Noiseless Chatter

Who is Brian Tanner?

I asked a similar question about Willie a few weeks back, and you can probably guess why: that was an episode that, at long last, made a sincere effort to answer it.

This time I’m asking it about Brian. Not because the episode’s going to answer it, but because as of this episode, Brian Tanner is dead.

This stretch of three episodes has had me worried for a while. “Hail to the Chief” was terrible, but not as bad as I had feared. I think the reason is I don’t hate it so much is that it managed to be extremely bland and forgettable. The “Kate dreams of ALF being president” thing was no less stupid than I expected, but the episode as a whole is pretty easy to overlook, which is the nicest thing I can say about it. (In all honesty, though, I’m still glad to say it.)

Then we had “ALF’s Special Christmas.” Which I’d rather not talk about ever again.

Now it’s “The Boy Next Door,” which actually has a lot more going for it than I expected it to have. It’s still, however, problematic, and kind of sad, for the reason I expected: Brian is meeting his replacement.

I’ll come back to that thought, but first we see something kind of nice: a good cold open, with the Tanners having family game night. It’s a great way to get all of these characters together and interacting, which I’m not sure has ever happened before. Even on their road trips, it’s usually one or two Tanners doing something, and everyone else sitting quietly in the background. This, I’m pretty sure, is the first time they’ve resembled anything like a family.

They’re playing charades, and ALF doesn’t understand how it works. While this leads to a funny moment, I was afraid it was also a continuity error. It turns out my memory deceived me, though; while Willie suggested a game of charades in “On the Road Again,” they didn’t actually play it, so this can still qualify as ALF’s first exposure to the game.

The funny moment is that Kate is giving clues and Brian answers, correctly, that the film’s title is The Birds.* ALF, upset, says it’s not fair that Brian got it right, because Kate was giving him signals to help him guess.

It’s a fun moment of naivete, which Willie ruins by saying, “HhhhhALFf, thaat’s hhow…y’ouu plaheyy charaades.”

Whatever. Then it’s ALF’s turn and he indicates that it’s a movie title and then points at himself. Nobody guesses correctly so he reveals that it’s The Man Who Would be King, which is less a punchline than it is a thing ALF says right before the credits.

The episode wastes no time in introducing New Brian.** It’s Jake, Mr. Ochmonek’s nephew, who comes from New York yet still learned his accent from Saturday morning cartoons. The Ochmoneks are letting him stay with them for a while, which once again proves that they’re way nicer than the asshole Tanners.

Okay, granted, the Tanners are letting ALF stay, but I’m pretty sure that’s just because they know if he moves out, they won’t get to be on TV anymore. It’s not a selfless act of hospitality at all.

Jake is going to be staying with the Ochmoneks while his father is away, which will be five years. “Unless he gets time off for good behavior,” clarifies Mr. O, which is both a funny line and a fun way of conveying knowledge to the audience without hitting them over the head with it. That’s a combination so rare on this show that I need to point it out whenever it happens.

Kate and Mrs. Ochmonek go into the kitchen to make some iced tea for everyone, and Mrs. O reveals how happy she is to be a mother. That’s…really cool, actually. I’ve liked Mr. Ochmonek for a while now, but this is the first time Mrs. Ochmonek gets to be a character as well, instead of some vague notion of a busybody. So, yeah, the episode that finally gives up on Brian is actually working to flesh out Mrs. Ochmonek. Take that, Benji Gregory.

In fact, at one point in the kitchen, Mrs. Ochmonek asks Kate what she thinks of Jake. Jake’s said exactly two words by that point, so Kate says he seems quiet. Mrs. Ochmonek replies, “Well, Brian doesn’t say much, but you don’t see me making a stink.”

The equivalency there is important, I think. “The Boy Next Door” knows what it’s doing. It knows that Brian is being rendered redundant, and it’s already come to terms with that. Brian was stillborn in his usefulness to this show, and now the writers are finally admitting it to themselves.

ALF never succeeded in finding anything to do with Brian. In fact, I remember only two attempts: his birthday (which was overshadowed completely by the possibility of ALF’s departure) and the fucking asparagus concert. But, here, with two and a half seasons ahead of it — which is more than the show has behind it — ALF is giving up on him, and serving up his replacement in a special introductory episode.

Jake, admittedly, circumvents a lot of the problems the writers had with Brian. For starters, he lives next door, which means they don’t need to dredge up some pointless thing for him to say every week. If he’s not part of any given story, he simply doesn’t show up.

He also comes equipped with a character trait, which is seven character traits more than Brian ever had. We’ll see this soon enough, but Jake is a troubled youth. Boom. Plotlines aplenty. Cliched plotlines, yes, but it at least means we won’t see Jake dancing and singing in a vegetable costume.

Thirdly, he’s not related to Lynn, which means he can talk about how much he wants to fuck her. That might be why Brian was such a difficult character for the writers; they don’t know what to do with a male unless it’s have him talk a lot about porking the teenage girl.

Mrs. Ochmonek explains to Kate that she’s always wanted children, but, ultimately, they decided not to have kids so that Mr. Ochmonek could get his master’s in art history.

That’s treated as a joke, and rightly so; it’s a good one. It subverts (or is subverted by) everything we’d expect of the uncouth Mr. O. And that’s why it can be funny…we actually do expect things of him. This M.A. in Art History detail can successfully go against his character because he has character to go against.

Also, unlike the mean-spirited bitching the Tanners did about him in “Come Fly With Me,” here it’s a joke for the audience to enjoy. Nobody’s making fun of him…it’s just a detail being revealed that registers as humorous to those of us watching at home. There’s a big difference between the comedy of learning that Mr. O appreciates the fine arts and the comedy of Mr. O being a hideous cripple.

Then there’s a part where Kate finds ALF’s hair in a jug of milk, which I’m not sure why she reached for in the first place since I don’t believe any recipe for iced tea calls for that.

Kate makes a friendly offer to Mrs. Ochmonek that if she has any questions, she knows where to find her. Mrs. O immediately pulls out a piece of paper and asks if Jake’s old enough to date, if he should get an allowance, what a proper bedtime would be, and this is good. Yeah, it’s silly, but it’s silliness that reflects a very human impulse. Mrs. Ochmonek doesn’t just want to be a mother…she wants to be a good mother.

Her eagerness is funny, but it’s also sweet, and it seems like a pretty great inroad for exploring her as a character. I wonder if the rest of the season follows through on this. I doubt it, but what a way to redeem the character.

Jake is a bad boy, which we learn when he puts his feet up on the coffee table. He’s 15, and Lynn talks to him for a while about the fact that they’ll be attending the same school while Brian adjusts to the role he’ll play in every subsequent episode: set dressing.

In last week’s review, ace commenter FelixSH said (among other excellent things), “Brian is not a character but a cipher.” He’s right. Maybe a bit too generous by calling him a cipher, even. He’s just a thing that’s on the stage. I could tell you exactly as much about the character of the sofa as I could tell you about him.

Their inability to find a role for this kid baffles me. Brian’s an eight-year-old boy who lives with a fuckin’ alien. What do you need, a road map?

Brian is growing up, so maybe ALF could help him learn lessons along the way. Or maybe Brian, in a role reversal, could actually help ALF learn lessons. Or they could go on adventures together…even if it’s just the two of them playing in the yard. Or maybe the show could acknowledge that nobody in this family pays attention to anyone else, so ALF and Brian bond over being misfits. Jesus Christ, there’s a thousand things you can do with these two, and that’s before we get into any more general “growing up” plots for Brian alone.

But they’d rather write for a teenager, so they can make more creepy sex jokes. Hooray.

Mr. Ochmonek and Willie go into the bedroom to speak in private, and a couple of funny things happen here. For starters, we see ALF climbing in the window. He looks down and says, “Hold still, Lucky!” Which is funny. But then he follows Willie’s lead in the cold open and steps on the joke by saying, “I’ll be off your back in a minute!” Yes, ALF, we got it.

The other funny thing is that when Willie sees ALF climbing through the window, he quickly slams the door on Mr. Ochmonek, who was following right behind. It’s a very, very simple bit of physical comedy, but it works precisely because it’s not overthought or overplayed.

