Category: alf

So little happens on this show, which I’m sure you know. What you may not know is that this sometimes works in its favor. After all, when ALF might as well be 23 minutes of static, every minor disruption to what we’re expecting is interesting by default.

That’s why background details like a singed curtain or a new shirt on Mr. Ochmonek register. That’s why acting from a competent guest star stands out. That’s why silly jokes — like Jim J. Bullock raising his hand last week — feel like they’re better than they really are.

ALF has cemented such a baseline level of laziness that literally anything that has thought invested in it shines. That’s why the moment I started this episode, and saw the scene above, I started paying attention.

Who are these guys on the couch? They’re in nice suits. Are they the FBI? They seem to be watching something on television. Is it surreptitious footage of ALF raping something in the back yard? Are the Tanners well and truly caught?

…probably not, because we still have 13 episodes to go, and sitcoms around this time weren’t very serialized. But the answer doesn’t matter as much as the fact that the question — a question — is being asked by the very first frame.

Whoever these guys turn out to be, and whatever it turns out they’re doing, is almost insignificant in the face of the fact that they’re somebody and they’re doing something. It could turn out that they’re crack-induced manifestations of Willie’s personal angel and devil for all I care. My point is that I’m watching ALF and for once, something is happening…even if I don’t know what it is. (Do you, Mr. Jones?)

It turns out they’re representatives from a timeshare company. ALF called them for some reason and Willie and Kate are just patiently sitting through their promotional video. When it ends one of the salesmen pulls a pen out of his pocket and Kate says, in one of the show’s long line of perfect Anne Schedeen readings, “Harry. Put the pen away.”

Then Willie goes into the kitchen to hatefuck ALF and that’s about it for the opening scene. But, you know what? Something happened. I started watching an episode of ALF, found myself unsure of what was happening, and I ended up paying attention. We got a nice little anti-punchline from Kate and…well, that’s about all that’s worth mentioning, but I was interested.

It didn’t take much. Just some kind of unexpected setup, and a little bit of thought given to an answer.

Any writer worth his or her salt does this without thinking. For the staff of ALF you can almost feel the strain. But you know what?

Good on them. Yes, they probably broke their backs to do what talented writers do naturally, but they got my attention. And, what’s more, they didn’t entirely waste it. (They only wasted most of it.)

Credit where it’s due: good on them.

This week, the part of Willie Tanner will be played by Popeye the Sailor Man.

We find out that ALF has been inviting all manner of salesmen into the house, with the implication being that he thinks he’ll win some kind of prize. It’s…hard to explain, but I do seem to remember a lot of sales techniques exploiting that gimmick in the past, and I’m pretty sure it still happens at car dealerships at least.

As best as I can tell, you need to commit to sitting through some kind of sales pitch, after which you’re entered into a drawing for some prize or other. (ALF alludes to a new car and a vacation package.) Willie makes the point that nobody actually wins those drawings, and while I’m sure he’s right I don’t know how they actually get away with that.

Presumably there’s some kind of loophole exploited, as you can’t legally promise that someone will be entered into a drawing that doesn’t exist. (Well, scratch that…you probably could, but a business could not.) Maybe the companies just choose someone who conveniently forgot to fill out their contact information, so the prize can’t actually be given away.

I have no idea, but ALF has been on this planet for three years and one week, and has worked as a salseman himself, so he should be slightly savvier when it comes to this shit. Instead he’s still misunderstanding the things he was misunderstanding on day one.

To the family’s credit, they’re pretty pissed off at him. They don’t say that he should know better by now, but at least their reaction is understandable.

…until it suddenly isn’t.

Willie sends ALF to the attic, but ALF says, defiantly, “No.”

And he makes a big speech about how unfair it is to live in this house, and he’s leaving. At which point everyone shifts into quietly mocking his decision.

So…a few points. The quickest is just this reminder: this is the umpteenth time this season we’ve been teased with the idea of ALF starting a new life without the Tanners. And, just in case you don’t know by now, this season indeed ends with ALF attempting just that. Should the show have progressed to its expected season five, the Tanners would have been written out, with the setting shifting to the Alien Task Force Base, where ALF is held captive. Presumably he’d be forced to watch cheesy movies and riff on them with some sleepy guy and another puppet…but we’ll never know, because ALF was cancelled between the end of season four and the production of season five.

Therefore all of this “Screw you guys; I’m going home” stuff is likely deliberate foreshadowing. I’ve lost track of how many times this season ALF’s new Tannerless life has been alluded to, but I’m sure it’s at least five. That’s about once every other episode, so I’m fairly convinced it’s deliberate.

Now, my other point:

Fuck this fuckass fuck.

He keeps inviting salesmen over. Even if he somehow didn’t learn not to do this within the past three years, he should certainly have learned it just in the episode so far, since we’re told he keeps doing it against Willie’s wishes. Willie sends him to his room — a very minor punishment — and ALF rebels, turns on the “poor, poor pitiful me” routine, and heads out to lay his head on the railroad tracks and wait for the Double E.

And…fine. Okay. ALF is ALF. I get it by this point.

But moments like this make me wish there was a human being somewhere in this cast, because this dude really needs a spanking. Instead of smirking and saying, “Oh, you…” they should be grabbing him by the shoulders and saying, “What the fuck is your problem?”

ALF’s got a sweet setup here. He’s spoiled, if anything. He knowingly defies Willie’s requests to stop inviting salesmen over, and then flips out when he receives the mildest punishment available to the human race.

Somebody needs to smack him across the face, because he doesn’t seem to realize what the situation actually is, that he has no right to be offended by it, and that this is the best things will ever be. (That holds true for both ALF and for ALF; yes, Paul Fusco could probably do with a good smack as well.)

Instead they all immediately react to ALF’s pity party and seem to forget that he was being punished at all.

But hey, of course they did. That was on the previous page of the script; we’re on this page now, so forget all that other shit.

ALF leaves, and the Tanners demonstrate just how little that bothers them at this point. Remember when he left in “Looking For Lucky,” and they combed all of LA on foot, asking everyone they met if they saw the super secret space alien that escaped from their house? Well, now they look out the kitchen window for a bit and call it a night.

I’m not even exaggerating; that’s all they do. In fact, Kate’s biggest concern here seems to be that the automatic sprinklers are going to turn on soon, and when ALF gets wet he smells like shit.

The episode doesn’t call attention to it, so I doubt much of it was deliberate, but…damn, their diminished lack of concern for ALF could have made for a great episode.

The show is winding down (which, okay, the writers don’t know…but they do know the Tanners are being wished to the cornfield), and ALF has learned nothing and continues to infuriate everybody. Why not make that the episode? We’re already pretty much there; ALF has misbehaved, refuses his fair punishment, and runs away instead. The Tanners realize that maybe they’re okay with him leaving, if that’s the way he’s going to be.

Have them — all of them — have to face that fact. That’s the conflict of your episode.

Whatever they hoped to get out of this alien concealment scheme of theirs, it’s not worth it. Willie’s going insane. Kate’s at the end of her wit’s end. There’s a new baby in the house. Lynn is starting her adult life. Brian has finally stopped drinking paint. The family should be at a kind of crossroads here, and ALF pulling this bullshit again, for the third year running, should force their hand to issue an ultimatum. He can either shape up — for real this time — or go fuck himself. For real this time. And if he chooses the latter, they’re realizing that they’d actually be okay with that.

That should have been the conflict for this episode. Instead…well…you’ll see what the actual conflict for this episode is.

I promise…it’s a doozy.

We see ALF hanging out by some trash cans, talking to himself. He’s basically moping because he knows that if he goes back, the Tanners won’t take him seriously the next time he threatens to walk out over petty nonsense and let them rebuild their lives.

Huh…when I write it out like that, it somehow sounds ridiculous.

I don’t know where this is supposed to take place. In a moment ALF leaves and then Willie pokes his head over the fence, so it’s not the Tanners’ yard.

I guess ALF is in the Ochmoneks’ yard? It’s tempting to assume that this is in front of the Tanner house, because that’s where people’s trash cans are often left out, but we’ve seen plenty of establishing shots of this house and there’s never been a fence out front. So…I have no idea.

Anyway, Willie just misses ALF. But then the sprinklers turn on and Willie gets wet, in an unexpected payoff to the setup 10 seconds ago when Kate said that that’s exactly what was going to happen.

Then there’s a scene that really gives away how badly the actors want to be done with this show. Kate says she’s worried about ALF, but Anne Schedeen can’t bring herself to show the proper concern. The “Put the pen away” delivery earlier on is important, because it shows she can still deliver a line when she cares about it. Here, though she should care about it, and claims to care about it, she clearly doesn’t care about it.

Willie then says he’s worried because ALF can’t keep out of trouble, and concludes, “He’s dead.”

But he says that with the smile we see above; the biggest, most convincing smile Max Wright’s ever smiled in his life.

We’re in an episode in which these two characters are supposed to be worried they’ll never see ALF again, while the actors themselves clearly never want to see ALF again. It’s a very interesting and odd viewing experience. And it concludes with Max Wright doing this:

Which is the international sign for “You literally could not pay me to give a fuck.”

ALF finds a new place to live with…

Mother of fuck! It’s Jim J. Bullock!

How did ALF get there? Nobody knows, nobody says, nobody asks. That’s just the state of the show right now.

Remember “For Your Eyes Only”? For ALF to visit Jodie, he had to secretly arrange it with Lynn, wear a disguise, and be immensely careful about every step he took. Remember “I’ve Got a New Attitude”? For ALF to visit Kate Sr., he had to box himself up and hire a courier to deliver him to her apartment.

Granted, one of those episodes was total garbage, but they both demonstrate a willingness on the part of the writing staff to answer a basic logistical question: if the alien can never be seen, but we need him somewhere else, how do we get him there?

“Happy Together” faces that some question, but just says fuck it. Granted, season three had ALF strut around town a few times, but in “Standing in the Shadows of Love” he was with Jake, who presumably helped him to stay unseen, and in “Suspicious Minds” the whole thing turned out to be a dream.

Here ALF, alone, wanders the neighborhood, finds Neal’s new apartment — where he’s never been before, mind you — and somehow makes it all the way inside, up to and through Neal’s door, which we see in the establishing shot is on the highest floor, without being spotted.

Is that possible? Sure.

But how did he do it?

The episode doesn’t care, and, for some reason, neither does Neal. He just shows his grandmother’s antique snowglobe to ALF so ALF can break it and the fake audience of dead people can yuk it up.

Jim J. Bullock shows more concern than anyone else in the episode when he’s sad about his heirloom being destroyed. And even then he’s only sad for two and a half seconds. Immediately after that he’s merrily making tea.

I can’t even blame Bullock for this. He’s told at the end of one page of his script to be devastated that his only memento of his grandmother is smashed on the floor, then at the top of the next page he’s making casual conversation with a naked mole rat. Yes, Bullock’s shift in performance is jarring…but how could it not be? They could have hired Jack Nicholson for this scene and it wouldn’t have been any better. There’s only so far this shitty writing can go. (For those wondering, it never gets cleaned up, either; the snowglobe remains smashed on the floor for the rest of sitcom eternity.)

Maybe I’m just especially frustrated because Neal and ALF reprise their conversation from the end of “The First Time I Ever Saw Your Face.” There and here, Neal tries desperately to get ALF to spit out some Melmac Facts. Which is, obviously, something most human beings would do when encountering a space alien that speaks English.

There I was frustrated that the writers didn’t bother to have ALF answer any of his questions, but it was just about excusable due to the fact that it was the final scene in the episode. A half hour block of television only lets you cover so much ground, and if the writers chose to focus their attention elsewhere — for better or for worse — so be it.

Now, though, we’re not even halfway through the episode. There’s plenty of time for these two assholes to have a discussion, and Neal tries to get one going. But ALF tells him nothing, because the writers didn’t want to think of anything.

Neal asks how far away Melmac was. ALF says he doesn’t know.

Neal asks which solar system it was in, and ALF says he doesn’t know that, either.

Which…fuck you, show. Yeah, it builds to a joke about how ALF majored in P.E., but come on. He was in the fucking Orbit Guard. He flew around in his own personal space ship. He was tasked with defending the planet (which…yeah, that explains a lot). But he doesn’t know what solar system he’s from? That’s like being a long haul trucker and not knowing what state you live in. I don’t care how dumb you are; whether it’s maps or star charts, if your job involves travel you know how to get the fuck home.

And regarding the distance from Earth, ALF traveled that distance himself. Personally. He can’t estimate it? Granted, I don’t know offhand how far Las Vegas is from my house, but because I made the journey I can say it was about an hour and a half by plane. I can provide some idea of the scale of the journey, and I can do that because it’s a trip I took. Just like you could give me some idea of how long it took you to get wherever you went last. ALF can’t provide any information at all.

Yeah, he’s a dumbass. But he’s not incapable of answering these questions. The writers just didn’t want to spend their time figuring stuff like this out, so they don’t.

I can’t imagine we missed much by being robbed of a season five. In it I assume all of the characters would have stood around shrugging at each other.

