Category: alf

Wow…ten episodes! We’re inching our way toward the midway point of season one, and the excitement is palpable. Wait, not excitement. That other thing. Excrement.

I really do have to wonder if the later episodes get better than this. Granted, I didn’t expect this show to be great viewing as an adult, and I certainly didn’t have the most discerning taste as a child, but what I’m really surprised by is how absolutely boring ALF is. For a show about an alien, it certainly isn’t doing anything interesting. ALF’s just a bad roommate, or an annoying house guest. He’s not an alien.

Sure, he might talk about his home planet every so often. And the script might refer to him as an alien. But he’s not one. Because if he were an alien, he’d have plots that reflected that fact…at least sometimes. But here? Once again? It’s a plot that could have been filled by some irritating uncle. He buys Lynn a car, and everyone’s upset because the gesture was made behind their backs. Wow, classic alien comedy right there.

So, yeah, the episode opens with Lynn talking on the phone to a friend, and Andrea Elson uses everything she learned about acting from playing Nutcracker #8 in her fifth grade Christmas pageant to clumsily reassure her friend that she will be borrowing her parents’ car later.

Then Brian comes in with a bunch of lint from the dryer because ALF thought it was worth something, but it’s not, so he tells Brian to throw it out and we get our opening credits.

If this is what “Baby, You Can Drive My Car” decided to lead with, then we must be in for a real doozy.

Once the credits end, Lynn goes through the exact same telephone conversation with her friend, just in case anyone tuned in late and would otherwise be confused by ALF‘s labyrinthine narrative style.

Willie and Kate come home with groceries, and Lynn is upset because the car broke down and was brought home by a tow truck. ALF thinks she says “toe truck,” and repeats the same joke over and over again in which he questions why a truck would be full of toes.

It doesn’t even build to anything. It’s just ALF repeating the word “toes” while the recorded dead people yuk it up. Watching moments like this in ALF is like watching a sitcom in another country, where you don’t know the language. Somebody on screen says something and the audience goes nuts, and you have no idea what was meant to be funny. Here, though, I understand everything that’s being said. It makes me feel like I’ve suffered a serious concussion and need to see a doctor.

Anyway, there’s no punchline to the brilliant toe material; ALF just repeats the same joke for the thousandth time and the scene fades out. It’s like we can literally see the show give up.

The car isn’t going anywhere, so Lynn cancels her plans to see The Pretenders in concert. Instead she has to settle for listening to her “Brass in Pocket” cassingle on her Walkman, while she sits in a fluorescent bean bag chair, wearing high-top sneakers and eating Pop Rocks, and various other references to 1980s teen culture.

While she does this ALF attempts to goad Willie into buying Lynn a car, and I’m not sure why. I mean, it’s possible that he thinks Lynn will shuttle him around now and again, like she did when he went to meet Jodie (hello Jodie! Hope you’re still lonely!), but it’s never very clear what his motivation is here.

Why is he going to bat for Lynn? Especially when all that happened is that she missed a concert. It’s not like the car breaking down made her miss her SATs, or her college entrance interview or something important. This isn’t really the time to lobby for a car for the teenaged girl when the more pressing issue is that Willie needs a functional car to get to and from work.

Willie has a different reason for declining, though: they used up all their credit fixing the garage after ALF crashed his space-ship into it. In a way, I’m happy because this suggests that they finally took the space-ship down off the roof. However that just raises the further question of where it is now. Seriously, where could they have stashed that thing? It was too big to bring inside. Did they just bury it in the yard like a dead hamster?

Lynn comes back in and Willie and Kate offer to pitch in half of the money for a car, but Lynn will have to pay for the rest. This is totally fair, and Lynn jumps right on board, offering to get a job immediately. Willie and Kate are hesitant, though, because Lynn’s grades aren’t very good and they’re afraid a job would only make it harder for her to study.

So…what? I don’t get this. They make the offer of paying for half of the car, and tell her she’ll have to pitch in the rest. That’s fine. But then they actively stand in her way when she volunteers to do the only thing that will enable her to get money. Why did they even make the offer? Were they just hoping she’d prostitute herself out a few times instead?

ALF helps Lynn study for…I don’t know. I have no clue what they’re studying for. It seems like a job interview, but Lynn literally got this idea about thirty seconds ago, so there’s no way she’d have one lined up already. Either way, ALF is helping her study the official handbook of Mr. Jim’s Chicken & Oysters. How did he get that? I have no idea. I don’t even know why the fake audience of long-dead relatives laughs like crazy whenever somebody says “chicken and oysters.” Is there a joke there I don’t understand?

Lynn falls asleep while studying and Kate comes in to check on her, at which point ALF bawls her out for forcing Lynn to get a job.

But…wait. Again, wait. Huh?

Let’s walk through this from the start. The problem is that Lynn doesn’t have a car. Fine. Willie and Kate offer to pay for half of it, if Lynn can pay for the rest. That’s also fine…and it’s the last time anything makes any sense in this episode, because immediately both Willie and Kate forbid Lynn to get a job. Next scene, ALF yells at Kate for forcing Lynn to get one.

I can’t even follow this. What’s happening? Did they get several drafts of the script mixed up while they were filming? Why is it so hard to keep it consistent? They can either want her to get a job or want her to not get a job, and either is fine. Just pick one and stick with it. I don’t see the benefit of jumping back and forth without even being aware that that’s what they’re having the characters do.

Lynn gets the job, I guess, because she’s in a Mr. Jim’s uniform serving boxed meals to her family. There is a pretty funny moment — the requisite one per episode — when she gives her little brother a kid’s meal and a “game card.” He asks her how it works, and she says that if you scratch it off and uncover three oysters, you win a free pack of cigarettes. I can’t express how grateful I am to that One Good Writer…

Then Lynn walks out of the room to get changed and because she doesn’t have any more lines. Willie and Kate, of course, then further confuse the issue of just what the fuck they want: Kate says that they should buy Lynn the car outright, and Willie replies that it’s important that Lynn sees this job through.

SO AGAIN.

FUCKING WHAT.

Do they support her decision to get a job or not? Again, either is fine…but which is it? First they want her to earn money, then they don’t want her to get a job, then they force her to get a job (off-camera, apparently), then Kate doesn’t want her to get a job, then Willie says it’s important that she has a job. The dead people aren’t laughing so I know this isn’t some intentionally comic flip-flopping; it really is just the work of writers who never bothered to figure out ahead of time how these characters were supposed to act, and then also never bothered to go back and give the script a second pass after it was done.

What a terribly written show.

ALF comes in and asks where Lynn is, and Kate says she’s getting changed. ALF calls out to her and Lynn answers from what sounds like about ten feet away, so I guess she’s getting changed in the living room? The Tanners are one fucked up family.

ALF bought Lynn a Ferrari, because of course he did. He’s an alien without a job who can’t leave the house. What else would he do but buy expensive cars for people?

How does he do it? Well, all of the plumbing in his space-ship was gold, apparently, and he worked through a broker to cash it out and buy the car. The fact that he worked with a broker who never wanted to meet him personally doesn’t bother me too much, because I absolutely believe that there would be crooked enough folks out there that won’t ask any questions when presented with enough money. Especially in a comedy show. That’s absolutely fair game.

What does bother me is the idea that ALF somehow stripped his space-ship apart completely, and pulled out all of the solid gold plumbing without having anybody notice him doing this. Wouldn’t that have been a pretty huge job? And, again, just where is the space-ship? How was this done without anybody ever being aware?

And so much for fixing the thing, I guess. This is probably just ALF’s way of ensuring they’ll never fix it while he’s sleeping and fire him off back into space. What a dick.

What bothers me even more is the fact that with a very small tweak, this could have been a more alien story after all. Instead of giving ALF a broker and having him understand innately how to make large purchases in Earth currency, they could have just had him get it wrong. He could have seen a television commercial advertising “no interest, no payments,” or something, and ALF assumes that means the car is free. Cut to the Ferrari in the driveway and Willie freaking out because he knows they’ll have to pay for it.

That works a lot better — in a lot of ways — than a puppet buying the car outright with his own heretofore unmentioned cache of golden plumbing.

Willie calls everyone back into the kitchen, except for ALF, to have a talk. He’s not comfortable with the fact that the family now owns a $90,000 car, but for some reason he is comfortable enough to leave that $90,000 car in the unsupervised care of an irresponsible alien. It’s fine, though, I’m sure, because there’s absolutely no chance of ALF fucking everything up.

He wants them to return the car, but Lynn wants to keep it. They talk for a bit about why it’s not a good idea for Lynn to have a car like that, and then Willie decides that they’ll wait until tomorrow to return it, and that’s fine, I’m sure, because there’s absolutely no chance of ALF fucking everything up.

Then the family stops and listens for a moment to hear the sound of ALF fucking everything up.

Who would have guessed??

They run outside just in time to see ALF speeding off into the night. He left skidmarks behind in the driveway, because it was cheaper to show that than a puppet driving a $90,000 car around a studio backlot.

Personally, I don’t see what the problem is here. This alien’s been fucking things up for ten weeks solid. If he wants to pilot an unfamiliar vehicle through the dark at dangerous speeds, more power to him. Change the locks and thank Christ he was the first to go.

The phone rings inside so they all go back into the kitchen to answer it, because having a group of people walk from the kitchen to the driveway and then back to the kitchen over and over again really makes for some fantastic television.

It’s ALF calling from the car phone. He’s on his way to Oxnard, where he’s invested in a mango farm.

The fuck is this show.

Seriously. The fuck. Is this show.

There’s some limp worry about somebody seeing ALF, but he assuages their fears by telling them he’s driving too fast to be seen. Then a bee flies into the car and ALF flips out and the line goes dead.

Once again, good. Fine. Let the fucker go.

This isn’t an instance of ALF stumbling into something and needing help…the assball bought this car himself, climbed into the car himself, started the car himself, sped out into the night himself, and is now dicking around on a highway himself. If a bee flies into the car and he crashes into a ditch and bleeds to death, good riddance.

But Willie is worried about him. I have no idea why. I really don’t. Let him crash. Let the government scoop him up, dead or alive. ALF needs to face some consequence for his actions, or you’re going to have him piloting vehicles he doesn’t know how to drive along unfamiliar roads every other night. Why do they allow this shit to continue?

Anyway, guess where they go next.

No, seriously. Guess.

Do they go to bed? Do they hang out in the shed? Do they go to Mrs. Ochmonek’s house?

No, they go back to the driveway. Almost all of this episode consists of these idiots walking back and forth between the kitchen and the driveway. Were all of the other sets being fumigated this week or something?

