be named a 10th planet.

I’m…more than a little bit shocked that the writers bothered to tie ALF’s fictional planet into some real-world cosmology. That’s actually kind of cool.

Willie is impressed, but he says he can’t tell Marcia Wallace about this. ALF questions him about it, asking why, and the laugh track takes a break so that Paul Fusco can deliver his big, stirring monologue about the importance of dreamers, about keeping an open mind, and all that hooey that nobody ever remembers ALF saying because it’s self-congratulatory bullshit.

Really, though, why can’t Willie tell this to Marcia Wallace? We’ve just established that Dave is actually Chiron, which does exist, and which he can prove to her. Can’t he just say that he was teaching Brian about Chiron, and that’s what the extra planet was? The second extra planet could be from a further discussion he had with his son, about how our knowledge is always expanding or something, and Brian took it to heart and added another planet to represent that.

I don’t know. I’m reaching. And for that to work somebody would actually have to buy Willie as being a good dad who would discuss things intelligently with his children or take an interest in their school work, so obviously that’s off the table. Still, he can explain at least one of these planets on non-insane non-Melmacian terms, so why wouldn’t he do that at least?

I guess it wasn’t a good idea for the writers to tie Planet Dave into real-life cosmological fact after all, since they’re now having the characters treat it like something only a space alien could know about. What was the point of doing the work to connect the fictional dots to our real ones if you then can’t have the characters do the same?

Willie pusses out of pussing out, though, and gives Marcia Wallace the same speech we just heard, about the importance of open minds and dreamers and here’s to the crazy ones and all that crap.

The doorbell rings again and it’s Consumer Ed because jesus christ this show.

Consumer Ed starts talking about the TV, but Marcia Wallace thinks he’s talking about Brian getting kicked out of school, which makes no sense whatsoever because Willie didn’t even know she was coming over, so how in shit’s name could he have organized an intervention in the form of a live news broadcast?

At least, I assume it’s live, because Consumer Ed and his film crew hang around letting these idiots talk about the Science Carnival, which is not something he would ever do if he needed to film an actual consumer affairs report for later use. This has nothing to do with his assignment. At. All. If Consumer Ed went back to his boss with this tape of two nobodies talking about a fucking fourth grade space project they’d think he had a Howard Beale style meltdown and have him committed.

Anyway Kate, Brian and Lynn come home, and Marcia Wallace gives the dreamers speech a third time, so that it can go on the news, along with the announcement that Brian will be allowed to display his unpainted styrofoam balls on popsicle sticks in the Science Carnival.

…and I’m sorry, but I can’t hold this in any longer: yes, “dreamers” have a place in science. Yes, “dreamers” helped us achieve flight and circumnavigate the globe…both examples which are used by the episode. Yes. Yes.

But we just call them “dreamers.” They weren’t really, because things didn’t stop with the dream. They did research, they experimented, they attempted, they explored possibilities. In short, they were scientists. Maybe not by trade, but certainly by nature. We call them “dreamers” because that’s a nice and romantic way to put it…but what we really mean is that they pulled the dream down and turned it into fact through dedication and hard work.

Here, the opposite is happening. Yes, there’s a Planet Dave and a Planet Alvin. But thick-headedly insisting that they exist is not the same as proving they exist. The former might be the work of a dreamer, but is insistence without evidence the kind of thing science needs? Is that inspiring? Of course not. ALF and Willie may know those planets exist, but nobody else does. The inspiring thing would be to prove they exist. Fuck, Willie’s already got one in the bag. That is the kind of dreamer science needs. The kind that doesn’t just ask, “What if…?” and walk away, but the kind that asks, “How do we figure this out?”

The kind that does something. ALF (and then Willie, and then Marcia Wallace) seems to be endorsing the viewpoint that if you believe something and the facts that everyone else has access to don’t support it, they have no right to tell you you’re wrong.

But isn’t that kind of…false? At the very least, what you should do in that situation is gather facts that demonstrate that you’re right. That’s what science is. What ALF wants you to do is piss and moan until people stop telling you that what you believe is demonstrably false.

…you know, that guest appearance ALF made on Bill O’Reilly is suddenly making a lot more sense to me.

Ugh. ALF.

Anyway, the family gathers around to watch the news report, so I guess Consumer Ed really did finish and edit a piece about the grade school Science Carnival when what he was supposed to report on was consumer affairs. Is anybody in the entire ALF universe an even vaguely capable human being?

The family doesn’t get to hear all the angry calls from confused viewers, though, because the new TV starts to smoke and it catches fire and that’s the punchline of the entire episode so fuck you.

MELMAC FACTS: On Melmac ALF was known as Mr. Science, but can’t fix his space ship because he’s not good with tools. That’s also the reason he dropped out of dental school. Melmacians only have four teeth. ALF almost collided with Planet Alvin on his way to Earth. He also stopped on one of the planets to take a dump. God damn it.

When I was in Vegas I met up with Ron DelVillano, a talented artist friend who took the opportunity to question me about the ALF reviews. They were good, he said, and interesting, but he couldn’t believe I was getting so many words out of each one.

I’ll be honest: I kind of can’t believe it either. A few times I’ve deliberately tried to keep them short, but it never seems to work out that way. Each episode ends up having entire scenes I gloss over or omit entirely, and I still find myself staring at 5,000 words about some unmemorable episode of a show nobody’s cared about for two decades. I don’t know why.

This one, though, I will try to keep relatively short, simply because I don’t know how much I’ll have to say about anything apart from the ending. That’s not to say that “The Gambler” is any good before we get to the ending; it’s just…holy hell that ending.

Anyway, it starts with Willie and Kate in a tizzy because they only have a week to prepare for their garage sale. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never spent more than a few hours preparing for a garage sale. It’s not the prom; don’t you just shovel a bunch of your crap onto the lawn and trade it for pocket change? Leave it to writers of ALF to treat it like you’re preparing for the Rapture.

Willie is upset because Kate wants to sell his ship in a bottle, but we never find out why he’s so attached to it. Did he make it himself? My eyes are telling me that it’s just some chintzy thing from an airport gift shop, but I have a feeling the show wants us to believe that this is another one of Willie’s disposable hobbies.

Why can’t they give him a hobby and stick with it? It’s changing constantly. Didn’t Kate Sr. say he was always whipping up killer robots in his shed or something? Whatever happened to that? Why do we replace it with ships in bottles, skydiving, and writing songs about asparagus? I’m absolutely positive that the writers had no idea whatsoever who Willie was when this show began, and I’m pretty sure they’re ending the season without having any clearer concept of who he is, or who they even want him to be.