Willie comes over to get ALF, but ALF pretends that he doesn’t want to go home because Willie beats him. Ha! Wrongfully accusing family members of violent abuse. Classic, wholesome comedy for all.

Neal volunteers to keep ALF, because they’ve been having a “great time.” Even though we’ve seen all of the time they’ve spent together so far, and it’s involved ALF showing up unannounced, breaking an irreplaceable valuable, and refusing to answer basic questions about what the fuck he is. GREAT TIME SHITHEADS

There’s a decently nice moment when Willie agrees to let Neal keep him, and really harps on the fact that he should have a working fire extinguisher, but it’s nothing great. Maybe it would be funnier if Neal had little kids in the house, so Willie could warn him about ALF’s much more horrible hobbies.

After the commercial we see ALF talking to a phone sex operator. Classic, wholesome comedy for all.

He describes himself as tall with great abs, and she does that moany, giggly routine you saw in 976 commercials that aired after midnight.

This is at least the second overt reference to ALF furiously masturbating to phone sex lines, for those keen on reminding me that this is a children’s show.

Neal comes home and sees that the place is a wreck. ALF threw a bunch of shit around and smashed a window, covering the hole with a “Mino’s Pizza” box. Obviously they didn’t want to pay to use the Domino’s Pizza name, but then I wonder why they didn’t just use a generic pizza box instead. Or, ideally, one from Pizza Barge, which was already this show’s royalty-free pizza delivery place.

Part of me is hoping there’s a whole backstory about a passionate pizza chef named Dom Mino who is sick of his restaurant being constantly mistaken for that shitty chain. All of me would rather watch that show.

Neal politely asks ALF why he didn’t clean up the way he promised to, or call the electrician like he promised to, or clean the cum out of the toothpaste like he promised to, and ALF tells him to eat a dick.

Then the doorbell rings, and Neal tells ALF, “Quick, go to the bathroom.”

That’s funny, because Neal doesn’t have a kitchen the way the Tanners do, so the hiding room in this apartment makes for some decent wordplay.

But then ALF says, “Okay!” and makes a face and shudders to suggest that he’s voiding his bowels on the carpet.

…fucking really, ALF?

It’s Neal’s boss at the door, some black lady we will clearly never see again. She chews him out for being a shitty handyman, and I get the sense that we’re supposed to see ALF as the cause of this crap. Yes, the call to the electrician was for another tenant, but she says there have been complaints all throughout the building about sinks and toilets not working as well…and I don’t think we can really blame ALF for that. He’s been masturbating to phone sex lines! It’s the universal alibi!

So…is the idea that ALF was supposed to be calling repair people for all of these problems, and he didn’t do it?

If so, yeah, he’s a dickfart. But Neal is no less of a dickfart. He’s the handyman, so why is he acting like a call center? And what is he out doing all day that’s preventing him from calling these people himself? He’s not going to work; this is his work. He just vanishes until night time because that’s what the script says he does.

Is “Happy Together” actively attempting to set a record for smallest amount of narrative effort?

Then the lady leaves and ALF comes out of the bathroom and does his racist impression of her West Indian accent.

CLASSIC WHOLESOME COMEDY FOR ALL

Later that night we get what might be a deliberate callback to “Looking For Lucky.” In that episode ALF danced around a wrecked living room to a shitty cover of “Old Time Rock and Roll.” Now he’s dancing around a wrecked living room to to a shitty cover of “Tutti Fruitti.” So, just in case you thought ALF might have learned something in three years on Earth, it’s made unmistakably clear here that he has not.

One thing I do like: there’s another pizza box on the window, meaning ALF broke it again sometime between the last scene and this one. See what I mean about small details standing out when the show’s baseline is so low?

Anyway, that’s all I like. Neal and ALF yell at each other for a bit, and while it’s not a bad idea to have a new character for ALF to annoy, it’s a shame that ALF really is pulling the literal first things he pulled on Earth anyway. It’s not him annoying someone new in a way unique to that person; it’s him repeating himself because that’s easier.

Life on Earth is a rich experience. I’ve been through things and seen things and done things that you never will. And I’m a fucking nobody. And you guys…no matter how dull or pointless you think your life is, your experience is something I’ll never know.

We have overlap, sure, but right now, as you read this, your mind is working differently than mine is while writing it. And all of us here, right now, combined, don’t have the personal experience that anybody else has. Some guy at a desk in Moscow lives a life we’ll never understand. Somebody who lives down the street also lives a life we’ll never understand.

As small as the world feels and as limited as our day to day activities are, there’s enough in the way of variation that no two lives will ever be the same.

ALF, by disarming contrast, can’t go three years without repeating himself note for note. So unimaginative is this writing staff that they keep treading over the same plots and jokes endlessly. The premise of this show is that an alien experiences life on Earth for the first time, but somehow the human beings writing this show heard “life on Earth” and could only think of about 10 or 15 things that that entailed.

And that’s infuriating. Human beings should know how rich their own planet is with potential, and this is someone experiencing all of it for the first time.

This guy can do anything. Why are they dead set on having him do nothing?

Then cops come to the door and Jim J. Bullock shits himself.

Surprisingly, we get a moment of pretty good physical comedy. Great, even, by this show’s standards.

Willie and Kate hear something in the night, and pad into the living room. Kate asks, “What if it’s a burglar?”

Willie says, “Don’t worry, honey. I’ve got the lamp.” He picks up the lamp and Kate absently flips the light switch…which causes the lamp to turn on and scare the shit out of Willie, who drops it.

It’s basic stuff, and it’s nothing you haven’t seen other sitcoms do better, but it largely works, and it’s nice to see somebody who isn’t made of old carpet samples getting laughs.

It’s Neal, of course, but he was sleeping so I don’t know what they heard that panicked them so much. Maybe he farts a lot.

Lynn comes out too to see what’s wrong, making this another in a long line of scenes in which everyone forgets there are more members of this family. (I seriously can’t remember if Brian’s had a line yet. I had to look back over my screengrabs just to reassure myself that he was in the episode at all.)

Jim J. Bullock overacts for a few minutes, bitching about ALF.

Which, okay, fine. ALF sucks dick. But really it’s just a repetitive way to pad out the episode. We know ALF is annoying. The Tanners know ALF is annoying. Neal knows ALF is annoying. To have the characters sit around and repeat “ALF is annoying” to each other is just evidence that they had no idea what to do with this plot.

…which makes me wonder, again, why the fuck it’s not about the Tanners and ALF coming to terms with their strained relationship.

Once again, we have an episode that stumbled over a solid premise worth exploring. Once again, the writers decide it’s too much work to explore it, so they have characters sit around and talk about Poochie.

Anne Schedeen does her best to sell a recurring joke in which Kate tries to convince Neal to keep ALF, but it never really goes anywhere, and Willie eventually yells at her to shut up, just to remind readers here what a great guy he is.

Eventually Paul Fusco gets antsy with all these “other” “people” delivering lines and stuff, so we cut to ALF and see that he shat fucking everywhere.

Aaand that’s pretty much the punchline of the whole episode. We knew ALF made a mess of Neal’s apartment, and the grand reveal is that when we cut back to him the mess is slightly larger.

Brilliant.

Willie and Neal come over to inform ALF that he’s going to have to live with the Tanners again, so he burps a bunch of times. Then Neal hugs him and he burps again.

It would be more respectful to the audience if these assholes just gave the camera the finger for three minutes.

In the short scene before the credits, ALF dicks around at the table. He asks Lynn to get him a beer and calls her “Legs,” and, man, this show has been so repulsive over the years that I expect the next episode will see him bending her over the table and buttfucking her while the rest of the family reads the paper.

Willie sends ALF to the attic, because that was his earlier punishment, from way back when the episode might have been good. Neal presumably spends the next 18 months cleaning alien shit out of the carpet.

Countdown to ALF getting a Colombian necktie in front of the Tanners: 13 episodes

MELMAC FACTS: ALF majored in Physical Education.

Ho ho hoho! Merry Xmas Eve! Thanks for being a good little lady/boy and joining us for the holiest of holiday traditions: making fun of ALF.

For starters, let me thank everyone who made it out to the 3rd Annual Xmas Bash!!! It was a great time, and we raised a lot of money (more than I expected) for The Trevor Project. That’s…humbling, and you have no idea what a great Christmas present that is for me. Seriously. I have no words. And you guys are incredibly funny. Thank you for turning Walker: Texas Ranger into one of my favorite holiday memories, somehow.

Secondly, thanks for understanding last week’s break from the series. The Bash!!! is a lot of work, and I needed to focus my attention there. ALF Reviews are also a lot of work, so the good news is that skipping one week feels to me like skipping about a month, and it does wonders to recharge my spiteful batteries.

Lastly, “Break Up to Make Up” is in no way a festive episode, so…yeah. If you’re reading this on Xmas Eve you’re probably conditioned to expect that it ends with everyone irrelevantly learning the meaning of Christmas, but it’s just a regular ol’ episode of ALF. (Kinda. It’s significant in other ways, but we’ll get to those.)

I do, however, have something holiday-specific to bring up.

See, there’s a bit of debate in the comments sometimes about Willie’s behavior. I’m convinced he’s a terrible human being, a lousy social worker, and a worse husband and father, but some readers say I’m needlessly hard on him, or they’ll make excuses about how draining social work is, suggesting that he might be suffering from empathy overload by the time he gets home from work.

First: fuck that. This asshole has never displayed empathy once, so suspecting that he displays so much of it that it breaks his brain every time the camera’s not on him is, flatly, absurd. You might as well suggest that Brian turns into a werewolf when we’re not looking. There’s no evidence of it, no reason to believe it, and nothing to gain by clinging to the idea. You raise infinitely more inconsistencies than you solve.

But thanks to the holiday season, I’ve made a connection that never occurred to me before. See, I revisited the review of “ALF’s Special Christmas” when another site linked to it, and was reminded of Willie’s story about Mr. Foley. He says that when he was little, his father lost his job, and the entire family was homeless. They had nowhere to go and no money, so Mr. Foley (just one of the suicidal black Santas that have graced the Xmas Bash!!!) took them in. Mr. Foley let the family stay in the cabin until Mr. Tanner got back on his feet.

Willie shares this story with his family, and it’s very clearly framed as an example of a small kindness during a time of need making a massive difference in the lives of others. It’s sweet, and something important to remember around the holidays. (And part of the reason I’m proud we raised such an awesome sum for The Trevor Project.)

Great, right?

Flash forward to “Turkey in the Straw,” when Willie has his own opportunity to help a homeless man around the holidays. Of course, he doesn’t; he arms himself to attack the docile stranger who’s made no threatening gestures or comments. Willie kicks Flaky Pete out of his shed, directly into the rain. And he demands that the homeless man return the clothes he was given, for no reason except that Willie wants them back. What’s more, Willie finds that he has common ground with this guy (an interest in astronomy), and still treats him as sub-human due to his station in life.

These are two situations that I covered in their respective reviews, but now put them together. It doesn’t paint a flattering portrait of Willie Tanner, does it?

It’s conclusive. Willie isn’t suffering from “empathy overload.” He’s a sociopath.

He has first-hand knowledge of homelessness. He knows what it was like to be cold, lost, and alone, with nobody around to help. He knows the pain of hopelessness and desperation. And he knows that his own family never would have recovered without the kindness of Mr. Foley. (That’s sort of the point of his whole story.)

…yet he refuses to demonstrate a similar kindness toward others. Willie isn’t just some guy doing a selfish thing…he is someone whose life was saved by the very kindness he emphatically he now refuses to offer another human being. This is someone who knows exactly what Flaky Pete is going through, and still decides to tell the guy to fuck off.

Even better? The kindness Flaky Pete needs is orders of magnitude smaller than what Mr. Foley gave to Willie’s family; all he’s asking is to hang out in the shed for a few hours until the rain stops…oh, and to keep some old clothes that were left in a pile for him. That’s nothing compared to sheltering an entire family, rent-free, until they figure out what to do with themselves.

Willie is not a good person. Period. The show, for all of its faults, created a good person: Mr. Foley. We know what empathy looks like in the universe of ALF, and it doesn’t resemble Willie Tanner in any way.

In fact, now that we have a clear image of what a “good person” is on this show, we can easily identify what a hypothetical villain would look like.

So, hey, as a thought exercise, let’s imagine the anti-Mr. Foley, and how this awful, theoretical monster would have handled Willie’s homeless family.

For starters, he would have turned them away around the holidays, rather than welcome them in. He would have insulted them rather than offered them help. He’d even begrudge them the clothes and food they found in his trash, and make them give it back before kicking them out into the elements, not caring even a little about where they’d go, or what would become of them.

…which is, word for word, Willie’s actual behavior with Flaky Pete.

Funny how that works out.

So, yeah. I…wanted to share that. Not only do I think Willie’s a shitlord, but the show’s internal logic — so far as it can be said to have one — definitively characterizes him as a shitlord. Sure, it tells us he’s great, but that’s kind of like someone telling you what a nice guy their brother is while he’s actively sodomizing you with a shrimp fork.