They go back to the driveway because they hear a crash, and sure enough ALF drove the car into the garage. Hilarious. It’s also covered in filth and branches so I guess he was smashing his way through the neighborhood, which you would think might convince this family of imbeciles that it’s about time to start laying down some rules. Instead they just rush to the car to make sure he’s okay. Fortunately he is, and the Tanners are relieved that he will still be around to drive them ever deeper into debt.

Willie, to his credit, starts screaming his ass off at ALF. But is this really the wisest thing to do right now, in the driveway? Think about it. If you were sitting in your house right now, and you heard a car squealing down the street that then collided with your neighbor’s garage, wouldn’t you at least look out the window to make sure everything was alright? What if someone was dying out there? What if it started a fire? You’d at least take a look to see if you should call for help, and that would doubly be the case if you then heard a loud altercation taking place immediately afterward.

But, no. Nobody comes out to see what’s wrong, so Willie’s perfectly safe screaming at a naked alien in plain sight. Maybe ALF’s assorted antics over the past 10 weeks have killed off the rest of the neighborhood.

Anyway, ALF makes amends to Willie by promising the sell the car the next day, and using the money to fix the garage. Willie is happy with this, and nobody seems to realize that they might have a hard time selling a totaled motor vehicle that was just driven through the side of a house. But, hey, what do I know about cars, right?

Somebody does buy the car, I fucking guess, because the next day the garage is fixed and Brian and ALF are in the driveway repairing Willie’s old car. These are exactly the two people in this house that should be working unsupervised on somebody’s engine, so I’ve got absolutely no concerns with this development at all.

Willie comes over and is touched by the fact that two people who have no experience of cars short of driving them through people’s yards and destroying the house with them have taken it upon themselves to dick around with his only form of transportation. He even shows his appreciation by climbing into the driver’s seat and turning to wither the souls of everyone watching at home:

Willie then tries to back out of the driveway but ends up crashing into the garage again, and I honestly have no idea what the joke is here.

Did ALF and Brian ruin the car and cause this to happen?

Is Willie just a dipshit?

I have no clue. Either way all of the cars are now wrecked, the house is destroyed, and nobody has any money, so the episode is over.

I don’t even have anything to say about this one. What a heap of garbage. I could summarize the plot by saying that the Tanner family ran into and out of the house a bunch of times, and then some cars got crashed. This one was almost as bad as “Strangers in the Night” in terms of how clumsily it was put together. Nothing really happened, and even then it felt needlessly complicated. What could the pitch session for this episode even have been like?

I don’t know. I can’t invest too much thought into this trash. The writing staff certainly didn’t.

And does Lynn still have that job? Ugh, who knows.

I’m sick of this, so let me end this review on a joke:

Chicken and oysters.

There. Yuk it up, you dead assholes.

MELMAC FACTS: On Melmac they ate dogs as well as cats. Great. Also gold was worthless there, but foam was very valuable. Interestingly, ALF keeps lapsing into the present tense when talking about Melmac. I wonder if the show will ever “forget” that it’s supposed to be destroyed.

Alright, guys and gals. Strap yourselves in because this one is a da-hoo-zy.

…no, it’s not. It’s actually just a half hour of Willie mumbling to himself about how worthless he is. And, I have to admit, that’s definitely the way to get me on your side, but man is this episode lousy.

It starts off with Willie’s birthday party. Couldn’t they have spaced out these plots a little bit? Two episodes ago it was Brian’s birthday, and right before this we had three episodes in a row about ALF being in love with different women. This show hasn’t even hit ten episodes yet; does it really need to be repeating itself this much?

I don’t understand. It’s a show about an alien, for crying out loud. It shouldn’t be that difficult to come up with ideas for plots. Certainly not so difficult that in episode nine you have to throw up your hands and say, “Fuck it, we’ll do another birthday.”

Maybe this was the idea all along. Write a handful of scripts and then make minor alterations to them over and over until the show is cancelled. I can’t wait until the holidays; I’m hoping they do five Christmas episodes in a row.

Anyway, Willie is turning 45. And good for him; he doesn’t look a day over 60.

Willie kisses ALF.

I don’t have anything to say about that; I just wanted to take a screen grab in case you were interested in having it for your desktop background.

As strange as it feels to say this, I’m pretty sure this is the first Willie episode. I mean, I know it is, but it feels like that can’t be true. I think it’s just because he’s always such a presence in the show, even when he’s not doing anything. It’s hard for your eyes not to be drawn to the weaselly, stammering lunatic whenever he’s in the room, regardless of what else is going on.

But we still don’t know anything about him. It’s not that he’s a cipher; it’s that the only characteristic he has is that the actor playing him doesn’t bother to learn his lines until a few minutes before the cameras roll.

We don’t know what he does for a living, we don’t know what he likes or dislikes, we don’t know what he thinks of his own children, we don’t know what he thinks of his wife — except that he will never, under any circumstances, allow himself to have sex with her — and we don’t know his history. He’s just this guy who is always there.

So it’s probably good that we finally get around to learning about him, seven weeks after ALF devoted a full episode to the nosy neighbor we never saw again.

But I guess I might as well tell you right now that we don’t come out of this episode knowing anything more about Willie than we knew going in, which was pretty much jack shit. The fact that the writers can spend a whole half hour with one of their central characters and manage to say literally nothing about him is an almost impressive display of ineptitude.

The family gives Willie those trick birthday candles that don’t blow out, so ALF dumps water on them and ruins the cake.

A few episodes ago this might have been fine, because I’d love to believe that this is just his alien mind misunderstanding a concept you and I would be familiar with. But, again, two weeks ago it was Brian’s birthday. He was there. He knows that you eat the cake, and that you don’t fucking dump water all over it like an asshole.

It’s not enough that ALF has ruined Willie’s life? He has to ruin his birthday cake, too? Why is he such a massive dick?

Then the family asks Willie to give a speech, and ALF gets upset that nobody wants to hear him give a speech too. Later ALF is confused by the fact that Willie gets all the presents.

But, again, ALF just experienced an Earth birthday not that long ago, and he didn’t express any confusion then. He knows how this shit works. Maybe these episodes were aired out of order or something, but watching them in sequence it seems to almost deliberately underscore the fact that ALF isn’t confused by this stuff at all…he’s just a cockhole.

Willie’s speech is just a list of the people he lives with, and his relationship to them, so the viewers at home don’t get confused by the foreign concepts of “wife” and “child.”

It’s strange. I can’t imagine being asked to give a speech on any occasion and just saying, “Mike is my friend, Joe is my friend, Tammy is my mother, Otis is my milkman…” and having that go over well. People would probably think I had a stroke.

I guess it was easier for the writers to just list the names of the characters in the show than it would have been to give any thought to who Willie is as a human being. I know I’ve asked things like this before, but, honestly, why would you even pitch the idea that you do a Willie episode if you don’t feel like writing anything about Willie?

The kids bring Willie his gifts, and the first one he opens is from Kate. It’s the Cambridge Atlas of Astronomy, and the moment he turns his head ALF grabs it and starts scribbling all over it.

Kick this guy out! There is no reason to keep him around. At least yell at him! All he ever does is take your shit and destroy it. Willie’s been in possession of this book for all of two seconds before ALF ruins it. Why are there no consequences? How is this even a joke? It would be like me sitting next to you while you’re eating your lunch, and I smack the sandwich out of your hand before you can bite it. Am I a brilliant humorist, or am I a big chain of dicks?

Anyway, Willie opens ALF’s gift next. Wait a minute…I thought ALF was confused by the concept of Willie getting gifts a minute ago…but now he already got him a gift? It’s one thing if he’s confused because this episode was supposed to come before the one with Brian’s birthday, but now they’re ignoring what they bothered setting up a few sentences ago.

This fuckin’ show, y’all. This fuckin’ show.

Oh, and if you’re wondering what Willie’s kids got him, tough shit. He never opens the presents. I bet that makes them feel good. They go out and get some thoughtful gifts for their dad on his birthday, and he just leaves them wrapped on the table without a second thought so he can exchange small talk with the alien who lives in their laundry room.

Can you imagine how you would feel if you were seven years old, and you got your dad a gift for his birthday, and he just left it in the wrapping? You’d probably cry yourself to sleep.

But I guess these kids have seen Willie favor ALF over them every second of every day since he arrived, so this probably doesn’t come as a surprise to anybody but stupid old me.

ALF’s gift to Willie is a box of old photographs he found. For whatever reason, they’re photographs of men that Kate used to sleep with before she married into a life of sexual dissatisfaction with Willie. It’s a little strange that Kate reminisces about how good-looking her old fuck buddies were on her husband’s birthday, but he just sits there quietly so I guess he doesn’t care and neither do the writers.

One of the pictures is of Joe Namath, and the joke is that she used to get railed by Joe Namath. I hope you can keep up with the amazing comedy.

I don’t know…talking about exes isn’t always the smartest move when you’re in a relationship with someone else — and talking about the sex you had with your exes is almost never a good idea — but don’t you think it would have come up at some point in the past that Kate was with Joe Namath? I remember when I was in college and I was seeing this girl. It wasn’t anything serious, but one of the first things she told me was that she’d been with Tom Jones, and had a picture of him naked on her phone to prove it.

…and prove it she did.

I didn’t get jealous at all. I wasn’t puzzled. Because damn, son…that’s Tom Jones! If you were with a celebrity, I’d say it’s fair game to mention that. It’s kind of impressive. That’s why I keep telling people that I slept with the pink Power Ranger. I didn’t, but I’m pretty sure that the woman who will finally be impressed by that is my soul mate.

But yeah, Kate had some kind of love affair with Joe Namath and keeps a shoebox full of Polaroids of him, but Willie never knew, and now that he does know he couldn’t care less. He finds a menu in the box instead, and it has a list written on it.

It turns out to be a list that he and Kate made of all the things they wanted to do before they die. (“Let Joe Namath go deep” is obviously crossed out.)

Kate’s list included things like running with the bulls in Pamplona, and getting published in a major literary magazine. We’ve never seen anything from Kate to indicate that these might have been realistic desires for her, but the episode tells us that she actually did them, which does round her character out a bit. It doesn’t fill it in, or anything, but I’m happier knowing that Kate likes adventure and enjoys writing, because it at least suggests that she is a character.

Willie’s list, then, should really shed some light on who he is. Right?

Nope. It just says “build a better mousetrap,” which is the vaguest sort of non-committal bullshit any writer’s room has ever come up with, and then it says something about jumping out of a plane, because that’s the plot of the episode. There’s really no other reason. Willie finds an old menu and decides to jump out of a plane. Sprinkle liberally with stalling and dream sequences, and boom, you’ve got an episode of ALF.