Willie tells ALF to fuck the fuck off, so ALF hops off of Lucky’s back and drops out of frame. You know, it’s been a while since we’ve seen that cat, but I honestly don’t remember it being five feet tall.

Mr. Ochmonek tells Willie he’s nervous about raising Jake. “He talks back. He disobeys. And I think he stole a bag of peat moss from our living room.” Which is funny…so Willie steps on that joke by asking why he’d have a bag of peat moss in the living room YES WILLIE WE KNOW THAT IS SOMEWHAT OUT OF THE ORDINARY THANK YOU

Willie offers to help with Jake, maybe give him a good talk and straighten him out, and Mr. Ochmonek accepts the offer.

Hey, do you remember how Willie’s a social worker? If so, you have a better memory than ALF, which must have forgotten completely because I can’t imagine a more natural place to mention that detail.

His professional experience doing exactly what he says he’s going to do goes unmentioned. I wonder if they’re ever going to mention it again, or if “Willie abducts a Mexican kid” was really the only plotline they could think to spin out of it.

Then we’re treated to some really odd, almost aggressive anti-flirtation between Jake and Lynn, culminating with him asking her to jump out of a cake for him.

She refuses, but the look on her face makes her seem bizarrely flattered, so thank you, ALF, for making it all too easy to believe that she’d enjoy getting plowed by an obnoxious 15-year-old that she just met.

Speaking of cake, Willie invites Jake over for some after dinner, and when we see it, damn is it some shitty looking cake.

I’m not surprised Jake doesn’t show up for this. I wouldn’t either. It looks like one of those filthy chunks of ice you find stuck to the underside of your car.

ALF wants it though, so he pounds the table and chants, “Cake, cake, cake.” I’m not really annoyed by this, because it’s pretty much the kind of childlike behavior I wish he demonstrated more. Later, during the conversation about Jake, he “sneakily” pulls the tablecloth so that the cake moves closer to him. Which is cute.

…but why, exactly, is he here at all? They’re waiting for Jake. Shouldn’t he be in hiding? I guess he could shuffle off to another room when Jake shows up, but then why invite him to the table at all if he’s not going to be given the cake and isn’t allowed to meet the company?

Whatever. The punchline is that Jake isn’t coming, so Kate gives ALF the cake and ALF drools or something. The episode already gave up on Brian, and from this point on it’s given up on itself.

That night Jake sneaks into Willie’s shed and steals his telescope. I don’t know why that’s what he decides to take, but he makes a bee-line for it, so I assume he already has a buyer. God knows this kid’s not going to turn out to be an astronomy buff.

Jake then has to hide, because ALF comes into the shed. And this — this — is a golden opportunity.

No joke. Usually when night falls, we cut to the next morning. This is done for reasons of keeping the plots — such as they are — scooting along, but it means we never get much of a sense of what ALF does all night. This is a perfect chance to make us laugh, because it’s something we’ve been passively expecting for a year and a half.

What sort of silliness does ALF get up to when the humans are asleep? I can’t believe we’re finally going to find out!

All we find out, though, is that the writers don’t know the answer to that question either.

ALF sings “Billie Jean.” He dances for a while. Then he calls a guy in Scotland and tells Star Trek jokes to him. The Scottish guy responds by playing “Papa Don’t Preach” on the bagpipes.

What the actual fuck is going on here.

Did they actually, finally, naturally get the chance to flesh out some previously-unexplored aspect of their main cocksucking character, and choose to pave over it with nonsense filler?

Jesus God, this show. It’s like it doesn’t even want to exist.

Jake sees ALF and drops the telescope. I’d list all of the characters who’ve seen ALF, but at this point I think it would be quicker to list the people on this show who have not seen ALF. That whole secrecy aspect of the show sure went out the window fast.

ALF makes Jake repair the telescope. I have no clue how this kid is going to repair shattered glass, but evidently he accomplishes it by sitting on the steps for a while while ALF tells him literally everything about himself. Through the magic of editing, it’s as good as new!

Jake says that his dad taught him to fix things. Including shattered glass, I guess. Ugh. It’s not like he broke a vase or a trophy or something he could glue back together. A telescope is a delicate scientific instrument. You can’t just drop one so hard that it breaks and then “fix” it by hand.

Who knows. Maybe it’s not fixed, and Jake and ALF just both realized at the same time that neither of them give a shit about Willie’s feelings anyway.

Later that night, ALF remembers that he has a whole new child to molest, so he spies on Jake through the window. This is when we are made privy to the horrific extent of the boy’s juvenile delinquency: he crumples up some sheets of blank paper and throws them around.

Mrs. Ochmonek comes in and reveals that the vase contained somebody’s ashes, which makes ALF laugh. And, you know, that is kind of shitty. It also works against the main point of the episode, which is that ALF proves that Jake is actually a really good kid.

No, he’s not. Dumping out somebody’s ashes and showing no remorse is not the work of a good kid. And laughing uproariously at this behavior is not the work of someone in any place to judge a kid’s goodness.

Whatever. ALF signals to Jake that he wants to finger his rectum, so Jake gets rid of Mrs. O by saying her husband wants to fuck her. She trots off, dripping with horn. Man, remember those couple of minutes earlier on when she was actually some kind of character? Those were some heady times.

ALF gives Jake a bunch of shit to fix. Mrs. Ochmonek hears him talking to somebody, and he calls to her that it’s just the TV.

ALF, to keep up the illusion, shouts, “Live from New York! It’s Saturday night!” And, man, I am absolutely positive Paul Fusco masturbated himself raw at the idea that ALF would even be considered for hosting Saturday Night Live.

The next day Willie is ignoring his daughter talk about her upcoming birthday*** because he’d rather read some unidentified textbook. This guy is a truly legendary social worker.

Speaking of which, I guess he gave up on straightening Jake out after the rude punk decided not to join them for smashed up crap cake. Troubled youth or not, you only get one shot with Willie Tanner.

Mr. Ochmonek then brings Jake over, because he found a bunch of Willie’s shit in the kid’s room.

ALF reaches through the plot window and hits Willie in the back of the head with a thrown dinner roll. Nobody questions this, including Mr. Ochmonek who saw it happen.

Willie goes into the kitchen where ALF reveals that he gave that crap to Jake to fix, and then they agree that their new friend Jake is one outrageous dude, and totally in their face. Then Willie returns to the living room and apologizes because the episode is over.

Lynn pats Jake on the head, and Jake says, “You want me, don’t you?” Brian, meanwhile, has silently drowned in the tub.

The short scene before the credits is pointless. ALF smacks a puzzle piece into place where it doesn’t belong. And…that’s a pretty good metaphor for this episode overall. It was so weird and disjointed, with everything being forced to happen rather than allowed to happen.

I’m pretty disappointed in the introduction of Jake for a few reasons. For one, it really does represent the show giving up on Brian, which is utterly baffling. The fucking kid’s in the opening credits…you can’t even try to do anything with him?

And isn’t it a bit early to be adding Cousin Oliver to the mix? That’s usually a late-game shakeup to try to bring some life back into a show that’s gone stale. ALF is only halfway through its second season, and already they can’t think of anything to do but toss new characters in?

The worst part is that I know they just keep doing it from this point on. Kate has another baby, Jim J. Bullock moves in, Dr. Potato Famine comes to life and rents Willie’s basement…they keep trying in the hopes that, eventually, something they add will make this shit funny.

Oh well. We’ll see where it goes. It could still prove to be a good decision.

Maybe Jake bullies Brian and we’ll squeeze another plot out of that dead kid yet. Or maybe Mrs. Ochmonek gets to work the “new mother” aspect of her character a bit and actually turn into someone worth having on the show. Or maybe Jake cums down the front of Lynn’s sweater and she has to pretend it’s toothpaste.

Whatever happens, the scary trilogy of awful horseshit is over, and we should be back to normal shit levels from now on.

The fact that that thought is actually comforting to me is worrying.

MELMAC FACTS: ALF had a cousin from the south side of Melmac, the baddest part of the planet, Pretty Boy Shumway. If he didn’t like your shoes he’d point and you and go “ee-ee-ee-ee.” Which is actually funnier than it sounds. ALF has had liposuction. Which is not as funny as it sounds. On Melmac they only had one guy who knew how to fix things.