Everyone’s a nice guy in their own words. That’s why you always need to look at their behavior. Do that with Willie, and then come back and tell me what a great guy he is.

I’d apologize for beating a dead horse, but come on. This is the 86th episode of ALF I’m reviewing. Beating dead horses is all I fuckin’ do.

Anyway, at some point I guess I need to talk about this episode, so let’s get that over with.

We open with the Tanners decorating for ALF’s three year anniversary of landing on Earth, “landing” being pretty loosely defined in this show. Like “comedy,” I guess.

So once again we have something to orient us in the ALF timeline; one year for us isn’t necessarily one year for them, as we’re well into the show’s fourth year at this point. I don’t mind; I just find it interesting. And I wonder why they bothered to make it only three years for the characters, since I don’t think they do anything with that. Breaking Bad famously condensed its run so that nearly every episode took place within one year of the pilot, but that was to demonstrate just how quickly — and easily — a seemingly ordinary man can lose his entire moral compass.

Here…I don’t know. Maybe four years and change would be too long for ALF to keep misunderstanding things on Earth, but I don’t know if that’s the reason they’re treating it like he’s only been there for three.

After all, three years isn’t much better. If we were still within ALF’s first year on Earth, that would make a difference. By now, though, he really should have a better grasp on things, whether he’s three or four years into his permanent vacation. Another 12 months would make a kind of difference — he’ll never learn everything, after all — but the basic stuff that he misunderstands on a weekly basis should really be behind him by now.

For instance, in this very episode he’s confused about his own party, which is kind of bullshit, since three years on Earth is more than enough time for him to realize that he shouldn’t be ordered dancing poodles for himself with Willie’s credit card. (This isn’t just a shitty sitcom, though…this is ALF, so we cap it off with some good ol’ comedy racism as he explains that they’re good dancers, “for white dogs.”)

Oh, and, also, ALF wiped his ass on the crepe paper Kate is hanging from the ceiling. I shit (ahem) you not.

So, yeah, he’s still misunderstanding basic concepts. (“Don’t wipe your ass on everything” being probably the single most basic concept in all of humanity.) Three years doesn’t make this behvaior any more excusable than four years would, so I have no idea why the show’s timeline differs from our own. Any hypotheses from the Peanut Gallery will be appreciated.

Brian comes over to show ALF the model he made for the party, asking the alien if it looks like his spaceship.

How brain damaged is this kid? He knows what the space ship looks like; he doesn’t need to ask ALF.

I mean, okay, maybe if someone saw a UFO streak through the air, three years later they’d be a bit fuzzy on the details. (Not least because they’d be fucking lying, but I digress.) In this case, though, it wasn’t a fleeting glimpse; it crashed into the garage that Brian was standing in. It stayed on that garage for about a year. Since then Brian’s been present as the ship’s been stripped for parts, reassembled, loaned out to film crews, and plumbed for ALF’s personal effects god knows how many times. And he doesn’t know what it looked like? Eat my ass.

ALF tells Brian that he forgot about the “My other spaceship is a Porsche” bumper sticker, and that the model as a whole is “a pretty feeble attempt.”

Man, fuck this guy. Can’t he just be grateful for someone’s effort rather than having to constantly criticize and wipe his ass on things?

During this year’s Xmas Bash!!! longtime reader Ryan pointed something out. We screened the “A Mid-Goomer Night’s Dream” episode of ALF: The Animated Series, and he observed that ALF was sure going through a lot of trouble to help his family out around the holidays…which makes this constant “fuck you” behavior to the Tanners even more troublesome. He’s not a naturally selfish little prick; he just treats his adopted family like fucking garbage.

Merry Xmas!!!

Anyway, we find out that Neal is on his way over, and then Kate Sr. calls and announces that she split up with Wizard Beaver.

Oh noes! Some people we haven’t seen in over a year are no longer together, in spite of the fact that their union was built on the sturdiest possible foundation: a family of busybodies pressuring them to fuck.

While they wait for Kate to go pick her up, the family plays Pictionary. ALF guesses “bird watch,” which is…not a bad guess at all, but he’s wrong. Willie rolls his eyes because he knows that whenever Lynn plays this game she tries to convey a “time to sink your birdie” message.

From the tickmarks above the easel we see that Lynn and ALF are doing significantly worse than Willie and Brian, and also that the game has been going on for a very long time. That’s some nice, passive storytelling. But I wonder where Neal is; Willie said he was just picking up some wine on the way, but evidently he’s taken long enough to miss 96 rounds of Pictionary, including this one. (Yes, I counted.)

It is nice that the teams are listed as LYNN / ALF and BRIAN / DAD. I wouldn’t have thought twice if it said BRIAN / WILLIE, but I like that someone on the production staff realized that a kid is much more likely to write DAD than their father’s real name.

The attention to detail with the score ends there, though, as nobody adds a tick for Willie’s team when ALF fails to guess Lynn’s clue. (The answer was “three o’cock.”) Maybe I’m misremembering the rules and a team only scores on their own turn…but then we’d be way more than 96 rounds into this game, and someone really should be wondering if Neal is in a ditch somewhere, impaled on his steering column.

Then — an Xmas miracle! — I really like something.

Willie gets up for his turn, and after a few seconds of sketching, Brian works out that it’s “All Quiet on the Western Front.” And the way the kid gradually puts it together, combined with the excitement and satisfaction he shares with his father when he gets it right…it actually feels real. And it’s kind of sweet. Maybe Benji Gregory deeply enjoys Pictionary, or something, because it’s the best acting he’s ever displayed on this show.

Then there’s a knock at the door and…mother of fuck! It’s Jim J. Bullo–

–NO

NO NO

FUCK NO

Fuck Christmas. Fuck Christmas, and fuck you.

Ah god motherfucking dammit.

Of course the show had to get my hopes up with a sweet scene between two characters I usually hate so that Jim J. Bullock in a toga could have its maximum toxic impact.

Jesus fuckballs.

Anyway, ALF told him to wear that, apparently, and then the alien tries to use it as an excuse to get Lynn to change into a toga, too. Everyone takes this sexually aggressive behavior against their daughter / niece / sister in humorous stride. Ha ha! Three years to the day since he first tried to rape Lynn, and he’s still at it! We do have fun as a family, don’t we?

At the airport Kate Sr. bitches about her lost luggage. She really should have known better than to fly with these guys, though, since their terminal is located in somebody’s garden shed.

So, Kate Sr. This is the first time we’ve seen her since her wedding in “Something’s Wrong With Me,” way back at the beginning of season two. I won’t say that it’s especially nice to have her back, but I do support giving this character a proper send-off in the show’s final stretch. Remember, though the cliffhanger at the end of “Consider Me Gone” was unintentionally morbid, they did intend to do away with the Tanners for season five, so bringing Anne Meara back to say goodbye was likely deliberate. And I like that impulse.

In fact, Meara actually wrote this one. So…there’s…that.

Since we last saw her in these reviews, Anne Meara passed away. For that reason alone I wish I could tip my hat to her performance here and say it was better than the show deserved (as I was absolutely able to do with Marcia Wallace), but…yeah, there’s no sugarcoating it. It kind of sucks balls.

She had talent that she displayed elsewhere (and which I wrote about elsewhere, so I won’t bore you with it again), but I’d be lying if I said she enhanced the ALF experience in any way.

And, seriously, what the fuck kind of set design is this? I figured the counter was supposed to be in the middle of the airport or something. It looked cheesy, so, y’know, tee hee, but now we see it’s actually in a tiny little room within the airport…and it’s the fucking baggage claim.

This is…preposterous. Who built this set? Have they never seen an airport before? Anyone who stuck a baggage claim in fucking room would have to be insane. Do you know how busy that room would be? How many people would be crushed and trampled? How impossible it’d be to get out through a crowd with all of your shit? The fact that that doesn’t happen here is evidence that Kate Sr. was the only one who bought a ticket for the flight. No wonder this airline needs to operate out of a shed.

There’s a decently funny moment when Kate asks how she’s doing, and Kate Sr. starts talking about how awful the flight was. But then they do discuss the separation, and Kate Sr. complains about how Wizard Beaver loves his saxophone more than her, or something. Which is bullshit, because we true fans who hate this show know full well that Wizard Beaver plays the clarinet. It’s easy to remember because it’s the only thing we ever learned about him.

Anyway, we get a big exposition dump about how they moved to St. Louis together and she wanted him to give up jazz, but then he didn’t, and holy shit I could not care less about this. Maybe if the guy had done more than be introduced and immediately marry this sour old bag I’d be more invested in their relationship, but as it stands I just want her to shut up. It’s very similar to how it is in real life when you run into somebody you haven’t seen in years, and they fill you in on updates to all the things you never cared about to begin with, and you just keep nodding and tune out and eventually pretend to have an uncontrollable diarrhea attack so you can leave.

Back at der Tannerhaus I see Willie at the piano and immediately assume we’re in for our Worst Musical Moment, but it’s actually okay. They’re killing time by trying to guess which television theme song Willie’s playing on the piano, and I’ll give them credit for this. It’s not funny (at all) but it’s the kind of thing I can imagine a family doing together, especially if one of them plays an instrument and another of them does nothing but spank off to Nick at Nite. It’s a well chosen activity for this show, and for these characters.

ALF keeps guessing the right show before anyone else, and it’s…kind of fun. The only one of them I identified in time was Green Acres, so even though I spent most of my life as a couch potato, I can rest assured that I was never as bad or obsessive as ALF.

I have to repeat one of my own questions from the Xmas Bash!!! here: why was every woman in the 80s 44 years old?

Also, what the jesusing hell is that lapel pin? Is it someone performing a slam dunk? That fucking thing is huge. She might as well be wearing a dinner plate. I can’t decide it I want to rip it off her and throw it in the trash, or pin it on myself and strut proudly down the street.

Then someone comes to the door and ALF hides in the kitchen.

It’s Wizard Beaver! Hooray! One of only two characters who hasn’t met ALF is going to meet ALF. Man, you just can’t keep a good writing staff down, can you? Remember back when it used to matter who knew and who didn’t know ALF? That lasted for a whole episode, I think.

So, yeah, the Beav is about to meet him. That leaves, unless I’m forgetting something, Mr. Ochmonek as the only recurring character who hasn’t seen the space alien. (APART FROM JODIE HAR HAR)

Right? It seems absurd that that’d be the case, but I can’t think of anyone else who’s been in more than one episode that hasn’t chilled out max and relaxed all cool with ALF. I mean…we can’t even count the Alien Task Force or the FBI, because we haven’t seen any of those fuckers twice. Is Mr. O really the only one who hasn’t seen him? On a show whose central premise is that ALF must be kept a secret at all times, forever, from every one?

Guys, ALF is a piece of garbage.

Wizard Beaver finds out Kate Sr. is on the way, and he says that he must have just missed her at the airport, which I’d buy except for the facts that a) he has baggage with him, b) his wife was at the baggage claim, and c) the baggage claim is the size of a toilet cubicle. You didn’t “just miss” anybody, Wiz. You just live in a very poorly written show.

Anyway he bitches about his wife for a while, because that’s how people communicate on ALF, as though the English language is just an endless flow of petty complaints. At one point he vents to Neal, who puts a hand on his shoulder, and nobody seems to realize that these two assholes have never met before.

ALF IS A PIECE OF GARBAGE

Whizzer says he needs a beer and goes into the kitchen, and Max Wright tries to get paid for acting without actually doing any of it:

Then there’s a scream, ALF pretends to be a dog, and that’s that.

Well, “Break Up to Make Up” certainly isn’t beating around the bush. So far removed from the Majestic Grand Reveals of other episodes, this one just has the guy walk into another room and see a naked alien staring back at him.

Which I…like. A lot. Not least because this should have happened ten thousand times before given how careless the Tanners are, and nine thousand of those times should have involved Mr. Ochmonek, whose brash, unannounced entrances lend themselves naturally to this.

What I don’t like is that the entire thing happens off camera, so we don’t actually get to experience it. It’s not “Here’s how Whizzer meets ALF.” It’s “Whizzer met ALF when you weren’t looking. Anyway, back to Kate Sr. complaining about the airport.”

Yeah, whatever personal revelations / cosmic reconciliations Wizard Beaver has to make, he makes them while we’re watching commercials for Jazzercise videos and Rubik’s Cubes. It’s like a few weeks ago when Jim J. Bullock was pressing ALF for information about his home planet, and the writers decided they’d rather go home early. So many opportunities for these episodes to do interesting things…so much complete disinterest.

It’s amazing that season four is setting new standards for laziness in this show’s writing. I didn’t think it was possible, but here we are.

By the time we rejoin the story, dude’s just yakkin’ it up with the space alien. Guys, I had a homeless lady yell something at me that I couldn’t even understand and I was shaken up for a month. This guy finds a creature from beyond the stars squatting on the kitchen floor and asks how its day was.

Laziness aside — I must put it aside if we’re ever going to finish this episode — I do like that the writers at least tacitly admit that their show has bungled every ounce of its promise.