Later that night ALF walks in on Willie in the shed, and he’s…

…wait. So “build a better mousetrap” was meant literally? There’s no laughter so I really don’t know if this was meant to be a joke. “Build a better mousetrap” is just a sort of general phrase meant to imply innovation. I wondered why nobody asked Willie what the living shit he meant by that, but now I see that it’s because they all immediately understood that Willie, for whatever reason, wishes to be responsible for improving actual mousetraps as we know them.

This is absurd. Ditto his prototype there. What is that? It’s a fishbowl, a bell and some cardboard. Does Willie even know what a mousetrap is? Has he never seen one before? Since when is he so obsessed with them? And how could he both be obsessed with them and build something this tremendously shitty? This is something I would have done for the fifth grade science fair. And I would have gotten a D.

This useless contraption at least retroactively explains why it took him 10 years to finish assembling his ham radio. This guy really is just a moron. We’re supposed to believe that the guy who tried to make a mousetrap with pipe cleaners could contact extra-terrestrial life? God fucking fuck this show.

ALF convinces Willie to skydive, due to the fact that the episode really needs something to happen at some point, and it was either that or give Willie a goal that has anything to do with who he is as a person. Willie agrees because it will be the first thing he’s ever done in his own show.

Eventually Willie goes to bed, and he immediately starts asking Kate about her exes, because the last thing any man wants to do on his birthday is have sex.

He presses her for information about how successful they are, so I guess he was jealous after all, but he didn’t show it in any way in the earlier scenes because the script didn’t mention anything about it until now. Kate reassures him that the past is the past, and she’s happy with she’s with him because he’s safe and boring and ugly and creepy. He then tells her he’s going to skydive tomorrow, but she’s either asleep or cares even less about it than I do.

And then…yup:

It’s a dream sequence. In it, Willie is graduating from something. One of Kate’s exes — the one he was worrying about a moment ago — is apparently a Roger Daltrey impersonator in an Indiana Jones hat. He talks for a while about how awesome he is while Willie stands quietly off to the side. And I’ll give ALF some credit for that much, because I can’t imagine Willie is creative enough to dream about anything other than formal ceremonies taking place on a cheap sound stage while he shuffles around and mutters to himself in the background.

Then Joe Namath comes out! Woo! And it’s really him! Not like the Roger Daltrey guy I mentioned a second ago. That was just a hilarious joke that you really liked. This, though, is the REAL JOE NAMATH.

I’m guessing this was a big event that the network advertised endlessly for like a week in advance. “See Joe Namath on the next ALF! You’ll never believe what happens!” Crap like that, making people believe he was going to be hanging out with ALF or getting into some adventure with him. Then people tuned in and saw that the big guest star was actually just shaking hands with Max Wright in a high school gymnasium. Take that, hypothetical idiots who looked forward to something.

This dream sequence goes on forever. Willie asks for Joe Namath’s autograph, and Joe Namath writes something about complimenting Kate on the unforgettable snugness of her rectum. Then he says that the only reason he didn’t marry her was that she was looking for somebody safe and predictable, which you’d think Willie should take as a compliment, but it really just pisses him off.

I don’t even understand why. What’s the problem here? That you’re the thing your wife wanted you to be when she married you? The fact that he’s just a useless dweeb must be coming as a shock to him for some reason. How he made it 45 years without even suspecting that fact is beyond me. I guess every time Willie looked in the mirror he saw Steve McQueen staring back at him.

Joe Namath jumps off the stage and it sounds like he’s falling, and Willie calls down to him, so it must be a flying graduation ceremony or something, and I’m less confused about that than I am by the fact that there are only seven minutes left in the episode and literally all that’s happened is that somebody ruined a cake and Willie discovered another reason not to fuck his wife.

Then ALF comes out and my god who cares.

Why are these episodes so padded? They end up recycling plots, but it’s not because they have anything new to do with them. They just set some idea up in the first scene, then dick around and kill time until the credits roll. How is this show so awful? Why did I even like it as a kid? Nothing happens.

Joe Namath comes back on stage, along with Indiana Daltrey. There’s this third guy there too that nobody introduces, but everyone’s hanging around with him like he’s been there all along. I guess it’s somebody else Kate fucked, but we’ve never seen him before and he’s never referred to. Did he have a scene where he showed up and explained who he was in this dream, but it was cut out? And is it possible that they could cut anything out of this sequence and still have it feel so bloated?

Willie doesn’t even react to this new guy. I guess he’s always getting belittled by strange men in his dreams and this is no big deal.

They all start chanting for Willie to jump, like they’re trying to pressure him into doing it, but that’s pretty strange since Willie has already said a bunch of times in real life that he’s going to do it, so I don’t understand the point of having this big long dream sequence that exists just to convince him to do it all over again.

Willie then trains himself to hop off of a step ladder onto a mattress, and if the fact that he still hasn’t opened his son’s gift didn’t scar Brian, this image certainly will.

Brian then does the jump better than his father does, and Willie takes the opportunity to describe to ALF the dream we just saw, in case we forgot quite how padded this episode is. ALF just hangs around listening to it and why in fuck’s name does nothing alien ever happen in this show? This is a full episode about Willie worrying about doing something that literally nobody — himself included — gives even one tiny shit about. This might have worked as a sort of “breather” episode amidst the more frantic installments of alien hijinx, but they’re all like this! They’re all nothing.

I can’t say this enough: this is a show about a fucking alien. Why is it that when they’re tossing out ideas in the writers’ room they come up with things like “an old woman watches a movie” and “the cat runs away?” I have no explanation for why they’re so defiantly uncreative with their own premise.

They’re not even fleshing Willie out as a character here. He doesn’t have a fear of heights or some bad memories of air travel as a kid…he’s just going to jump out of a plane. There’s nothing to be overcome except the episode’s running time. It’s terrible.

Kate comes in and doesn’t seem to mind that this is what she ended up when she could have had Joe Namath. He tells her about his plan to skydive, and she reminds him in the politest possible way that nobody on the face of the planet gives a living fuck about whether or not he does this dumbass thing he wrote on a menu two decades ago, and going through with it doesn’t change at all who he is as a human being, whatever that might be. It’s a pretty reasonable perspective, but Willie feels like he has to do it, because that’s what it says in the script, so to hell with this woman who loves him for who he is.

Willie is sitting in a fake airplane while somebody off-camera blows a hairdryer into his face. Everyone’s waiting impatiently for the point in the episode at which they jump out of the plane, and for once I can identify with somebody in this show because that’s exactly what I’m doing too.

I really have to wonder why they did cut out that third guy’s scene in the dream sequence. It’s not like they had anything else to show in this episode. The whole thing is just padding. It could have been two minutes long and the edit wouldn’t have lost anything of substance. Why bother trimming a whole character out if all you’re going to do with the extra time is show Max Wright waiting quietly for the credits to roll?

Everyone jumps out but Willie, who gives this little speech to the instructor about why he won’t do it. But the instructor can’t hear him over all the noise, so Willie decides to jump after all. I’m not sure I understand the logic behind that decision, but then again I don’t spend my evenings alone in a shed building implausible mousetraps so what would I know?

We then cut to some stock footage of a parachuting baboon, and the fake audience expresses their approval.

Seriously, what the fuck is that? That’s not human.

Later that night everyone yuks it up in the shed, and I guess we’ve learned a valuable lesson about always having to live up to all the people your significant other has ever slept with, and making sure to put yourself in mortal danger whenever the opportunity arises to do something nobody cares if you do.

Joe Namath isn’t listed in the credits, at least not that I could see, which I’d like to think was a non-negotiable demand of his for appearing on ALF. That way he could just tell people they hired a look-alike and he had nothing to do with this garbage.

Anyway, my Christ was that a bad one. It was framed as an episode about Willie, but really it was just the characters wasting time until they could get to the skydiving scene, which lasts all of thirty seconds. It’s not even like there was any conflict; I know the Kate-Fucking Three in the dream sequence all chanted at him to jump, but he already said he was going to do it. He doesn’t even change his mind until he’s in the plane, and then because the instructor can’t hear him he does it anyway.

I know nothing more about Willie than I did last week.

Well, that’s not entirely true. I know the show wants me to think he married a slut.

Ninety more episodes to go. I hope in one of them we learn that Kate also slept with Charles Nelson Reilly. Because I could actually start looking forward to this show if I knew I’d eventually get a little bit of Charles Nelson Reilly.

MELMAC FACTS: One of ALF’s parents was an asteroid polisher. Which is more than we know about either of Brian and Lynn’s parents.

So, this is it. This is the episode I’ve been warned about by multiple people. (Two is a multiple.) It’s not one of the episodes I remember from its original run, but I guess it’s something that’s stuck with a few others. Honestly, I’m not surprised. It’s definitely memorable for one reason, at least.

The more episodes of ALF I review, the more I wonder if I even saw season one when it first aired. I’m sure I caught at least a few of them in reruns, but I’m starting to think I didn’t join the ALF party until the second season. That’s got the first episode I remember seeing for sure, and man I can’t wait to get to that one.

Anyway…this is a bad episode. Not that that really needs to be said at this point, but just in case you thought I’d end up loving this…nope. It’s fucking bad.

It’s even worse than it would have been otherwise simply because it’s the third episode in a row(!) about ALF dealing with his affections for someone. He sure does rebound quickly, doesn’t he? Last week it was his ex-girlfriend Rhonda that he never dated, and the week before that it was Jodie. Remember Jodie? ALF sure as hell doesn’t. Fuck you, Jodie! You depressed blind nobody!

This week it’s Lynn. Which totally isn’t creepy at all. It starts immediately when Lynn hangs up the phone and announces that Scott Maynard wants to put his band equipment in her garage. “Band equipment” is a pretty obvious euphemism for his penis, but I’m not quite sure which of Lynn’s holes is being referred to as her “garage.” I guess I’ll just make a point of watching carefully.

ALF gets jealous and presses her about whether or not she finds Scott more attractive than him. The family just sits there listening to this, I guess, because, hey, it’s just an alien that lives in their laundry room making it very clear that he’d like to fuck their daughter after they go to bed. No biggie.

Scott is coming over in fifteen minutes, which means Lynn has to cancel her “date” with ALF to redecorate his room. Since they live together and it’s not like either of them do anything with their miserable lives I don’t know why they couldn’t just postpone it until tomorrow, or even later that night, but ALF’s pretty heartbroken. I know I complained about having three episodes in a row with similar plots, but I’m okay with it because each of them focuses around ALF’s increasing sadness, and at this rate the season finale will be about him slitting his wrists over the bathroom sink.