—–
* For those keeping score at home, this is the third overt reference to a Hitchcock film. “Strangers in the Night” was (kind of…) about ALF wanting to watch Psycho, and “Lookin’ Through the Windows” was an episode-long pastiche of Rear Window. The interesting thing? All three are Ochmonek episodes. A coincidence, I’m sure, but now I’m really looking forward to the episode in which Mr. Ochmonek and Wizard Beaver agree to murder each other’s wives.

** Yes, I’m deliberately referencing Family Guy. Yes, I hate me too.

*** We learned in “Hail to the Chief” that Lynn was 18, so I guess this means she’s turning 19? And she’s still in high school? Did she stay back, or is there a way to rectify those details that I’m missing?

There is no God.

Even though I’ve seen “ALF’s Special Christmas” listed as two episodes in some places, the DVD version is the full, hour-long edit, which means I have to talk about this shit in one go. And, honestly, I don’t know what to expect. I’ve got 40 screengrabs and a list of notes that’s longer than most of my finished reviews. My impulse is to whittle it down to the observations I really feel compelled to make…but, at the same time, this is the last ALF Christmas special, and for some reason I feel compelled to give it a proper sendoff. I don’t know…I always feel generous around the holidays.

And…around the end of July.

It’s clear from the start that ALF considers this to be event TV. Aside from its super-sized running time, we see immediately that there’s a different opening sequence. That’s right…this does not even deserve a Captain’s Log introduction, because this is dead serious. The new opening is more like a movie, with the title and credits fading up over the action of the episode, already in progress.

In fact, “ALF’s Special Christmas” plays an awful lot like a dry run at ALF: The Motion Picture, and part of me wonders if it wasn’t, at some point, intended to be exactly that. The budget is far higher, the film quality is well beyond that of a standard sitcom, and there’s actual care taken with the direction of the episode.

Almost every visual concern I’ve had with this show is rectified here. There’s creative (and effective) blocking, there’s impressive camera work, there’s background business that lets the characters seem like they’re actually alive rather than waiting for their turn to react to ALF. It’s good, in that sense.

In that sense.

Because…wow. I’ve been warned about this one so many times, that I figured there was no way it could be as bad as I expected.

People, it was far, far worse. Mainly when folks warned me, it was because of the syrupy crap with the dying girl. And, yeah, that’s pretty bad, but it’s really just the tip of the iceberg.

Well, enough stalling, I guess. We’ve got an awful lot of reindeer shit to shovel.

The episode begins with Willie driving the family to a cabin, and ALF is singing a presumably Melmacian version of “The 12 Days of Christmas,” which is all about cooking cats. He makes it to day 82 before anyone tells him to shut the fuck up, which, as far as I’m concerned, is impossible. Even the regular “12 Days of Christmas” is grating. It takes forever to make it through that awful, repetitive garbage. I always hate when it plays in a store around the holidays, because I know I’m stuck hearing it for the next nine minutes.

How long would it take to reach day 82? Who knows. I’m not doing the math. I just know it would be way too long for ALF to remain unstrangled.

The Tanners make it to the cabin and the camera rotates around them as they spread out and — gasp! — do things. This is still a set on a soundstage, but by employing a little bit of technical artistry and asking the actors to do something other than stand in the background making funny faces, it feels less cheap. Less slapdash. More real.

Again, this episode isn’t good. In fact, it’s pretty terrible. But none of its problems come from its presentation, which is unquestionably top-notch for late 80s primetime television.

It’s very much of a piece with any of the interchangeable Christmas movies you might see on Lifetime or the Hallmark Channel in terms of its style. While those are never (and I do mean never) groundbreaking works by any rights, they are competently made, and, largely, they achieve the modest goals that they set for themselves. So, for ALF, it’s a compliment to be compared to those things; competency is a huge step up.

So, yeah. Think back on literally any Hallmark Christmas movie you’ve ever seen, and imagine that it starred Max Wright, Benji Gregory, and Paul Fusco. Boom, you have “ALF’s Special Christmas.”

Willie walks around the cabin, reveling in the great Christmas he spent there with his family when he was young. We don’t hear much apart from “Here’s where we hung the stockings,” and “We sang Christmas carols,” but it’s nice to see him giving even half a fuck about something for a change.

He tells Kate, Lynn, and Brian that they’re going to have a heartwarming Christmas full of joy and love, which is ALF’s cue to scream for help because he fell in the outdoor shitter.

What a merry act break!

When we return, Willie and ALF are unloading the family’s stuff from the car, and I’m so glad Willie had the good sense to enlist the help of the guy who just slipped into a vat of human feces.

The camerawork is nice here, as it trails around to the back of the car, and then gives us actual closeups for individual lines…which implies that they probably did more than one take of these scenes before throwing up their hands and saying, “Fuck it, nobody will pay attention anyway.”

I looked up who directed this episode, because it definitely feels like they brought in some external talent, but it was a guy named Burt Brinckerhoff, who directed a bunch of ALF episodes. Some of them were indeed quite good (this season he directed “Oh, Pretty Woman” and “Night Train”) but overall I wouldn’t say he’s a stamp of quality or anything (this season he also directed “Wedding Bell Blues” and “Prime Time”).

So, who knows. Maybe Brinckerhoff was a talented guy who just didn’t get the time or support he needed to elevate the show on a weekly basis. “ALF’s Special Christmas” absolutely proves that he has a good grasp on the language of visual storytelling, and it’s a bit of a tease that this guy doesn’t get to strut his stuff more often.

Whatever. The big joke in this scene is that ALF boxed up the TV, the microwave, and a whole bunch of other shit to bring to the cabin, because he didn’t realize there’d be no electricity. Willie is pissed, but really he’s just a fucking idiot. Did he not notice ALF boxing this stuff up? Did he not notice the appliances missing at any point? Did he not question this earlier when he was loading these heavy boxes into the car?

God damn, Willie. You stupid.

Then Willie does something really fucking weird: he talks to his son.

He tells Brian the story of his father losing his job and their house in the middle of December. Little Willie was out on the streets, but then Mr. Foley showed up and offered the Tanners a place to stay: this very cabin. It’s the best Christmas Willie remembers, so fuck you, Willie’s wife and kids.

They didn’t have any presents, but going by Willie’s earlier statements when they arrived I guess they had stockings and a tree. Oh well, it’s vague, and it raises a lot of questions that go bizarrely unanswered,* but it’s something. Willie is so rarely human that even this aimless, non-committal, half-assed attempt at backstory is welcome.

ALF comes into the room with a sprig of holly, which Willie stuffs down the front of his shirt for no reason except so that they can later reveal it to be poison ivy, I’m sure.

Our favorite alien sex offender is wearing a sweater that Kate quickly recognizes as her gift to Willie, and then ALF reveals that he opened everyone’s gifts and tells them all what they got.

Why the hell did he do this? He’s not misunderstanding Christmas. This is at least his second one on Earth, and during the first one the concept of presents was about the only thing he understood. He’s fully aware of how this works; he’s just being a dickbag.

He also changed all of the tags on the gifts so that they look like they came from him, which is another level of holidickery, I guess, but also sort of moot since he already opened everything. Oh well. I guess he doesn’t give any more thought to the logic of his shenanigans than the writers do.

Willie gives a time-eating lecture about spoiling surprises or the true meaning of Christmas or who cares, there’s still 42 minutes of this shit left. Then Brian comes over and informs his dad that the sprig of holly was actually poison oak.

Damn, ALF. Ya got me! I thought it was poison ivy. I’ll never doubt you again.

So, yeah, fine, Willie has poison oak all over his chest now, but, really, can anyone explain to me why the fuck he stuffed it down his shirt in the first place? Wouldn’t it have been enough for him to have it on his hands? Do we really need to imagine Max Wright’s poisonous, oaky nipples for this gag to land?

Willie then scolds poor ALF, and we know we’re supposed to feel sorry for the guy who just went out of his way to ruin Christmas for an entire family because some sad music plays, borrowing the melody from “Deck the Halls (With Poison Oak).”

He accuses ALF of not understanding Christmas, because he’s a fucking moron who doesn’t remember that they already did this plot last year. Then he asks Kate if it isn’t about time ALF learned how to behave himself, because he’s a fucking moron who doesn’t remember that they already did that plot like 35 times in a row.

