Noiseless Chatter

Has time rendered any prospect sadder than “David Spade guest stars on this week’s ALF“?

“Make ‘Em Laugh” aired in January of 1990. ALF‘s cultural cachet was falling quickly, with public opinion of him and his shtick souring fast. His ratings fell. People stopped caring. He was once the star of one of the most popular shows in the world, but, as Artie Fufkin would say, ALF oversaturated. The more often people see something, the more opportunities they have to get sick of it, and ALF gave everyone a wealth of opportunities to get sick of him.

He was everywhere. There were ALF clothes, ALF dolls, ALF action figures, an ALF board game, ALF video games (in traditional and educational flavors), ALF ice cream, and even ALF records and cassettes on which he either narrated irrelevant fairy tales or sang bullshit songs about Melmac.

And those were just the tie-ins. As far actual ALF productions go, there was of course ALF, his flagship show that ruined the lives and careers of everyone involved. But there was also an ALF comic series on shelves, and two animated spin-offs.

One was ALF: The Animated Series, a prequel to the live-action show featuring a weekly half hour of hideous Melmacian freaks braying at each other, and ALF Tales, in which ALF kicks Humpty Dumpty off the wall and buffucks his cat or something. It was shit.

And these were all in addition to his guest appearances on other shows, such as The Hollywood Squares, where his demands to take all the best lines from Jim J. Bullock were taken less seriously.

The most important thing about all of these productions: they all happened at the same fucking time.

ALF ran from 1986 to 1990. ALF: The Animated Series aired from 1987-1989. ALF Tales ran from 1988-1989. ALF: The Pointless Comic for Idiots was published from 1988-1992 (holding on a bit longer than anything else, interestingly).

Do you think that’s enough god-damned ALF?

Public perception turned almost on a dime. We went from being so in love with ALF that we needed him everywhere, at all times, to being so sick of him that we didn’t care if we’d ever see him again.

This episode aired, and about three months later the series would be quietly terminated while nobody was looking. It was costly to produce, everybody hated working on it, and the ratings made it clear that an increasingly negligible amount of viewers gave a shit if ALF lived or died.

So the show died. ALF went from having everything to having nothing. As I’ve said before, Paul Fusco never wanted a show; he wanted a franchise. And that’s the mentality that prevented him from keeping one. Instead of giving the audience what it wanted, he gave them too much, and they moved on to other things. Instead of working to make any one of these myriad productions great, he was content to crank them out irrespective of quality.

“Make ‘Em Laugh” is one of the last gasps of an unlikely star whose career was as good as over. And though the episode sucks, I have to admit it has some damned good thematic resonance in that regard.

David Spade, by contrast, was coming up in the world. I was never an enormous fan of his, so maybe somebody can fill in the 1980s-shaped blanks for me, but as far as I can tell he was a standup comic who achieved some small degree of recognition for his talents. In 1990, though — the year this episode aired — he was hired as a cast member on Saturday Night Live, and it was a great time to be a part of that show.

Saturday Night Live was experiencing something of a second renaissance, thanks to the arrival of great new talents like Phil Hartman, Jan Hooks, Mike Meyers, Dana Carvey, Chris Farley, Chris Rock, Julia Sweeney, Adam Sandler, and Kevin Nealon, as well as the return of golden-age writer/performer Al Franken. How much credit Spade deserves for the show’s resurgence of cultural significance is debatable, but he was there, he was a part of it, and he was a staple of both the stage and the writers’ room.

He also carved out a bit of a film career for himself, most notably alongside the late Chris Farley. He established himself as a sort of caustic straightman, and it’s a role that served him well. But Farley passed away, and Spade was suddenly far less in demand. He didn’t stand on his own very well (hello, Joe Dirt!); whatever degree of talent he may have had, it pretty clearly involved responding to other people…and other people just weren’t interested in working with him.

With the notable exception of his role in Just Shoot Me, Spade failed to find work on an extended basis, and his career took a tumble as a result. Overnight he went from nobody to one of the most recognizable faces on the most popular sketch comedy show in history, and then another night passed and he was nobody again.

ALF and David Spade are natural fits for each other, though not for the reasons either of them would care to admit.

Anyway, David Spade’s scene here boils down to a brief snippet of a comedy program called Giggles in the Valley, which sounds like a film you might catch after Bikini Carwash IV through a scrambled HBO signal.

David Spade gets exactly one and a half lines. The first is him telling a joke about polyester. (And by that I mean he observes that somebody is wearing polyester.) Then he starts talking about his trip to Canada and gets cut off by ALF changing the channel. So I guess even when ALF goes out of its way to cast an actual stand-up comedian whose star is on the rise, it makes sure he doesn’t get any laughs that could instead go to Paul Fusco’s right hand.

That night ALF types some shitty jokes, making him the only person in history to be inspired by David Spade.

Willie comes up to yell at him for making noise at one o’clock in the morning, but Jesus fuck, it’s not that loud. And it’s in the attic. I’m willing to buy that Willie could hear him, but compared to ALF pounding on the piano to brainstorm a musical comedy act, or bringing the typewriter under Willie and Kate’s bed so he could write his material without having to sacrifice his chance to hear the joyless sounds of their passive fucking, this qualifies as good behavior.

Maybe that’s why ALF is still lashing out and pulling such destructive nonsense after all these years. When he’s an asshole, Willie screams at him. But when he’s polite and does something quiet to keep himself occupied, Willie screams at him with exactly the same degree of anger. At some point ALF must have realized that the net result is the same, so he might as well be a raging dick all the time.

ALF reads one of his jokes to Willie, with the implication that it’s so funny Willie will cum. Or piss himself. I’m not sure which. Either way, the show just made you picture Max Wright’s leaking cock, so you’re welcome.

The joke is a standard cat-eating gag, making it the first one since “Live and Let Die,” the episode in which our furry felon decided he wouldn’t eat felines anymore. But since it’s a just joke ALF invented and not necessarily reflective of his desires, I won’t cry “continuity flaw.”

I will cry “nonsensical bullshit” though. I honestly don’t understand the joke. It’s a short anecdote about ordering an extra-crispy cat on Melmac, and getting an arthritic cat instead.

Genuinely no fucking clue. Can anybody make sense of that one for me?

Willie says that the joke sucked and checks to make sure the tip of his withered old wiener is dry. Then he leaves and ALF repeats to himself, “I’m funny! I am! I am funny!” And…

No.

No my fuck no

Not a fantasy sequence my ass please no

ALF, for some reason, is fantasizing about somebody else’s standup set. That would be kind of like leaning back in your chair to daydream about being a famous rock star, and then just thinking about some footage of Billy Idol you saw on VH1.

After a while ALF remembers that this is supposed to be taking place in his own brain, so he’d better make an appearance. He bumps into John Pinette backstage.

Pinette died in 2014, which I didn’t know before writing this. I definitely recognized him, so I wanted to see what else he’d been in. He had a good number of standup specials to himself, and guested in a bunch of others, so that’s definitely why I remember him. He also had a recurring role in Parker Lewis Can’t Lose, which I watched all the time and definitely never understood. His most notable sitcom appearance, though, was as the heavy man who gets mugged and kicks off the events of the Seinfeld finale.

I’m a bit sad to find out that he’s dead. I’d be lying if I said I was a particular fan of his, or even that I’d thought about him once in the past 18 years, but as soon as I saw him here in ALF I thought, “Hey, it’s that guy!” I remember him being pretty funny, and seeing him again brings me back to the days that I actually paid attention to the world of standup comedy.