They have Whizzer ask ALF if he can “levitate, or cure people by touching them.” And, nope, ALF can’t. Then he asks ALF what he’s done since he’s been on Earth, and ALF is at a loss. Willie helps him out by suggesting that he eats a lot.

And, yeah, the show is in on the joke here; I’m aware of that. But the fact that it can make this joke speaks volumes about how little the writers have done over the course of the previous three seasons.

Other shows about aliens went beyond their premise, including the truly lousy ones, which is why it’s so frustrating that ALF thinks that its main character being an alien is enough.

What can he do? What does he accomplish?

Doesn’t matter. He’s an alien. That’s plenty.

…which it clearly is not. ALF has nodded toward Mork & Mindy before, so we only have to look there to see that Mork formed a deep relationship with someone he met on Earth, eventually marrying her. ALF, by contrast, makes Jodie wet and walks out of her life forever to get back to masturbating into Willie’s socks.

3rd Rock from the Sun featured a crew of aliens posing as a family in order to research life on Earth. This meant that every episode, no matter what it was about, tied into that larger mission as they were always learning something. ALF, by contrast, still wipes his ass with party streamers.

Out of This World was probably garbage (though — all together now — I watched the hell out of it as a kid), but its main alien character, a seemingly ordinary teenage girl, could freeze time and perform other alien-specific feats that made the show feel unique. By contrast, ALF fingers the kids.

You really start to understand how mishandled this show is been when you compare it to…almost anything else, ever. And now, as it winds down for good, the writers might be realizing that they’ve wasted literally all of their time here. It must be a bit like getting to the end of your life and realizing you’ve spent so much of it complaining about waitresses.

Then there is a moment that got a chuckle out of me. Wizard Beaver says, “First my wife leaves me, then I meet an alien. How many people can say that?”

It’s clunky as all fuck, but it leads to this:

And alright, show. Ya got me. I liked it. There’s something about the obviousness of the punchline that actually makes it work for me.

Then Kate and her mother are driving back from the airport, and the old bag bitches some more about the airport losing her old bag. Man, I hope she never stops complaining. Did Anne Meara really write this, or did someone just adapt her angry letters to Spirit Airlines?

Kate turns the conversation back to the woman’s failing marriage. Kate points out that Whizzer’s been playing jazz for over 40 years, and he’s known Kate Sr. for “less than two.” Her point is that they haven’t had enough time as a couple to figure out how to balance hobbies with their obligations to the relationship, which is a good point. And, hey, maybe Kate shouldn’t have been pressuring them to get together in the first place, and instead let them sort this shit out like humans do.

Then there’s some stupid joke about how Whizzer and Kate Sr. met when he was buying her a drink at a jazz club, but, again, we know that didn’t happen; they met when Kate Sr. was moving into her new apartment, which was in the same building as his. Boy, I really hope somebody got fired for that blunder.

Then there’s a poker game that goes on for three full minutes.

As a reminder, the episode is about 20 minutes long, once you subtract commercials and credit sequences. Three minutes is one hell of a lot of real estate. And while I’d be perfectly happy with three minutes of good comedy or something, instead it’s ALF playing poker with Max Wright, Wizard Beaver, and Jim J. Bullock, and I can’t imagine any less promising a setup than that.

There’s also this really stupid moment when ALF looks at Willie’s cards and gets yelled at, then he blames Willie for putting the cards right in his face.

…but it doesn’t work as a joke, due to the logistics of the scene.

Willie really does have to lean close to ALF in order for the alien to peek at them, as you’ll see in the screengrab. He needs to put them unnaturally close because the puppet is so short, so ALF’s comment about Willie putting them right in his face — which is supposed to be funny because he’s making it up — plays really bizarrely.

The joke is meant to be ALF putting the blame for his own misbehavior on someone else…but it turns out to actually be that person’s fault, due to blocking limitations on this shitty sitcom. The screengrab doesn’t do the awkwardness justice; Max Wright actually has to adjust and then re-adjust his cards to get them into ALF’s sight line.

It’s probably the most effort they’ve ever invested in making a joke, and they broke it.

Literally everything goes wrong with this show. Was it filmed on the set of a failed sitcom about an Indian burial ground?

Kate and her mother get back from the airport, and there’s some a big waste of another few minutes as ALF repeatedly calls her an ugly bitch. Then Neal tries to talk about his dissolved marriage, and ALF interrupts. Finally, Kate suggests privacy for her mother and Whizzer, but accidentally says ALF’s name instead of Whizzer’s.

It’s…weird. Like the show is just jamming ALF down our throats now for the sake of doing it. Maybe they were contracted to say ALF’s name another 500 times before the season ended, and tried to get it all out of the way with this episode.

At some point I expected the ALF’s-anniversary-party and the dissolving-marriage plotlines to dovetail, but they never do. They’re just two things that irrelevantly happen in the same episode. Even though characters from both plots end up on the same set, we just go from talking about one to talking about the other, and never go back again. There’s no connection whatsoever.

ALF isn’t jealous that they’ve taken over his celebration. Kate Sr. and her beaving husband don’t reconnect over shitty party games. They’re just two scripts stapled together, and fuck you for expecting anything more.

Anyway, ALF runs out of standup material, so Kate Sr. and Wizard Beaver say they love each other. As all human beings know, that means the relationship is saved, and whatever serious problems there were are gone forever.

Actually, they both agree to give up something. In Wizard Beaver’s case, he says he’ll find a steady job. In Kate Sr.’s case she agrees to move far away from LA and never see her family again. There’s some kind of imbalance here but I can’t put my finger on it.

Also, I was just kidding; ALF didn’t run out of standup material.

He pops up to observe repeatedly that it’s gross when old people kiss, even though nobody’s making him watch them do it.

In the short scene before the credits, ALF watches them fuck.

Man…this one was the pits. Again, I do want to emphasize that it’s nice that these characters get some kind of in-universe sendoff (something many other characters don’t get; chief among them Jake and Jodie), but that’s about as nice as I can be this week.

On the bright side, the final Kate Sr. episode is so shitty it guarantees that nobody in the audience will miss her.

God bless us, every one!

Countdown to ALF being crucified in front of the Tanners: 14 episodes

We get a break from Jim J. Bullock this week, and let’s be honest: we’ve earned that. The Enter the Neal two-parter introduced further drag to a show that never had much energy to begin with, and every week I get less convinced that there are any diamonds left in the rough.

Maybe that was the purpose of bringing Jim J. Bullock onto the show, actually. By thrusting us deep into the worst possible version of ALF imaginable, they ensured that anything that followed would look good by comparison.

So, does it? We’ll find out now with our first post-Bullock episode, “Live and Let Die,” which begins with ALF exploding Weird Ed’s hamster in the microwave.

We’re back in low-quality video territory for this one, as you can probably tell from the murky screengrab. What baby did we all collectively kill to be punished with the fact that the only masters that look good are the ones starring Jim J. Bullock?

Willie comes in with bad news: he “found the cat” outside by the fence. Fortunately Kate recalls that it had a name, and asks if he means Lucky. I’m glad someone on this show finally remembered they had a cat. Of course, it’s a bit late, as Lucky is dead.

Well, let’s ac-cent-tchu-ate the positive: this is a great idea for a story. No, really, it is. We’re immediately carving out some room for emotion and minor drama, and the death of a pet is a nearly universal tragedy that just about every child experiences at least once. It’s fertile and appropriate territory for a family sitcom, and this could lead to some interesting — dare I say “watchable?” — things. I’m on board.

The suggestion that we might get a very human story this week is raised here, too, as Willie and Kate agree that Lucky’s death is going to be especially hard on Brian. I’m not sure why, since the kid hasn’t even seen the cat in two and a half seasons, but I’ll go along with it.

I don’t know what Willie means when he says he “found” the cat, though. Was Lucky lost?

He could just mean it in the sense that he “discovered” that the cat was dead, which is fine, but was Lucky an outdoor cat? He never seemed to be before. It’s weird.

Willie says that Lucky died peacefully in his sleep, which is what everyone says after they accidentally run something over with the lawnmower.

In the next scene, it’s the funeral already.

Wow, this episode is just rocketing along. Not that I’m complaining…but I am worried. When an episode opens with a death and a funeral in quick succession, that could be an indication of pacing problems (characters really should get to breathe a bit between those two things), or an indication that the episode has so much ground to cover that it can’t afford to linger.

I’m not passing judgment yet; I’m genuinely curious as to what the rest of the episode will entail. But I am worried, because this is ALF, and it’s not as though we’re really in capable hands. By now I know that my worry is usually for good reason.

For those curious, I’m indifferent about the fact that ALF is learning about death yet again. He bonded with a dying girl in “ALF’s Special Christmas,” murdered a kindly relative in “We’re So Sorry, Uncle Albert,” and cooked some ants in “Funeral for a Friend.” So, yeah, ALF-deals-with-death is admittedly not a new melody for this show to sing at us, but two of those episodes were garbage, and the third one — which I liked quite a bit — is a very different situation than the death of a pet that’s been on the show from the very first episode.

In short, yeah, ALF has dealt with death before…but only the deaths of characters we didn’t know. Now he’s dealing with the death of Lucky, a name we’re all familiar with, and it’s a death that impacts everybody in the family.

Do I have faith that it will be handled well?

Fuck no.

Am I interested to find out what happens?

Yes. I definitely am.

The family shares some little speeches about Lucky, and we see that ALF is wearing the same thing that I wear to funerals.

The suggestion that Brian would be hit hardest is…actually followed up on here. He’s asked if he’d like to say anything, and he says no. Kate tells him that it may help to say goodbye, so Brian says, “Bye.”

And…fuck. It’s actually decently affecting.

You know how Andrea Elson is naturally good at being warm, Max Wright is naturally good at being awkward, and Anne Schedeen is naturally good at wanting to castrate things that sound like Paul Fusco?

Well, here’s where Benji Gregory gets to be good, at last. His sad, detached demeanor works really well here. Brian’s not in tears, but he’s hurting. And, for once, the character’s stilted line readings suggest something that he might be feeling inside…an inability to get to grips with things.

It befits his sadness. For the first time, Benji Gregory’s style of acting (fuck me is that a generous thing to call it) makes sense for the character, and for the context.

Congratulations, ALF, you blind squirrel. You found a nut.

Everyone leaves so Willie can bury the cat, but ALF hangs around because he wants to eat it. This is ALF, where if you tell a joke once you might as well tell it fifteen million times.

Willie is pissed that ALF isn’t taking the death seriously and has no regard for anyone else’s emotions, which, in light of the fact that ALF has learned this precise lesson three times already and is in the middle of learning it a fourth, is a fair thing to be upset about. But ALF does have a point to make specific to this circumstance: on his planet, this would be like having a funeral for a hamburger.

And this could be an interesting thing to explore. After all, even just on Earth we have cultures that value the lives of some species more than others, and the value isn’t uniform. That probably sounds shitty, but I don’t mean it to be. If I heard that somebody’s pet snake died, or if I found a dead snake in the road, I wouldn’t think anything of it. In India, however, they are celebrated and worshiped as earthly links to the deities. They’d have a very different reaction to the death than I would. Conversely, if I hear that somebody’s dog has died I fall directly on the floor and sob for months…but go to Korea and dog meat is food. Massive difference, and it’s not due to us coming from different solar systems; it’s due to us simply being born a few thousand miles apart.

That dog example is an apt one, considering ALF’s “hamburger” comparison. For him, it’s absurd that somebody would get attached to an animal that he’s always seen as cattle. For someone who treats that animal as part of the family, though, it’s just as absurd that anyone would think of it as cattle.

There’s a dichotomy there that this show is in a unique position to explore; Melmacian culture doesn’t exist (I’m speaking about our reality here, but, come to think of it, it doesn’t exist in the show anymore, either), which means ALF can use it as a convenient filter through which to discuss the inequality of value we place on life as humans, rather than as Americans, Indians, Koreans, or anything else. It doesn’t have to worry about falling into the trap of elevating one culture’s perspective above another, since the only other culture we’re comparing things to is fictional.

This is a really great opportunity to explore a fascinating point.

You’ve read enough of these reviews to know that that doesn’t happen, though, and I’ve written enough of them that my hopes were never up in the first place.

But I do find it interesting that this show stumbled onto a golden opportunity for social commentary by virtue of its longest-running, shittiest gag. It’s fascinating to me that it even came close to saying something with it, no matter how badly it bungled the execution.

Later ALF is Looking for Lucky[‘s corpse] with a metal detector, and Willie catches him. But there’s something really odd about the height difference in this shot.

ALF isn’t usually that short. Is he? No joke, when ALF bumped into him like this I thought for a moment he was discovering Willie’s corpse hanging from a tree.

Comparing the relative heights of the characters to the previous scene, I guess this is about right…but man does it look off here for some reason. I honestly did think this was a dream sequence in which Willie had been hung by the neck until dead.

No such luck, though.

Willie scolds him for trying to eat the dead cat. He holds up the bell ALF put in the box in order to help him find the body, but ALF says that Willie’s mistaken; he’s just looking for quarters.

“Yeah,” Willie says. “Hind-quarters.”