He then meanly tells ALF he has to dispose of the poison oak in the woods, that meany, and ALF slinks away sadly, because the mean-headed mean man hurt his feelings, when all he did was deliberately ruin Christmas for the four people he always bankrupts and rapes.

Funnily enough — even though it’s, of course, not a joke — ALF doesn’t go deep into the woods at all. He just walks outside and drops the poison oak. We…didn’t really need the sad walking away music for that, did we?

Seeing ALF behind that boulder reminds me that this might be the only episode so far in which the cast didn’t have to worry about falling into a puppet trench and becoming paralyzed. Since we’ll never see the cabin or the hospital again, I don’t think they would have bothered cutting long passages into them as they did with the main sets. In fact, ALF is pretty limited in his mobility in the cabin scenes. He doesn’t get full roam like he does in the Tanner house, which does kind of support the idea that this new environment wasn’t laced with death traps. No wonder the cast actually seems happy.

And, of course, the rest of these scenes are outside. The ability to walk unafraid across smooth surfaces must have been Paul Fusco’s gift to the cast.

While ALF is outside, Mr. Foley pulls up. ALF calls to Willie, but Willie mishears him and thinks he said, “Mr. Foley is near.”

It’s Cleavon Little, people!!

The star of Blazing Saddles! A firm candidate for not only the funniest film ever made, but one of the most effective social satires Hollywood’s ever produced!

…and now he’s guest starring in “Melmac Christmas A-Go-Go.”

Anyway, since Mr. Foley’s here, Willie tells everyone his backstory. Even though, y’know, Mr. Foley could do it? Maybe? Nah…everything’s better when it comes from Max Wright.

It turns out Mr. Foley repairs old toys every year and delivers them to children in the hospital. But Mr. Foley corrects Willie: he says he delivers them to Santa Claus, who gives them to the kids.

The camera lingers on Mr. Foley’s one-shot for way too long, and there’s no laughter so I know that wasn’t supposed to be a joke. I guess it’s meant to be inspiring…somehow? I don’t know. I’d be a lot more inspired by the story of some old guy passing out toys to sick kids than I would am by an awkwardly long shot of somebody who just finished saying “Santa Claus.”

While Mr. Foley is standing still and the Tanners are quietly watching him blink, we see ALF open up the Foleymobile and get a hard-on over all the toys in it. He climbs in, and I’m glad, because it really is the next step in ALF’s natural progression to start fucking with a hospital full of dying kids.

Mr. Foley gives Willie an envelope which he says is his Christmas present, and then says his wife died a few weeks ago and drives away.

Really, ALF? You cast the lead from Blazing Saddles and turn him into a live action Hans Moleman? Let the guy tell a fucking joke.

Santa Cleavon gets to the hospital, and we see him pushing a big sleigh of toys through the halls. ALF, of course, is sitting in it like a big doll, which I guess might fool the kids, but how did it fool Mr. Foley? He’s supposed to have repaired these toys himself. Wouldn’t it occur to him as he unloaded the van that he’d never seen this enormous, hideous, breathing, heat-generating monstrosity before in his life?

Whatever. They parade through the halls singing “Santa Claus is Coming to Town,” which must be Mr. Foley’s way of really twisting the knife for the kids who are too sick to leave their rooms.

We get a crane shot of the Christmas ward, and see that ALF is the last toy left to be given out. Weird that none of the kids wanted a sociopathic alien rapist of their own.

But if ALF is really the last toy, and if he was sitting on top of all the other toys, did Santa Saddles have to pick him up every time he needed something else for a kid? And then set him back perfectly in place? ALF sure is lucky Mr. Foley is gentle with horrific toys he’s never seen before. What if he’d just dropped the “doll” out of the sleigh and ALF broke his neck and died?

Fortunately, ALF’s mysterious presence means Mr. Foley has exactly enough toys to go around, as the little sick girl at the end of the line gets stuck with him. I guess that was a pretty damned big stroke of luck, because if ALF hadn’t shown up, Santa Claus would have had to look a terminally ill girl in the eyes and say, “Tough shit.”

In fact, before Cleavon hands over the toy, he blabs for a while about how ugly and shitty that thing is. You know. That thing. This dying child’s only Christmas gift. So even though Mr. Foley’s supposed to be some really saintly guy, he sure is trying hard to make this terminally ill kid cry.

She likes ALF, though. She thinks it’s a female doll, due to ALF’s glorious tits, so she takes him back to her room, and the next time anyone saw her she was a semen-soaked corpse.

Merry Christmas, everyone!!

Santa carries ALF to the girl’s room, bitching the whole time about how heavy it is, because he really wants her to feel guilty for wanting this thing. When Jolly Old St. Bitcholas finally leaves, the girl starts brushing ALF and talking to him.

She says her name is Tiffany and she’s eight, but not to worry, unlike that other eight-year-old kid in this show she’ll have something to do with the plot. Then she uses the remote control to crunch ALF in the adjustable bed, because the dying kid ward of the local hospital is a very natural place for physical comedy.

The nurse comes in and takes Tiffany’s temperature. She makes a really disappointed face when she reads the thermometer, which I’m sure is done to let the audience know that Tiffany’s really up Shits Creek, but within the reality of the show, what an awful thing to do. Who cares if Tiffany is dying? Your bedside manner is to look disgusted because she can barely stay alive?

This isn’t even a running theme in the episode. At least, not a deliberate one. We’re not supposed to see ALF as a dick, even though he ruined Christmas for the Tanners. We’re not supposed to see Mr. Foley as a dick, even though he made a point of rubbing in the fact that Tiffany’s gift was a real piece of shit. We’re not supposed to see the nurse as a dick, even though she rolls her eyes at this girl for being at death’s door.

This is a weird fucking episode.

Tiffany then returns to ALF and serves him fake tea. She tells him about her previous roommate, who had to leave because Tiffany is totes dying and that was making the other girl sad. But, you know, this is a hospital and all, so there’s probably going to be some sadness no matter what room you’re in.

She then grabs some earrings and is about to force them through ALF’s ears but, sadly, we don’t get to see a little girl mutilate him. He speaks up and reveals himself as a living creature.

The sad music plays while he explains that he’s not a stuffed animal, he’s in danger, and he needs to get home. So it’s like Follow That Bird, from a bizarro universe in which Big Bird was always stealing cars and spying on people using the toilet.

You know, as much as this episode is asking me to weep, Follow That Bird manages it almost without trying.

That scene where he’s painted blue and he sings the sad song?

Fuck. I get the shivers just thinking about it.

It’s a good point of comparison, actually. They’re both long-form stories about puppets who are separated from their families and want to get back home. They’re both emotional, but still intend to make us laugh.

Follow That Bird, however, is a really, really good film. Seriously. Watch it as an adult. It holds up.

“ALF’s Special Christmas” is its moronic, bastardized opposite. Sure, Follow That Bird had a bigger budget, and awesome songs, and better actors, but I’m not comparing them in any of those regards. I’m comparing them simply in terms of what they wanted to make the audience feel, and how they went about doing that.

There’s a reason that when Follow That Bird comes up, people tell me about how sad that scene of poor, blue Big Bird made them feel. And there’s a reason that when “ALF’s Special Christmas” comes up, people say, “Just you wait.”

Anyway, back to whatever the hell this is. Tiffany tracks down Santa Claus and returns ALF. Why is Santa still at the hospital? And how does he suddenly have a teddy bear to give Tiffany instead? I thought the whole point was that ALF was the last toy.

Ugh, who fucking cares. Santa takes ALF back and wheels him over to the gynecology wing.

Did you think I was kidding?

Nope. ALF and Santa chill in the gynecology wing.

Come the fuck on. Seriously. Just look at that image for a while and try to count how many things about it make you wish you were never born.

I guess this episode was ALF‘s gift to the black community. Two whole paychecks! Now shut up about diversity, will ya?

Cleavon Little hangs out with his friend the gynecologist. Man, that just screams Christmas.

Cleavon gives Dr. T an envelope, and then the two of them read aloud from the “Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus” editorial. Only somehow they got their hands on a leatherbound 700 page collector’s edition. They’re aware of the fact that the original was something like 300 words, right?