Here ALF calls him fat and makes fun of him for a while. Then he suggests that Pinette make some jokes about his weight, so that the whole audience can make fun of him for the health issues that would kill him at 50.

ALF does his routine. Not a moment too soon, since this was the ostensible point of the whole fantasy sequence, which until now we’ve spent making fun of fat guys and listening to other people tell jokes.

He tells, in full, the same arthritic cat joke he told earlier. The fake audience laughs, which is kind of meta since ALF always has a fake audience laughing at his jokes, even when he’s awake. At least now he finally gets to meet the people who offer up polite chuckles at his half-assed material.

His other jokes: the Melmacian library had two coloring books, and his girlfriend Rhonda had a hairy back. Hilarious.

Son of a bitch I miss the midget.

Anyway, ALF is so funny that he takes his necktie off when we aren’t looking. Then the guy who runs the nightclub or hosts the TV show or whatever the fuck is going on comes over and tells ALF that he’s the funniest comedian ever and has “redefined comedy in America.” Man, if you liked those other three jokes, you’ve got to hear his take on airplane food!

Then Brandon Tartikoff shows up. The real one.

He offers ALF a prime time sitcom of his own to showcase his talents. I’m tempted to launch into a speech about how important Tartikoff was to network programming at the time — NBC in particular, as he was their president, though the echoes of his success unquestionably drove the decisions and reactions of rival networks as well — but I already did that in my review of “Prime Time.” So, go read that, because it provides some good context for his guest appearance here.

In that episode he was played by David Leisure, which is a little odd as the events of “Prime Time” happened in reality. Now that we’re firmly in a dream, we get the actual Tartikoff. Not a complaint at all, but it’s interesting how that worked out.

A while back reader Justin provided this piece that was inspired by a conversation he had with Bernie Brillstein, and it sheds some light about why Paul Fusco might have wanted to pay these in-show respects to Tartikoff. After all, that’s the guy who gave ALF his big break in real life.

Something seems to have turned in their relationship, however, as Anne Schedeen alludes to in this interview which was posted to YouTube last month. (Hat-tip to kim for sending it my way.) I shared this on Facebook and people seemed to enjoy it, so if you haven’t seen it, take a look. It’s a long interview, so make a sandwich, but people so rarely talk about ALF that it’s pretty valuable by default.

Among other interesting tidbits, she mentions that the network president and Fusco had some creative disagreements about where to take the show next…and the cleanest solution was to avoid the question altogether by canning ALF.

Paul Fusco made an invaluable ally in Tartikoff up front, and through stubbornness made a career-ending enemy of him.

Hands up, everyone who’s surprised.

Then the Tanners come over to gush about how great ALF is, and how funny he is, and how he’s the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being they’ve ever known in their lives.*

I’d complain about the fact that people keep walking up to ALF in the middle of his set, which may be recorded for broadcast or may be live, but which at the very least has a room full of people waiting for these assholes to leave the performer alone so he can tell some more jokes, but it’s a dream, so I can’t worry to much about it. That’s also, I hope, the explanation for why Lynn is dressed like Blossom.

Then there’s a short montage with a bunch of newspapers and fliers and calendar pages swirling around and footage of people laughing, to demonstrate how popular ALF is and WILL ALWAYS BE.

The camera is proud enough to make sure we see this one:

So if you don’t find that funny you can skip the episode in total confidence that you’ve missed nothing.

There’s also this:

It’s odd that “Alf” isn’t in all caps. It’s even odder how much punctuation is in that headline. I’ll give it points for proper usage of the semicolon. I’ll deduct far more points for suggesting that a performance at the White House implies political momentum. Did anyone expect a Colbert / Biden ticket after the Correspondents’ Dinner?

Again, it’s a dream…it’s a dream…

For ALF it’s a dream, anyway. For me, I’m spending my waking hours watching this horse shit so fuck it.

“Oh, good; more $excessive/punctuation.”?!

It’s the National Inquisitor, and I like the fact that this invented publication from “Alone Again, Naturally” and “Lies” has actually become a part of the show’s universe.

I enjoy far less the Sybil joke, but I guess it’s hilarious if you enjoy poking fun at people with severe mental health problems.

If anyone can make sense of the “A Redoubler Publication” tagline, please get in touch.

When the barrage of limp headline gags finally ends, we’re in the Tanner house, where the Tanners all dote on him and cater to his every whim. Weird…I thought the fantasy was supposed to be at least a little different from reality.

ALF reads fanmail and fields requests for interviews and to appear in shows, and then Mrs. Ochmonek comes over and sprays vaginal moisture everywhere. It sucks.

There’s a bit of an interesting theme here with ALF being really selfish in his requests — having other shows named after him before he’ll even consider appearing, refusing to grant interviews unless he’s the only guest — which may well be the writers venting their frustrations at Paul Fusco’s similarly audacious real-world demands…the very demands that would sink the entire show and send them all looking for new jobs in a matter of weeks.

I have no idea if it’s intentionally meta, but it sure is tempting and easy to read that way. And the way the next few scenes unfold — with some phantom global audience deciding that ALF isn’t funny almost as quickly as they decided ALF is funny — plays like a damned prophecy.

Then ALF gets a lifetime achievement award from Casey Kasem, and I’m entirely willing to believe we’re watching unedited footage of Paul Fusco’s wettest dream.

There’s a decent enough idea here (ALF has only been famous for three days, a conceit upheld by the calendar pages earlier), but, I assure you, I did not need “Make ‘Em Laugh” to convince me that ALF’s shtick is garbage.

Then ALF tells the arthritic cat joke — in its entirety — for the third fucking time. Granted, it gives the audience at the ceremony a chance to shout at him to do new material, but, man, telling the same cock sucking joke three times in the same episode, with the same cadence, just feels like extremely lazy padding.

Hey, speaking of extremely lazy padding, another passage-of-time montage! For this one they even used a headline from this very blog.

Interestingly, you can read some of that article in the screenshot. It’s text from an actual story about the then-recent box office failure of the Eddie Murphy vehicle Harlem Nights.

The film is mainly notable now for being one of the earliest examples of gunmen opening fire in a movie theater. Evidently they started firing on the crowd during a shootout scene in the film, perhaps to further confuse their victims and prevent them from immediately fleeing. I don’t think this particular article mentions that, but it’s an odd, dark footnote that seems to come up any time that film is mentioned. (Thankfully, the film’s astronomical crap factor ensures that it’s not brought up often.)

Then there’s a brief scene of the family saying ALF’s career is over, in case you didn’t pick that up from when ALF fretted that his career was over, or Casey Kasem said that ALF’s career was over, or the awards show audience shouted at him that his career was over, or those spinning newspapers all stopped long enough for you to read that his career was over.

And after that deeply necessary scene, we’re right back into a passage-of-time montage. If the episode keeps passing this much time the final scene is going to take place in the year 3535.

We do actually end up 10 years in the future. (ALF fantasy sequences are nothing if not comprehensive.) ALF is a washed up MC in the Catskills, introducing a plate spinner. There’s a nice enough detail that the sign is missing a letter and therefore refers to him as GORDON “AL” SHUMWAY. I mean, it’s not funny, but it’s also not the arthritic cat joke, so I’ll take it.

Of course, ALF then refers to that detail himself, calling attention to it that’s far out of proportion to its actual comic value — which it would have had as a sign gag — so…that kind of sucks. “Make ‘Em Laugh” is working really hard to ensure that I don’t.

Then HOLY JESUS SHITFUCK he tells the arthritic cat joke again anyway so fuck it all to fuck.