And whatever the last thing I ate was, I guess that’ll always be the last thing I ate.

Mr. Ochmonek shouts to them like he’s coming over, and ALF hides, but then the scene ends and suddenly it’s the next morning.

Jesus Christ, does this show hate me so much now that it gets my hopes up for a Mr. O appearance only to dash them?

I wasn’t expecting him or anything. I was perfectly content to get through the episode without thinking I’d see my good friend / doughy Hawaiian-shirt model Mr. Ochmonek at all.

You fuckers made me get excited, just so you could disappoint me. That’s low, ALF.

The family is getting ready for church, which once again raises the issue of how somebody’s faith in the Christian God might be threatened — or at least forced to adapt — when faced with incontrovertible proof of intelligent life in a vast, unknowable universe, but you’ve read enough of these reviews to know that that shit never happens, either.

Brian mopes a bit more than usual and says he’s not hungry. Kate tells him it’s not right to waste food, and ALF suggests burying it in the back yard, which would be funny if he didn’t then explain the joke (IT IS SIMILAR TO WHAT THEY DID TO LUCKY, WHO IS FOOD TO ALF) to his audience of fake, dead, braying, complete idiots.

Willie suggests getting another pet, and shows Brian the free animal listings in the paper. Then they all go to church, leaving ALF with those listings so he can order a shit-ton of cats, proving that the Tanners are complete idiots, too.

In the next scene, ALF indeed has a shit-ton of cats, so I guess he found someone in the paper who’d be willing to drop off a litter without meeting or seeing anyone there to accept it. That’s exactly one ethical notch above stuffing them in a sack that you’ll “accidentally” drop into the river.

ALF tries to eat the cat, but can’t, because it’s too cute. Then he tries to eat another one, but the Tanners come home before he gets to do it.

ALF eating a fucking cat is definitely this show’s long-delayed orgasm. And here we are, on the brink of it potentially happening…

…and it doesn’t really feel like anything at all.

I’d wonder why that is, but I think it’s because nobody actually wants to see ALF eat a cat. It’s a contract made with the audience on day one that we never actually wanted to see fulfilled anyway.

Do we? Are we, in the audience, rubbing our hands at the prospect of this space monster devouring a screaming kitten on TV? Of course not.

ALF wants to eat the cat, but we’re not on his side. This isn’t “Will Sam and Diane get together?” because we don’t especially want to see it happen. We’re not invested in the outcome the way ALF is.

If anything, our interest can only come from the other side: would ALF dare to show us a cat being eaten?

The answer is a pretty obvious no. Maybe some kids back then would have wondered if we’d see ALF eat one, but it would have been clear to any older viewer that no prime-time sitcom in the late 80s was going to show its title character biting the head off of somebody’s adorable pet.

Admittedly, shows today such as South Park, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and the exquisitely cruel Peep Show would be able to pull this off. “Would they actually do this?” is a question fans of those shows ask silently, week after week, and, often, yes, they do exactly what you’re dreading. There’s a kind of tension built between those programs and the audience…a promise that the audience only partially wants the shows to make good on.

But that’s a relatively recent development in sitcom writing, and it’s only possible due to comparatively lax censorship and broadcast standards. In this case, though, we’re watching ALF, a product of a much earlier, much more wholesome television climate.

(Let’s all just ignore the Too Close to Comfort episode about Jim J. Bullock being hilariously raped. Like, seriously. Let’s ignore it forever.)

The family comes back from church, and Willie gives ALF the Vulcan Nerve Pinch with more conviction than I’ve ever seen from this actor before. Paul Fusco is lucky Max Wright hopped into his car and sped away as soon as they finished shooting the show’s final episode; had he stuck around for the wrap party I’m pretty sure he’d have killed the puppeteer with a tire iron.

ALF lies and says that the kittens came to attend Lucky’s funeral, which is a pretty decent attempt at a save. It makes no sense to us as human beings, but to ALF — who still doesn’t seem to grasp the concept of funerals at all, even though he’s attended more of them than I have by this point — the confusion is believable. One species on Earth may gather to mourn, so why is it so strange that he expects another to do the same?

Obviously, they know he’s a fucking liar. Kate expresses her disgust at the idea of ALF eating cats, and Schedeen plays it very well. It’s not funny, but she’s convincingly repulsed. It doesn’t go anywhere, but in isolation I like it. She’s being human.

Mr. Ochmonek knocks on the door, so I assume this scene will end before we get to see him. Fool me once, show, shame on you. Fool me twice…

Oh.

You did fool me twice.

Anyway, the Ochmoneks are going to Malibu to hunt for treasure with their metal detector, and they want to see if the Tanner family (the whole fuckin’ Tanner family) would like to join them.

Tell me.

A-shitting-gain.

Who the bad neighbors are supposed to be.

Here we see these two taking a spontaneous little daytrip that I’m sure they’ll enjoy, and before they go they figure they might as well invite their neighbors along to have a nice afternoon out as well. What a pair of cunts, amirite?

Once again, the Ochmoneks go out of their way to show kindness to the Tanners. When’s the last time the Tanners even thought of the Ochmoneks without turning it into some kind of joke about how ugly / old / scummy they are?

It’s so strange. I’m supposed to see this and think it’d be a nightmare to live next to the Ochmoneks…but all they do is say nice things to the Tanners, buy them things, and bring them on trips. What is the Tanners’ god damned problem?

There’s a really nice exchange here, and it’s pretty funny, too. Willie mentions having some cats he needs to find homes for, but Mr. Ochmonek can’t take them because his wife is allergic. “She breaks out in these big, red welts that drip!” he explains.

“Trevor, please, some things are private,” she says. And I like this in itself, because it’s the kind of Ochmonek material that works: they say things without thinking. They’re not bad people (as much as the show would love us to believe otherwise); they just don’t behave in the most socially acceptable manner.

But it’s the punchline that I really love. He replies, “Then why did you pose for the cover of that medical journal?”

She says, “I was young. And I needed the money.”

And holy shit, in four lines of dialogue the Ochmoneks just weaved a funny little story more satisfying than almost anything else ALF has managed in 3 1/3 seasons. It’s nothing groundbreaking, but it’s efficient comedic work between two actors who understand timing and delivery.

In short, it’s okay material elevated by people who care about what they’re doing. We don’t see that often on ALF, and I always appreciate it when we do.

Willie tells them to fuck off.

Later, in the shed, ALF attempts to eat one of the cats. He says, “Ready to go through with this?” and we cut to an insert of the cat violently shaking its head, as though someone flicked its ear off camera or something. It’s really fucking stupid.

I guess the cat can understand English? Bullshit, ALF. Make like a pair of really great neighbors and fuck off.

I find it interesting that the episode that seemed to be about Lucky’s death (and Brian’s reaction, which we’ve all but forgotten about at this point) is actually an episode about ALF finally getting his chance to eat a cat.

Like…it’s actually pretty cool that they took a believable everyday plot element (the death of a pet) and tied it into something the show’s been toying with passively from the very start (fucking eating a cat’s guts).

Granted, it’s not a very good episode, but whatever. I’m all about silver linings.

ALF hides because Kate leads some folks into the shed to look at the cats. This scene…is fucking awful.

It’s almost an exact recreation of a scene way back in “Looking for Lucky,” and that’s not going to do “Live and Let Die” any favors, as that scene was great. That’s the one where some little girl we never saw again demanded that ALF be murdered for her entertainment. How can you possibly top that?!

The setup and the dynamic here is copied wholesale from that scene: spoiled little girl and her distant dad show up to adopt a pet. It’s odd how similar it is (can the writers really think of only one situation when it comes to pet adoption?), but it’s nowhere near as good.

The girl here, in particular, is fucking atrocious. She’s so bad I could easily see her being added to the main cast.

She does this phony, elevated accent which I guess is supposed to be French. To the show’s credit, it annoys her father as much as it annoys me. But that doesn’t change the fact that it annoys me, and really I just keep hoping for ALF to beat her to death with a rake. (How’s that for a reversal?)

The girl is played by Emily Schulman, who had a few one-off appearances in shows like Mr. Belvedere and The Wonder Years, but it looks like her most substantial part was as Harriet in Small Wonder.

You know Small Wonder. That’s the show about the robot who looked like a little girl and would hilariously misinterpret basic commands. For example, somebody might say, “Hey Vicki, get the phone,” and she’d yank the telephone out of the wall and bring it to them. Or they’d say, “Hey Vicki, empty the dishwasher,” and she’d kill your dad with a lobster mallet. It was fucking terrible, and I’m tempted every year to make you watch it during the Xmas charity marathon.

Anyway, I think Harriet was the neighbor or something. I don’t remember, even though I watched way, way too much of that shit as a kid.

That’s one thing these ALF reviews have made me painfully aware of: I’ve spent way too much of my life watching really bad television. (And you people ARE NOT HELPING.)

After they leave, ALF confesses to Kate that he loves cats. Kate — realistically, delivered like a woman who is truly sick of these jokes — says that she knows all about his “love for cats.”

But ALF means it; he can’t eat them because they’re too cute. He’s never seen a live kitten before, and now he’s not sure he can bring himself to actually consume one.

And, again, pretty crappy episode, but I like this. It’s well-enough observed, and it’s the same reason that a human being might stop eating meat. In fact, it’s not all that far removed from Lisa Simpson’s similar awakening after playing with a lamb on The Simpsons. (See? I watched good TV, too!) That was a show-changing event for The Simpsons, and ALF’s epiphany here has the potential to be even more of a shakeup to this show’s universe.

…okay, yes, ALF is ending in 15 weeks. But this guy deciding he doesn’t want to eat cats anymore is big. Like, massive. You know, since that’s pretty much his only shtick.

Neither Willie nor Kate believe him, though; they’re convinced that cats in the house will be too much of a temptation for him, so they keep giving the kittens away.

One thing about the screengrab above struck me as odd: Kate has physically come down to ALF’s level. Only now do I realize that that’s never (or very rarely) happened before. Brian is basically there already, and Willie and Lynn both get down on their knees for him (AHEM), but Kate tends to remain upright, above him, speaking (literally) down to him at all times. Whenever she does address him at eye level she bends at the waist, which has a very different social connotation than kneeling before someone.

I’m not at all complaining that she’s breaking that pattern here; I’m just noticing her usual behavior now that I see it contradicted…and it’s making me really like the physical acting choices Anne Schedeen has been making all along that I never picked up on.

When only one cat remains, Lynn brings a friend over to get it, and…

I…need a moment.

Sorry…

Lynn…

…brings a friend…

…over to the house.

Holy. Shit.

This might be an even larger shakeup than ALF not eating cats anymore. Lynn has a friend! Like, an actual friend! One that doesn’t need the “with benefits” qualifier!

Her name is Joanie, and we get some chatter between them about how Joanie’s been dumped by a guy she only dated for a week. Already she got the guy’s name tattooed on her body (CHACHI), and Lynn reminds her that she should have taken things slowly. When you get the “take things slowly” speech from a girl who almost got married in a planetarium to someone nobody else ever met, you know your life is truly off the rails.

I’m a little disappointed this isn’t Julie, who’s been mentioned by Lynn a few times before and whom it would be very nice to confirm is not imaginary, but that’s okay. I’ll take what we can get.

I’m disappointed, though, that Joanie won’t be sticking around, because Lynn really needs a friend if she’s ever going to convince me that she’s not a mannequin who comes to life only when ALF is around. God knows I’d rather add this girl to the cast than Willie’s horny little brother.

Willie can’t find the cat for Joanie, though, so he confronts ALF in Eric’s room and asks where it is. (“Dhoooo I haff to-tear the hhousse a-paahhhrt!?“)

ALF replies that he ate it. This causes Willie to make the same face that your grandmother makes when you take the last peppermint candy:

Max Wright never showed appropriate concern in his entire acting career, and he’ll be fucked if he’s going to start now.

There’s some stupid Eric reaction shot in this scene, too, and I’m already sick to shit of cats and babies responding to ALF as though they understand him. For an episode so focused on the idea of cuteness conquering all, it’s really making me want to kill everybody involved with a box cutter.

He threatens ALF with serious punishment for this transgression, and then goes into the living room to say that something happened to the kitten and Joanie can’t have it. Jesus Christ…couldn’t this guy at least have tried to make an excuse?

Not that it matters; Joanie just leaves, as though Willie said something much less horrifying than he actually did.

Then he tells Lynn that ALF ate the cat, and Andrea Elson acts fucking circles around Max Wright.

Look at that. She cycles through horror and disbelief and sadness, all in the span of a few seconds. She’s really grown as an actor since this show started, which makes me even more disappointed that this was the horse shit she was stuck in. Imagine if she actually got to work with some people who knew what they were doing.

They head out to the shed and discover ALF hiding the cat.

Obviously they’re relieved that ALF didn’t eat the cat, but I’m just pissed off because it leads to a fucking third reaction shot of the kitten, this time licking itself.

They decide to let ALF keep the cat, and I think it’s safe to say that he doesn’t rip this one to shreds with his awful fangs before the show ends…which means he really did change his ways.