The credits come up and I see that this episode was written by Jerry Stahl. Now, I can’t say anything about this personally, but Stahl is the one that several commenters here have identified as the most likely candidate for my One Good Writer theory. Apparently he wrote a book called Permanent Midnight about his experiences writing for television, and it was later made into a movie. I haven’t read or watched either, but I’m willing to defer to folks who have. Stahl’s later credits certainly suggest he was capable of a lot more than writing for a slutty puppet.

Of course, the fact that Stahl is the credited writer for this episode doesn’t necessarily mean much. It’ll be interesting to see if this one bears a stronger stamp of the One Good Writer than the other ones do, but ultimately it’s pretty moot. The way these shows tend to work is that, yes, there is a credited writer (or sometimes more), but it’s actually “written” by a full staff of people. Who they decide to credit will vary from show to show, but usually it’s the person who pitched the initial idea (whether or not the final product is anything like what he or she envisioned), or the person who took the time to organize everyone’s contributions into a final script (whether or not he or she pitched any ideas that made it into the episode). So, it’s a little confusing. If this episode is great, that doesn’t necessarily reflect on Stahl. Likewise, if this episode is lousy, that doesn’t necessarily mean he wasn’t the most talented one in the room. It just means he got stuck typing up everyone else’s bullshit.

I’ll spoil it for you: he got stuck typing up everyone else’s bullshit.

Scott arrives, and Lynn was right! He’s a total babe. Hunka hunka! Just get a load of that sweater. If that doesn’t scream “teenage rock musician,” I don’t know what does.

There is actually a decently funny moment when he says that his band is no longer The G-Men, because they found out some other band already had that name. Then he holds up a bass drum that reads DOORS. It’s actually an alright moment, but Scott doesn’t get any characterization beyond this. I thought maybe his schtick would be that he’s a bonehead or something, but I don’t even know what his schtick is. His only joke in the entire episode is holding up that drum, so I guess the writers didn’t give him one. It’s a shame, because this is the kind of joke that would work better if they carried it a little further and let it give us some insight into who he is.

Whatever. I’ll take what I can get. While I’d rather this joke serve as some character work, I need to just accept the fact that he’s not a character; he’s a sweater with some meat stuffed inside of it. I’ll just be happy the show got a relatively appreciative “hm” out of me.

Actually this scene isn’t so bad, probably because Lynn’s acting works so much better in this context. She’s nervous around Scott, so, while I’m sure it wasn’t intentional, her “too careful” enunciation of her lines works very well. Of course she’d make a point of speaking deliberately…she’s worried about making a fool out of herself in front of the guy she likes. She fidgets with his instruments, too, and it’s kind of a nice moment.

But then the show remembers it’s about ALF, so ALF starts poking his head into shot in the presumable hopes of seeing Scott take Lynn’s shirt off.

She keeps trying to wave him away and she shouts “No!” when Scott asks her out, but really she’s talking to ALF, only she can’t say that, so she makes up an excuse about swatting a locust and Jesus Christ did this scene fall apart.

ALF gives up on seeing teenaged nip and ropes Brian into helping him decorate his room instead. He has the boy paste wallpaper all over the windows, and Kate comes in and gets upset.

Which, hey, good for her. ALF has proven week after week that he doesn’t misunderstand any human concepts at all, which means that he must be wallpapering their windows just to be a dick.

ALF asks Kate for advice on women, but he does so in such a way that she thinks he has a crush on her. Her response is that women love poetry, so ALF starts writing a poem.

I’m not blaming ALF here, but I’m curious where this cliche came from. You always hear advice like this on sitcoms, but when in the whole of human history did any little boy impress the girl he liked by writing her a poem? More likely he’d just be exposing his feelings in the most clumsy and inexpert way possible, and he’d be providing her with physical evidence of his awkward advances that she can show her friends on the bus ride home and then they all laughed at me. :(

ALF tries setting his poem to music, and Willie walks in on him. Willie says, “AAAALF,” and ALF replies, “WHAAAAT.” I don’t think I’m looking too deeply into this to see it as a dig at Max Wright’s line delivery, and it’s kind of funny that the poor guy was asked to be the butt of a joke about how shitty an actor he is.

There’s another dig at Max Wright immediately afterward…or, at least, I think there is. He asks ALF if he can see his poem, and then he reads it out loud. “Take a look at me / and tell me what you see. / Just another pretty face?” Then Willie looks at ALF’s hideous visage and says, “…very amusing!”

It’s obviously a joke, but the fake audience doesn’t laugh its fake laughter, which has to be a deliberate choice. Maybe Wright complained about not getting any funny lines, so Fusco and crew gave him one to shut him up and then just twisted the knife later by not pasting any laughter after it.

Willie then tries to turn the poem into a song, and the entire history of popular music was just a prelude to this moment, when it’s all revealed to be just one long, elaborate joke on mankind.

ALF tries to make himself vomit, and it’s the only time I’ve felt anything like empathy with him.

It’s really bad, but…well, that’s okay. Because the point is that Willie’s really bad.

But just you wait, friends. Because this doesn’t compare to the mountain of shit that’s yet to come…and that one’s unintentional.

Brian is sleeping, ALF is setting his awful poetry to awful music, and Lynn is getting digitally violated by Scott at a drive-in, which means Willie and Kate have the house to themselves. Kate makes some romantic overtures toward him, but fortunately Willie doesn’t reciprocate, sparing her from a night of sluggish, oily fucking.

The phone rings, and it’s Mrs. Ochmonek. Wait, isn’t she dead? If she’s not dead, then why the fuck was ALF praying to her in the last episode? Maybe they aired these two out of sequence. I don’t know. Either way she doesn’t appear in the episode, so maybe she’s calling from beyond the grave to complain about ALF bashing out shitty music in the garage at all hours of the night. It makes sense, actually…I don’t think death could prevent me from complaining about ALF either.

Willie tells Kate about it, and explains that ALF is setting a poem to music. Kate replies by saying that she thinks it’s because ALF has a crush on her.

And there you go, folks. The only time Willie Tanner has ever smiled, and it’s because he’s laughing at his ugly hag of a wife believing that anybody could ever be attracted to her.

Remind me, please, why Kate is with this putz?

Of course, belittling his wife for being horribly undesirable is really just Willie’s idea of foreplay, so Kate leans in seductively, and Willie makes a sex face that will not only get him laid, but also ensures that I never want to get laid again.

In another stroke of luck, though, ALF interrupts their tender moment and they no longer have to pretend to be attracted to each other. He is holding a VHS and explains that it’s a “rock video” that he made for Lynn. This makes Kate leave, because she’s upset, I guess, that ALF doesn’t want to fuck her.

Willie also leaves, upset, I guess, that ALF doesn’t want to fuck his wife.

These concerns seem to override for both of them the fact that they’ve just learned that ALF wants to fuck their daughter.

This is messed up on all kinds of levels, folks. I can’t even bring myself to unpack it. Just make a list of the ways in which this isn’t messed up, because that will be a lot shorter.

Lynn and Scott come home laughing at something we don’t get to hear, because God forbid the writers of ALF have to write a joke.

ALF spies on them through the window and starts shouting insults and threats at the boy to scare him off, because it’s been well established by this point that ALF is the only one who is allowed to insert anything into any members of the Tanner family.

Really, people. This show. It’s so…ugh.

It’s so gross. When I started doing these reviews I expected to be disappointed by how unfunny it was, and at least mildly embarrassed that I liked it so much as a kid. But I didn’t expect every episode to deteriorate into some kind of alien sex festival.

It’s terrible. The whole time I was watching this I wanted Scott to take Lynn away from whatever the hell was screaming at them from inside the house. Instead, though, he leaves alone, probably to think about what character trait he’d eventually like to pick up for himself.

We’re getting closer, folks. We’re getting closer to that moment.

But first Lynn comes inside to yell at ALF for fucking up her one chance to get date raped by a rock musician. Willie comes out to find out what the hell is going on, but it’s not like it matters because he’d never, under any circumstances, punish the alien.

He pulls up a chair to discuss “the facts of life” with ALF, which means he’s about to have the sex talk with a creature from outer space, while his daughter sits on the other site of the couch observing. I couldn’t imagine a more awkward scene if my life depended on it, and it’s not helped by the fact that there’s a plate between them covered with what looks like a small child’s bones.

ALF ate a kid I guess.

Sure. Why not.

Willie goes to bed because he just taught the creature that’s currently lusting after his teenaged daughter how to have sex, so his work here is done.

ALF reveals to Lynn that he made a rock video for her and SERIOUSLY WHAT THE FUCK ARE THOSE BONES

She wants to see it, but he refuses to show her. She recites to him the moral of tonight’s episode, which is that you should never feel ashamed about videotaping yourself singing about the sex you’d like to have with an underaged girl of a different species. He takes the lesson to heart, and I hope all of you will, too.

ALF asks Lynn to turn the VCR on, because the midget had the day off and the puppet can’t leave the couch.

The video starts and it’s just a slow zoom on the drum kit, and I’m sure Scott won’t mind that ALF scraped off the DOORS thing and replaced it with a sticker bearing his name and his clearly alien face, because seriously fuck trying to hide the fact that an alien lives here anymore. Just fuck it all forever.

And then…

And then.

Oh yes, ladies and gentlemen.

And then.

Yup.

This happened.

ALF filmed himself singing his song to Lynn, cutting between different takes of him, I guess, at different instruments and wearing clothes meant to evoke famous rock stars. In one shot he’s dressed like Bruce Springsteen* and in another he’s dressed like Elton John, who’s very well known for getting all the girls.

It’s really bad. Really, really bad.

And it only gets worse.

He’s singing this really shitty song which is probably called “You’re the One That’s Out of This World,” and I feel humiliated just for watching it.

I know it sounds silly, but while I was taking notes and making screengrabs I was genuinely afraid that I would drop dead at my computer, and somebody would find my body and see what I was watching. That was a serious source of concern for me.

I mean, just look at this shit.

Yep, this must be why people remember “Don’t It Make Your Brown Eyes Blue?” as being such a lousy episode. Prior to this it was just bad in a sort of vague, lamely predictable way, but watching a bunch of ALF puppets performing a song about how fuckable Lynn is definitely elevates this to brave new peaks of shitness.

Seriously. Just LOOK AT THIS.

ALF went all out for his music video, rigging up pyrotechnics, fog machines and laser light shows in the garage. And I’m not even going to question how he edited all this shit together. It’s not enough that ALF knows how to play all of these instruments? He also has to have comprehensive knowledge of how to work videography equipment?

I hate this.

I hate this, I hate this, I hate this.

And it KEEPS GOING.