Somebody heckles ALF, and there’s some tedious back and forth about that. The heckler does threaten to stick the microphone up ALF’s ass, though, so he’s the most relatable character who’s ever been on this show.

Then John Pinette comes back and we hear a few minutes of his actual standup while ALF mopes around. Granted, spending the final stretch of your episode listening to a character we’ll never see again perform a completely irrelevant standup act in a fantasy sequence that doesn’t matter anyway is the very definition of wasting your audience’s time…but since people who actually know how to deliver a joke are so rare on this show, believe me, I’m fine with it.

Later that night, ALF drinks alone, with nobody else. The Tanners come in and holy barf what the shit is Benji Gregory wearing?

Somebody else make a joke about it. I know better than to try to follow Pinette.

The funniest thing in the whole episode is the tossed-off reveal that Brian somehow has his own TV show now. Man, I’m sure it’s a comic masterpiece. A weekly half hour of the kid sullenly scratching his armpit.

Also Lynn works for MGM, which is fine, if totally pointless as a plot development. I understand that the point is that ALF’s star has fallen while everyone else’s has risen…but that’s not even true. We don’t learn anything about who Willie and Kate are in this fantasy, and does the career trajectory of the kids — a trajectory that hasn’t even been mentioned before this scene — really mean anything? “Also Brian is famous or something” feels quarter-assed at best, and I don’t know what we’re supposed to take from it.

Unless it’s exactly what I am taking from it: the hilariously terrifying concept of a Benji Gregory Show.

The Tanners tell ALF he can come back and live with them, but he doesn’t want to leave show business, so he tells them to cram it with walnuts.

In the short scene before the credits, ALF wakes up.

He tells Willie and Kate about his dream. Then Max Wright does this while both ALF and I scream:

mammy

Alright. So “Make ‘Em Laugh” had a few strikes against it from the start.

Firstly, it was a dream episode, which, again, is the very definition of unnecessary in a show about a screaming space beast that lives in the attic. You don’t need to exploit another layer of fantasy when your show’s reality is already so far removed from our own. And when you do exploit it, you should do so because you want to do something more interesting than usual, and not something more mundane. (That sounds obvious, but ALF, oddly, still doesn’t understand this.)

Secondly, it had fucking David Spade. (Though John Pinette, admittedly, was a nice surprise.)

And thirdly it was an episode in which a character becomes a stand-up comic, and those have never been good. I’ve always wondered why it is that shows that are normally funny become exponentially less funny once it wants one of its characters to be funny in-universe.

It’s a larger essay than I’ll write here, and I’d certainly need to come up with more examples, but I do remember seeing an episode of Mama’s Family in which Mama — of Family fame — starts telling jokes at a comedy club or something. No, Mama’s Family wasn’t great, but it was competent. And I remember watching that episode as a kid and wondering why the show felt perfectly funny until it was actively trying to convince us that her standup routine was funny. It felt flat all of a sudden, and it almost always does, as though these shows are suddenly trying too hard. Or maybe it’s just because fictional standup routines will always be compared to the ones we know from the real world, which tend to be quite good and well-developed by the time we know them at all.

But “Make ‘Em Laugh” had one really intriguing card up its sleeve: the meta component. While I’m pretty sure the real-life frustrations of the staff bled through to the writing (ALF’s sharp rise and irredeemable fall — centering as they do on lazy, repetitive material and unreasonable egotism — are too true to life to believe otherwise) it wasn’t nearly as clever or interesting as “I’m Your Puppet,” which successfully offered metatextual insight while still telling a coherent story of its own.

“Make ‘Em Laugh,” by contrast, played like a string of grievances, without the interesting gimmick, solid jokes, or great acting to carry it. (The impact Bill Daily had on the viewing experience can’t be overstated. There’s a reason I sing that guy’s praises every chance I get.)

“I’m Your Puppet” took real-world frustration and spun it into a fun and insightful episode, and it actually ended up feeling more satisfyingly caustic because of its restraint. “Make ‘Em Laugh,” if it was intentionally meta at all, is just a stream of loose, disconnected bitching. It’s not funny, and, even as a guy who hates this fucking show, I have to say it feels nasty.

Additionally, Max Wright was really out of his mind this week. Usually I make fun of a slurred delivery here or there, but this week I couldn’t do that, because I’d be left with no room to talk about anything else. It’s pretty clear by now that he not only doesn’t care about giving his best performance…he doesn’t care if his lines are intelligible at all.

You might think I’m exaggerating, but I’m honestly not. This week the guy sounded like an answering machine that’s eaten its tape. It takes a lot for me to single out a Max Wright performance as being particularly fucking terrible, but let me assure you that this one was particularly fucking terrible.

Anyway, Christ, let’s never speak of this garbage again.

This is the home stretch, ladies and gentlemen. We only have 10 episodes left to go. And if “Make ‘Em Laugh” accomplished nothing else, it reminded us that we’ve absolutely earned it.

Countdown to ALF having his flame extinguished in front of the Tanners: 10 episodes

—–
* I’ve made this joke a few times over the course of these reviews, but since we’re nearing the end I might not get the chance to make it again. So let me take this opportunity to make this clear: if you’ve never seen The Manchurian Candidate, the original one, with Frank Sinatra and Angela Lansbury, take a few hours this weekend and do so. You’ll thank me.

ALF has tried many times to tug at our heart strings, to affect us, to make us feel as well as laugh. Most notably we had “ALF’s Special Christmas,” which legendarily overreached in every direction imaginable, leaving us with a sappy pile of ostensibly touching horse shit, but we’ve also had smaller, more successful attempts, as demonstrated by “Night Train” and “Alone Again, Naturally.” Perhaps best of all we had “Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadow,” a fantastic late-game showcase for Jake, and one of the few times we’ve been allowed to give a rat’s ass about a character that wasn’t made by turning a jacket inside out.

None of these compare, however to the emotional gut-punch of “It’s My Party.” This is the episode that will choke me up the most, without question, even though it might not seem that way on the surface. As much as ALF has tried to make me feel sadness, pity, wonder, or anything else, “It’s My Party” actually lands a devastating blow. It takes a while to get there, but once we do…

…I can’t even talk about it. Not yet.

We’ll get there soon enough.

Too soon…

For now, we open with Willie getting excited over new pictures of Neptune taken by Voyager II. One thing the writers have done a fairly decent job of keeping consistent is Willie’s interest in the sciences, and I genuinely do like seeing him nerd out about things like this — Max Wright sells that well enough — but, again, it makes me wonder why they didn’t give him a career in the sciences. Willie has no interest in or aptitude toward social work, which I think is part of the reason it’s only driven one story in the entire history of the show. (I’m speaking of “Border Song,” in which he kidnapped a Mexican kid. Any other plot that has had to do with his employment could work, without change, no matter what his job was, making “Border Song” the only time it was actually meaningful.)

It’s strange that they established Willie to be a nerdy guy with nerdy interests who loves to nerdingly nerdy-nerd all the nerd-long day…and then gave him an irrelevant job that has nothing to do with what he’s good at, what he likes, or what his character seems to be. It’s so strange.

ALF is excited about the pictures, too, so Willie shows him. Then ALF makes some crack about buying land on Jupiter sight unseen, which causes Willie to ask, “Can’t you find something else to do?”

Which is…weird, because it’s Willie who was gushing loudly about the pictures. ALF asked to see them, but only after Willie ejaculated at length about how great they were. This isn’t the usual situation in which Willie is doing something and then ALF comes in and clamps jumper cables on his nipples. This is Willie saying, “Check out this cool thing,” ALF saying, “Cool,” and Willie getting pissed off.