Fine.

My question, though: does this ALF-no-longer-eats-cats thing hold true in future ALF media?

The cartoon series doesn’t count, as that took place chronologically before any of this, so aside from that are we really done with cat-eating jokes forever?

The remaining episodes?

Project: ALF?

ALF’s Masturbatory Talk Show?

Somehow I doubt he stopped making jokes about eating cats, so maybe he really was pulling the long con with the Tanners on this one. Sure, that conclusion sort of undercuts the (attempted) sweetness of the episode, but the alternative is that ALF eventually said, “Fuck everything I’ve learned; I’m hungry,” which doesn’t do much to keep the sweetness alive, either.

In the short scene before the credits, the writers remember that this episode had something to do with Brian at one point. ALF wants to name the cat Flipper, Brian names it Lucky II, and the episode ends.

Eh, I don’t care. This one could have been way worse, but it leaves me with one question for any cat lovers (spit) in the readership out there:

In the final scene, Brian holds the cat and pets it, and it purrs at him. I know enough about cats to know that that’s probably a good thing; the cat is cozy. (Correct me if I’m wrong.)

But when ALF holds him, the cat meows loudly and repeatedly.

Like, it never fucking stops until ALF puts it down.

That’s got to be bad, right? Like the cat fucking hates him? Granted, it wasn’t screaming and clawing his foam snout off or anything, but if purring signifies contentment, what’s the meowing? Fear? Confusion? Seething hatred?

So, yeah, “Live and Let Die.” It manages to be neither the best nor worst of the death episodes, and it somehow feels pointless in spite of the fact that it features the passing of a family member and an exploration and reversal of one of the show’s key tenets.

Leave it to ALF season four to render even the important things meaningless.

Countdown to ALF being immolated in front of the Tanners: 15 episodes

MELMAC FACTS: Melmacians who didn’t eat cat were considered sissies. (Lovely stuff, ALF.) Also, “cat lovers” were spat upon, literally.

Well, we’re back, after last week’s nail-biting cliffhanger which saw Neal…

…not doing anything, really, or finding himself in any kind of worrying situation. Great.

Granted, he’s starting his life anew in LA — within convenient plot distance from the Tanners — but we have only the vaguest idea of what his old life was like (storm doors, sleepy wife), so “what will he do now?” isn’t even a question for valid consideration. It’s difficult to care about somebody we don’t know.

What are his hopes? His dreams? His intentions? What would he have changed about his previous life, given the choice? What will he miss about it? What is he looking forward to doing now that he’s single again? Has he ever been in LA before? How much of this is new to him? How much of it is scary, and how much of it is exciting? Is Neal thrilled by the idea of having new challenges to overcome, or daunted by the prospect?

We don’t know any of these things, because we don’t know who Neal is. And without knowing who Neal is, it’s impossible to be invested in this “new life” of his. After all, without any context, it’s not a new life; it’s the only Neal we’ve ever known.

Of course, it’s not fair to write him off just yet. When Jake was introduced partway through a season, he, too, seemed like an unnecessary bloat of the regular cast, but he ended up proving himself to be a pretty reliable character. That’s why I think we’ll really start appreciating Neal come season five, when…

…oh.

Oh.

Yeah, and, come to think of it, Jake did arrive with a sturdier backstory, and a far (far) clearer suggestion of what his previous situation was like. There may have been some teething troubles with that character, but at least we knew from the start what was in line with his character’s history, and what would represent a personal evolution.

So that’s that. We’re stuck with bloat. And not just bloat, but two-parter bloat! My favorite flavor of misery!

This one picks up where last week’s episode left off…or it would, if last week’s episode left off anywhere. Instead ALF just comes into the dining room singing to the tune of “Camptown Races” a song about how he’s glad Neal’s fucked the fuck off. He then asks Willie if he’d like to hear his rewrite of “Helter Skelter,” and Willie says no.

The “no” is really weird. It just hangs there, like there was supposed to be laughter after Willie refused ALF’s offer, but instead they left the long stretch of silence where it would have gone. It’d be a bizarre editing choice if I could be convinced that any editor was invested enough in this show to make choices in the first place.

We get a brief rundown of any salient plot points from last week (wife left him, he lived briefly in a camper, he now rents an apartment nearby) just to cement the fact that there was no reason to watch that episode at all. Then ALF says that he sometimes shits in the tub, and the opening credits roll.

I predict I will love this one!

In the next scene Willie and Kate are giving Neil a bunch of their stuff, like an iron that he got them as a wedding gift, and a hula girl dashboard thing for some reason. I kept expecting the latter to result in a joke about how the Ochmoneks must have left it there (since we’ve seen in “Fight Back” that Mr. Ochmonek’s car is covered in them, and in “Breaking Up is Hard to Do” that they have some in their bedroom), but, no. Nobody says anything.

So…is the joke that Willie and/or Kate likes and/or like hula girls? If it is, then the Tanners and the Ochmoneks have a similar penchant for cultural detritus and, once again, there’s common ground that nobody seems to realize. But, I confess, I have no fucking idea what the joke is, and I’m just grasping for something that makes any kind of sense at all.

Neal asks the Tanners to spend the night at his apartment, clearly distraught, and Willie tells him no, because he’s a great social worker, brother, and human being. Then there’s a really weird bit of blocking, which you’ll see in the screengrab above, where he touches Neal on the shoulder, but does so at full arm extension.

Try that, by the way. I know it’s not uncommon to touch someone when you’re tying to make them feel better, but try doing that from a full arm’s length away, and then just leave it there, without getting any closer. Tell me how natural that feels.

I said in the Character Spotlight on Lynn that I end up having to read into the actors’ personalities because there sure as shit isn’t any character personality to read into, so I apologize if it seems like I’m picking on Max Wright, but this really leads me to suspect he doesn’t have a warm bone in his body.

Not this alone, mind you. Every time he’s sitting or laying next to his wife, he keeps his hands to himself. He doesn’t touch her unless he absolutely needs to (as in “Lies,” when he’s trying to fool some tabloid journalists), and he rarely even looks at her. When he talks to his kids he almost never makes eye contact, and he certainly doesn’t speak to them with any fondness. Now he’s dealing with his distraught brother, and he gets no closer than is strictly necessary.

I don’t think this is a product of characterization, and I’m sure the scripts made no mention of any of this. They probably said something like “Willie sits with his wife” or “Willie grabs Neal’s shoulder to comfort him,” and this is the best Max Wright can do.

He’s the opposite of Andrea Elson. If you tell her to comfort somebody, she gets as close to them as possible, opens her eyes wide, smiles, and makes them feel like the most important person in the world. You tell Max Wright to comfort someone, and he’s mentally tallying the seconds until he can go wash his hands.

Later on Willie finds one of those really old fans with the sharp steel blades, and immediately chops his fingers off.

He’s looking for stuff to give Neal, which pisses ALF off, even though Willie reminds him that this means Neal is leaving and things can get back to normal. Normal, I assume, involving hourly raids by the FBI.

We’re six minutes into this episode now, by the way. A quarter of the way through it, and all we’ve done is reiterate over and over again that Neal is moving out. I’ve asked this of all of the official two-parters, so I might as well ask it of an unofficial one: did this really need to be two episodes?

There’s a frustratingly common impulse on ALF‘s part to pad out even single episodes. Two-parters are even worse, because if those were single episodes they might actually be denser and more interesting. Instead we just get the same non-story slogging its way across two weeks of our lives. Either come up with two different stories about Neal, or pull the best pages out of both scripts, give it a good rewrite, and produce that instead.

There is a funny moment when Neal calls, “Willie? Are you up there?” And Willie blurts, “No.”

I like Willie blurting things, and I really wish that was utilized more often. Max Wright will never convince me that he’s a caring individual, ALF, so stop trying to tell me he’s playing one. He is, however, awkward and a bad liar, so let that be Willie’s character!

Also, I notice that I’ve called out two of Willie’s lines so far, and they’re both just the word “no.” Make of that what you will.

Neal comes up and ALF hides. To his partial credit, Neal wonders why a bed is up there. Willie dodges the question by saying it’s Brian’s old bed, and also Brian used to piss all over it. THANKS FOR THAT

But, honestly, the smarter question would have been: why is the attic clearly in use as a bedroom? There’s more than a bed there…there are pictures and starcharts on the wall, there are games and toys, there are possessions set up on end tables instead of being packed away in boxes…but Neal only asks about the bed.

I guess that makes sense, though. I, too, would stop asking questions the moment one of them resulted in an answer about Benji Gregory marking his territory.

Neal finds a tape recorder and turns it on, which is the polite thing to do when staying as a guest in somebody’s house. He hears ALF singing “Like a Virgin.”

No, it’s not funny. But it does lead to Willie faltering for an explanation, and saying, “The speed’s all off. You don’t want that.”

So, yeah, the fact that he’s trying to pass ALF’s a capella warbling horse shit off as being an actual recording of Madonna…yeah, that’s a fair gag. Way to finally redeem a mindless joke, ALF.

Later on Kate calls ALF to the table, and he makes a big production out of how long it’s been since he was allowed to eat with them. Which is odd, since this episode opened with him eating with them. This is why second drafts are good, people. (Cue everyone in the comments rightly turning this phrase back at me with examples of my inevitable typos.)

Kate tells him to knock it off; he can eat out of the toilet for all she cares. He sits down and I thank the Lord once more that Anne Schedeen — the real Anne Schedeen, not that pod person we were stuck with in season three — is back for this final stretch of episodes.

There is a pretty funny sequence here, as Brian and then Lynn enter the room, and they each ask ALF what he’s doing at the table. (ALF’s sad observation — “I used to be a phenomenon. Now I’m reduced to a ‘what are you doing here?'” — is very tempting to read as meta commentary on just how mundane this show about a space alien turned out to be.) It pays off when Willie walks into the room and greets him, at which point ALF shouts in frustration, “I was invited!”

…but, again, all of this would have worked one hell of a lot better if we didn’t already see him eating with the family in this episode.

Seriously, guys, I don’t harp on problems like this to be an asshole. (Though I am, I promise, an asshole.) I do it to point out the negative impact that carelessness can have on your show / film / song / novel / anything else you choose to create. You need to be careful with what you produce, because even a small inconsistency — like this one — can drag down the stuff you do correctly.

This entire sequence should be funnier than it is, but it’s impossible to ignore the fact that just a few minutes ago ALF was already dining with everyone, rendering every single thing said here moot.

Reviewing ALF has made me much more careful in my writing. If readers pull just one thing from this series, I hope it’s a similar carefulness in the things they write themselves.

Actually, if readers pull just one thing from this series, I hope it’s that I’m a really funny, smart, and attractive guy, but if they pull two things from this series, then the other one can be that crap about the writing.

They don’t get far into the meal before the doorbell rings.

Mother of fuck, it’s Jim J. Bullock!

His new job is handyman at his apartment building. But because he’s Jim J. Bullock he doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing, so he just hides at the Tanner house when somebody needs him.

ALF flees to the kitchen, and Lynn goes to comfort him while Neal complains about his ex-wife Margaret some more. He says she’d eat four or five pounds of meatloaf at a time, so I guess in addition to being sleepy she was also really fat. Keep the Margaret jokes coming, guys! They’re great!

In the kitchen ALF stews — not literally, sadly — because Neal is eating his dinner. And as we cut to commercial, we see an illustration of my earlier point. Remember what Max Wright looks like when the script tells him to comfort someone?

Well, for the purposes of comparison, he’s what Andrea Elson looks like when the script tells her to do the same thing:

One might be a social worker, but I know who I’d turn to if I was feeling blue.

When we return Anne Schedeen does her impression of a drinking bird toy:

It’s the next day, and Neal has been there since six in the morning. Right now he’s taking out their trash. She tells Willie to talk to his brother about “getting a life,” and I really do love her. When she’s on point, Anne Schedeen gives her dialogue just enough edge to make her seem bitchy without being unlikable. She’s genuinely the only thing I look forward to in this show anymore.

Neal plans on painting the trash cans with the name TANNER on them, and Willie says this is good because it’ll help him catch the Ochmoneks next time they steal them.

Fuck off, Willie. Nice try, and all, but I remember that it was the Ochmoneks who bought you trash cans in the first place, way back in “Come Fly With Me,” because you were content to just let your garbage blow all over the neighborhood like an asshole. Stop trying to make the Ochmoneks look like the bad neighbors. It’s not going to happen. You could wake up every morning to Mr. Ochmonek punching you in the nuts and he’d still be the nicer guy.

Kate says that the situation isn’t fair on ALF — who was promised that once Neal moved out he wouldn’t have to hide in the attic anymore — but Willie says that ALF should learn to show a little compassion.

You know, like Willie did last week when he avoided all of his brother’s calls, or this week when he refused to help him settle into the new place, or touched him in the same way that he’d hold a dirty diaper.

Willie heads to the attic to find ALF packing. Hey, great! Looks like we’re getting to Project: ALF 16 weeks early.

…no, he doesn’t actually leave, but “The First Time I Ever Saw Your Face” becomes yet another episode this season that raises the idea of ALF striking out and starting a new life without the Tanners.