When they’re done killing time by reading some much better writing, Cleavon asks about Tiffany. The doctor replies that there’s nothing he can do. Then we cut to a one-shot of the doctor so that he can make puppy dog eyes and crack his voice as he asks, “What are you supposed to say to a little girl who’s not going to see another Christmas?”

This guy’s a doctor, though. And he, evidently, works with sick kids. Has he never seen a child die before? I’m sure it never becomes fun, but if this guy starts crying at the mere prospect of one of his patients dying, maybe, just maybe, he isn’t emotionally equipped to be a doctor.

And…wait. Waaait.

Isn’t this guy a gynecologist? What the fuck was a gynecologist going to do to save an 8-year-old girl? Is she dying of ovarian cancer? What the hell is going on here?

ALF sneaks back into Tiffany’s room and tells her to keep quiet so that nobody knows he’s in there with her, giving your creepy Uncle Lou a little more to work with when he spends the night.

I don’t care that we didn’t see how ALF snuck away, but I do kind of care that Cleavon never notices that he’s gone. It was the ONLY THING IN THE FUCKING SLEIGH CLEAVON.

Tiffany shows ALF a picture she drew of them both. ALF is a glob of brown shit, but the important thing is that Tiffany drew herself with wings, because ALF‘s audience is going to cry if it kills Paul Fusco.

They talk for a while about the true meaning of Christmas, of course, and the little girl says it’s not about giving presents. “It’s about giving yourself.” Creepy Uncle Lou is having a field day.

Santa Cleavon told her that, and ALF says, “After meeting you, I know what he means,” which is almost sweet…but it just makes me think that Tiffany’s lucky she won’t live through many more nights. Remember Jodie? And that Mexican kid? ALF has these touching moments all the time. He makes some pretty nice promises, Tiffany, but believe me, he never visits.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Willie opens his Christmas gift early and sees that Mr. Foley gave the family the cabin. Well, that moves the plot along so I shouldn’t complain, but what fucking time is it? Has nobody noticed that their autistic space pet hasn’t been seen in God knows how long?

Eventually they do realize it, but Jesus Christ, how many hours have to go by before they start to wonder about the unsupervised alien they left dicking around in the woods?

Tiffany confides in ALF that she has to move on to “another world” soon and there’s nothing even the bestest gynecologist in the whole wide world can do about it DO YOU UNDERSTAND SHE’S DYING YET, ALF’S SPECIAL AUDIENCE?

ALF consoles her by telling shitty jokes about eating cats, which works, because if there’s one thing that comforts a dying child it’s the thought of somebody’s pets being eaten alive by beasts.

Then something really, really bad happens.

Tiffany says, “I love you, ALF.”

But that’s not the worst thing…

ALF replies, “I love you too, Tiffany.”

…but that’s still not the worst thing.

ALF takes her hand and presses it to his face.

AND THAT IS STILL NOT THE WORST THING.

Nope.

The worst thing…is this:

God fucking dammit.

Really?

I think this is supposed to make us cry with him, but that tear is just stuck to the side of his face. It looks like a white mole.

Follow That Bird becomes an even better reference point. Remember when Big Bird, sad and alone, opens his eyes and a tear comes out?

That kills me.

Why? Because it’s unexpected, maybe. And probably because it’s a real tear. Or…real water, anyway. It’s a very, very human emotional response, coming from a puppet.

But…no. It’s not a puppet. It’s Big Bird. Big Bird is a character we understand. Big Bird is in a situation we want him to overcome. Big Bird is our friend. It hurts, because that tear rolling down his beak is something we recognize. We know the feelings that go along with that tear…and we don’t want Big Bird to have to feel them.

Here? It just looks like somebody got careless with the hot glue gun.

Anyway, the image makes the musicians sad, at least, and they respond by playing “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear,” which is a very artful reminder of all the things ALF came upon over the years.

We then join the Finding Bigfoot Christmas special, already in progress.

The Tanners walk around the woods, shouting for ALF. Narratively, it’s a complete waste of time. Visually, though? It’s kind of lovely.

The camera dollies perpendicular to the Tanners, revealing each of them in turn, then scurries ahead and circles inward to wait for them. When the four arrive, they’re perfectly in frame.

Jesus Christ…see what happens when you bother to storyboard an episode, ALF? You look like you know what you’re doing!

Anyway, we’re back in the hospital and…

OH MY GOD THE MIDGET.

It’s a Christmas miracle! Thank you, ALF. This really was the one thing I wanted this year, and as you know I’ve been very good.

We don’t see the midget much anymore. In fact, I wonder when we’ve seen him last. Part of this must be the crew getting better at what they do, meaning they use the actual puppet more and don’t have to resort to wrapping a little person in ALF’s empty flesh, but…man. I kinda miss it.

Anyway, I have no fucking clue what ALF is doing running around in the halls, but he crawls into the bottom of a conveniently draped gurney, and then a pregnant woman gets plopped on it.

Great.

She’s going into labor, and her husband is the most annoying caricature of a flustered idiot male imaginable. They guy who plays him is terrible, but the woman is actually pretty alright. She doesn’t get any good lines or anything, but she’s a perfectly capable actress.

I looked her up to see if she did anything else I’ve seen. Her name’s Molly Hagan, and she’s been working pretty continuously in small parts here and there, so, that’s good. What really brought some memories back, though, was seeing that she played the angel on (in?) Herman’s Head.

For those who don’t remember, Herman’s Head was a high-concept sitcom about…some guy, I guess. I dunno. The gimmick was that you could see his thoughts playing out, represented by four (I think…) little humans that lived in his head and argued and stuff.

Molly Hagan played the angel, and I remember thinking she was really cute. I was probably nine years old at the time, but believe me, if I ever met her I would so offer her a stick of my Juicy Fruit. And then pee all over myself.

Dr. Gyno and the idiot husband wheel her into an elevator alone, and press a button for another floor, apparently, and then are somehow surprised when the doors close and the elevator takes off without them.

What the fuck did they expect?

Then the elevator comes to a clunking stop and…oh, shit. You’ve got to be kidding me. It’s not enough that ALF has to learn the true meaning of Christmas. It’s not enough that ALF has to bond with a cancer moppet.

No: ALF also needs to deliver a baby.

FUCK. YOU.

The doctards call the guy who dresses as Santa once a year to fix the thing. Why is he still hanging around, anyway?

They can’t call the maintenance crew, because “they’ve all gone home.” Seriously, people, what the living fuck kind of hospital is this? They don’t stagger their employees’ shifts? I know it’s a holiday and all, but shouldn’t somebody have to be on the clock? The patients sure as hell don’t go home for Christmas. What if something happens? Something like…EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENS?

And then this happens, and we can all feel relieved that a space monster is trapped in the elevator with this helpless woman, and will soon fiddle blindly around with her genitalia.

Man, this is the second most gynecological Christmas I’ve ever had.

Think about how stupid this is. This woman doesn’t know anything about ALF. Okay, fine, we know she’s not in danger, but shouldn’t she be frightened in something other than a comical way? What if he has good intentions, but also razor-sharp talons? What if he eats human fetuses instead of cats? We know he hasn’t cleaned himself properly, or sterilized his fur or anything. And didn’t this episode open with him swimming in human shit and playing with poison oak?

WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING I HATE CHRISTMAS

Incredibly, the department store Santa fails to single-handedly repair the entire hospital’s elevator system. So ALF is forced to spring into action.

Whew! Good thing all elevators keep a copy of this book behind an emergency window.

We cut back to the husband and Dr. Cliff Litterous running around the stairwells, then with the sound of a baby crying we’re back in the elevator, where everything went juuuuust fine.

See? You friggin’ women, complaining about childbirth. Look how easy that was! A space alien with no knowledge of human biology delivered and cleaned the baby in the time it took us to watch some idiots run up the stairs. Quit complaining.

The woman says she needs a pretty name for her pretty girl, which you’d think maybe she and her husband could have talked about at any point during the past nine months, but ALF suggests “Tiffany,” and she immediately agrees with the rodent monster that crawled out from beneath her gurney and yanked a screaming child from her cootie-coot.

Seriously, I’m sorry, but come on. Really.

If you were alone in a tiny room with no way out, going into labor, and a fucking creature you’ve never seen before appeared, would you let it deliver your baby?