End! Why won’t this end? This is the longest three minutes of my life.

I guess ALF’s supposed to be dressed up like one of the guys from ZZ Top now, but it just looks like he found a shitty Santa Claus costume in the garage.

How long is this fucking video? It’s been nothing but guitar solos for God knows how long. Did they run out of lyrics? Then why not just end this stupid thing? We don’t need to see a puppet pretending to play instruments. It isn’t funny or interesting. It’s just happening and it won’t end and there aren’t any jokes and the music is fucking terrible and these pointless solos are just padding out a sequence that was already pure padding.

Did they think we’d be impressed by ALF’s musicianship or something? He’s not real, you know. He’s a piece of cloth holding a guitar while somebody else’s uninspired rock solo is dubbed over it in post. We get the point after about ten seconds…we don’t need to watch the extended cut.

It’s not over. ALF is playing the saxophone.

Did the writers just harbor secret dreams of being rock stars or something? Is this music video their chance to show off what they’re capable of? If it is, I can see why they ended up writing for ALF.

It’s so out of place. None of the lyrics are even comic. I guess they didn’t want to ruin this beautiful performance with a laugh track, so they left out all attempts at jokes.

I don’t get it. Did they really think this was a good song or something? There’s no other reason to give over the whole final fifth of your episode to it — not to mention the fact that the whole rest of the episode was building up to it — if it’s neither good nor funny.

I can’t understand this. I can’t even comprehend what I’m watching and WHY THE FUCK WON’T IT END

One of the ALF puppets is at a computer while the rest of the ALF puppets noodle around endlessly, and the ALF puppet at the computer watches instruments and music notes come flying out of the computer because holy mother of cockshit how long is this crap

It’s still going. This must have been the easiest episode to write ever. It’s just some horse shit about ALF wanting to fuck Lynn, then there’s one page that says, “ALF dicks around on guitar until the credits roll.”

Done. Another masterpiece in the can.

My Christ is this painful. I actually never want to listen to music again. I need to avoid triggering memories of this at all costs, because I don’t think I could live through it a second time.

It does finally end, though, and Lynn tells ALF that she really appreciates the nonsensical bullshit she just watched that was mainly just ALF fucking with Scott’s instruments and barely about her at all, but she’d rather be sexually violated by boys of her own age and genus.

ALF is cool with this, probably because he knows he can do whatever he wants to her while she’s asleep and there will never be any consequence to his actions.

Then the music video plays again under the end credits because it’s been almost a full fucking minute since we saw it last and boy howdy do the ALF writers hate you.

This was probably the worst episode yet. Analyze it yourself in the comments, because I refuse to think about it any more than I already have.

Fuck you, ALF.

—–
* When I was a kid I actually had an ALF puppet that was dressed as Bruce Springsteen. I guess that comes from this episode, but it could just be a coincidence since they also made ones where he was dressed as a chef and a gynecologist and shit like that. In addition I had a stuffed Jodie doll that I kept locked in a box where nobody would ever think about it.

Toward the beginning of this project, I was speaking with a friend of mine, and I realized something kind of shocking: even though I remember watching ALF every week as a child, owning the toys and presumably enjoying it, I really don’t remember much as an adult about the show.

A few details stuck out, such as the fact that ALF’s real name is Gordon Shumway (a fact I expected to find out in the pilot, but apparently the Tanners didn’t give enough of a shit to ever ask, “Hey, who are you?”). I remembered that he was from Melmac, and that he ate cats. I remember “Ha! I kill me!” And, for whatever reason, I remembered that his favorite song was “Help Me, Rhonda.”

That’s about it. And, granted, I wasn’t very old when ALF was airing and it’s fair that I’d have forgotten a lot. But aside from a few miscellaneous bits of trivia, I didn’t remember anything. It’s actually kind of strange, because as an adult I’ve revisited many things I loved as a child, and I’m usually amazed at how much of it I remember. Whether it’s where the secrets are hidden in Super Mario Bros., the words to all of the songs in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, or pretty much every line in Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, adult Philip ends up feeling like he’s time traveling when he remembers so much so vividly.

With ALF, I remember nothing. At least, not yet. Maybe eventually we’ll get to an episode that will make my mind light up with recognition, but so far it’s just a garbage show that I can’t believe I ever enjoyed. I guess I must have only enjoyed it on a superficial level, because I sure as shit didn’t retain anything about it.

Anyway, I bring this up now because the episode is called “Help Me, Rhonda,” and I was pretty sure it would be about ALF tormenting everyone with the song or something. It’s not, but it’s also not a total lost cause, either. It’s an episode that seems to be trying to tap into the same vein as last week’s “For Your Eyes Only,” but this one feels more within ALF‘s wheelhouse than that episode did, simply because the approach is bungled so thoroughly.

Placing the two episodes side by side is actually quite instructive. In each case the show is trying to soften ALF, and in each case the show is trying to mine very similar territory (loneliness and homesickness). But whereas “For Your Eyes Only” largely succeeded at what it set out to do and seemed to suggest an alternate-universe ALF that wasn’t half bad, “Help Me, Rhonda” fails completely and reminds us of the actual-universe ALF we’re stuck with.

The episode opens with Brian and ALF dropping overt hints that it’s almost Brian’s birthday. We learn here that Brian is turning 7, and that ALF will be 229 in August. Then he and Brian talk about ALF’s experience of turning 229, which they discuss as though it already happened, meaning attention to this particular detail died in the space of a period between two sentences. ALF makes a crappy joke about blowing out the candles being easy, but lighting them being hard because your hand could catch on fire. The audience laughs and since it’s Thanksgiving I guess I’m thankful for the laugh track in this shitty show because otherwise I wouldn’t know that half of this stuff is meant to be a joke.

Kate and Willie ask Brian what decoration he wants on his cake, and this actually does trigger a memory, though not of ALF. I remember when I was about Brian’s age, being asked the same question. I wanted Bambi on my cake, because that had just been re-released in theaters and seeing it was still fresh in my memories. I really liked the movie, but my parents wouldn’t let me have Bambi on the cake, and were actually pretty rude with their explanations of why no son of theirs was going to have a birthday cake with Bambi on it. I guess I shouldn’t be too upset, though, because I’m positive that the lack of Bambi on my 7th birthday cake was the one thing that allowed me to make it through the rest of my life without fucking the anus of every guy I met.

Brian can’t decide what decoration he wants. Word of advice, kid…don’t ask for Bambi.

The pre-credits sequence ends on this harrowing cliffhanger, and, man, I really can’t wait to find out if Brian decides on a dinosaur or a fire engine. ALF really knew how to snare an audience!

After the credits we see ALF in bed, stroking off to a teddy bear in the tumble dryer. But it’s a very sad masturbation, because he knows he’ll never have another birthday with his friends.

This, I do have to say, is a promising start to the episode. In fact, “For Your Eyes Only” got my hopes up that this one might handle its exploration of ALF in a similarly satisfying way. I’m now convinced that “For Your Eyes Only” exists only so that I would lower my guard before “Help Me, Rhonda” punched me in the face.

Willie enters the room in a loosely-knotted robe and I spend the rest of the scene horrified at the prospect of it slipping open. Also, what’s next to ALF on the floor? Was he drinking a beer? I’m okay with this, but as much as the show has alluded to him drinking, we’ve mainly only seen him with soda pop and juice boxes. I just find this to be an interesting detail.

Also interesting is the fact that he vents to Willie about his 228th birthday (they get the detail right this time) being a particularly bad one, because that was the day Melmac exploded.

So, wait. A full year has elapsed since ALF came to Earth? Maybe not, because it’s not ALF’s birthday, but the way they’re talking makes it sound like it’s coming up soon. I get that they might just be trying to link his sadness to Brian’s birthday, which reminds him of the fact that he has his own birthday, and that his last birthday was the day his planet exploded, and his next one will be his first birthday without his friends…but that’s a hell of a train of reasoning. It makes more sense if ALF’s sad because his own birthday is coming up, but we’re only seven episodes in so it can’t have been a full year.

I don’t know. I don’t care. I’m just upset because this episode is making me try to sort out the chronology of ALF. The worst part? It’s not even the last time in the episode I’ll be doing that.

ALF gets wistful over Rhonda, who is presented as his ex-girlfriend, even though ALF then later contradicts that by saying they never went on any dates. Their first date was scheduled for the night of his birthday, but, obviously, the planet exploded and their fateful evening never happened.

He also mentions that just before the planet blew up, he and the rest of the Orbit Guards were called into duty, so, hey, more continuity! If Orbit Guard was the last job he held on Melmac, then he must have been a Phlegm dealer before that. It also suggests, at least potentially, that the nuclear disaster that decimated the planet was a war rather than an accident, if the Orbit Guard was called in.

Of course the Orbit Guard could have been like our own National Guard, which I guess is a lot more likely to be called into duty in the face of an accident than in open conflict. See? I told you this episode wasn’t done making me think about ALF to uncomfortable degrees.

This is off to a good start, though, no? A strong premise, a tender moment, some expansion of the ALF mythology. But don’t worry, we didn’t get two good episodes in a row. Boy howdy did we not get two good episodes in a row…

Willie shows off some serious gams while he tells ALF about Marsha Shankan. It was a girl that Willie was in love with, but she unfortunately moved to Toledo before Willie could embarrass himself thoroughly by asking her out in front of everybody and being so roundly rejected. He’s pretty clearly wallowing in the unresolved affection he had for another girl, which is a pretty fucked up thing to talk about while your wife is sleeping alone in the next room. He also almost refers to Kate as ALF’s mother during the story, which is even more fucked up.

At one point Max Wright says, “By the time I got the nerrrrrrrrvvv–up to ask her out…” and it’s pretty clear he forgot the line and stalled for time. Why does nobody ever ask for a second take on this show? I’ll never get used to just how poorly made this crap is.

ALF dickishly dismisses Willie’s heartache because it’s nothing that affects him personally, but since Willie’s going to lay next to his sleeping wife and jack off to the memory of some girl he knew in the sixth grade, I’d say they’re both on equal dick footing.

ALF then…oh no. Oh, fucking no. A dream sequence.

He dreams he’s back on Melmac, and I think it’s supposed to be a pretty accurate flashback as well as a dream. He’s at a diner or something, and he’s totally nude apart from his Orbit Guard armband. I mention this because the show doesn’t…it’s not a joke or a plot point, it’s just there.

See, this is weird to me, because everybody else in this scene is wearing clothes. I always just figured ALF’s nudity was due to the fact that they didn’t wear clothes on Melmac, and when he came to Earth he didn’t see a need to start. That’s fair. It’s the one thing that allowed me to overlook the fact that the Tanner household just has some naked dude lying spread-eagled on the sofa all day.