I like that, and it lends credence to my growing suspicion that the writers knew season four would end with ALF actually leaving as setup for a Tanner-less season five…but, again, if that’s true, then why are we bothering to introduce Neal in the first place?

Speaking of introductions, Willie proposes that ALF and Neal should meet. That would prevent ALF from having to hide all the time to avoid him, and on some level Willie must realize that Neal and Mr. Ochmonek are the only residents of Los Angeles ALF hasn’t met yet, so really what the fuck does the premise of this show even matter anymore?

From a logistical standpoint, Willie’s a fucking idiot.

What’s to keep Neal from panicking and braining ALF with a vase? Or deciding to call the Alien Task Force at some later point when Willie’s not around? From a storytelling standpoint, though, I’m okay with this. It will be one of the very, very few times that the family intentionally introduces ALF to someone. Every other time it’s just been some visitor walking in on ALF taking a shit, so even if this is a fucking idiotic plan I at least respect the attempt at variety.

Later on the family waits for Neal to arrive, and ALF gets nervous. Lynn calms him down by saying, “ALF, you two are going to get along great. He’s a wonderful guy with a terrific sense of humor,” which is clearly a holdover line from before they cast Jim J. Bullock.

They decide that ALF should hide when Neal arrives and reveal himself later, which would give the Tanners time to prepare Neal for the fact that he’s going to very soon, and very often, be raped.

Against all odds — and blowing my expectations thoroughly away — we get a really good scene next.

In retrospect, maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised. The one time I remember ALF being deliberately introduced to another person was Dr. Dykstra, in “Going Out of My Head Over You.” And that scene, in which Willie has to find the words to tell someone he’s known for a long time that he lives with a space alien, was pretty great. Now it’s Willie and the rest of his family, which gives us a chance to recapture the tension of that scene without repeating it directly.

It works well. The family strikes the right note between excitement and anxiety, and they dance around the reveal just enough that it feels real. It’s also pretty funny that Neal hears they’re hiding a secret, and guesses that it’s something to do with Brian. (This is another bit of meta-commentary I hope was deliberate, because god knows they’ve done nothing with that character, ever, and it’s tempting to believe that the other characters have picked up on this as well.)

When Willie finally comes out and says, “We have an alien living with us,” he repeats it several times, changing the words just slightly each time, as though speaking this thought out loud restores the oddness and the wonder it’s been stripped of after four seasons of trivializing the show’s premise.

Strangely, Willie says that ALF has lived with them “for almost three years now,” so I guess time does pass more slowly in the show than it does for us in the real world. Kate also says that they had to “lock out the 976 numbers,” so if you’ve ever wondered if ALF excessively masturbated to phone sex operators in a house with small children, you finally have your answer.

Willie opens the door to the kitchen to reveal ALF…but ALF isn’t there. Neal, thinking this is all a joke, gets up and pretends to introduce himself to an invisible alien. While he does this Max Wright shoots daggers at him, because this guy’s only been in two episodes and already he’s gotten more jokes than Willie ever has.

I like the idea that the reveal doesn’t go as planned. It’s not some grand, magical moment as it usually is when somebody meets ALF; Willie spills the family’s most important (though also worst kept) secret, and then there’s no ALF around to prove it. He starts to search around in worry for the alien who has completely disappeared without explanation.

It’s just the idea I like, though. The execution is fucking terrible, because this wrinkle is over before it begins. ALF just says, “Sorry!” and walks through the door anyway, with no excuse or reason for why he didn’t do it a moment ago.

So much for complication. It’s much better to just have Jim J. Bullock making a funny face.

ALF tells him to cook him dinner and to get a life. Kate tells ALF to stop being such a dick, but ALF doesn’t, because that’s kinda the only thing he knows how to do.

Welcome to the family, asshole!

In the short scene before the credits, Neal tries desperately to get some Melmac Facts out of ALF, but the writers just want to go home so that doesn’t happen.

Instead ALF cheats at chess, which Neal says he’s never played before. Which…I don’t know if I buy. But then again, I don’t know who the fuck Neal is supposed to be, and this is as good a time as any to talk about that.

Last week I was operating under the assumption that he was supposed to be something of a horndog, based on his behavior in that episode (such as outright telling Willie to find him a woman to fuck), but obviously that seems incompatible with flaming homosexual / living doiley Jim J. Bullock being cast in the role.

Best Commenter in the History of Anything (For Real) kim read the character differently: “He just seems like another version of Willie, except more nerdy and awkward. […] But really if you introduce a character that is very much like another character that already exists, it’s not much of an improvement.”

And she might be right. Maybe the horndog thing was supposed to be just one throwaway gag for the sake of seeming out of place, and Neal is just a big nerd. But now he doesn’t even know how to play chess, so if he’s meant to be some kind of Mega Willie, that doesn’t work, either.

I honestly don’t know. Is Neal supposed to be Cool Willie (a moniker suggested by RaikoLives), as reinforced by his Thirst 4 Poon and his joking around with the invisible alien, or is he supposed to be Mega Willie, monumentally awkward and dorky, though without having dorky knowledge or interests?

Either could work, and either would be hamstrung by evidence to the contrary. Neal has now had two full episodes to establish himself as a character, and I don’t know what character that actually is. That’s embarrassing.

But I don’t hold this against Jim J. Bullock. Yeah, he’s fucking terrible, but I’ve seen enough of this show to say conclusively that poorly defined characters can’t be blamed on the actors. The better ones (Bill Dailey, Josh Blake, Anne Schedeen, that woman with the raised eyebrow a few weeks ago) find ways to stake out character details in scripts that don’t actually provide them, but I can’t exactly blame those who don’t. If the script doesn’t meet them halfway, it’s hard to hold an actor accountable for not making up the difference.

So, yeah. Lots of time spent getting to know somebody we still don’t know. Sounds like a pretty appropriate way to welcome a character to the cast of ALF.

Countdown to ALF being skinned alive in front of the Tanners: 16 episodes

What is an interloper? In terms of television, at least, an interloper is a character who is introduced to shake up the show’s existing dynamics, nearly always temporarily. (This is due to the nature of an interloper; if the interloper sticks around, the dynamics are no longer “shaken up”…they just change.)

Introducing an interloper is one of the easiest things a writer can do to generate conflict. After all, we dislike it in real life when somebody wants to shoulder us out of our routines, so it’s easy to imagine how sitcom characters — routines personified — must feel when somebody saunters in and changes the rules, deliberately or not.

That “deliberately or not” bit is important, as an interloper isn’t necessarily a villain, and a villain isn’t necessarily an interloper. Gargamel, for instance, isn’t an interloper, because his interactions with the Smurfs are part of that show’s established dynamic. He doesn’t interrupt it; he contributes to it.

Similarly, an interloper has to…well…interlope; he or she or it can’t have been there from the beginning. An example of this would be Steve Urkel on Family Matters. While the Winslows do indeed treat him as someone who interferes with their…erm…family matters, we aren’t the Winslows; we are viewers of the show. On that level he is part of the dynamic and not a complication to it. His suave alter ego Stefan Urquelle was an interloper, however, because he changed the way people reacted and behaved around him. (This is also a reminder that interlopers don’t necessarily have to be “bad guys,” as Stefan is an improvement on Steve in almost every way.)

Other examples include Schmitty on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, or The Real Seymour Skinner on The Simpsons. In both cases, these are characters we meet for the first time, but whom the characters in the show remember from long ago. This means that while the interlopers change the dynamics for us, they actually return the other characters to their previous dynamics…pre-show, before we knew them. And, in both cases, the characters involved reject this reversion violently.

Then there’s The Office, which saw an interloper (coincidentally named Neil) added as the Slough branch’s new manager. The American version had its own equivalent, and in both cases their presence resulted in our focal character losing his job…a permanent change that was written into the show’s DNA from then on, even as the interloper slipped into the background or disappeared entirely.

Which leads us to ALF, where interlopers do indeed visit but are difficult to register, as no recognizable dynamic exists anyway.

Of course there’s behavior we’d recognize as out of character immediately (Lynn punching a stray dog to death, Willie giving up crack, Brian speaking, Kate being thanked), but very little that can be given the slight, jarring tweak that interlopers represent so well.

So much of what we have been told about these characters has been reversed, contradicted, or overwritten during the past three years and change that we can’t distinguish the work of an interloper from the work of a lazy writing staff.

Except in cases like this week’s episode, in which we’re told outright that a character is interfering with someone’s comfort.

ALF has given us a few interlopers before. Kate Sr. is the nearest approximation to this week’s Neal, as she, too, is a member of the extended family, got a multi-episode introduction, and primarily frustrated ALF. (Not surprising in itself, as Paul Fusco ensured that he’s the only character that matters). Jake, by contrast, was not an interloper, as he didn’t interfere with anyone’s dynamics at all; he was just another character for them to react to as they always reacted to people.

Dr. Dykstra was an interloper, and a great one because, by virtue of his occupation (and superior acting), he was able to occupy a space above the regular workings of the show, commenting on them, pulling them apart, reconfiguring them for the sake not of mischief but observation. He was awesome, and that’s why his episodes (on the whole) worked so well.

So, you know. Fuck that guy. Let’s replace him with Jim J. Bullock.

The opening scene sets this up, but not in any notable way. Willie talks to his brother Neal on the phone (foreshadowing) about how Neal’s wife left him (foreshadowing) while ALF bitches about how annoying Neal is (foreshadowing). That’s about it. Lynn picks up a bagel and crams it in his snout, which is a funny moment in theory, but I’m disappointed that she didn’t really wedge it in there with much violence. I think that’s a little more of Andrea Elson’s natural warmth coming through; even when the script wants her to be mean, she can only bear to do so gently. That’s disappointing from a comedy standpoint, but it’s also kind of adorable.

Speaking of adorable, the next scene sees the family eating dinner. Eric is there, and he’s doing the thing I’m a sucker for where he coos at ALF and keeps reaching out to touch him, because to this baby (the real life baby), the ALF puppet must look like some giant talking teddy bear. Trust me, people, I’m a tremendously awful human being who hates everything that’s ever brought anybody joy…but stuff like this melts my heart. It’s cute, god dammit, and I love it.

Anyway, they feed the kid for the first time since “Baby, Come Back,” and the phone rings. Lynn goes to answer, and Willie says that if it’s Neal — his distraught fucking brother — he’s not here.

Tell me again what a great social worker Willie is. Yeah, I understand that Neal’s been calling a lot or something, but from the dialogue we know that Neal is in legitimately bad shape, on the verge of doing something stupid, and in desperate need of somebody he can talk to. You know…somebody like a family member, or a social worker.

Both of which are Willie.

Not only is this his responsibility as a relative, this is what Willie is trained for. By hiding from somebody who actually needs him he’s not just being ethically wrong, he’s being professionally irresponsible. And as this person is his own fucking brother, he’s also just being a bad person. I’m sorry Neal is imposing on you, Willie, but something tells me his disintegrating marriage and general feelings of hopelessness and despair are more important than you having your evening free to sit motionless on the couch, ignoring your wife.

Willie even pats himself on the back for giving Neal such good advice last time they talked…while he ignores his brother’s current need to speak with him.

It’s fucking maddening watching this show sometimes. It’s like a show about a family of bears who keep referring to themselves as hippos, and there’s no self-awareness or comedy behind the discrepancy, so you start to wonder if they really are hippos and you’ve actually just gone insane.

We might as well deal with the continuity issue right now, though I assure you that’s the least of this episode’s problems: in “Night Train,” Willie indeed told ALF that his parents had two kids. That’d be Willie and Neal, I guess. Or, I would guess that, if it weren’t for Willie mentioning his brother Rodney in “La Cuckaracha.” So that’s three kids, unless for some reason Willie himself doesn’t count. Which works for me; that would make Willie the Brian of his own family, and I’m perfectly happy with that.

Anyway, the phone was for Lynn, so Willie’s off the hook and doesn’t have to let his suicidal brother know that somebody cares about him. Lynn takes the call in her bedroom to flick herself off to the dulcet sounds of Donny Duckworth mistreating her.

Mother of fuck, it’s Jim J. Bullock!*

Yeah, the next morning a mysterious camper appears in the driveway, and everyone talks about it, wondering whose it is, instead of checking. That’s very true to life, the way a gypsy caravan just sort of settles on your property and you walk around the house shrugging instead of seeing what the hell is going on.

Then the doorbell rings and it’s Neal! He mentions the camper and Willie says, “That’s yours?”

…what the fuck, Willie. Of course it fucking is. How are you still confused about who owns the camper?

It appeared moments before your brother rang the doorbell. And then your brother climbed out of it and approached the house. And there’s no other vehicle out there that your brother could conceivably have driven instead.

What kind of shit is this? It’s like it was written by somebody without a human brain.

Neal explains that he took Willie’s shitty advice to turn his life around, and did so by quitting his job, leaving his apartment, and buying a camper. Willie, empathetic human being trained to deal with delicate situations like these, tells him that he never said to do any of that shit.