ALF pops up through the window that exists only so that he can have something to pop up through. He tells Willie that he read his credit card statement, and $11,000 is way too much to spend on balloons. Willie explains to him that the “balloon payment” is referring to his mortgage, but ALF keeps thinking it’s an actual balloon a million fuckin’ times even though Willie and Kate keep telling him it’s not and Jesus Christ I’m going to write another five thousand words about this shit, aren’t I?

The credits come and go* and we start the episode proper with Willie asking ALF if he understands balloon payments now. Huh? So I guess the credits sequence took the place of the conversation in which an aging white man explained the financing of the house to the alien that lives in his laundry room…but why? Was anyone watching really concerned about whether or not ALF would come to understand the concept of mortgage payments?

Last week the show didn’t bother to connect in any way the action of the pre-credits sequence to the actual episode, and though I gave it a bit of guff for that, that’s really fine. It’s a sitcom, after all, and sometimes the rigid structure creates gaps and irregularities. A good show knows how to pave over the holes, or even use them to its advantage, but this isn’t a good show. This is ALF, which for some reason believes that the one time it needs to create a feeling of more realistic progression it’s so that they can assure as that ALF now understands the intricacies of late 80s homeowner financing.

The. Fuck.

Willie moans again about having to sell his ship in a bottle, but Kate tells him they need to make space, which is why they’re having the garage sale to begin with. This thing is the size of Willie’s forearm at best; can’t it sit in a closet somewhere if he loves it so much? ALF believes that the real reason for the garage sale is that the Tanners need money — presumably because they’ve had to replace everything they own about 21 times over since his hairy dickass moved in — but even if that’s true, how much money do they think they’re going to get for Willie’s I LOVE PENSACOLA BEACH tchotchke?

Then Kate reveals that she’s going to sell Willie’s hockey stick and he goes bananas and holy shit how many never-mentioned hobbies does this asshole need? Willie Tanner has absolutely no consistent character traits. I used to believe the problem with him was that the writers wouldn’t give him any…but now I see that the problem is that they give him so many that they keep overwriting anything we’ve seen before. It’s so strange.

OH GOOD. Kate Sr. is back. I guess I shouldn’t have brought her up earlier in the review, because she heard that and rushed right over, fresh from her nooner with Wizard Beaver and with nothing else to do all day.

She sits down and turns on the horse race, telling the kids she needs to watch this. That’s fine…but why in the name of hell did she have to go all the way to the Tanner house for that? Doesn’t she have a television? Isn’t she obsessed with some dumbass soap opera? Will anybody on this show achieve consistent characterization?

Kate Classic comes in and is shocked to learn that her mother is a gambler. She asks how long she’s been gambling, and Kate Sr. replies, “My whole life,” because God fucking forbid this show suggest that anyone might develop over time.

Kate Sr. jokes about leaving all of her money to the Alien Task Force when she dies, which makes a later moment even odder than it would be otherwise, but we’ll get to that in a bit. The more pressing concern right now is the fact that civilians know that the Alien Task Force exists. Doesn’t that imply, then, that humanity within this universe knows — doesn’t suspect, but knows — that there’s extraterrestrial life? After all, if that wasn’t a given, why wouldn’t there be rioting in the streets that the government openly operates a massive entity dedicated to creatures that might not even exist? Can you imagine the shitstorm if Obama announced the foundation of the Federal Department of Sasquatch Relations?

If people know there’s an Alien Task Force, then they must also know that there are aliens. But if they know that there are aliens, then why is the Alien Task Force trying to cover them up?

It’s a chain of reasoning that isn’t debatable. If you openly operate the Alien Task Force, then everyone needs to believe in aliens, in which case there’s no need for coverups and secrecy. And if you operate the Alien Task Force in secret then we don’t need to take knowledge of extraterrestrial life as a given, but in that case you can’t have minor characters know about it and you can’t have your fucking representatives going door to door in full regalia asking if anyone’s seen the latest alien that fell to Earth.

I know I shouldn’t bother looking for logic of any kind in this show. I’m just holding out hope that somebody on the writing staff cares about this shit…and I’m disappointed almost every time.

ALF asks Kate Sr. for the name of her bookie, and then he calls him and says he wants to turn $50 into $11,000. They’re going to do all of this by mail, I guess, which is fine because sending currency back and forth through the postal service with somebody you’ve never met while betting on sports you’ve never heard of is bound to end well.

Then we cut to ALF listening to the radio and he has a lot more money now so I guess he won a bunch of times and my god who cares.

It’s actually part of a sequence set to a jaunty ragtime tune that’s supposed to suggest that ALF’s accumulating winnings over an extended period of time. So, a montage. Right?

Well, technically…but I don’t think the people working on ALF know how montages work. They’re meant to compress time so that we can skip over the boring stuff. They show the highlights, maybe a few comical moments along the way, but they are designed, essentially, to fill in the gaps as quickly as possible and get to the payoff. That’s why they’re nearly always set to music: the tempo creates a sense of momentum. We’re not just watching something…we’re moving forward.

That’s what happens when they’re employed for narrative reasons, anyway. They can also be employed for expressly artistic reasons, injecting some visual variety into a traditionally static medium. Maybe the story could be told just fine without one…but it can be told in more interesting ways with one. Breaking Bad did this regularly, and it was great at it.

Of course, you can do both at the same time. Being ALF, this show does neither.

This “montage” is just a bunch of meandering scenes stitched together in which ALF talks on the phone or monitors a horse race. It moves at no greater clip than any other given scene in any given episode, rendering the exercise redundant. It would have been easy to chop this down to an assortment of several-second scenes that showed ALF counting his money, tossing it in the air, placing more bets…you know. Something with momentum. Instead they just sit a camera on a tripod and slap music on some long scenes of a puppet poring over a betting sheet.

I don’t know. Maybe the ragtime music was laid over this sequence by some desperate editor who was charged with adding some sense of pacing to an episode rooted firmly in the mud. Even so, though, the way to do that would be to whittle down the footage he has for sharper impact…not lay some rollicking library tune over it and call it a day.

FIVE THOUSAND WORDS HERE I COME

Then it’s the day of the big garage sale! Hooray! Of course this show doesn’t have any outside sets so we won’t see any of it.

Kate Sr. comes over and says that she thinks the Ochmoneks are having a yard sale too, because they have a mess of shitty furniture in their front yard, but Kate Original Recipe delivers the punchline: it’s always that way. That would actually work as a joke if Kate Sr. had never been to the Tanner house before, but she clearly has. And, y’know, kinda lived there forever and a day.

It’s like this show goes out of its way to make no sense.