Hell no. You’d scream yourself hoarse and focus every ounce of energy you have left into kicking its God damned teeth out.

But, nah, fuck all that, it’s over. We never find out how they got out of the elevator, how she explained the childbirth, how (and why) she covered up ALF’s existence, and how ALF made it back to the fucking sleigh.

Anyway, Mr. Foley’s eighteen-month-long residence as Santa Claus has come to an end, so he’s pushing the sleigh out. But why is he out of costume? Why now? What if one of the kids sees him?

He stayed in costume while repairing elevators and playing grabass with his gynecologist buddies, but now that he’s pushing Santa’s sleigh he’s just dressed as Mr. Foley?

Dr. Victor Ulva shows up, so I guess he didn’t think it was worth hanging around with the woman and her newborn, even though she’d just given birth under unexplained circumstances in a filthy elevator without any of the proper equipment or monitoring.

He opened his Christmas present early, and saw that it was a big check. He surmises something’s wrong, because Cleavon…Cleavon likes his money. Doc tries to return it, but Cleavon won’t take it back, all but shouting, “I’m killing myself tonight, you bimbo. Why is this so hard for you to figure out?”

Back at der Tannerhaus we see Willie trying to assemble Brian’s new bike. Again, visually, this is lovely. There’s good camera work, nice blocking, and perceivable warmth from the fireplace.

Brian is sad, though. He wants to know if ALF is coming home, because if he doesn’t, that’s the end of the show, and this is kinda the only acting gig he’s ever going to get.

ALF is in the back of Mr. Foley’s van, dressed like Santa for no logistically reconcilable reason whatsoever. And why is he still surrounded by toys? I thought, again, that the whole idea was that ALF was the last toy for that little sick girl. Maybe Mr. Foley just gives away the toys he doesn’t like.

Mr. Foley drives along through the night, silently reflecting upon the fact that he was once the star of a great movie. This in turn reminds him of It’s a Wonderful Life, so he pulls over on the bridge to kill himself in what ALF hopes we will consider an homage. Foley’s first name is even George, for fuck’s sake.

ALF appears and tells him not to jump. After all, Mel Brooks might one day turn Blazing Saddles into a musical and let him make a cameo.

Cleavon Little concludes that this chubby monkey in a Santa suit is the actual Santa because fuuu-uuuuuuu-uuck you!

Sure enough, ALF convinces Mr. Foley not to kill himself in front of all the kids watching at home, as they much prefer rape scenes.

I’m sorry, but this is way too much for one episode. ALF has to learn the true meaning of Christmas, comfort a dying child, deliver a baby in an elevator, and stop Cleavon Little from killing himself. Oh, and he also has to get back to his family. This is a busy fucking hour.

It’s like the end of Groundhog Day, when Bill Murray runs around solving everybody’s problems, but when it happened there, it represented the culmination of the film’s message and the protagonist’s growth as a human being. Here, it’s some space alien dicking around one week, becoming a heavenly Christmas angel the next, and then dicking around again the week after that. There’s no growth at all, because this isn’t actually ALF. This is Touched by a Fusco.

Mr. Foley drives the naked mole rat he believes is Santa Claus to the cabin the Tanners are staying in. ALF acts nervous about having to go down the chimney, but why exactly does he have to go down the chimney?

I get that he wouldn’t want Mr. Foley to suspect that he’s not Santa Claus, but Mr. Foley drove away. We saw that happen. Nobody’s watching ALF now. Why can’t he just climb down from the roof and knock on the door?

And how the shit did he get on the roof to begin with?

Arrrrhghghghghhghhh.

None of this makes any sense. He’s clearly afraid of going down the chimney and returning to his family as a charred and stinking corpse, but he does it anyway, for no reason whatsoever.

He gets stuck in the chimney and the fake audience goes nuts.

The puppet is upside down? Hilarious! But, wait…wasn’t some little girl really sick, and an old man lost the will to live, and some newborn is now dying of alien space flu?

Who cares! Fuck those assholes. The puppet’s back with these people we still…don’t really know! That’s all that matters and Christ died so you could watch this so shut the fuck up.

In the short scene before the credits, the Tanners go to the hospital, where Mr. Foley has been hired on as a maintenance man, thanks to the talent he displayed the previous night when he failed to fix anything. Willie gives Mr. Foley his cabin back, the Tanners give Tiffany a fuckload of gifts, and ALF waves at her through the car window.

Then Mr. Foley recites “Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus” a second time, and we’re treated to a touching version of the ALF theme song that has sleighbells in it.

Jesus. That…

…god.

That…fuck.

Fuck.

FUCK. THAT.

What a cloying, melodramatic, unfunny piece of sappy horse shit. I don’t even know what was going on. Any of these plots (lost ALF, sick chick, suicidal old man, ALF pulling things out of a prostrate woman’s vagina) would have served an episode on their own, but we get them all at once. I found it a little puzzling at first that seasons three and four don’t have Christmas episodes, but now I see why. They used up every storyline imaginable on this one.

In the spirit of the season (a season, anyway) I’ll say a few nice things about this episode. It looked great, for starters. Visually this was a competent experience, front to back. And even though there’s a dying little girl in a lot of it, she wasn’t a terrible actress. Not great, but when it comes to kids, “not great” is actually great. And this episode reminded me that I used to really want to sleep with the girl in Herman’s Head.

But that’s it. This was the cheapest piece of self-indulgent mush I’ve seen in a long time, and I find it more than a little hilarious that this episode about ALF making the world a better place for everyone he meets is followed in a few weeks by one where he murders Willie’s uncle.

So, yeah. My God. I actually, no joke, need some time to recover from this one.

I die, dear readers, so that you might live.

At least we’re halfway through the Shit Trifecta. And the season, come to think of it. Surely it can’t get any worse than this.

Right?

…surely?

Melmac Facts: On Melmac there was no pavement and no silverware. MEEEEERRY CHRISTMAS!!

—–
* What was Willie’s dad’s name? What job did have have that he lost? Why did he lose it? How did they know Mr. Foley? How long was the family homeless? Any of this would be interesting to know…but it would also reveal character, and God fuckin’ forbid.

When I started this review series, I tried not to look at plot summaries. I saw a few, because that’s what happens when you use the internet for anything ever, but I more or less forgot them quickly. A few specific plots, however, stuck in my head, either because they sounded monumentally stupid, or because some other folks warned me about them.

As I mentioned in last week’s review, three of those episodes come right in a row, starting now. This is the Trilogy of Terror, and I’m worried about every one of these.

“Hail to the Chief” gets the party started with a fantasy episode about ALF running for president. I’m already not a fan of fantasy episodes of good shows, so tossing an even less consequential plot than usual into this garbage factory isn’t exactly promising.

I don’t know. As much as I love Futurama and The Simpsons, the Anthologies of Interest (and its less-structured relatives) and the Treehouses of Horror just don’t do much for me.

It’s not that I hate them. The good ones make me laugh. The lousy ones are over with quickly enough. So, really, I’m not complaining…I’m just not the kind of guy that gets excited about fiction within fiction. I tune in to shows I enjoy so that I can spend some time with those characters, in that setting. Scrambling up the characters and swapping out the setting, therefore, leaves me a bit less engaged.

I guess the thing is that I’m not interested in the question of “What if Alan Partridge was actually a medieval knight? And his catchphrases would all be slightly altered to be period-appropriate puns. Wouldn’t that be funny?”

Well, maybe. Maybe not.

The point is that I found the character funny already, which is why I’m tuning in, so the question of whether or not I’d care about this alternate version of the character that I’ll never see again is kind of moot.

Then again, ALF sucks. Alternate versions of these characters may well lead to something fun, and, surely enough, “Hail to the Chief” opens quite nicely.

It starts with the camera following Willie from the kitchen door over to the table, where it comes to a rest as Willie sits down. I think every single time the camera does something interesting on this show, I take note. It means somebody cared.

There’s no reason the camera couldn’t have been stationary, with Willie stepping into frame and then sitting down. In fact, that’s pretty much always how things happen on this show, and that’s okay.

It’s unnecessary movement, but unnecessary movement is charming. Somebody’s fiddling with the language of the medium, and I like that. It’s not a visual highlight or anything — though such unexpected camera behavior has been in the past, as in “La Cuckaracha” — but it’s nice. It’s something somebody tried, and that’s why it stands out. Somebody tried.