Willie is really weird.

Then Kate brings over an invitation from the Andersons, inviting the Tanners to a dinner party. She and Willie complain for a while about how they’re “always” being invited to things, without ever being able to return the favor and host a party of their own.

Two lumps of bullshit, there:

1) The Tanners don’t have any friends. Sorry. We’re midway through the fourth season and none of them have any lasting relationships with anyone. Alright, Lynn has Joanie, I guess, and Kate has those college chums she met up with exactly once, but I think that’s it. Willie hates everybody and Brian might as well be an aborted fetus in a jar.

2) The Tanners have hosted parties of their own. This is just from memory: a cosmetics party in “Keepin’ the Faith,” a Halloween party in “Some Enchanted Evening,” Kate Sr.’s wedding in “Something’s Wrong With Me,” a cheer-up-ALF party in “We Are Family,” Kate Jr.’s baby shower in “Baby Love,” and ALF’s crashiversary celebration in “Break Up to Make Up.” I’m not counting any of the smaller-scale events in which they entertained just one person (like Dr. Dykstra, or Jimbo from “Hide Away”) or any of the parties that were immediate-family-only (like the various birthdays or the Tannerversary in “Isn’t it Romantic?”), so if you do count those, it’s even more.

Granted, that’s not a huge amount of parties, but over the course of the three years ALF has been on Earth, it’s quite a lot. I sure as shit don’t throw a party every six months, and I don’t even need to worry about hiding a space alien. (It’s bad enough just being forced to do my laundry.)

So fuck the lying-ass Tanners in their ass faces.

After the credits we see that the family has hired a professional party planner.

What — and I mean this in the most respectful way — the fuck is this shit?

It’s just some get-together for the neighbors. Put out some cheese and olives and call it a fucking night. I absolutely love the fact that they told Lynn to her face that they couldn’t afford to send her to college, but they can afford to hire a party planner for this dumbass minor gathering nobody’s even expecting or cares about.

PARENTING!

Come to think of it, they didn’t even hire one for Kate Sr.’s wedding. If you could organize a wedding on your own, certainly you don’t need to hire someone to go to Shop Rite and pick up a deli platter.

The party planner says that they need to decide on a theme for their party, which I guess is the kind of thing you take into consideration when you live in a sitcom. But I assure you that if your party has a theme I’m 100% less likely to come. Fuck that.

ALF calls Willie from the phone in the kitchen and asks if they can have a luau. He calls again shortly to make sure they order two pigs. Then Willie does this thing where I think he’s stuffing the cordless phone under the couch cushion, but his positioning makes it look like he’s forcing it into Kate’s anus.

So, they’re having a luau with two pigs. Who cares. It’s kind of ridiculous that the point of the episode was that the Tanners haven’t been able to have a party since ALF arrived, and now they’re following his instructions on what kind of party to have.

I kind of thought this was…you know. Their thing. If they’re just going to do ALF-approved bullshit as usual, why bother? That’s every day of their lives, and it won’t separate this event from any of the other events they’ve thrown over the past three years that had to accommodate ALF.

I imagine a writer pitched this by saying, “Hey, you know how the Tanners host parties every so often? Let’s do an episode like that, only this time it’s exactly the same as those.”

The party planner leaves with Brian’s college fund and ALF emerges from the kitchen. Kate pays some lip service to my concerns by telling ALF that he’s not allowed to come to the party, and fretting that he’ll ruin it. Which, hey, fine. But then why were you guys agreeing to his requests for the party theme and food?

I’m kind of on ALF’s side here. Their acceptance of his requests implies that he’ll be allowed to attend. If they didn’t want him there, they shouldn’t have been organizing the party to his precise specifications. They should have said, “Listen, you braying merkin. You want a luau, but you’re not invited so we don’t care.”

Instead they just keep saying, “Whatever you want, ALF!” which means it’s not his fault if he assumes he is invited. Imagine telling a friend that she should have her birthday party at some particular restaurant you like, and she replies, “Yes, that sounds great! Let’s do that!” and then she doesn’t invite you. It’d be weird, especially since you don’t know any women.

ALF tells them that he’ll stay out of their way. “My cooperation can be bought,” he says, “if you agree to the following harsh and unreasonable demands.”

It’s a pretty good line, but I can’t give the writers credit for it since this is precisely what Paul Fusco said to every actor during contract negotiations.

Then, for maybe the fifth time ever, we see Willie at work.

Not that he’s doing any work, of course, and he’s certainly not surrounded by anybody we’ve seen before or will ever see again, but it’s something.

Unfortunately it’s a pretty dumb scene. The party planner calls and his coworkers all bitch him out for having a party without them. Guys, when Max Wright throws a party, you don’t want to go. You just want to pick up next month’s National Enquirer.

They guilt him into inviting them, because apparently they’ve done all kinds of nice things for him — like driving him home and chipping in to throw him birthday parties — and he’s never, under any circumstances, done jack shit for any of them in return.

Sounds about right. I’m glad somebody else in this show shares my opinion that Willie’s a selfish fuck…even if it’s a bunch of somebodys who have no names and who will vanish from existence once “It’s My Party” rolls credits.

Later that night, or six months later, or back in 1851 (it’s never clear in this show), the Tanners have a luau. Kate and Lynn are dressed in Mr. Ochmonek’s hand-me-downs, and I have to say that if I ever met a woman with his fashion sense I would propose to her on the spot.

There’s a funny enough line here when Kate says that pretty soon people will actually be able to say they’ve been to the Tanners’ house, and Lynn replies, “It doesn’t take much to get us excited anymore, does it?”

Andrea Elson’s been doing this thing recently that I haven’t mentioned, so I’ll mention it now. Whenever she gets a punchline, she delivers it, lets it hang a moment, and then smiles. And it’s fucking adorable.

She’s gotten so much better since the first season that I’m actually impressed. The pause / smile is a natural little flourish for her, I’m sure, but it makes Lynn feel real. She’s not just delivering a joke that was in the script; she’s somebody’s daughter, or sister, or friend, and after she makes a joke she smiles at the person as a kind of reassurance.

It’s so human, and it makes it feel like part of a conversation between two actual people. In real life we don’t get a punchline and cut away to the next scene; we keep talking. And Elson’s little smile is her way of keeping the conversation going. Strictly speaking, it’s not something someone should be doing in a multi-camera sitcom about a masturbating puppet, but I like it all the same. Go figure.

Then we cut to Brian and ALF in post-coital serenity.

the fuck this show

ALF is spying on the party so that Paul Fusco can still be present for 51% of the episode. (Any less and the show can’t legally be referred to as ALF.) We get a bunch of jokes about the party planner being gay, so if you ever thought it was hilarious that homosexuals can be in relationships, too, this is probably the episode for you.

Then the Ochmoneks come over, and Mrs. O says that they thought the Tanners were playing a joke on them when they got the invitation.

Now I’m happy. It’s one thing for Willie’s anonymous coworkers to be savvy to the fact that he never invites them to do anything, but the Ochmoneks are aware of it, too? I’m in heaven.

Seriously, these two have gone out of their way for the Tanners — and Willie specifically — more times than I can count. They’ve invited them to graduation parties and free vacations and spontaneous daytrips on a near-weekly basis, but the Tanners haven’t invited them to a damned thing in return, including things like the Halloween party and Kate Sr.’s wedding, to which they did seemingly invite the rest of the neighborhood.

So, sure, Mrs. Ochmonek’s comment is kind of bitchy, but bitch away, bitch. If anyone’s earned it, it’s you.