It’s actually kind of sad. Yeah, Neal did a lot of this to himself, but he did so while believing that he was following the advice of Willie — his brother, and a trained social worker — so Willie’s “oh, fuck off” registers as pretty hurtful. What an asshole, this guy.

Anyway, ALF makes a dickton of noise in the kitchen, so Lynn goes in to gently beat him to death. And we can take a moment to talk about Jim J. Bullock.

He’s probably still most famous for Too Close for Comfort, where he played the comic relief bozo Monroe. I remember watching that show when I was young, and I didn’t think it was especially awful, but evidently there was one episode that displayed ALF-like levels of tone-deaf stupidity. It was called “For Every Man There’s Two Women.”

In that episode, Monroe is kidnapped by two ladies in a parking lot and subjected to a night of sexual torture before they let him go. The episode then centers on him and Henry (Ted Knight) tracking down the women who raped him and turning them over to the police. The big punchline comes when Henry says that the next time Monroe is the victim of sexual violence, he won’t help him.

I’m not making any of this up. I am, however, stealing the details from an article on Cracked. I don’t feel even slightly bad about that because those fuckers keep stealing my screengrabs when they write about ALF, so nuts to them.

Bullock was also a recurring panelist on The Hollywood Squares, where he told shitty jokes as well as anyone else did, I guess. I’m pretty sure ALF was also a panelist, just to give you an idea of how prestigious it was.

Jim J. Bullock found himself the subject of headlines and news stories when he openly told the world that he was HIV positive. The timing of this review is interesting, as Charlie Sheen — a similarly famous figure of similarly limited talents — has also opened up about having HIV. The response to Sheen now is probably comparable to the response to Bullock then, right down to the unfortunate jokes and “What did you expect?” condescension.

I’m by no means a fan of either Bullock or Sheen, but I feel for both of them. God knows I’ve made my share of mistakes. We all have. The fact that I don’t have HIV, a criminal record, an illegitimate child, or anything along those lines doesn’t suggest that I’ve made uniformly smart decisions…if anything it suggests that I’ve been really fucking lucky a really fucking massive number of times. Granted, I’d like to think that I often make smart decisions, but I can’t say that I’ve never left room for tragedy to creep in. That would be bullshit.

So, no, there probably won’t be too many AIDS jokes in these reviews, because I think that would be out of line. I don’t know how Bullock contracted it, or how Sheen contracted it, and they might not even know. Judgment is going to be kept to a minimum there.

Only there, though, because fucking hell is Bullock punchability on legs. For god’s sake, look at him. He’s Mr. Potato Head with the voice of a gay honeybee.

Not that “sounding” (or being) gay is a bad thing, but Neal, for some reason, seems to be positioned here as a kind of voracious ladies’ man, which is so patently at odds with what we’re seeing that it’s absurd.

If you remember Jim J. Bullock from anything, you know how ridiculous it is for him to play a lock-up-your-daughters character here. And if you don’t…just look at these fucking screengrabs. You could walk in on this guy actively fucking your wife and you wouldn’t feel threatened.

There’s a scene in the camper in which he and Willie talk about how he quit his job selling storm doors, and what he’ll do now, and though it’s a nice enough scene there never seems to be much actual warmth between the brothers.

Bullock, to his credit, seems to be trying to treat Wright as a relative he’s missed and hasn’t seen for years. Wright treats him in return the way he treats everyone else on this show: as a person who needs to finish recording their lines so everybody can go home.

It’s a shame, not because Bullock is great or anything, but because he’s here and we might as well try to make the best of him. Wright, however, seems to have resigned himself to the idea that this show is as good as over. Which is true, of course…but while that could be an excuse to up the effort and go out with a bang, Wright sees it as an excuse to stop investing even the small effort we used to get from him. I’ve seen sleeping people who were more enthusiastic about what they were doing.

The scene ends with Neal asking Willie if he knows “any women that fool around, just a little.” Which is gross, and while it might be meant to play up Neal’s pathetic nature (asking your brother to get you laid is pretty sad; asking Max Wright to get you laid makes you the most worthless creature in the universe), it’s not even slightly believable, and is so clearly forced. It’s like they wrote a line for Patrick Swayze and didn’t bother to change it when Jim J. Bullock was cast instead.

I’m all for suspending disbelief, but this is asking too much. Try as I might, it’s impossible for me to imagine Bullock being interested in vagina in any way other than satisfying his curiosity as to what one looks like.

The next morning Neal cooks breakfast for everyone. We get an idea from this scene of what his wife, Margaret, was like. Evidently she slept a lot, which I guess kind of sucks, but it seems to be meant to demonize her in a way I can’t quite understand. For all we know she had health issues and had to sleep a lot. Admittedly that’s not the implication, but “she liked to sleep” seems like a bizarre way to make the audience think she was a horrible person we should be glad he’s free of.

It does lead to the episode’s best line, though, when Neal, completely without malice, says, “Sometimes I wonder where she got the energy to leave me.” It’s a genuinely good delivery, too.

Then he and Willie talk about eggs for a while, and Lynn confides to her father that ALF made a voodoo doll of him.

Oh, ALF! I forgot he was in this show. It makes sense that he’s assert himself here, though, now that another character has made me laugh. It’s like when a dog hears you unwrapping a slice of cheese.

Willie goes to check on him in the attic and…

…okay.

That is pretty funny.

Part of me wants this to be a Rush Limbaugh reference. Limbaugh may still do some variation on the idea with Obama, but I remember during the Clinton administration that he’d have these little animated bumpers during his show that read AMERICA HELD HOSTAGE: DAY 228, or however long Clinton had been in the White House. (Google Images is failing me on finding an example, which disappoints me more than it should.)

Clinton didn’t take office until 1993, though, and this episode aired in 1989, so it can’t be that, as I doubt Limbaugh would have been bitching about Bush Sr. in the same way. It must be referencing something else. Either way, I like it.

ALF moans for a while about Neal’s visit meaning he can’t leave the attic, and there’s some crap about ALF writing a note threatening to run him over, but really it’s just padding time until ALF grandly reveals himself.

I mean, he has to reveal himself, right? There’s no other way for this show to handle visitors anymore. It’s like going to a Rick Springfield concert and wondering if he’ll play “Jessie’s Girl.”

In a very rare occurrence on this show (which goes unremarked upon), Kate and ALF are in agreement; they both think that Neal needs to get the fuck out of their house.

For ALF this makes sense, because he’s a selfish little nutsack…and also because he’s confined to the attic until Neal leaves. But for Kate, I’m not sure. Frustration after five days of having an unexpected visitor is totally fine, but it’s not as though Neal has been portrayed as annoying or anything. All he’s done so far is cook breakfast and ask Willie to find him a fuckbuddy.

But whatever. Willie’s been such an asshole to her for the past eighty-something episodes that I’m perfectly okay with her being bitchy now and then just to piss him off.

Willie argues with her, leaning on the fact that Neal is his kid brother and needs him. Which is lovely, except that the episode opened with Willie trying to avoid Neal for the same reason. Nice try, dickwipe.

There’s a knock at the door and they both assume it’s ALF, about to ask when he can expect to hear tepid penetration, but it turns out to be Neal.

I guess Eric will be the last Tanner kid, because seeing Jim J. Bullock lean into your bedroom like this has got to be a form of permanent birth control.

He asks them for toilet paper, because he’s wiped his ass so many times that he’s run out, and has even used up all his napkins scraping oily shit slicks out of his cornhole. What a wonderful show this was.

He asks who ALF is, since he overheard Willie saying the name, and Kate covers by saying it’s Willie’s pet name for her. Which is disgusting. Neal says that his pet name for Margaret was his Chicken Taco, so if you ever wanted to envision Jim J. Bullock limply fucking some unconscious lady, you now know what he’d call her.

Anyway, this discussion of horrifying sex names and the need to scrape out Jim J.’s pooper really cement Neal as a welcome addition to the cast. Who knows what this guy will wipe next!

The next morning, Neal is gone. Willie surmises that ALF wrote him another threatening note, so he asks the alien if that’s what happened.

ALF says it’s not, but his ears involuntarily waggle around, giving away his lie, and I actually really like this. It’s cute. Even if this episode sucks ass and ALF’s ear-wiggling contradicts every other time he’s lied in the past, it’s a nice moment, and it takes advantage of the fact that the main character is a puppet…something that happens with odd rarity on this show. Seriously, ALF almost never does anything that a human character couldn’t do. Seeing something like this — which is actually funny — reminds us of just how much potential went unexplored every single week.

At dinner that night (because things only happen on this show at mealtimes) everyone’s pissed at ALF. He tries telling jokes, but nobody’s laughing, because thanks to him Uncle Neal is gone forever, and…

Oh.

Uh, nevermind.

That sure was a needless complication. Anyway, he’s back now, and he didn’t even get mad at ALF’s threatening note. In fact, he assumed it was Willie trying to toughen him up or something.

Whatever. The point is it inspired him to sell the camper and rent an apartment half a mile away. He also applied for a job, and everything’s going to be juuuuust fine. Forever!

Meanwhile, in the kitchen, ALF plays with his Willie voodoo doll, which I admit looks one hell of a lot like my Max Wright voodoo doll:

In the short scene before the credits, ALF writes another threatening note to Neal. Willie catches him, and then ALF scampers away just before Neal comes in.

Since the note was left behind, and Neal seemed to walk right over to it, I assumed the big joke at the end would be that he and Willie would get into an argument about it, and Willie would have to cover for it again, or whatever.

Instead, though, we get a weird second scene with ALF calling Neal’s high school tormentor, telling him where Neal lives so he can come beat him up.

I…don’t care. People can beat the shit out of Jim J. Bullock every hour of his life and it wouldn’t affect me one way or the other. But I wonder why they crafted this big setup about the note, just to cut away when Neal was about to find it and end with an unrelated scene of ALF on the phone.

Granted, I know this is a cliffhanger (and a riveting one, taboot!) but it feels like the phone conversation was a last-minute change to the episode. Maybe they shot Neal finding the note and whatever happened from there, but they didn’t like the way it turned out so they later shot this ALF-only bit to replace it. Considering the very low standards of this show, a scene that didn’t cut the mustard must have been truly shit-awful.

So, welcome to the cast, Jim J. Bullock. I know we’ll see him again next week, and for too many weeks thereafter, so I’m not too concerned that he didn’t see ALF. That’s sure to come soon enough.

What I am concerned about is season four’s desire to introduce new characters. See, I’ve wondered about the show’s intention of doing away with the Tanners in season five…specifically I’ve wondered when that decision was made. It seems as though it would have been made early in season four (or even beforehand) as there have been a few references to ALF starting a new life without the family, and we know that the season ends with him doing exactly that, as potential setup for continuing the show without them.

But the decision to add Neal to the cast — which was to be replaced wholesale the moment the season ended — is bizarre to me. Why are we deepening our knowledge of Willie’s extended family (indeed, inventing a character who’s never been referred to before, and who raises more questions than he answers) if we won’t even be expected to care about Willie by the time the season ends? It’s possible they intended to keep Jim J.’s character around in season five somehow, but I think that’s unlikely. I have genuinely no clue why they brought him in just to get rid of him with everyone else at the end of the season.

It’s weird to me. Baby Eric makes a little more sense, since I know they had to write Anne Schedeen’s real-life pregnancy into the show, but as long as we’re literally winding down this era of ALF’s life, why are we introducing other new characters so late in the game?

Why not more Jodie? Dr. Dykstra? Jake? Or anyone else that was introduced in the show’s first three seasons? Why not do some nice sendoffs for the characters we already know, rather than spotlight new people that the show will soon drop anyway?

It’s so odd to me. Of course, it’s also possible that they haven’t decided to do away with the Tanners yet. That would make a little more sense, but since “Consider Me Gone” has to be written, filmed, and edited sooner rather than later, you’d think the decision of how to end the season would be made by now.

But, oh well. Jar Jar Bullock is here to stay. And he joins Cleavon Little (suicidal black Santa from “ALF’s Special Christmas”) as another actor who sunk from working with Mel Brooks to working with Paul Fusco. It’s hard to imagine a more significant step down in comedy clout than that.

They were in Blazing Saddles and Spaceballs respectively…one is clearly a better film than the other, but they’re both pretty great in their own right, so I won’t pick on Bullock too much for being in the lesser one. (In total fairness to him, compared to Blazing Saddles just about any other comedy can be considered “the lesser one.”)

Were there any other actors who appeared in both ALF and a Mel Brooks film? I’d be surprised if so, but I might as well ask. It saves me having to be up all night worrying.

Anyway, that’s that. I’ll see you next week for “Willie’s Brother Lives in the Driveway, Until He Doesn’t Anymore: Part 2.”

In the meantime, I’d just like to remind you that Christmas is coming, and if anyone wants to make me a little Willie voodoo doll like ALF has, they’d instantly become the greatest person on the internet.

I HAVE THE POWER TO AWARD THAT TITLE

Countdown to ALF being drawn and quartered in front of the Tanners: 17 episodes

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* I really want this to be what people say whenever he enters a room.