The Kates ‘n’ kiddies head outside, and Willie skulks around with his hockey stick and souvenir from some layover in a vaguely tropical region. ALF tells him to join him to watch the race, because it’s going to win him a lot of money. But the horse ALF bet on falls over. Willie leaves to re-hide his stuff, and ALF panics and calls the bookie, who says he’s coming over to the Tanner house to collect his money but why the fuck wouldn’t the bookie have asked to see the money in advance and holy cockmother in hell this is garbage.

In the garage ALF scrapes together his meager possessions in the hopes of selling them at the garage sale to pay the bookie. I don’t know if it’s attention to detail on the part of the props department or the simple fact that ALF didn’t have much of a props department, but some of the items laid out here are from previous episodes. He wore those headphones in “A.L.F.” (though I didn’t have anything to say about the scene here), he gave those green dice to Brian in “Help Me, Rhonda” (and apparently took them back…fuck you, kid), that’s his ejaculating flower from “Going Out of My Head Over You,” and those are the X-Ray Specs from “Wild Thing.” Maybe there are some other specific callbacks there that I just can’t remember.

Either way, the fact that I recognized any of it is evidence that I have wasted my life.

Oh, wow. I stand corrected; we do get to see the garage sale. I guess I forgot that they have a set for the driveway.

Nobody’s buying anything, though, and eventually Willie and Kate figure out it’s because ALF priced everything really high. How did he manage to re-price every item at the garage sale without anybody noticing? Especially since he only found out he needed that money after the garage sale began?

Anyway, Willie and Kate are pissed so they go inside to club ALF to death with his own foreleg, and there’s a really, really weird moment:

This guy was in the background during the whole scene, looking at things for sale, and then after Willie and Kate leave he approaches Kate Sr., and I really expected him to reveal himself as a member of the Alien Task Force. After all, they went out of their way to have Kate Sr. clumsily reference the organization earlier in this episode — and that’s only like the third time it’s been referenced ever — but no. It’s not even a deliberate fakeout. He’s just some guy who wears a military uniform to yardsales, I guess. He asks about a screwdriver and the scene ends.

What the actual god damn.

And that’s not even the worst thing that happens at the garage sale. No, I couldn’t begin to tell you why they dressed this extra like Colonel Klink, but something leaves me far more speechless than this ever could.

Stay tuned, dear reader.

ALF reluctantly explains to Willie and Kate about the bookie, and there’s somebody at the door so it must be the bookie because that’s the way shitty sitcoms work. But it’s not just any bookie…it’s David Leisure!

For whatever reason, ALF sure does get a lot of talent for one-off appearances. Why they didn’t cast any of these good actors and actresses in recurring roles is beyond me.

Yeah, yeah, I know David Leisure isn’t exactly Paul Newman, but he was a funny guy. He might not have had much range, but what he did he did well. I remember loving him as Charlie on Empty Nest, which he played with a genuinely charming shade of oily sleaze. And he was Joe Isuzu, in what’s got to be the most memorable advertising campaign for automobiles ever.**

Sadly, David Leisure gets stuck with a hankie and a deep voice because his character has a cold, which prevents him from putting much of his own stamp on the character. All he gets to do is demand money and sneeze. Hilarious.

Anyway, he wants $6,000 from Willie. Willie doesn’t have $6,000, so David Leisure breaks a vase and leaves. Good shit.

He’ll be back, we assume, though it’s not clear why he left. Willie then runs into the kitchen to stab ALF through the brain with a railroad spike.

They all stand around the kitchen talking about everything we just saw and repeating everything we already know, because the episode wasn’t long enough and what else were they going to fill time with? Jokes? Ha! You kill me.

ALF explains that he was just trying to help pay for the mortgage, but Willie says they have money stashed away for that, and it’s not a problem. This is actually a decent twist — ALF legitimately tries to help, but there’s no problem to begin with, which in turn results in him causing a problem — but it sure is dusted onto a damned damp squib of an episode.

Someone else comes to the door, I assume because he read my mind and knew that I thought it couldn’t get any worse.

Bitches? Bastards?

It gets worse.

It’s some guy we’ve never seen before who was at the yard sale. He says he wants to buy something he found, but he isn’t sure it’s for sale.

Willie and Kate ask him what it is. He says “the spaceship.”

So…wait. A million fucking times wait.

A fucking trillion million fucking billion fucking wait.

That’s where the space ship has been the whole time? In the bullfucking yard? Why have we never seen it? It’s just been sitting out in the open? Nobody thought to move it? Not even when they were hosting a garage sale?

They just left it clearly visible? It’s been clearly visible since episode mothertitting one?

The man doesn’t think it’s real, though…he just wants to use it as a prop for a film he’s working on, called Jupiter Guys.

But fuck all that; fuckfuck alla that fuck.

From the very first episode of this show until today the space ship has been in the yard. I wondered a while back where they could have hidden it…stupid ass idiot me!!! They didn’t hide it. They just scraped it off the roof of the garage like a dead pigeon and left it where it fell.

This is ridiculous. The people browsing their used cutlery and underpants have a clear view of the crashed UFO sitting in their yard. And it’s recognizable as a “space ship” by sight. Think about that.

Think.

About all of that.

What about that shit in “Baby, You Can Drive My Car” where ALF strips it for parts and sells the plumbing? Did that not actually happen? Is it a UFO or a pile of scrap metal?

None of this makes any sense, and it’s the grand resolution to the whole episode.

The Tanners don’t want to sell the space ship. But why? ALF’s obviously not taking it anywhere. Who knows. They agree to rent it to the man for exactly $6,000, as long as he gets it back to them within a week.

Why do they want it back? I guess I could think of a few reasons, but all of them are moot if the thing’s just sitting in the dicksplitting yard at all hours of the day and night. And won’t this be a problem when the guy sees that it’s not a prop, but a big, functional, complicated flying machine capable of intergalactic travel? Won’t he find that to be a little bit suspicious?

No, of course not. What kind of fucking moron would even think that? Everyone lives happily ever after and what with all due respect was any of this god damn bullshit goodbye.

MELMAC FACTS: On Melmac they don’t name their bottles.

—–
* For some reason this episode gets the longer version of the credits that we saw in “Try to Remember.” I don’t know why…this is still 22 minutes long, which is the same as the other syndication edits, but for some reason we don’t get the truncated credits. I figured the only reason the longer credits were on “Try to Remember” was that it wasn’t a syndication edit but who fuckin’ knows anymore.

** What would even be the competition for this? I can’t think of any other “mascot” characters for cars, apart from that receptionist Toyota has now that’s just a clear derivative of Progressive’s Flo. Am I forgetting something?