Anyway, I have been told that this episode marks the final appearance of Mr. Ochmonek. (His wife appears in a few others.) This, as you must know, is a sad occasion for me, and it’s why the episode hits so hard.

John LaMotta, it has to be said, was a god damned trooper. The show treated his character like garbage, hiring him so that they’d have someone they could call fat, old, stinky, bald, stupid, poor, and ugly. And he certainly didn’t enjoy his time on ALF any more than the rest of the cast did. In 2010 he was asked about the now-infamous outtakes of ALF shouting racist comments, but he was not interested in discussing them. He was happy enough to offer some general comments on the show, though:

“I thought the show ALF was a piece of shit. Worst work I ever did.”

That’s the whole of his interview, by the way, at least as far as I can tell. It’s very easy to imagine that his phone rang, he heard a question about ALF, then he said that and immediately hung up. The above two sentences represent his entire feelings on a show that consumed four years of his life. “ALF was a piece of shit” covers everything.

And while I can’t really blame the guy for disliking the show, I think it’s impressive that the “worst work” he ever did was actually pretty good.

LaMotta took a punching bag and turned him into a character. When we first met him, way back in the pilot, he was an ancillary character to an ancillary character; Mrs. Ochmonek was positioned as the neighborhood busybody, and the one that would most often find herself entangled in the Tanners’ lives. He was just her doltish husband.

All of which is fine, but LaMotta successfully evolved the character from there. By season two, he was a more familiar face than his wife was, owing, surely, to his ability to actually deliver his material in a comedically successful way. I don’t mean to suggest that Liz Sheridan didn’t do her best with her material, but he’s probably the only example of any character on this show ending up with a bigger role than was originally intended. That’s a testament to LaMotta’s strengths, and the delight of seeing him perform against such a backdrop of misery.

The evolution is best represented by his wardrobe. In his first few appearances, he wore a sleeveless undershirt…a plain white garment that’s often associated with lower-class individuals, but which was about as far removed in terms of style from his later wardrobe of flashy, gaudy, gloriously awful Hawaiian shirts as it’s possible to get. I have no idea if LaMotta had any input regarding his character’s change of fashion sense, but if I found out that he did I wouldn’t be especially surprised; he always did seem to have a better handle on his character than anybody else.

Mr. Ochmonek was a nice guy. Crude, but pleasant. Unflinchingly happy in the face of people who treated him poorly, and deeply in love with the woman he fell for back in high school, more than willing to spend whatever little money he had on other people who never thanked him for it. Very little suggests that we’re supposed to be envious of his station in life, but since he’s about the only one who doesn’t seem to hate himself and everyone around him, and is the only one in any kind of healthy, loving relationship, it’s tough not to side with the guy.

And I say this as someone who originally couldn’t stand him. In my review for “Oh, Tannerbaum” I made fun of the fact that anyone watching would be excited to see him. I don’t exactly know when my opinion shifted, but as you know by now, I became the guy who gets excited to see him. When he shows up I know, unquestionably, that we’re going to see somebody who studied his lines, somebody who figured out — on his own — the best way to deliver them. Somebody who cares about his character and manages to make this cartoonish oaf feel like the most human character in the show.

This is his final appearance. After “It’s My Party,” he’s gone for good. He doesn’t get any kind of spotlight here; he just pops up, says his unintentional farewells, and goes gently into that good night. He may have hated his time on this show — and, I’m sure, for good reason — but I’m genuinely happy he was there. He established himself as a reliable bright spot in a cast that desperately needed one, and his appearances nearly always represented the highlight of the episodes he was in.

He’s gone, but he won’t be forgotten. And while he may not get much to do in this final episode, he does dust off one of my favorite shirts of his…the JOSEPHINE one that we saw in “Take a Look at Me Now.”

I’d like to think of that as his nod to me. His quiet goodbye. His reminder that while I’ll never see him again, we had some good times and great shirts along the way.

God bless you, Mr. Ochmonek. May your wounds from this show heal more quickly than the ones you got from the Korean War.

Some guy who works with Willie, whom we’ll never see again, introduces Lynn to his son, whom we’ll never see again, while she makes eyes at some hot guy in the background, whom we’ll never see again. The nerdy kid shuffles Lynn away, and there’s some respectable (if not successful) attempts at dark humor when he tries to regale her with stories of his career as a mortician.

The impulse is better than the outcome, because we don’t get much more than a basic suggestion that a lot of people died in a grisly bus accident today, but it’s something. Also, this guy’s performance is pretty cartoony, which interferes with the success of the darkness, but points for effort. I’ve seen worse, and the ignorantly creepy guy is a stock character that even good productions have trouble pulling off. See Paranoia in Red Dwarf, or, even more tellingly, Gilbert in The Thin Man. A great show and a great film, both of which fumbled their attempts at a similar character.

Then it starts to rain, making this the second outdoor dining event ruined by storms in as many weeks. Also, if “Fever” taught me anything it’s that being hit with a single raindrop means you’re laid up for a week, so I expect the next screengrab will be Willie and all of his coworkers sharing a bed.

The truly strange thing here is that Willie tries to comfort Kate by saying that they’ve been looking forward to throwing a party for four years. Since the premise of the episode is that they used to throw parties regularly (my hairy butthole) and that this came to a grinding halt when ALF arrived, this implies that he’s been on Earth for four years.

…which is insane because in “Break Up to Make Up” we were told that exactly three years had passed since his arrival. So another full year elapsed in the two episodes between that one and this one? What the fuck is with this show and timelines?

After the commercial break, the party moves inside. That’s about it, but it apparently requires a couple of minutes of people telling us this fact over and over again, proving it’s far more efficient to read about these episodes than to watch them. It’s stuff you really don’t need to say at all in a visual medium like television, where the interiors look totally different than the exteriors and viewers don’t rely on dialogue to tell them whether the characters are standing in one or the other. Maybe ALF was originally written as a radio play.

The party planner tells his 2hottie assistant to entertain the guests, so the kid lights up some poi in the living room.

Willie tells him that’s a pretty jackass thing to do, which it really is. At least ALF tries to fall back on the “I wasn’t born on this planet” excuse when he starts fires indoors. Granted, by now he should know that the Tanners don’t enjoy having their house burned down, but at least it’s something. This guy, by contrast, is just a dangerous idiot.

Everyone gets mad and grumbles at Willie for not allowing them to die in the blaze.

Then there is a pretty well-shot moment when Willie goes into the kitchen. Through the window we see a rope made of bedsheets drop down, and as Willie investigates he sees ALF’s naked ass falling gracelessly to the ground. It’s nothing great, but it works visually and the timing is good.

Inside the house Benji Gregory asks the mortician guy if he believes in zombies, which is a simple question, but for some reason Gregory shrugs three full times while asking it. It’s like some kind of bizarre tic, as though they were mildly electrocuting this kid to make his lips move, Mr. Ed style.

Then the party planner does some shitty impression of Bette Davis in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

This guy is getting a hell of a spotlight for a guest star, so I looked him up to see if he was some bigshot in the late-80s. As far as I can tell, he was not, so fuck him.

His little assistant though was played by a guy called Dean Cameron, who seems to have had a lot of roles here and there, and is still working. I don’t know that I’ve seen him in anything, though, and it looks like his most notable part was as Spicoli in the shitty TV adaptation of Fast Times at Ridgemont High, so…fuck both of these guys.

Then they start a conga line, something else that I’m pretty sure exists only in sitcoms, and there’s a great little moment you’ll probably miss if you’re not looking for it: Mrs. Ochmonek joins the line, then Willie’s coworker steps in behind her…and Mr. Ochmonek bumps him out of the way to get behind his wife.