But now we see that they did wear clothes on Melmac. Everybody did. It’s just ALF who walked around town all day with his dick swingin’. Was he mentally ill?

ALF’s friend Skip has a few lines here, and the puppetry is really bad. His mouth doesn’t match his words at all, and it’s a great time to remember just how good Fusco’s puppetry is. It’s been the lone, solid highlight of these episodes so far, and putting him next to a puppetteer who had no idea what he was doing really makes me appreciate his talents more. Say what you will about the man himself, and I’ll say what I will about the show, but ALF’s puppetry is impressive.

Skip makes some remarks about how bangin’ their waitress is, and, look! She totally is.

She serves the guys their food, and behind her you can see all the cat dishes on the menu. Commenter E[X] asked a few weeks ago why there were cats on Melmac anyway. Well, this episode doesn’t provide an answer, but I did want to take this moment to say I’m fucked if I know.

ALF awakens screaming to the image of Willie touching him and stroking his chest, which is interesting because that’s precisely the image that I awake screaming from.

Willie shook ALF awake because the freeloading naked fuckhead was shouting and singing. What, at the same time? ALF asks what he was singing, and Willie says it was something by The Beach Boys. The one with Rhonda in the title.

Willie, if you heard the line “Help Me, Rhonda” then you know the name of the song. I don’t know why they didn’t just have him say that. Did they think it would make us feel clever to figure it out on our own? It would be like me saying, “I won’t tell you the name of my favorite Beatles song, but I’ll give you a hint: it has Jude in the title.” You won’t feel clever for figuring that out; you’ll just think I’m a moron.

Sad music comes on as ALF says he wants to go home. Which I guess qualifies as a twist since he’s spent every episode so far specifically not taking any steps toward going anywhere at all.

It’s not enough that ALF gets free room and board and unchecked demolition privileges, he also has Kate rubbing his shoulders. Oh, and Lynn is also stroking his chest. I don’t know; maybe that’s just a Tanner family tradition.

The show actually goes a good job of making ALF look “sick,” even though the puppet doesn’t really change. They muss up his hair, lower his eyelids, and Fusco makes ALF’s movements look tired and sluggish. I swear, that man’s puppetteering is really good. Maybe what he should have done is sign up with Jim Henson’s Creature Shop or something, where he could show off that talent but not be in charge of the production. It’s not that he has no talent…it’s that he shouldn’t have been running the show.

ALF asks Kate to get the dustbuster and for some reason gets pissy that she won’t go out to the garage to get it right now. Lynn goes to get the dustbuster herself in order to defuse the situation, but then something wonderful happens.

Kate comes over, sits on the couch, and tells him — thank you God! — to cut his motherfucking bullshit, and to cut his motherfucking bullshit right motherfucking now. She doesn’t give a flying fuck if he’s sick…he is not to speak to her that way.

Then she threatens, and I am not exaggerating, to punch his heart out.

Please Jesus, let that be the Christmas special.

In a rare instance of this show doing something for a reason, we cut to the garage. Lynn is grabbing the dustbuster, and she notices that Willie and Brian are using their ham radio to ask if anyone who can hear them is from Melmac, because, really, that whole “Nobody can find out an alien lives here” was so six episodes ago.

There’s no joke in this scene, and the camera just awkwardly films Willie and Brian silently passing a tape recorder back and forth. This is so weird. The camera just keeps rolling even though nothing’s happening and nobody’s saying anything. They didn’t bother to write any dialogue? Is this show improvised or something? It’s so bizarre.

We cut back to the living room, where ALF must have reinstated the pecking order because Kate is spoonfeeding him soup.

The first episode seemed to set up the idea that Kate was some cold, heartless, humorless shrew — my dream girl, basically — but I guess she’s really just a battered housewife.

Lynn comes back with the dustbuster and asks if she should clean now, but ALF tells her it would be better to wait until tomorrow. Then why did he get so pissed off that Kate didn’t get the dustbuster a minute ago? It’s not even a joke…and I know it’s not, because they don’t turn on the recording of dead people laughing.

Instead he hands Lynn his Last Will and Testament, which is when we find out his name is Gordon Shumway. Wow, lots of continuity in this one. ALF even suggests that he never mentioned that fact before because he’s embarrassed of it, which is pretty much the first time this nudist dickwheel has ever demonstrated having a sense of shame.

We don’t hear what the will says because the writers didn’t want to think of anything, so they have Willie and Brian interrupt with news that they’ve contacted another survivor from Melmac. I guess that justifies the fact that they spent the past week continuously broadcasting the information that they had a secret alien that lives in their house. That’s me told.

We then…

…no.

No, I won’t continue until you all take a moment to soak in Lynn’s outfit.

A long, long moment. Jesus fuck.

…okay.

So, anyway, Willie managed to contact Skip, which is convenient because it’s one of the few puppets they already had made. Skip offers to stop by and pick up ALF on his way to Andromeda. I don’t know why Skip isn’t there already if that’s where he’s going. What has he been doing this whole time? Orbiting the Earth listening to ham radio operators talking dirty to each other?

ALF asks if Skip can come by next week instead, since it’s Brian’s birthday tomorrow, and on Friday “the transvestites are back on Donahue.” Once again the laughter doesn’t come and it’s really fucking odd…as though the laugh track feels as sickened by ALF’s use of transvestites as a punchline as I do.

But then Skip says that Rhonda is with him, and ALF says, “Forget the transvestites!” Which, I guess, is the punchline, because that’s when the audience laughs. What kind of family show is this? How many kids do you think turned and asked their parents what a transvestite was? And how many of them do you think got anything like an open-minded response?

The next day Brian is sad, because ALF is leaving and his birthday is ruined. ALF tries to comfort him the only way he knows how, by tweaking his boyboobs.

There is some evidence of the One Good Writer here, as ALF asks if he can take Lucky with him. Kate says no, and then ALF replies that they’d better let him out then. Willie opens ALF’s suitcase and the cat hops out.

Honestly, by the end of this show’s run, I bet I could compile a series of clips that might fool someone into thinking ALF was pretty good.

They bring out Brian’s birthday cake and we find out the decoration he finally decided on: he wanted ALF on his cake.

It’s not supposed to be a joke, but I can’t help but laugh because even though we don’t get a clear shot of the cake, it’s pretty clear that they just globbed some brown shit on top, smeared it around a little and called it a day. That’s you, dickhead! Fuck you, ALF!

Everyone says goodbye to ALF and, again, there aren’t any jokes. It’s strange because they’re obviously not going to fool anyone into thinking ALF is leaving. The season isn’t anywhere near over, and even if he did go into space he’d pretty clearly have to come back so that there could be an episode next week.

Willie gives some cockamamie speech about how enriched the family was by having ALF in their lives. To remind you, I’ll recap everything ALF’s done for them so far: destroyed their garage, tormented their neighbor, scared their cat away, made prank calls to the president, and ruined them financially. Cut the shit, Willie. Kick him in the ass and move on with your life.

Actually, last week he didn’t do anything too bad…he just went on a date with Jodie. Where’s Jodie? Will we ever see her again? I love how that episode ended with him asking her to trust him and that things would work out, then he never thinks about her again and she’s just heartbroken in her apartment forever.

There is a good moment though when Kate wishes ALF luck, and he asks if that’s all she has to say to him. Then she adds that it’s a long trip, so if he has to use the bathroom now would be a good time. It’s especially funny because of ALF’s face after she says this:

I know I’m supposed to hate you, Kate. I know. But I just can’t.

Brian says, “I love you” to ALF, and ALF replies “Yeah, me too,” because he’s an asshole.

ALF then looks upward and says, “Goodbye, Mrs. Ochmonek, wherever you are.” Did she die? What the fuck is this? She had the entire second episode to herself, then they killed her off camera? What the hell is going on with this show?

Later that night the family is all gathered in the living room, sad. Brian is at the window so I guess ALF is just standing naked in the yard waiting for Skip to come. Great. The Tanners really do not give a shit about keeping this whole alien thing under wraps, do they?

And why are they not outside with him? I know he sucks and all, but even I would be standing out there just for the chance to see a UFO. These guys just hang out around the coffee table like it’s nothing.

It’s also strange that the birthday cake is sitting there, untouched. I mean, it’s fine if they’re too sad to eat it or something, but why are they carrying it with them from room to room?

ALF comes in to give Brian his birthday present, which are some fuzzy dice that the ALF crew dyed green. That’s so alien!

Willie then tells ALF to get back on the roof, and I feel like an idiot for assuming he was in the yard. Of course this show would stick the naked alien on the roof for the entire town to see. Of fucking course. My mistake. I’m such a dope.

Willie says that he’d better hurry because Skip will be there in 30 seconds, which is pretty ridiculously precise. If I told you I’d meet you at a restaurant at 7 o’clock, and you looked at your watch to see that it was 6:59:30, would you think, “Okay, he’ll be here in 30 seconds?” Of course not. You’d just think I’d be there soon. This show comes off like it was somehow written by people who’ve never interacted with human beings.

It turns out ALF is stalling for time because he’d rather stay with the Tanners than go wherever Skip and Rhonda are going, presumably because that might require him to get a job or respect other people’s privacy.

Willie, unbelievably, sees this as touching. He also does not grab ALF by the throat and throw him outside, to his great discredit.

The family all turns to watch a strobe light switch on and off outside, which I guess is meant to represent Skip and Rhonda porkin’ off into the night.

That’s the end of that, though we do get a short scene of Kate and ALF eating the birthday cake, which is a bit strange since nobody else in the family — including the birthday boy — are around. Kate says she’s starting to warm up to ALF, and then ALF walks over to the couch and starts demanding she does all kinds of shit for him and what a hilarious end to the episode that is.

I don’t know. This one was really bad, and I’m a little confused by why we never saw Rhonda. With a very small rewrite they could have just turned the waitress into Rhonda instead of having her be this separate character that doesn’t do anything but get sexually harassed by ALF’s grabassing friends. Which raises the question for me now of what the point of that flashback was at all.

Seriously, I thought it was going to have something to do with Rhonda, and I guess it kind of does because ALF’s friend’s are dicking around with him about his crush on her, but that’s it. We don’t learn anything about her, despite the fact that ALF is still madly in love with her, apparently, and we don’t even see her. We hear her voice on the ham radio for about two lines, and then that’s the end of that. Wouldn’t the episode have worked just as well if it was Skip alone offering to give ALF a ride? Why bother setting up a love interest just to do literally nothing with her?