Anyway, ALF is filling out a voter registration form, which causes him to muse on the concept of the pencil. This is also nice, because it makes sense that something we’d see as mundane might actually be pretty fascinating to an alien visitor. Willie’s not an alien, but he is a nerd, so when ALF brings up the question, he excitedly replies that he’s heard many theories about where pencils came from.

ALF says, “How about the shortest one?” Willie, deflated, replies, “The stationery store.”

This is nice, because ALF gets to be a dick without being too much of one (being disinterested in long theories about the evolution of the pencil is something we can sympathize with), Willie gets to be excitable and disappointed in fast succession, and a show-opening warmup gag flows naturally from the DNA of both characters. That’s a great start, so it’s a shame that it’s all downhill from here.

Then Willie reminds him that he can’t vote, so filling out that form is fucking stupid, at which point ALF launches into an elaborate plan that would allow him to vote, which hinges upon him marrying Lynn.

You know, I didn’t mention it in that review, but “Night Train” also had a joke about ALF saying he’d marry Lynn. Maybe that was the original idea for a heartwarming series finale, instead of the one we actually got, with ALF getting hauled off screaming to an underground vivisection facility.

It’s the night of the presidential debate, and ALF has hidden all the effective satire. Lynn is going to the mall, even though this is the first election she’ll be able to vote in.* She’s heading to the mall with her friend Julie, because Lizard got a job at the new Wiener On A Stick place.

Why is Lizard working at Wiener On A Stick? This guy successfully performs brain surgery on dying animals. Won’t some vet hire him? He really needs to work a shitty fast-food job in the mall? This dude’s got a skillset. Why are they treating him like any other high school dipshit?

Also, Lizard being a more or less consistent boyfriend for Lynn in season two makes “Oh, Pretty Woman” even more odd. Why was she at the dance with Rick? Did they really write her a new boyfriend just for one episode? Was that script left over from season one, and they never bothered to fix the guy’s name?

Willie comes home, announcing that he found Lizard’s wiener delicious. Kate’s mad, but it’s not Willie’s fault; he called to tell her he’d be eating dinner at the mall. By the way, ladies, if your husband calls to say he’d rather eat dinner at the mall than with you and your children, you’re about to be served divorce papers. Just sayin’.

Willie asks ALF why he never writes down his phone messages, to which ALF replies, “They’re hardly quotable.” That’s actually funny.

Then Brian says, “Hey! The presidential debate’s starting!” which is the final proof anyone should need that the staff had absolutely no clue how to write lines for an eight-year-old boy.

We see the candidates: Senator Hossenfeffer and Congressman Peal, two assholes we’ll never see again even though one of them is destined to become the leader of the free world. There’s also a John McLaughlin cameo for all the ladies watching at home.

It’s odd to me that they’d go for a fictional president. Usually when a show does that, it’s because that particular fictional universe requires it. Think The West Wing. It’s a clue that the world we’re watching is very much like the one we occupy, and may even see events unfold that are similar to the ones we’ve seen, but they’re not the same. Things can, and often do, turn out differently. It’s a chance to see reality through a distorted lens, and an easy way to distort that lens is to swap out the one person that the entire world knows by name: the President of the United States of America.

Here, though, I’m not sure what’s going on. We’ve already seen (or…heard) Ronald “Win One on the Crapper” Reagan, so for a while we were in actual America…and now we’re in bizarro America.

Even stranger is the fact that this episode aired nowhere near a presidential election. It aired in 1987…exactly midway through Reagan’s second term. There wouldn’t be another presidential election until 1989, when George Bush I ran against (and defeated) Michael Dukakis.

So, what year is it in the ALF universe? Is this taking place in 1989? Was Reagan impeached in this fictional wonderland that actually sounds really awesome now? Ugh, who knows. TV shows air their Halloween episodes around Halloween and their Christmas episodes around Christmas. Surely it can’t be too much to ask that they air their election day episodes in a fucking election year.

One of the candidates — I don’t care who — says, “As Joe Biden once said, we have nothing to fear but fear itself.” The fake audience laughs at the misquote, but it’s really strange to watch this while Diamond Joe is the real-world Vice President. It still doesn’t make it a good joke, but it does make it one that, all at once, could play today without any alteration. In fact, it may be even funnier today, albeit for a different reason. It seems slightly prescient.

I’m not familiar enough with Biden’s history to know what kind of figure he cut in late-80s American politics, so somebody do please fill me in. I know how this joke plays right now, but I’m genuinely curious to know how it played in 1987.

Paul Fusco launches into his soap-boxing bullshit, just like he did with the power of imagination and / or pig-headedness in “Weird Science.” This time, he’s fixing the world’s problems, through the brown bathmat he wears on his hand.

ALF decisively declares the way to balance a budget (“Spend less than you make.”) and achieve world peace (by telling both sides to kiss and make up).

In the later years of M*A*S*H*, Alan Alda began using his role as “Hawkeye” Pierce to rattle off thinly-veiled commentary on the state of the world, but M*A*S*H* was a legitimately great show, Alda a legitimately intelligent man, and “Hawkeye” a legitimately nuanced character.

I think I can leave it to you to figure out why this similar impulse isn’t working for ALF.

That night ALF walks into the master bedroom and announces that he can see Kate’s tits through her bedclothes.

Some other stuff happens but it’s just aimless, vaguely political bullshit intended to kill time before the big fantasy sequence.

There’s a joke about ALF telling them not to lock the door, because he might have some more questions to ask later, and then Willie runs cartoonishly over to the door and makes a big, exaggerated fuss about trying to lock it. It’s fucking awful.

In the comments for last week’s review, FelixSH pointed out that Willie always looks like he’s on the verge of falling asleep. I thought that was funny, but then moments like this remind me that he’s no better when he’s flailing around like an imbecile. Max Wright has two settings as an actor, and neither of them are anything like human.

On his way to bed Willie mumbles, “At least Mr. Ed stayed in the barn at night,” which is indeed true. To my knowledge Mr. Ed never hid under the mattress to listen to Wilbur fuck.

Willie gets into bed and Kate is already asleep. She’s not even pretending in order to keep Willie’s oily tendrils off of her; she’s really sleeping, and we enter a dream sequence to prove it.

Obviously the dream is Kate and ALF running against each other for president, because obviously the dream is Kate and ALF running against each other for president.

John McLaughlin is there, which makes sense. When you have a guest star so well-known for his comic timing, you make sure to use him as much as possible.

Johnny “The Bod” McLaughlin asks ALF about the environment, at which point ALF starts rapping.

You think I’m fucking with you?

I am not fucking with you.

My solution to pollution will help your constitution, so send a contribution, and start the revolution, n’huh n’huh.

Kate, speaking for everyone who has ever lived, tells him to knock it the fuck off. John McLaughlin replies, “Quiet. Rap-Master ALF is on a roll.” Which strikes me as something that must have been said at least once a week to silence the One Good Writer.

ALF then gives McLaughlin a Wiener On A Stick. I was picturing a corndog of some kind, but apparently a Wiener On A Stick is just an uncooked Oscar Mayer frank on a wooden skewer. Yum.

His real “solution to pollution” is to catch all the factory smoke in big balloons, and yeah, it’s dumb, but it’s a dream sequence so whatever.

But then, just like that, the dream is over.

Kate wakes up mumbling, “ALF, ALF.” He replies, “That’s my name! Ask me again and I’ll tell you the same!”

Then the same exact thing happens immediately.

This seems almost like it was supposed to be a catchphrase, so I don’t know. Maybe he says it in every episode from now on.

Funnily enough, I haven’t heard much in the way of his other catchphrases. “Ha! I kill me!” and “Yo!” come to mind, but I think he also said, “No problem!” or some shit, too. Maybe these were just things the marketing department used to sell dolls, because he certainly doesn’t seem be saying this stuff very often in the show.

ALF asks Kate why the moderator on TV didn’t ask any of the tough questions, such as “Are you going to be a good president, or a bad president?” Kate asks what kind of question that is, and ALF says, “Well, if he says a bad president, I’m not going to vote for him.”