That was all John LaMotta. The camera doesn’t linger on it, and it’s not blocked to make it the focus of the scene. It was just a stage instruction (“everyone congas,” or something similarly vague I’m sure), but when LaMotta didn’t get to grab his TV wife’s hips, he bumped the guy who did out of the way. Because that is what Mr. Ochmonek would do. LaMotta was acting, and he knew what he character would do in that situation, even though the writers didn’t.

When I talk about why I believe the Ochmoneks are in love, it’s due to things like this. It’s the way the two actors relate to each other. It’s the little glances and touches that clearly aren’t in the script. (Because they’re sure as shit not there for any other couple.) It’s the fact that John LaMotta and Liz Sheridan understand what their relationship is like, even if it’s never spelled out in the show, and they know how to bring it to life for the viewers. They become their characters, which is something that so few people who have ever been on this show know how to do.

Working on ALF, especially in a supporting role, must have been the very definition of a thankless job. But these two took it seriously — LaMotta in particular — and I’d tip my hat to their implied relationship as one of the show’s few genuine triumphs. It’s entirely down to the actors and not the writing or direction, and I’m pretty sure ALF never realized what a resource they had in these two. Strand Willie and Kate in an elevator for half an hour, and the odds are good it’d be genuinely unwatchable. Strand the Ochmoneks in the same situation, and I’d bet my life that LaMotta and Sheridan would find a way to make it worthwhile.

So, yeah, Mr. Ochmonek is the kind of guy who will bump a stranger out of the way to be close to his wife, whom he sees 24 hours a day anyway. Willie, it bears repeating, sits on the couch while his heavily pregnant wife carries groceries and makes dinner.

I’ll always believe that one of these couples is in love. I’ll never believe the other.

Of course, what is a conga line without ALF? (ALF is grand!) He materializes, gets a dirty look from Willie, and then slides back into the kitchen.

It’s…okay. Visually it’s smooth emough, but it’s not especially funny or interesting or important.

As punishment Willie ties ALF to a stake in the back yard and burns him alive.

Also there’s a running joke in this episode I didn’t want to mention, but it keeps happening, so I guess I finally will: whenever ALF burps, he feels pain, so he keeps burping and saying “Ow!” It’s a hilarious subversion of our expectations of ALF burping repeatedly with no payoff.

Lynn comes outside just as Willie is going back in. They have a cute little exchange where we see her smiling after her punchlines again, and I adore it.

Then there’s a legitimately funny moment when Willie informs her that ALF is tied to a stake, and she says, nonchalantly, “Okay.”

It was good. Probably one of the best delivered lines this show’s ever had, and a nice simple way of acknowledging the absurdity of the Tanners’ lives right now.

Then Robert, the party planning assistant, comes out and flirts with Lynn for a bit. He asks about her boyfriend, and she says she’s “in between boyfriends.” ALF quips to himself (because of course he does) “Oh yeah, like I’m between jobs.”

And…I don’t get the joke.

Is the joke that Lynn is always between boyfriends? I’d assume so, because ALF is always between jobs (by nature, y’know, of the fact that he can’t have one).

But that’s pretty clearly not true. Lynn’s been through several serious relationships and plenty of trivial ones over the course of the show. Most recently I think we were supposed to believe she was still dating Donny Duckworth, but I guess that died at some point off camera. Maybe the actor got a piece of fanmail and Paul Fusco put a stop to that shit real fast.

So, it’s weird. If anything the joke should be that she’s always with some guy or other, since “Lynn dates a lot” is pretty much her only definitive character trait, but ALF’s line makes it seem like the exact opposite is true, and no guys ever bother with her.

It’s…strange.

Back inside the party is winding down, and Willie and Kate wait in silent terror for LA’s only person of color to leave their house.

Robert tells Lynn he’ll call, and Lynn says, “I’ll answer!” (This is why you’re never between boyfriends, Lynn.) Then ALF asks if he can have the leftovers. There are none, so he tells the Tanners to go fuck themselves.

In the short scene before the credits the Tanners remember they have a baby and feed it a month’s worth of food at once. (Lucky II, it’s safe to say, is dead behind the refrigerator.)

So…this episode was actually okay. By ALF standards, of course. Lots of idiocy, yes, but there were some decent flourishes from a few actors, and nothing offensively bad…aside from the flaming caricature that was the party planner. At this point, though, a parade of unnecessary gay jokes actually counts as progress for this show.

Don’t get me wrong; I’ll never watch “It’s My Party” again as long as I live. But, to its credit, it was one of the less moronic installments of season four, and even though the context made it convenient for him to appear, we didn’t have to deal with Jim J. Bullock. I’ll call that a win for everyone.

So, yeah, tell your favorite Hawaiian shirt you love it, because we’ve seen the last of Mr. Ochmonek. With him, Jake, Jodie, and Dr. Dykstra all gone forever, there’s a lot less to look forward to in this final stretch. But we’ll plow through, as we must, if only to ensure that the Alien Task Force guts this stupid show for good.

Countdown to ALF being gutted for good: 11 episodes

Season four had two episodes that I was actually looking forward to. One of them was “Mind Games,” which shouldn’t surprise you at all because that was a Dr. Dykstra episode, and I tend to like those. (That tendency was broken with “Mind Games.”) The other was “Fever,” simply because its premise was solid: ALF contracts a common Earth cold…but since he’s not from Earth, he ends up in real danger.*

Obviously, this opens up a lot of reliable avenues for comedy; how many sitcoms have you seen about one of the characters lying around sick, driving the others crazy with his/her requests? It’s a common plotline because there’s a lot that you can do with it, and because it relies on character interaction…interaction which is specific to each show. (Frasier Crane’s cold is going to go differently from Larry Appleton’s, not only because of who these characters are, but because of the characters they’re surrounded by.)

Of course, ALF doesn’t have any characters, and nobody on the planet knows that better than I do, so that’s not what got my hopes up. What got my hopes up is the fact that ALF’s extra-terrestrial origins provide this episode with another chance to explore something that we take for granted.

And, yes, this show has had that opportunity dozens of times by this point, and it’s whiffed on nearly all of them. But “Fever” has something unique on its side: biology. Almost all of the show’s previous explorations of Earth-life were handled through the filter of culture. Christmas, Halloween, birthdays, funerals…erm…soap operas…magic teeth…? I don’t know. This show sucks.

Biology, though? We’re in much better shape there, because it’s involuntary. It doesn’t matter if ALF wants to deliver a standup routine, because it’s not his brain or mouth that will be reacting to this aspect of life on Earth; it’s his body. He has no choice but to make us see the common cold through a new filter…and that’s interesting to me. The writers are being handed an opportunity that they will have to actively work to fuck up.

I’m…setting myself up for disappointment, aren’t I?

“Fever,” additionally, wins me over by sheer virtue of being named after the single sexiest song in all of popular music. (You can pry my lust for Peggy Lee from my cold, dead hands.) So, hey, even if it sucks a dick, I get a pretty great song stuck in my head. Small comfort, I know, but that’s way more than I usually get out of this show.

Oh, and, the end of this episode puts us halfway through the season. So, at the very least, we have that to thank it for.

“Fever” starts out with one of the nicest things I’ve ever seen in this show. Willie’s starting up the grill in the back yard, and ALF gooses him in the side with a pair of tongs.

Big deal, right? ALF is always fucking around with people.