Ladies and gentlemen…start the countdown. As of now, we have only five episodes left in the first season of ALF! Hooray! And yes, yes, I know I will have 74 more episodes to slug through after that, but I’m still looking forward to finishing the season. Why? Because I’m going to take a cue from the late, lamented Full House Reviewed and post a few “breather” installments before moving onto season two. That should hopefully keep you folks amused and allow me a much-deserved rest.

What will the breathers consist of? Well, I’ll definitely do an overall season one review, and I’ve got a couple other things in mind, too. Stay tuned. You will love them. So much it will hurt.

Speaking of hurt, this episode opens with ALF rapping in Lynn’s bedroom.

Yeah. ALF…is rapping.

I don’t care. There are only five episodes left. Rap away, ALF.

Oh, and then he hands the microphone to Lynn, who raps, too. The fake audience goes insane over this, even though there aren’t really any jokes…just words that happen to rhyme. ALF scratches up a record on Lynn’s turntable and I assume she’s encouraging him because it’s the least destructive thing he’s ever done.

Then…oh Christ. Willie comes in, and ALF hands him the microphone to rap, too. No. I can’t do this. I can’t watch Max Wright try to rap. No human being should ever have to witness MAX WRIGHT RAPPING.

Mercifully, Willie admits defeat quickly and the rap sequence is over, and I’m beyond glad. I honestly expected this opening scene to consist of each of the family members coming into the room and rapping in turn, and the fact that this didn’t happen almost has me believing in God. It sure says a lot about this show, though, that I can’t watch a bad scene and just accept it as bad; the show never stops with just “bad.” I keep expecting the levee to break and a flood of further horribleness to rush in. I’m like a dog that flinches when you go to pet it. ALF did this to me.

Then there’s this batshit insane moment that actually makes me miss the rapping. ALF says, “Let me know when this gets irritating, okay?” and then…

…I can’t even describe it. I’ve been loath to start embedding YouTube videos in this series because I really do feel like it’s my job to describe this shit adequately, but this is beyond description:

That might seem like a YouTube Poop, but it’s not. That’s actually how it is in the episode. ALF jitters and convulses while that…noise comes out of him. Even the laugh track drops out, giving the entire thing a bizarre, disorienting sort of detached feel from the rest of the episode, and from ALF in general. It’s like one of those scenes in Get a Life where the laugh-track stops in order to emphasize the moment at which the comedy has slipped into derangement, or those Tim & Eric skits where the video glitches and the sound repeats maddeningly. Only, y’know…ALF plays it straight. It’s done for the purposes of a joke, but the presentation itself — the most unnerving part of this — is not part of the joke.

Holy hell…season one sure is going out with a bang.

ALF explains that the sound is a “Melmacian mating call,” and that it renders females unconscious. So all sex on Melmac is effectively date rape. Hilarious stuff, eh?

Lynn leaves the room, joking on the way out about feeling faint. Willie’s fine with that, because who doesn’t love a good joke about their teenaged daughter being mounted and raped by a house guest while she’s passed out on the floor?

Willie then leaves the room as well, telling ALF to be good while they’re gone. Where are they going? It’s never stated, and it doesn’t tie into the episode at all. It’s just an excuse to get Willie to shut ALF in Lynn’s room (who the fuck knows why…) so ALF can do the mating call again.

There’s even less of a purpose to it this time; at first he was demonstrating it to Willie. Now he’s alone, so why is he doing it? Is this Melmacian masturbation? I’m actually kind of angry that I even have to ask that question.

The episode proper begins, tying in no way into anything we just saw. This effectively means that the writing staff was charged with coming up with two minutes of material — literally anything they wanted to do; it didn’t even have to make sense within the context of the episode — and they figured, “Let’s just have ALF rap and scream for a while.” AND THEY WERE FINE WITH THAT.

Kate is sewing three asparagus costumes, which seems bizarre since we find out shortly that there are only two kids who need them…but I’m getting ahead of myself. Willie is at the piano, writing a song about asparagus, and this is kind of a surprising character trait. Yes, I know that he played the keyboard for a bit in the episode where ALF made that music video about wanting to cum on his daughter’s butt, however I thought the joke there was that he was an awful musician without any idea what he was doing. Here, though, he’s competent.

I’m not really complaining; I just find it interesting. It makes enough sense, when you think about it. The Tanners had a piano before ALF moved in, but so far ALF was the only one we saw play it. That implies at least a passive interested in the instrument from one of the Tanners, and now we find out it’s Willie. I kind of wish we’d seen more of this side of him…y’know…since it kinda makes him seem human and all.

What I will complain about is the fact that Kate’s costumes and Willie’s song are for a first-grade play that very night. What is it with this show and last-minute preparations for performances? Granted, a first-grade play isn’t as complex a production as the soap opera we saw in “A Little Bit of Soap,” but in either case the performers need to know their lines. That’s the bare minimum, and it applies to a first-grade play as much as it applies anywhere else.

Although, the more I think about it, the more I realize that seasoned actors in a daily soap would probably be able to fumble their way through a recording even if they’re under-rehearsed. They would have developed methods of masking or acting around the confusion…figured out ways to make furtive glances at cue cards look like thoughtful pauses. So even though a soap opera is a far more complicated and high-stakes production than this vegetable play in the school auditorium, it would probably result in less of a train wreck there than here, where the five and six year olds are going to be shoved out onto a stage in front of their peers with no idea of what the shit they’re supposed to do.

In fact, this scene seems to take place around six or seven o’clock at night, as evidenced by the fact that ALF is watching Wheel of Fortune. Maybe on the west coast it airs at like five or six instead, I don’t know, but either way that’s proof that this school play is happening in the extremely near future — as in, within an hour or two — and neither of these idiots have anything ready for the kids. Why did they wait until the last minute? And why on Earth is Willie charged with writing songs? I can understand the parents being responsible for the costume, but I can’t imagine that any public school in the world would send kids home with instructions to have their dads score the annual vegetable pageant.

Willie and ALF try to drown each other out with the piano and television respectively, and it’s like the “La Marseillaise” scene from Casablanca except it’s a massive fucking pile of garbage.

Brian comes in from the kitchen, where he was boning the salmon for ALF. Now that I’ve heard this phrase spoken out loud by several actors I have to say that “boning the salmon” is about as repulsive a euphemism as is possible in the English language.

Anyway, ALF doesn’t want the salmon anymore because that idiot dumbass Brian threw away the head. What a moron. Oh well, at least he was working with knives in the kitchen without supervision.