And that was a flashback of Melmac’s final night in existence. Isn’t it a little strange that it has nothing to do with the fact that, I dunno, it fuckin’ exploded a few hours later? What a bizarre thing to do. It would be like making a movie about a guy who knows the full truth about the JFK assassination, and he spends all this time talking about how he was there and saw everything, and then finally when we get a flashback to November 22, 1963 it’s the wrong time of day so we just see him having brunch with some assholes he went to school with. What would be the point?

I don’t know. I never will know. But I’ve already invested way too much thought into this episode so I’m done. This review is over.

Oh, and goodbye Mrs. Ochmonek. Wherever you are.

MELMAC FACTS: Ruth the Two-Headed Nurse was the Vanna White of Melmac. (And the Betty White.) Melmac exploded in August. 425 degrees is normal body temperature for someone from Melmac. I’d question why ALF then doesn’t cook everything he touches but I promised myself this review was over so FUCK IT THIS REVIEW IS OVER.

Well, I’d love to be able to report that ALF finally managed to slap together a decent episode, but I can’t say conclusively that prolonged exposure hasn’t just driven me insane. Either way, I found myself kind of liking “For Your Eyes Only.”

In a relative sense, at least. When it comes to ALF, you need to grade on a curve. It’s a bit like someone attacking you with a baseball bat that has a nail in it. If that happens enough, and eventually the nail falls out and you’re just being attacked with a normal baseball bat, you’ll probably feel kind of relieved.

So that’s what “For Your Eyes Only” is. It’s not great. It’s not even all that good. But you know what?

It’s better. And I’ll take that.

Of course, as surprising as this is, it also makes me feel somewhat vindicated in my previous reviews, as a lot of what makes “For Your Eyes Only” work is stuff that I’ve been hoping they’d address all along.

Maybe this episode bears a greater stamp of that One Good Writer. I don’t know.

What I do know is that when I saw the plot description — “ALF befriends a blind woman,” or something to that effect — I definitely didn’t expect I’d be watching the best episode so far. The way things have been handled in previous episodes I half expected ALF to burn down her house and dance a jig on her mother’s corpse.

And maybe the entirety of my relative goodwill toward the episode is due to the fact that that didn’t happen. I don’t know. I’m just kind of gobsmacked that I didn’t hate this one, y’all.

…which you might not have guessed since I seem to be so hesitant to describe what’s actually happening when the episode begins, so here you go: ALF frosts a cake with some toothpaste.

Forget for a moment the fact that ALF knows all about ordering pizzas and selling cosmetics and political call-in shows and the complete works of Alfred Hitchcock, because he doesn’t seem to know that humans don’t eat toothpaste and Play-Doh.

He’s being a dick, right?

For once, no. He’s not!

Granted, a toothpaste cake and Play-Doh pate sound pretty gross, but he’s doing it in honor of Willie and Kate’s anniversary.

That’s…kind of sweet, actually. And this sweetness is why I actually enjoyed “For Your Eyes Only.” I don’t want to get ahead of myself, though, so let’s just look at this scene in isolation. Not isolation from the rest of the episode, but in isolation from the rest of the show.

Imagine, in other words, that we haven’t had to sit through five terrible episodes. Imagine, instead, that this is the pilot. This is the very first thing you see.

ALF’s mess-making here is due more to a child-like desire to do nicer things for his family than he actually can. He’s no chef, and this isn’t something anyone would want to eat, but his intentions were good. This is a toddler making inedible pancakes for his parents on a Sunday morning. It’s cute.

When I mentioned earlier that we have to forget how much he knows about Earth in order to accept this, it’s because I’m all too happy to do so. Yes. Let’s please forget everything that came before this. Because this is a smarter approach to ALF.

We can still have him wreck the house. We can still have him be a massive inconvenience. We can still have him sink the family financially. The difference, though, is that this ALF does it because he doesn’t know any better. That other ALF — the one who’s starred in the previous five episodes — does it in spite of the fact that he knows better. This ALF is an adult who seems child-like through the filter of a culture he doesn’t understand. That ALF was a dick with feet.

ALF still breaks dishes as he carelessly sets the table for Willie and Kate, but I’m willing to allow it.

I’m not laughing at it, because the sound of things breaking isn’t really much of a joke, but I’d go along with it, and make allowances for it, because this is the ALF I want to see more of. “For Your Eyes Only” plays almost like an episode of the ALF that should have been, beamed by accident into our universe from one where the show had a significantly better writing staff.

…again, however, I have to assure you it’s not good.

It’s just a lot better.

Willie and Kate have to leave, though, because they made other plans. They’re going to see Nicholas Nickleby, and ALF, hurt, shouts spoilers at them about the play.

Wait…really?

I know usually when I type “Wait…really?” in one of these reviews it’s because I want somebody to enter the room and stab me so I don’t have to continue, but here I’m…I’m just kind of shocked that they’re making literary jokes about a Dickens deep cut. This is so much better than that pointless Three Stooges back and forth last week. This is…well, maybe not clever. But intelligent, at least.

I’m willing to overlook the fact that ALF graphically alluded to the hot, sluggish anniversary fucking Willie would subject Kate to later, because…this kind of isn’t totally awful writing.

Even ALF’s active dickishness here makes sense. It’s not well-founded, but he put a lot of effort into something selfless (for what’s pretty fuckin’ clearly the first time in his entire worthless life), and his family didn’t stay around to enjoy it.

Yes, it’s a bit self-centered of ALF to get upset that a couple made plans to go out on their anniversary, but it’s self-centered in a childlike way that works very well. This is the kind of character development he needs. He can’t just be a rampaging asshole…he needs a justification. This is something American Dad! learned about Roger very early as well. While the number of “asshole Roger” episodes is pretty high, they’re always balanced out by other episodes that soften him.*

It’s not because American Dad! needs us to like Roger; it’s because American Dad! is smart enough to know that it will be funnier if we like Roger. If he didn’t have those more “human” moments and was always a destruction-and-abuse delivery machine, he’d…well, he’d be ALF.

Time passes and we see that ALF has eaten the cake by himself. He calls out for Lucky, because he wants some company, but the cat doesn’t come.

Remember Lucky? I think this is the first time we’ve heard him referred to since he got a whole episode to himself in “Looking For Lucky.” And speaking of which, what the fuck happened to Mrs. Ochmonek? She got the second episode of the show to herself and we haven’t seen hide nor hair of her since. Why do they bother having us spend all this time with these characters we’ll never see again?

We still don’t know what Willie does for a living. And, come to think of it, how long has he been married to Kate? It’s their anniversary, and this would be a nice, organic time to relay that information to us.

But, again, the writers don’t know. They don’t know anything.

But no.

No!

I’m not going to get sidetracked by the larger problems with ALF, because I’m enjoying this one, at least slightly, and fuck me if I’m going to let that slip away.

Look at that picture. Isn’t that better than seeing ALF singing into a God damned cucumber?

ALF turns on the radio and hears a call-in show (he sure loves those things). Specifically, he hears a woman named Jodie calling in, talking about how sad she feels because she recently moved to Los Angeles and doesn’t fit in. She also says that people act strange around her when they find out she’s not like them.

It’s pretty on the nose, and ALF’s cries of “I can relate!” aren’t the most subtle hints in the world, but I’ll take it, because this is something that really did need to be addressed: ALF is an outsider.

I don’t care what the previous episodes said. He’s not going to be dancing around the living room and calling the president and sexually harassing children…he’s going to be homesick. This is good. This is exactly what the show needs, because it both acknowledges its central concept (something it usually seems bizarrely reluctant to do) and deepens ALF’s character (if only because he’s actually demonstrating an emotion, however shallow).

Again, it’s not great writing; it’s something that needed to be addressed. What impressed me isn’t that they addressed it masterfully — because they didn’t — but simply the fact that the show hit the right notes. It doesn’t make it good, but it does make it competent. And that’s a huge step forward.

So obviously we learn what city and state the Tanners live in, finally, and we also learn their phone number: 555-8531. This is because ALF calls the radio show and asks them to give Jodie his digits, saying, “Tell her she’s found a friend.”

They do, and Jodie calls him.

We don’t get to hear the conversation, though, because they’d rather cut to a scene of ALF obnoxiously clipping his toenails in the living room the next day.

One of his toenails lands in whatever the hell Kate was carrying on a try, and though she doesn’t say anything, she makes the exact same face I make when I have to deal with ALF’s bullshit.

So, yeah, it’s not a very good episode. But I’m supposed to be focusing on the positive, since there finally is some positive, so, yes. The plot of “For Your Eyes Only” revolves around ALF’s feelings of homesickness, loneliness, and isolation. It also redefines his dickishness (well, most of his dickishness) as an unfortunate manifestation of his naivete, rather than as a ruthless desire to physically destroy the home and belongings of innocent people.

That’s not only the best plot yet, it’s the first one that makes any sense. And…well…it still gets better.

The phone rings, and it’s Jodie.

I know I made this observation as a joke last time, but I’m really starting to think Willie just had ten thousand phones installed after “Pennsylvania 6-5000.” Seriously, there’s a phone in every shot, and nobody has to reach very far to grab one when they need it.

And why doesn’t anyone care that ALF is talking on the phone to people? The last time this happened he ordered $4,000 worth of makeup and…

…no. No no. Let it go, Philip.

Enjoy it while you can. You may never get another chance.

Deep breaths. Let it all go. Allow yourself to be taken away by the dulcet stammers of Max Wright.

…ahhhhh.

ALF hands the phone to Willie because he’s going to finish his conversation on the kitchen line so SERIOUSLY THERE ARE LIKE PHONES FUCKING EVERYWHERE AND…

…and that’s okay.

That’s…yes. That’s okay. The Tanners can have as many phones as they want. It’s fine. Just…fine.

Anyway, I thought that Willie would listen in or something instead of hanging up, but he doesn’t, so I’m not sure why they bothered to have ALF start a conversation here and finish it somewhere else. I guess it’s so we can hear the hilarious sound of ALF smashing more shit.

I can’t really tell what happened. I think he laughed so hard at one of Jodie’s jokes that he knocked a gravy boat over, which is exactly why I tell all of you to read these reviews as far away from your gravy boats as possible.

Why it happens is academic, because all it does is set up the running gag of the episode: ALF breaks a fuckload of shit somewhere, then shouts out that nobody should walk barefoot in that room. It’s not even a joke that layers itself or evolves in any way; it’s literally just the sound of stuff breaking followed by ALF saying the same exact thing and…

…and that’s…okay.

ALF…can say whatever he wants to say. It’s fine. I don’t live with him. He’s not my responsibility.

Deep breaths…

…and continue.