I laughed at that…but the laugh track didn’t. I actually thought it was one of the better jokes in this episode, but I guess it wasn’t a joke at all. That’s one good thing about a laugh track: you can always tell when the writers aren’t trying to be funny.

Here, I guess, they weren’t. Was this supposed to be some touching moment of insightful innocence? If so, let me be the first to say fucking fuck you.

Kate goes to sleep again, and this time ALF is the moderator, I guess because she couldn’t dream up any more jokes about ALF being a candidate.

It’s here that Kate reveals her full name: Katherine Daphne Halligan-Tanner. You know, way back in the middle of season one (“I’ve Got a New Attitude”), I made this smartass remark:

We can have an episode with ALF and Willie trapped together in a car and learn literally nothing about them from anything that they say, but strap Willie to a rocket and fire him at the moon and have ALF travel through time to save him and that’ll be the scene in which we learn that Brian’s middle name is Frank.

And now, look. We need to have a dream sequence that gets revised as a second dream sequence in an episode about ALF running for president to find out that Kate’s middle name is Daphne.

Fuck.

Anyway, ALF tricks her because he asks if her plans to deal with unemployment will help his brother get a job, then when she says yes he reveals that he has no brother** and starts calling her a liar.

They bicker for a bit about whether or not she’s a liar, because even Kate’s dreams are padded for time. When she wakes up she sees ALF putting her jewelry on.

This episode is fucking terrible.

In fairness, there is a funny moment here. Willie wakes up and asks what’s going on, and ALF says, “Go back to sleep, Willie. This doesn’t concern you.”

Whatever. I laughed. Anything that has Paul Fusco reminding Max Wright that he’s worthless gets a pass in my book.

Kate goes back to sleep so we can have a third God damned dream sequence. Jesus Christ, ALF, commit to the fantasy or just fucking forget it already.

This time, ALF is Kate’s image consultant, and, man, that really is my nightmare. ALF having total control over Kate’s character. That’s downright bone-chilling.

Anyway, the Tanners show up to congratulate Kate on her debate.

Willie says: “You were great, honey!”
Lynn says: “Yeah, mom! You were terrific!”
Brian says: “…neat!”

Again, no laughter, so I guess her son’s crippling autism haunts her dreams.

Why is Kate running for president the only consistent thing in these sequences? Wouldn’t it be better if ALF were the one running, and maybe Kate’s role keeps changing? You know, she’s terrified of him getting elected, so in each dream she’s the opponent, the moderator, the image consultant, whomever else, each time trying to make ALF fail and look like an idiot in front of the voting public, who only end up loving him more? Make it spiral out of control as she tries to reveal him for the idiot he is, unintentionally securing his win every time?

Man, that sounds like a much funnier episode than ALF wearing silly costumes.

Then we cut to another dream within the third dream, because why the fuck not.

Post-image consultation, Kate’s dressed like some loose secretary from the 1920s and goes by the name Sigourney Tanner.

I’m sorry but…come on. Was this the show’s way of punishing Anne Schedeen for making the rest of the cast look bad? I actually feel embarrassed for her. She’s the one human being who found something to work with in this shitheap of a show, and this is what she gets? She did not deserve this.

She wakes up again because Jesus Christ this episode is awful. I do think you could organize each of these screengrabs of her waking up in order and come away with a pretty good illustration of a woman sliding quickly into a state of abject misery, though.

Anyway, while she’s awake ALF says he’s going to run for president, so they could sell shit like this in stores.

And then we get another fucking, fucking, fucking dream.

Hey, look, ALF is president. I hope you think that’s a funny enough joke on its own, because it certainly doesn’t go anywhere from here.

Most interesting to me are the pictures behind him. The one on the left is probably his family, so I wish we could see it better, but the one on the right is a photo from the dream sequence we saw in “Help Me, Rhonda,” since that’s the only time they ever built a Melmac set.

The more I think about this, the stranger it gets. How is a photograph of one character’s dream appearing in the background of a different character’s dream? Man, I thought Inception was complicated.

Kate comes in, having been defeated by ALF, which means her dreams circled all the way back around to the idea of running against him. You know how I always say these scripts feel like first drafts? This is why I always say these scripts feel like first drafts.

ALF offers her popcorn, which he popped “over the Eternal Flame,” and I’m glad, because I was getting really worried the episode would end before we got a joke about the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Kate presses him about what he’s done for the country, and special guest star Paul Fusco discusses through ALF how he was able to solve homelessness and unemployment in one fell swoop: he built houses for each of the homeless people, and everyone’s employed because they’re building those houses. #fusco2016

There’s a bunch more crap about what a great leader ALF is, and then I guess somebody on staff drew this…

…so they put it on the screen as a static image for a while with no punchline.

How nice of this show to produce its own fan-art. It really saves the audience the trouble of ever having to give a crap.

Kate wakes up again. Why not.

Seriously, as many times as she falls asleep and wakes up, it’s less an episode flowing from beginning to end than one that just keeps giving up and starting over.

She and ALF talk for a bit about how she dreamed he was president, and he was right about everything, and really good at finding logical solutions to complicated problems, and also she’s not sure if there’s a man out there named Paul Fusco, but if there is she’s sure he has a great body, a peerless sense of humor, and genitals that taste like heaven.

Then she pats his hand and they agree that a country that adored ALF would be a truly beautiful thing, I guess, and the audience claps because, hey, that’s right, ALF is just a big bowl of frosted applesauce. He’s a true national treasure, and anyone who doesn’t appreciate that hates freedom.

The short scene before the credits is really short. In fact, that picture is basically it. Kate is snoozing on ALF’s lap, and while that’s an incredibly cute image, it’s tempered somewhat by the knowledge of how many times ALF has raped this lady.

Whatever. It’s over. It was fucking terrible, and yet, somehow, not quite as bad as I feared.

It was oversimplistic and uninspired and offensively didactic, but at least it stopped short of ending with ALF turning to the camera and saying, “Hey kids, we all had a lot of fun this week laughing at politics. But you know what’s no laughing matter? The democratic process. Be sure to register to vote, even though major elections won’t be held for another two years. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to shit some cat bones. HA!!”

In last week’s comments, FelixSH said that he thought “Hail to the Chief” was their attempt to do with the ALF / Kate dynamic what “Night Train” did with ALF and Willie. Sure enough, the ending scene here with Kate sleeping on him does kind of support that notion enough that I’m willing to buy it…but man, they will never top the ALF / Kate magic of “Working My Way Back to You,” will they?

That should have been left as the final word on their relationship; a kind of passive aggressive stalemate that also represents a comfortable stasis. That was good. Kate dreaming of ALF running for president, and then dreaming that he’s not, and then dreaming that he’s still not, and then dreaming that he did run and was elected…yeah, it doesn’t lead to the ending this episode thought it earned.

Instead of dreaming that ALF was awesome, what if she dreamed that ALF was a piece of shit, damaging the country, and…no, wait. Forget that. Ditch the entire pointless presidential bullshit and just have Kate experience a nightmare about ALF accidentally killing Willie or something. Something that bothers her…but then the next day ALF does something really nice for someone and she realizes she likes him and it was just a stupid dream.

I don’t know. That probably wouldn’t be a great episode, but it’s hard to think of anything that wouldn’t improve “Hail to the Chief” as it stands.

It’s over, though. And next week…

…oh, fuck. Why did I have to go and remind myself of what comes next week?

It’s “ALF’s Special Christmas.” And it’s a motherfucking hour long. May God have mercy and split this into two shorter episodes on the DVD. …please.

Melmac Facts: On Melmac ALF was a registered Democat, which was both a political party and a doo-wop group. Also, if they didn’t understand something on Melmac, they broke it.

—–
* This puts Lynn’s age at 18, so even though she’s still a teenager, I guess we can take solace in the fact that ALF is no longer trying to diddle an underage girl. Now he’s the socially acceptable kind of sex pest. In researching voting ages, I did discover that some states allow 17 year olds to register to vote as long as they’ll turn 18 by or on election day, but California isn’t one of those states, so Lynn is officially 18.

** This doesn’t go in the Melmac Facts because this is just Kate’s dream. I wouldn’t take it as definitive proof that ALF doesn’t have a brother just yet. Look at me. All givin’ shits.