His failure to properly debone salmon for the dickhead who lives on his couch is compounded by having to try on his asparagus costume. He’s not looking forward to the play, because he has to perform with a kid named Spencer, who absolutely hates him and bullies him relentlessly. That’s pretty much the plot of this one, which is fine, but it makes me wonder if this is the first “Brian episode.” I think it is…I know it was his birthday back in “Help Me, Rhonda,” but that episode was centered far more securely around ALF standing naked on the roof. Other than that I’m not sure the kid’s gotten any notable screen time at all.

Well, anyway, here’s that Brian episode nobody asked for…except maybe Benji Gregory, who they stick in an asparagus suit and give an awful song to sing so he’ll never ask for another one.

There’s somebody at the door. It’s Spencer, of course, and…

…okay. Well, that’s definitely not what I was expecting. I figured Spencer would be some 1980s sitcom version of a school bully. Some dirt on his blue jeans, a backwards cap…forced scowl…you know the drill. Instead I guess Brian’s getting ripped on by the abandoned spawn of Rick Moranis.

Seriously, Brian…I’m not one for violence, but if this kid is such a punk to you, give him one good whack and I’m positive he’ll back off forever. You know what a green sweater vest over a lemon-colored dress shirt says? I don’t either…but I sure as hell know it doesn’t say tenacity.

Spencer has his new toy with him: a Transformer painted brown that the writers want us to believe is something called “Dr. Potato Famine.” I have no idea who would award a robot with a doctorate, nor why any child in any time period in any reality would be interested in potato famine tie-in toys, but there you go. Spencer talks a lot about how expensive and fragile it is. Do you see where this is going?

Anyway, we learn more about why Spencer is such a giant piece of shit: he took the initiative to prepare a script for the show. This obviously makes Willie bristle, and it’s clear that the show wants us to see him as some imposing little snotbag, but, really, come on. The two dolts in charge of putting the play together haven’t done anything, and they need to go on stage like right now. Spencer probably didn’t want to be totally unprepared, so he took it upon himself to write up some lines. What’s wrong with that? Why would the writing staff of ALF work so hard to demonize somebody who took his job seriously?

…nevermind. I figured it out.

Willie tells the kids that they need to rehearse the song that he’s still writing, so Spencer sets Dr. Potato Famine down precariously on the edge of the table, reminding everybody that it’s very expensive (brown paint was at a premium in the late 80s) and they need to be careful with it.

You know. Careful. Like, putting it really close to the edge of the table, right next to the asparagus costumes that somebody’s going to have to pick up shortly.

Do you see where this is going?

During the rehearsal Spencer talks some smack about Brian’s asparagus cred, but I’m far more upset by the face Willie’s making in the screengrab above.

Actually…wait. Why does Spencer look more like Willie’s kid than Brian does? God, I would love for this to be some kind of subtle joke about Willie boning the neighbor’s salmon. God knows he doesn’t bone his wife’s.

We cut to later in the night, and Brian tells the family that he doesn’t want to be in the play. But who cares about that? LOOK! Off to the right! It’s the midget!!

I don’t know that it was necessary to bring him back and suit him up just to shamble across the floor in the background of an irrelevant conversation, but he’s the most talented member of the cast so I’m always glad to see his silent little waddle.

I notice Dr. Potato Famine isn’t on the table anymore…and Spencer is gone, so I guess he just picked up the toy and went home. So what was all that shit about being careful of him and making it clear to us that the toy was set in a precarious place that would too-easily allow it to go crashing to the floor? Did the writers forget what they were setting up? I mean, maybe that wasn’t what they had in mind at all…which is fine…but if that scene wasn’t supposed to climax with Dr. Potato Famine being smashed into a thousand pieces, then what the fuck was the point of it?

Maybe Paul Fusco got jealous that the toy was out-acting him and demanded that its pivotal scene get cut.

Willie and Kate fail to convince Brian to perform, so ALF comes over and tells him about a little boy on Melmac named Gordon. Brian deduces that ALF is referring to himself, but acts continuously baffled by the fact that Gordon is ALF’s real name. I guess I can’t remember for sure, but there’s no way this is the first time he’s learning this fact, right?

I don’t know. That’s the least of my concerns with this exchange, which is about ALF getting stage fright the night he was supposed to play Sancho Panza in Man of La Mancha.

Whywhywhywhywhywhywhy would they be performing Man of La Mancha on Melmac? How did they even get access to it? The creative staff of ALF is aware that Man of La Mancha was not written (or, rather, adapted) by an anonymous space alien, correct? We can even confirm that this is the same play we know on Earth due to ALF’s explanation of what happens and the songs they had to sing.

So how exactly was Melmac importing and performing — without alteration — theatrical works from planet Earth? This would have been a great opportunity to shine some light on Melmacian culture by having ALF describe some play that was native to his culture, or something. He could describe some famous Melmacian tale that would give us a sense of what his people felt was important and how they went about achieving their goals, while also allowing a completely blank slate for comedy…but instead the ALF writers just plop in Man of La Mancha and say fuck you.

God. Damn.

Anyway, ALF doesn’t have any helpful advice, but he does have the good-luck tooth that the Melmacian who played Don Quixote gave to him, so he passes it on to Brian, who agrees to perform. Brian then gets up to leave and ALF sees the tooth is still on the couch, which qualifies as a riveting act break because the good-luck tooth that was introduced a whopping four seconds ago is now the single most important thing in the ALF universe.

At the play we see two pieces of garlic finishing their act, and…holy shit! That’s Marcia Wallace!

Speaking of Full House, she would play a similar character on that show a few years later. And, of course, she’d play Mrs. Krabappel on The Simpsons. I know she’s done a lot more than that, but I think that speaks volumes about just how well she embodies a certain type of vaguely damaging educator. She doesn’t get much to do here, but catching a glimpse of Marcia Wallace in this show is like seeing a brief ray of sunshine as you slip finally into the vat of human waste that will be your tomb.

Backstage Brian realizes that he forgot the tooth, and refuses to go on. In order to stall for time, Willie lets Spencer go out and perform the jokes he wrote after all.

Spencer opens with a joke about a guy who has a duck on his head, and then he waits for laughter that doesn’t come, because everyone’s waiting for the actual performance to start. Kate senses this and turns to Lynn, asking, “What’s wrong?”

Lynn replies, “It wasn’t funny.”

And that was actually a good joke. You know, if they stuck with this ditzy characterization for Lynn rather than injecting it intermittently, turning her into a sort of family-friendly version of Kelly Bundy, I’d be a much happier reviewer, because Andrea Elson can pull off that doe-eyed bewilderment better than she can do pretty much anything else, and I’m pretty sure it’s gotten a laugh out of me every time.