Kate sweeps up the gravy boat, and ALF tells a joke that cracks him up so hard he flails his right hand off to the side and makes sure it knocks a glass onto the floor so that Kate can sweep that up, too.

I guess I’d like this a lot more if ALF just slapped the table or something and the glass was close enough to the edge that it just fell off, but instead he pretty clearly went out of his way to smack it over so I’m kind of starting to hate him again.

All I need to do is keep in mind what happens later in the episode. Or, rather, all of the house-burning abuse of a blind woman that doesn’t happen.

In fact, this is where we find out Jodie is blind, and there’s…kind of a nice conversation about that. ALF says he made a date with Jodie, but Willie and Kate aren’t having it, even when he tells them that she’s blind.

ALF and Brian, however, both understandably childlike, ask why that is. Is it because Jodie’s blind?

It’s not, but the way it’s handled is, again, impressive in its competence. The two “children” here miss the point, which is that ALF can’t leave the house. Even if Jodie can’t see him, somebody else might. Meanwhile the adults are trying to be both fair and rational…but end up in a situation where they feel like they’re not being either.

There’s even a great joke when Willie tells ALF he can’t borrow the car, and ALF promises, “I won’t let Jodie drive.”

I…I am actually totally conflicted. As long as I separate “For Your Eyes Only” from the rest of ALF so far, it’s not so bad. It doesn’t quite work as a short film or anything, but it does work as a pilot for a much better show than this one actually is.

There are shades of Roger in ALF’s invention of a new backstory for himself. He’s from Cincinnati, he sells wholesale band equipment, and he has two children (twins) from his brief marriage to a woman named Kathy Rigby. None of that is very funny in itself — though I do enjoy the specificity — but Kate says that eventually Jodie might find out the truth. ALF replies angrily, “Not if Kathy Rigby keeps her mouth shut.”

That’s pure Roger. And it’s funny. Maybe the One Good Writer actually did graduate to American Dad!

There’s even another funny exchange when the family tries to tell ALF that he has friends, but I won’t type that one out because I think this review is close enough to a record of my descent into madness already.

ALF slinks off sadly because he’s not allowed to see Jodie, and…whoa! We find out where he sleeps!

It turns out he’s got a little setup in the laundry room. Man, this episode is answering questions left and right. Did the writing staff suddenly eat a balanced breakfast or something?

ALF speaks to a sock with eyes on it — which he calls Mr. Ginsburg — and I have to admit I’m a sucker for puppets using puppets. Remember when Fozzie Bear took up ventriloquism? That was a childhood mindfuck of the highest order.

Of course, because this is ALF, he tells a joke so funny that he must smack Mr. Ginsburg’s eyeballs off. We hardly knew ye.

Willie and the kids come in to cheer up ALF, and it must be motherfucking Christmas because Willie spins a Frisbee directly into ALF’s face. This really is the episode of my dreams!

Christ that’s glorious. I don’t even mind that I couldn’t get a good shot of the Frisbee actually smashing into his awful stupid face, because I got to watch it over and over again while trying. That was its own kind of special reward. I hope the clip show is just this on a 60-minute loop.

Lynn is then left behind while the Tanner men head out to the back yard, probably to high-five each other over the fact that they just whipped a hard piece of plastic into ALF’s fucking freeloading face, and she feels so sorry for the lonely alien that she offers to help him meet Jodie.

The sheer competence with which this development is handled is astounding. Again, it’s not good or anything, but one character reacting in a human way to another character is leagues ahead of previous episodes, which would have resolved this by having the government come, and then ALF is mistaken for a dog, so Brian hijacks Air Force One and Willie slips in cow shit.

This is much, much better.

More Roger (and I do mean this as a compliment) when we see ALF in disguise. Part of me wants to say that they should have made some effort to hide his face, but then I realize his nose wouldn’t allow for a mask, so they did pretty much do the best they could…even if he does just look like Kermit the Frog in his reporter outfit.

Before ALF goes in to meet Jodie, there are a few more reminders of how childlike he is. He asks Lynn why Jodie has so many rooms if she lives alone…because he doesn’t understand what apartment buildings are. Then he reaches into the pocket of his coat and pulls out a glove, but gets scared because he thinks it’s somebody’s hand.

This is not the ALF who was totally familiar with everything on Earth that we got to know in the previous episodes. This is much more interesting, and the panic when he finds the “hand” is actually pretty funny. Fusco’s been pretty much on target this episode. His puppetry has been the lone highlight of this show so far, but this time he adds to that with a vocal performance that effectively sells most of what the episode’s trying to convey.

For God’s sake I like this.

Jodie comes to the door and ALF, in his nervousness, introduces himself as “not an alien.” God damn it, ALF, stop being funny.

You know, if this really were the standard of ALF episodes, I’d enjoy this project a hell of a lot of more. (And, consequently, you’d enjoy it a lot less. Swings and roundabouts.)

I got a little nervous when we first saw Jodie, because the way she looks in the wrong direction made me worry we were going to be in for a lot of broad and cruel humor at her expense, especially since ALF has previously proven to us that all humor must be at somebody else’s expense.

I know it’s not strange in any way to remove your hat and coat when you enter somebody’s house, but since for ALF that essentially means he’s stripping down naked before he sits on her furniture, that does seem a bit forward. Of course, it’s an approach that served me very well in college so who am I to judge?

There’s some standard joking about ALF eating lots of food and getting a boner when she mentions her cat, but what interests me here is the interplay between them regarding her blindness. What absolutely stood out to me as dangerous territory for the idiots in the ALF writer’s room actually ended up being the highlight of the series so far.

Why? Because ALF behaves like a person.

He’s still dickish, but he’s dickish in a very human way. He keeps telling Jodie where she is in relation to things in the room, and he describes what things look like to her. Is that a very insensitive thing to do to a blind person? Yes, it is. But here’s the thing: people do it anyway. And they don’t do it because they’re assholes…they do it because they think they’re helping.

ALF’s naivete — at least in this episode — is behind this. He’s being a jerk, but he’s being an accidental jerk, in an awkwardly relatable way.

Of course, this would play a lot differently if Jodie’s feelings were hurt, but that’s the great thing about it; Jodie comes across as a woman who’s come to terms with her blindness. She’s not happy about it, but she’s aware of it. And, what’s more, she’s aware of the many different ways well-meaning people will end up embarrassing them both.

ALF’s being an ass, but he’s not being an ass in any way she hasn’t heard before. She’s become comfortable enough with her disability to know that ALF’s attempts to help are coming from a good place.

I really like this scene. Again, there’s plenty I would change, but as it is? It’s downright decent. We have two characters dancing around a touchy subject in cringe-worthy ways that are still completely understandable.

Give ALF something simple like a dog catcher or a nosy neighbor or a pizza delivery guy, and the show will fuck it up. Give it a time-bomb like blindness and it somehow manages to get through just fine.

Maybe it’s because they had to take the time to handle this one correctly. Presumably they wanted to be funny, but they also didn’t want to actually hurt anybody’s feelings. If this is true, then it means they would have had to invest more effort than usual. It’s not just pitching an idea and worrying about how to write it later…it’s pitching an idea, and then worrying about whether or not they’ll be able to write it at all.

They had to figure this out before the pen ever hit the page, and I’m glad for that, because they added depth to a character that had none, and introduced a strong new character as well.

Bravo, “For Your Eyes Only.” Credit where credit is due, absolutely.

These are two lonely people who need each other more than they even realize, and they are doing their best to navigate their way through a conversational minefield.

It’s actually good.

Lynn starts calling ALF’s name through the door, because she needs to get him home before Willie and Kate come back and discover him missing. The fact that they actually bothered to address this is astounding in itself.

Jodie hears her calling, though, and assumes it’s Kathy Rigby, ALF’s imaginary ex-wife. ALF tries to explain that it’s not what she thinks…it’s the girl he’s living with, and she’s only sixteen years old.

So, creepy? Yes. But this, again, is accidental creepiness that feeds from ALF’s childlike misunderstanding of social norms. This isn’t him telling Lynn to tilt her head back so he can splooge on her face…this, whether you find it funny or not (and it’s certainly okay if you don’t), is at least the product of deliberate, relatively careful writing.

Jodie tells ALF to tell her the whole truth, but he can’t do that. In fact, ALF says, he can’t tell her any of the truth. And, okay, the sad music kicks in and that’s at least slightly corny, but this is a good moment. Jodie is hurt, because she feels as though she’s being lied to. And she’s right. But she doesn’t know what she’s being lied to about, and ALF can’t tell her. He’s at least honest enough to tell her that that’s true, she is being lied to, but he’d like her to trust him.

She says that it feels like she’s taking a bigger risk than he is, and ALF tells her that she has no idea. He then takes her hand without realizing what he’s doing, and pulls it away. But it’s too late…she’s felt it. And she says nothing when he leaves, but it’s clear that she knows he isn’t human.

The episode proper ends, and what a great, open conclusion. It’s undercut somewhat by the fact that there’s always a brief pre-credits scene, but that’s an excellent choice for an ending.

I have a feeling we’ll never see poor Jodie again, but who knows? I’d like to be wrong…but I kind of doubt that I am. Which means this episode works even better in isolation than I thought. The unseen promise of a relationship between these two could have fueled an entire — and, I’ll say it again, much better — show. Instead it’s relegated to a single episode with no real conclusion, but since it’s the best episode I can’t really complain.

These are two characters who need each other, and want to be with each other, and could benefit from each other, but can’t actually be together. THAT IS GOOD WRITING ALF SEE IT IS NOT IMPOSSIBLE.

The short tag scene involves Lynn rushing into the house to clean up before Willie and Kate get home, and we get a short, three-second glimpse of the midget hobbling across the floor in his ALF suit, just in case anyone watching during the original broadcast was afraid this wasn’t going to be a terrible show anymore.

Why couldn’t they have just tilted the camera up another couple of inches? Then Fusco could have used the actual puppet and we wouldn’t have had to make the midget walk across the room just so we could replace him with a puppet a few seconds later anyway. It doesn’t make any sense, but I sure am glad even the best episode of ALF ends by dropping a perfect dollop of shit.

MELMAC FACTS: ALF was an “Orbit Guard” with someone named Squeaky Macintosh. I guess this was before he became a car salesman. Or after. I don’t care. Either way, ALF says that Squeaky didn’t have any friends, either. “Of course,” ALF says of the difference between them, “he was obnoxious.” That One Good Writer was damned busy this week…even the Melmac Fact is funny.

—–
* For a particularly brilliant example of this, check out “The One That Got Away.” While it’s not a terribly even show, I’m always impressed at the impressive highs American Dad! is able to reach when it wants to.