Well, in this case, it’s different because Willie looks at him and chuckles. For the first time ever, ALF’s annoyance actually seems well received by another person. Some little smile or laugh makes all the difference, because usually when ALF jabs something deep into Willie the latter makes an angry face, or yells, or fumbles for his crack pipe. Whatever you do or don’t think of Willie, that makes ALF look like an asshole.

But when the Willie doesn’t seem to loathe the joke, it changes everything. It actually seems…nice. And believable. I like that.

Then there’s some crap where we learn that ALF ate all the raw meat and there’s nothing left for anyone, so I’m really hoping we get another one of those great descriptions of ALF shitting in the tub later.

Then there’s an unexpected storm, which cancels the barbecue over Willie’s protestations.

It’s actually not a bad opening sequence. It does three different things (Willie setting up the grill, ALF eating all the meat, the storm) in just about a minute of screentime, making it pretty efficient, and giving the episode a lot to work with.

It’s a good start.

Then it’s not the start anymore, and it stops being good.

The intro credits give way to the family running into the house, wondering if they brought everything inside. It turns out they forgot Willie, who is pinned under the barbecue grill. If you guessed this is because ALF tipped it over on him, congratulations; you are still alive.

Fine, whatever, ALF is sentient dickcheese. I don’t even care anymore. What I do care about is how much of a fucking asshole Willie is when he comes inside. Kate runs over to make sure he’s okay, and he yells at her that he was “flailing around” and nobody helped. Since he knows ALF is the one who tipped the grill on him, he has no reason to be upset at Kate. He knows she didn’t even see that happen; he’s the one telling her about it. Then she brings him a towel to dry himself with, and he snatches it away from her with such violence that I’m pretty sure he considered busting her on the jaw just to remind her of her place.

He’s pretty mean to her here, and I have no idea why, as she’s the only one trying to help him. What a sack of assholes this guy.

Willie then waves away her concern for his health by saying that it’s an old wives’ tale that people get sick in the rain. In fact, he was just reading a study about that in his scientific journals (which all good social workers subscribe to; why didn’t they make Willie a lab technician or something, again?), which conclusively proved that people subjected to rapid temperature changes were no more likely to get sick than the control group that never experienced them.

If you guessed that Willie’s speech is interrupted when he starts sneezing uncontrollably, congratulations; you are still alive.

Roger Ebert observed once (and I have to paraphrase as I can’t remember the exact quote) that if somebody coughs early in a film, the sickness will likely be fatal by the end. The same observation could apply to sitcoms; we sneeze all the time in real life, but if someone does it even once during TGIF you know they’ll be laid up for the rest of the episode.

Sure enough, the next scene sees Willie in bed, and his loving wife whom he hates brings him some tissues and a bowl of his favorite soup, cream of crack. He says that he appreciates the way she’s been putting up with him while he’s sick, and she says, clearly joking, “You can’t help it. You’re a man.”

Which causes Willie to pause, take a breath, and say, “I’ll just ignore that.”

Willie, you fuckfart. Some obvious, gentle ribbing from your wife gets this stern, condescending rejoinder? Do you have any clue how much shit comes out of your mouth that she clearly ignores on an hourly basis? What about the previous scene in which you screamed at her for something you knew wasn’t her fault, and ripped a towel out of her hands while she was trying to help? If Kate said “I’ll just ignore that” every time you were a cunt to her, she’d never have any other lines.

Then ALF comes in and he starts sneezing, which means…

:-|

So, yeah, there’s like four minutes of this “strange bedfellow” bullshit. It’s basically just them saying how much they hate each other and then making goo-goo eyes at the camera. At one point ALF rips an implicitly nasty fart and fans it all over the room with the blanket.

I’ve never had anything less to say, and that’s probably due to the fact that I want to get away from the above screengrab as quickly as possible.

There is one part when ALF says that he’d rather have a feather pillow, because he hates foam. And since we watched the “A Mid-Goomer Night’s Dream” episode of ALF: The Animated Series for the Xmas Bash!!! so recently, I know that’s bullshit. The Goomer used to bring everyone on Melmac foam every year. He was their Santa Claus, and that was their gift. Not that I give too much of a shit about continuity between the two shows (the only thing important to me is that all of the characters from the cartoon are dead now and won’t be coming back) but I figured I’d bring it up.

Hey, as long as I’m making stray observations: remember when we met Lynn’s friend Joanie in “Live and Let Die”? I commented then that I’d rather have her added to the cast than Willie’s horny little brother, but God hates us and that wasn’t to be.

Well, I had to refer back to my review of “Lies” recently and noticed that the girl Lynn speaks to on the phone is Joanie…and she was counseling her there about a recent breakup as well, just like she did in “Live and Let Die.” So not only was she referred to before we met her, but in both cases we get a sense that she hops from relationship to relationship, and Lynn’s role is keeping her centered.

That’s a name, a face, and a character trait…at least one thing more than most characters on this show get. I wonder if she originally was meant to be a recurring character, perhaps in those mythical Monday scripts that apparently made a lot more sense and were funnier than any of the crap that ended up being filmed.

In some alternate universe we ended up with Joanie in the cast instead of Jim J. Bullock. I can think of at least three reasons I’d rather live there, and only one of them involves the toga.

We get an establishing shot that ensures us that we’re one week further away from imagining ALF and Willie feverishly grinding their bodies together in tormented sleep. Now ALF is the only one sick, and we get our standard “bothering everyone with requests” jokes. He sent Kate to the store, for instance, to buy him all manner of shit to help him feel better and keep from getting bored. Then he calls Willie out to adjust and fluff his pillow, which Willie does with comic violence.

Here’s why that’s interesting: it’s deserved.

See, the whole sickness thing came about because of ALF. ALF tipped the grill onto Willie, ALF hung around while Willie was sick, and now ALF is pissing everyone off with his demanding behavior. So when Willie lashes out at him here, it’s after at least a week’s worth of direct irritation, illness, and inconvenience.

So that’s fine. That works. ALF caused this shit, and Willie’s over it.

But compare that to his earlier lashing out at Kate, when she had nothing to do with anything, and the worst thing that happened was that he got rained on for a little while. His pillow-fluffing violence is played the same as his towel-snatching violence.

Max Wright either doesn’t know how to or doesn’t care to moderate his performance. He could be snippy in either case, but there’s a clear difference in snippiness between what Kate should have received and what ALF receives here. To Wright it’s all the same, which makes Willie look like a fucking asshole.

Two days later ALF is doing worse. Kate is concerned for him, but Willie is convinced he’s faking it for attention. (His training as a social worker has clearly conditioned him to expect that everyone’s problems are made up and should be ridiculed.)

Then he feels ALF’s forehead and realizes that he’s burning up. He then apologizes, which is fine, but did this moron never think to feel his forehead at any point in the past week and a half?

Willie takes Kate into the kitchen and asks if she’s seen War of the Worlds, because he knows the writers on this show haven’t had an original idea yet and they’re sure as hell not starting now. His concern is that ALF has no natural defenses to a common Earth virus, and will die. Then he beats Kate for several minutes until the commercial break.

And, once again, I like the idea that a relatively harmless Earth virus has more serious repercussions for ALF. But here’s the problem: we never actually find out that it’s dangerous to ALF’s life or safety. It’s just a guess, and it’s a guess rooted entirely in what Willie knows is a work of fiction. He saw it in a movie, this is kind of vaguely, tenuously, possibly sorta similar to a detail from that movie, and now he’s in a panic.

It’s bizarre. To put this in more human terms, this would be like Lynn eating an apple and then falling asleep, causing Willie to conclude, without an ounce of doubt, that this is the work of the witch from Snow White.

It’s fucking ridiculous.