I also really like the scene composition here. The camera is static behind Kate and Lynn, with Spencer centered on stage between them, keeping all three principals in view, even though they’re quite a distance apart. When Spencer is telling his jokes, he’s in focus. When Kate and Lynn talk, focus instead shifts to the foreground so that our attention shifts as well.

It’s a good, effective, efficient way of shooting the scene, and it probably represents the only visual experimentation this show has even attempted since the fish-eye sequence in the pilot. For such a relentlessly dull sitcom, a moment like this — which, to be frank, the show could afford to do much more as they don’t have the logistical hurdles of a studio audience to work around — stands out at downright artistry.

Nobody laughs at Spencer’s act, so he runs backstage and starts crying. That’s the ALF writing staff for ya…picking on a five-year-old kid for writing shitty jokes without even a whiff of self-awareness.

Anyway, Marcia Wallace comes over and tells them to get their shit together, because there is an auditorium full of people shifting uncomfortably while they hide backstage weeping and giving each other pep-talks. Spencer is reluctant because his act bombed, but now Brian is the confident one, and he convinces him to go out and sing the asparagus song anyway.

That actually leads to one of the funniest moments this show has ever had; just as the boys decide to perform, Kate stands up with the intention of checking on them. As she does, Marcia Wallace comes on stage to announce the act, sees Kate, and says, “Sit down, lady.”

Marcia Wallace, I’ll miss you. You were a tremendously gifted comic actress, and moments like this — some tiny, thankless part on a garbage sitcom — could still be turned into a genuine belly laugh with talent like yours behind it. Rest in peace, Marcia. You were a gem.

This shining moment is short-lived, of course, as The Asparaguys are introduced and they sing the motherfucking song for like the tenth time in this God damned bullshit episode of trash.

The family returns home and finds ALF dressed like an asparagus. Oh, hey! So that’s why Kate sewed a third asparagus costume…so she could leave it laying around for the alien to wear when he snuck around town trying to deliver the misplaced tooth to her son. Man, I’m always so impressed by the way everything manages to fit together in this show.

I especially like the fact that ALF would wear this disguise as a presumable attempt to avoid drawing attention to himself because REALLY NOW WHO WOULD PAY ANY ATTENTION TO A GIANT WALKING ASPARAGUS FUCK

The episode is over and I hate everything.

MELMAC FACTS: On Melmac women are rendered unconscious by a mating call and sexually assaulted. Gordon was ALF’s mother’s maiden name. Melmac imports its stage plays from Earth somehow. And fuck a ballsack the end of this season can’t come soon enough.

Just as the Jodie episode gave way to the deplorable “Help Me, Rhonda,” last week’s experiment in competence spits us right into “Lookin’ Through the Windows,” which is awful. But before we dig into what happens in the episode, I’d like to talk for a bit about the concept.

“Lookin’ Through the Windows” parodies Hitchcock’s excellent Rear Window. It’s an undeniably great film with a solid central premise and culturally indelible imagery, which makes it a relatively common reference point for other films and TV shows.

The film stars Jimmy Stewart as a photographer with a broken leg. Boredom, limited mobility and an unfortunately timed heat wave lead to Stewart’s character spending nearly all of his time at an open window, and his idle hobby of watching the neighbors turns obsessive when he believes he’s seen evidence of a murder.

It’s one of those rare films that could probably be pieced together by those who haven’t seen it, simply because of how frequently it’s been referenced, parodied and ripped off. It’s also ALF‘s first attempt at singular, sustained parody (unless, of course, I’ve missing something along the way…do feel free to let me know in the comments), and even if it wasn’t doomed at this point to be compared to the Simpsons episode in which Bart believes he saw Ned Flanders kill Maude — the gold-standard of Rear Window sendups — it falls completely apart on its own. Compare it to better shows that mined the concept more fruitfully, and it’s disappointing. Remove it from any such comparison…and it’s still pretty disappointing.

The neighbors here, of course, are the Ochmoneks. I’d make a joke about how it has to be the Ochmoneks because there are no other named characters outside of the Tanner family, but that wouldn’t really be fair. Los Angeles is a notoriously small town. In fact, you’ve probably never heard of it. It’s not unlikely that there would be only a handful of families in the whole place, so good on ALF for verisimilitude.

The Rear Window stuff begins with the very first shot: ALF at a window with a pair of opera glasses. He’s watching the Ochmoneks argue, and every so often he makes a mark on a chalkboard to indicate who’s winning. Somewhat impressively, the writing staff not only incorporated the heat wave aspect — coupled in this instance with the Tanners’ electricity failing due to brown outs — but bothered to refer back to it throughout the episode. No, “Lookin’ Through the Windows” is not very good…but it does at least demonstrate some good impulses. Whereas ALF is frequently content to introduce ideas, details and even entire characters just for the sake of forgetting they exist a few minutes later, it’s nice that this episode has some semblance of internal continuity.

Willie comes in and tells ALF not to spy on the neighbors, which is fair, but then he suggests that he go play in the yard instead. It’s broad daylight, so here’s another example of the show forgetting — or ignoring — that ALF is supposed to be kept secret from the rest of the world. It’s pretty much established in the pilot as the single most important detail of the show, but I could count on one hand the episodes since that gave even half a shit about it.

For this to make even a modicum of sense, the Tanners would have to have ridiculously high, solid walls surrounding their home, something like we see in the movie Dogtooth. However we’ve seen the outside of their house in every establishing shot, and we know it doesn’t. If ALF goes out to play in the yard, he’s caught. End of story. Or, at least, I wish it could be.

ALF and Willie yak for a bit, and while they do there’s this gentle, smokey saxophone music playing. When their conversation ends, ALF leans out the window and yells at somebody to “knock off the sax.” I get the joke — we assumed the music was on the soundtrack, while it was actually playing within their reality — but beyond that…what the living fuckbucket? Who was playing the saxophone? Mr. Ochmonek? And why is it not okay for ALF to watch people through the windows, but it’s fine for him to lean out and shout verbal harassment at them? What kind of sense does that make?

God I wish I was watching Dogtooth.

The episode proper gets off to a pretty good start. It’s dinner time, and Kate sets a massive plate of food in front of ALF, who explains that it’s all part of a new diet he’s trying: “You can eat as much as you want of whatever you want.”

Then, when no further explanation is forthcoming, Lynn asks, “And you lose weight that way?”

To which ALF replies, “You do?”

It’s a solid gag that compounds nicely, and it taps into the way a visitor like ALF would believably misunderstand concepts we think are simple, something that really, really, really should be more of a factor in his characterization than it actually is.

What’s more, another very nice moment follows. The lights go out, and the family moans. Lynn laments having to reset all of the clocks yet again, and Kate, in the dark, replies wearily, “Let’s not. Let’s just live a few minutes behind everyone else.”

Every so often some actual humanity shines though these cardboard characters, and nearly always it’s through Kate. Not only does she call ALF on his bullshit, but there’s a kind of quiet, simmering frustration within her that suggests something deeper than the lines that they ask her to recite. I’m willing to bet that this comes entirely from Anne Schedeen, who manages to inhabit a place behind her words rather than on top of them, as the rest of the actors do.

Interestingly, though, the show just sort of has that line tumble out. The real punchline is that when the lights come back on, ALF ate all of the food. I’d wager Lynn’s (decently well-observed) line about the clocks and Kate’s response were both placeholder lines…a way to pad out the darkness so that when the lights came back on we could see the big reveal of ALF’s empty plate. The way the scene is structured, it’s very clear that that’s the moment that’s supposed to get the big laugh…the rest is just jogging in place.

The best line a few episodes ago was some shoe-horned explanation as to why Lynn doesn’t have braces anymore, and now it’s a line that’s literally being used just to space out what the writers think of as the big laughs. I’m amazed at how downright funny the tossed-off material is compared to the garbage that seemed to receive the bulk of the show’s efforts.

There’s a knock at the door and ALF is shooed away, so I guess they do care about keeping him a secret. Except when it comes to hollering nonsense out the window, in which case fuckin’ go nuts.

It’s Mr. Ochmonek, and he’s pissy because his wife is a bitch and nothing he ever does is right. It’s his own fault for marrying a character on the show ALF, though. If he’d waited a bit he could have married a woman on a much better sitcom, where she’d be allowed to be an actual human being and then they might have had a relationship instead of a series of plot-dependent spats.

Since this is already an overt nod to Rear Window, we know that ALF is going to think Mr. Ochmonek killed his wife. That’s fine. The execution (so to speak…) is not, but we’ll get to that. For now I just want to point out how strange it is that both stories to heavily feature Mrs. Ochmonek have touches of Hitchcock. Way back in “Strangers in the Night” the whole “plot” hinged on the fact that both ALF and Mrs. O wanted to watch Psycho. The scene in which ALF cross-dresses also suggests an aborted attempt to tie the themes together more tightly than what we got, but that’s just speculation on my part.

Here she gets her second turn in the spotlight, and it’s so that she can drive another story centered around a Hitchcock film. It’s coincidence, I’m positive, but a very bizarre one. I wonder if we’ll get a story in season two about Mrs. Ochmonek chasing Willie around in a crop duster. Or ALF hosting a cocktail party around her corpse that he crammed into a trunk.

Speak of the devil, Mrs. Ochmonek comes over to retrieve her husband, and Mr. Ochmonek eats some corn.

There’s some preposterously unnatural dialogue in which Mr. Ochmonek reveals that he believes the Tanners spy on him while he fights with his wife, which would make sense if he was confronting them, but instead it’s delivered as an off-hand comment to the very people that he’s essentially accusing of voyeurism. It’s ridiculous. If you believed your own neighbor was spying on you in your weakest moments — actually believed it — would you bring it up with him in some chummy “you’ll never guess” kind of way? Of course not…you’d be pissed off and confrontational. None of this makes any sense.

Fortunately for that shitty moment, though, it gets eclipsed by a much worse one. Willie attempts to assuage Mr. Ochmonek’s concern, which leads to Max Wright choking his way through the line “No. No we don’t. Noh one…in this roooom…whaatches you, through yurwindows.”

And then…oh yes, dear reader, there’s more…Lynn suggests that it might be their “poltergeist,” which nobody comments on or acknowledges in any way, even though this is pretty conclusive evidence that the girl is suffering from acute mental illness.

The fuck this show the fuck.

That night Lynn comes into the laundry room to say goodnight to ALF, and there’s a near-miss here with what could have been another great joke. ALF says he’s speedreading a book, and Lynn asks him what it’s about. He says, “I have no idea.”

On its own, that’s funny. The joke should end there, with the implication that he’s gliding so quickly over the words that he’s not comprehending them. But instead the writers take it further and try to turn it into a joke about how he’s wearing the fur off of his finger by moving it across the page so quickly.

Damn, guys. They sure reached pretty far to make sure that joke dropped dead, didn’t they?

Lynn leaves and ALF hears the Ochmoneks fighting again, so he goes over to the window and hot damn this is a great screengrab:

I know I’ve praised Fusco’s puppetry many times before, and I stand by everything I’ve said, but I do think it’s worth drawing some additional attention to the physical ALF puppet itself. It’s impressively articulated for something that seems so simple. Everything from the way the eyebrows move to the ability of the ears to perk up like a dog’s contribute to ALF’s “reality,” and I like that a lot. So far we’ve seen ALF elated, depressed, sick, terrified, dazed, and whatever else, and each time the emotion registers. The odd thing is that when I started reviewing ALF, I thought the easiest thing to do would be to make fun of how fake the puppet looks. Little did I know that would actually be the one thing I couldn’t criticize at all.

ALF runs into Willie and Kate’s bedroom and shouts that he just saw Mr. Ochmonek murder his wife with an ice pick.

Okay, now I can criticize.

See, usually in a Rear Window parody (and in, uh, Rear Window) the protagonist doesn’t actually witness the murder; they infer that there’s been a murder, and then go nuts trying to prove it. If they saw a murder then there’s not really a story. How could there be? The protagonist picks up the phone, calls the cops, and the murderer is arrested before he has time to clean up the evidence. The end.

ALF botches this crucial aspect, though not surprisingly I guess. By having him actually witness the crime, it raises additional questions that the episode isn’t up to answering…a complication compounded by the writers’ choice of the murder weapon: an ice pick.

Think about that. As I’m sure you know, Mr. Ochmonek didn’t really murder his wife. (It would be a pretty dark sitcom if he had.) So by having ALF “see” this happen — rather than assume it — the writers raise an unanswerable question: what the fucklights could possibly be happening that looks like an ice pick murder?

Picture an ice pick murder. Honestly. Picture a man stabbing his wife repeatedly with an ice pick until she dies. What else could that possibly be? If you see that happen, is there any possibility at all that you actually witnessed something benign? The whole plot of this episode falls at the first hurdle, because nothing that isn’t an ice pick murder can possibly be mistaken for an ice pick murder…and then, of course, they still need to provide some rational explanation for what really happened.

Do they pull it off? Place your bets now.

Willie tells ALF to fuck fucking off, so ALF goes to sleep and dreams that Mr. Ochmonek is stalking the Tanner house with an ice pick. One thing I have to say is that even though this episode sucks dick, it sure did lead to an article full of great screengrabs.