So, yeah, I love that ALF’s life is in danger. (Do I ever!) But I wish that the danger was established by something other than Willie’s distant memories of something he saw on The Million Dollar Movie.

When we return, Willie calls a Dr. Kramer, and introduces himself as “Wooly Tanner.” It’s not a joke; it’s something that should have been reshot after Max Wright cleared the mashed potatoes out of his throat. But since Paul Fusco wasn’t the one who looked like an idiot, it didn’t get a second take.

Throughout the conversation Willie has his hand partly inside his shirt, like Napoleon. I have no idea why, aside from the obvious fact that nobody cared about anything anymore.

He reports ALF’s symptoms to Dr. Kramer — pretending they’re his own — and I like this aspect of it.

When ALF had emotional issues, Willie could call on his friend Dr. Dykstra. For whatever reason he knew he could trust Dykstra, which meant the family had someone with the proper knowledge and training to help them through whatever problems ALF was having.

Now, though, it’s a biological issue, and Willie doesn’t seem to have a general practitioner friend. That means ALF can’t get the treatment he needs, and the family has to figure out some way to solve it otherwise.

It’s a nice development, and very natural to the setup of the episode and the series as a whole.

The doctor tells him not to worry; there’s a bug going around. Which is believable (aside from the fact that Willie managed to get an actual doctor on the line, and not a receptionist). Coughing and sneezing usually aren’t anything to worry about, and if there’s something going around it’s likely that a doctor would shrug you off. He’d tell you to rest, drink plenty of fluids, and call if it gets worse. There’s no reason to panic over something that people experience regularly.

…except that ALF isn’t people, the doctor doesn’t know that, and Willie can’t tell him that.

I like this part. And I like that Kate is making ALF soup. “His favorite,” she says. “Cream of pizza.”

There are a lot of cool little ideas in this one…I just wish they came together to create a better episode.

The kids come into the kitchen to report that ALF is doing worse. Well, Lynn reports it. Brian’s well into his second week without a line. And Eric doesn’t even exist.**

Then ALF enters the room and briefly collapses with some pretty great puppetry. They help him up and he shows them a picture of Carl Shrub that he found in one of their reference books.

Carl Shrub was the herb in Melmacian diets that gave them their immunity to viruses. See, Melmacians never got sick, at all, and Melmacian scientists suspected it was due to all the Carl Shrub they ate.

The family identifies Carl Shrub as ragweed. Which is convenient both for ALF and for the show, the former because it’s easy to find, and the latter because we get to make fun of the Ochmoneks for being poor and slobby.

Willie and Kate try to sneak around the Ochmoneks’ property to harvest ragweed, but speak too loudly about how fucking fat and awful and stinky and ugly their neighbors are, so they get caught. Also Max Wright does some really annoying pratfall over a garden gnome.

It sucks dick.

Mr. Ochmonek comes out brandishing a hoe because he thinks he’s being burgled. At the last moment he sees that it’s actually Willie and Kate, and then knowingly and happily beats them to death.

…no, he just listens to them make excuses about why they’re standing in his yard at night, loudly making fun of him and his shitty wife. They claim to have come over to weed for them, and they start pulling ragweed.

It’s not a bad excuse, and it moves the plot along. But then Mrs. Ochmonek comes out and her husband explains that they’re weeding the garden. Mrs. Ochmonek shakes her head and says, “Oh, please.”

The studio audience laughs and we fade to the next scene, so I guess that was the punchline. But fucked if I have any idea what the joke was.

Any guesses from you guys? Maybe they don’t have a garden, and therefore Mrs. Ochmonek knows their excuse is bullshit. But then why would her husband believe them? Surely he’d also know that they don’t have a garden.

I give up.

Back at the house ALF has the air conditioner cranked up, and Kate is baking ragweed per his instructions. Which…okay. When ALF said that he had ragweed (erm…Carl) in his diet on Melmac, I assumed it was something used in other dishes. You know, like a seasoning or a garnish or something. Instead I guess they just baked fistfuls of it and ate that? And what if someone on Melmac didn’t like the taste? Or was allergic to it? Then could they get sick?

ALF said earlier that Melmacian scientists (enjoy imagining that) weren’t certain that a Carl-rich diet was responsible for their immunity; they were just pretty sure that was the reason.

But wouldn’t that have been pretty easy to prove one way or the other? Just as Willie alluded to an experiment earlier about subjecting a group of test subjects to extreme temperature changes to see if that made them sick, couldn’t Melmacian scientists have performed their own experiment in which one group was given Carl-free meals for a few weeks to see if they became ill? Ideally they’d believe they were still eating Carl, so that the scientists could rule out the placebo effect.

On the one hand I shouldn’t be surprised that a planet full of selfish morons like ALF should have been a bit sloppy with their scientific research, but at the same time they mastered space travel and nuclear fission to the point that they were far beyond Earth in those regards. They can’t have been totally idiotic. Those aren’t advancements you stumble upon with a lucky guess. So why were they shrugging and saying, “Keep eating ragweed, I guess”?

I. Give. Up.

Anyway, they ask what to do with the ragweed, and ALF says that some of them used to stick it in brownies and take them to Stanley Kubrick movies.

Man, season four sure loves its drug abuse jokes, doesn’t it? Also: Fucking Melmac had Stanley Kubrick movies. I GIVE UP.

Brian and Lynn come in, with Benji Gregory getting to announce that they bought some ice for him. Damn. I was really hoping he was going to be inexplicably silent until the show was cancelled.

Lynn tells ALF that if his fever doesn’t break they’ll dunk him in a tub of cold water, to which ALF replies that if they get his nutsack cold they’re “gonna hear one heck of a Little Richard impression.”

I GIVE UP. I GIVE UP. I GIVE UP. I GIVE UP.

Anyway, ALF gets sicker so he starts doing racist impressions of Japanese people, a propos of absolutely god-damned nothing.

Willie and Kate decide to forcefeed him ragweed, which I’m pretty sure has been my solution to this whole ALF problem since episode one. Then there’s some really shitty attempt at physical comedy as she tries to get him to eat from a clearly empty ladle.

This show is fucking terrible. If the ladle is empty, why shoot it so close up? Why go out of your way to let everyone see how half-assed your sitcom is? Shoot it from further away, you dumbasses! Pick a different angle! Do anything to make me believe you give a shit!

In the next scene he’s all better, and he bitches that there’s no pesto to go with his chocolate turkey.

He then says he’s going to market the ragweed cure through his new company. He even belabors his own jokes, making sure that we all know that the name of this company — Shumway — is a riff on Amway. ALFusco, you need to rewrite your jokes if you keep having to explain why they’re funny.

Anyway, Kate tells him that ragweed makes most Earthlings sick, so ALF punches Willie in the balls.

In the short scene before the credits, ALF sets the back yard on fire. Why not.

“Fever” wasn’t a terrible episode, which instantly makes it the second best of season four. But I can’t say there’s much to recommend this one aside from its basic premise.

Oh, and its title. Go listen to that song 15 times. It’ll be a much better use of your half hour. Anyway, I’m out of here. I’m singing “Tutti Frutti” at karaoke tonight and I need to ice down my scrotum.

Countdown to ALF becoming an ex-alien in front of the Tanners: 12 episodes

MELMAC FACTS: Melmacians never got sick, due to an “immunity” they gained from eating Carl Shrub, which we know as ragweed. Also: Fucking Melmac had Stanley Kubrick movies. I GIVE UP.

—–
* Both this and “Mind Games” were apparently holdovers from season three. Read into that coincidence as much as you like.
** Back into the womb with you, kid; we’re doing a season three story again!