There’s not much to this dream sequence, but — and I mean this — it gives us some very effective imagery. It’s also miles better (and infinitely more relevant) then either of the dream sequences we’ve gotten from Willie so far, so I’m all for this.

Anyway ALF wakes up screaming his head off, and the Tanners all arrive in the kitchen to check on him at the same time, making it seem like they not only share a bed, but a hive mind.

Willie chastises ALF for spying on the neighbors in the first place, which is what caused his paranoia. It’s a fair thing to say at this point, but I really wish it was an excuse to bring back Dr. Larry from last week. Seriously, I’d give anything for this show to ditch its original concept and become Dr. Dykstra: Alien Psychologist.

They all go to bed and ALF goes back to the window and you don’t even have to scroll down because you know what the fuck he sees.

ya dudes mr ochmonek is totes burying a corpse

The episode is over and Mrs. Ochmonek is dead forever. Good night, everyone!

…no, it’s still going. It’s the next morning, and ALF does the only logical thing you can do after watching your neighbor brutally murder his wife with a sharp instrument: he calls the murderer and pretends to be conducting a survey on behalf of the BBC. He asks Mr. Ochmonek the difference between American TV and British TV, and then he asks if he killed his wife.

Kate hears him and hangs up the phone before Mr. Ochmonek can produce a story-ending “no,” and then it’s suddenly nighttime again. What a day that was!

As Willie gets ready for bed he glances out the window and sees ALF snooping around the Ochmoneks’ house, which causes him to make this face:

Wowsers.

This is the big pulse-pounding moment in Rear Window; Jimmy Stewart can’t leave the house, so he sends Grace Kelly into the murderer’s home to investigate. When The Simpsons did it Bart couldn’t leave the house, so he sent Lisa into the murderer’s home to investigate. In this show, ALF can’t leave the house, so he says fuck it and does it himself anyway.

Why the writers threw themselves into a Rear Window parody without wanting even slightly to adhere to the conventions that would render it watchable is beyond me.

Anyway, Willie calls Mr. Ochmonek on the phone to distract him so that ALF can escape the house, but ALF is a dick so he dicks around all dicklike instead.

I fucking hate ALF, you guys.

Mr. Ochmonek talks to Willie for a while, and explains that the difference between American TV and British TV is that in Britain they respect their audience. I’d be impressed by the fact that they tied this phone conversation back to a previous one if it weren’t for the fact that they did it as an excuse to give a big “fuck you” to their own viewership.

“We keep ALF alive because we get paid to,” they seem to say. “What’s your excuse?”

Anyway, ALF gets home and he managed to steal Mrs. Ochmonek’s false teeth, so Willie goes to bring them back.

Why is any of this even happening? Call the cops, ALF, you piece of shit. You believe you watched a woman get stabbed to death in her home and your response is to turn it into a physical comedy routine. Jesus Christ.

After Willie leaves, Kate and Lynn rush over to the window in time to see Mr. Ochmonek charging at Willie with an ice pick.

I love that every window in the Tanner home affords a perfect, clear view of everything happening inside the Ochmonek house. Seriously, no matter what room these assholes are in, they always see perfectly into the other house. Do the Ochmoneks live in a giant glass dome?

The lights go out again, and Kate rushes over to save Willie from being murdered by Ice Pick Ochmonek. ALF, two whole days after he should have done this in the first place, decides to call the cops.

They arrive almost as quickly as Kate does, which again makes sense because cops in LA are probably bored out of their minds waiting for something to do. But, hey, that’s what happens when you’re a lawman in such a tiny, quiet town.

It’s explained that Mr. Ochmonek never murdered his wife with an ice pick and wasn’t going to murder Willie with it either; he was using it to make Willie a nice cocktail!

Well, if that’s the case, why was he charging at Willie with it? And what the fuck was he doing driving it repeatedly through his wife’s heart? See, this is the kind of question you’re left with when you have your characters actually “witness” this crap. No attempt whatsoever is made to explain what actually happened between he and his wife, but the cocktail explanation with Willie defies all human logic. In what way does mixing a drink resemble an active threat to kill another man?

Here’s an experiment you can do at home to find out. First, invite a friend over, and mix him or her a nice, refreshing cocktail. Take careful note of their expression and demeanor as you do so.

Next, invite another friend over. When this friend arrives, grab an ice pick, approach them threateningly, and act like you are about to murder them. Take careful note of their expression and demeanor as well.

Now it’s time to review your findings. Did you notice any overlap whatsoever between the way these two people interpreted your actions? No? Nothing at all? How strange!

In ALF these two actions are easily and frequently mistaken for one another…but something tells me you’d have a hard time duplicating the results.

Of course, even if we accept this, that still leaves the small matter of the corpse wrapped in a tarp that Mr. Ochmonek buried in his back yard. But, no, don’t worry about that either! It was actually just a side of beef that started to rot, and he was getting rid of it.

The police accept this far too easily. For starters, who — in the name of shitstabbing Christ on the cross — disposes of bad meat by digging a hole and burying it? And why wrap it in a tarp? Did the tarp go bad, too?

And secondly, when they ask where his wife is he responds that she’s at her sister’s house. There are no followup questions and no attempt to make contact with her to verify the story. That’s insane. Somebody called and reported a murder. The police followed up on it and were unable to find the victim. The murderer says she’s fine, but admits he buried a crapload of beef in his back yard. And they’re fine with that. What — with all due respect — the fuckfuckfuck.

Even by sitcom logic, they need to dig up that yard. First the Alien Task Force, then Social Services, and now the LA Police Department have all been shown to operate on the honor system. And that’s insane. I’m not saying that Mr. Ochmonek killed her (it’s a family sitcom, so we know he didn’t), but since when is “I buried some old meat in the yard and my wife is totally chilling with her sis” an airtight alibi?

Dig. Up. The yard.

But, no. That’s it. We’re meant to be as satisfied by this solution as everyone in the show is. I won’t spoil the ending of Rear Window, but I will go back to that Simpsons episode. Remember the conclusion, when it turned out that Ned killed a houseplant and not his wife? That was a deliberately unsatisfying, illogical solution to the question, because that was the joke…and it was still a hundred times better than what ALF gives us here with a perfectly straight face.

Oh well. It’s over. There’s some short scene before the credits, as usual, but I don’t care about that. Instead I’d like to take a moment to appreciate Mr. Ochmonek’s shirt.

Because daaaaamn Mr. Ochmonek. It’s no wonder you look so proud in a fine ass shirt like that. You can bury my spoiled meat any day.

Now stop reading this shit and go watch Dogtooth.