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ALF

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About This Episode

Before binge-watching and streaming took over, one wisecracking alien from the planet Melmac became a television sensation. In this Backtrack, we’re looking back at ALF, the hit 1980s sitcom that brought an unexpected extraterrestrial into the Tanner family’s home—and into living rooms around the world. We’ll revisit the laughs, the characters, and the memories that made ALF a pop-culture icon.

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(May contain some explicit language.)

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Show Notes

Transcript

Speaker Transcript
Jon Welcome back, Gen X Grown Up Podcast listeners to this backtrack edition of the Gen X Grown Up Podcast.
Mo Hey, it
Jon I am John. Joining me as always, of course, my buddy Moe. Hey, Moe.
Mo hey how’s it going
Jon Good. You know, it’s not a show without George. Hey, George.
George Hey, how’s it going, everybody?
Jon You know, before binge…
Jon You know, before binge watching and streaming took over, one wisecracking alien from the planet Melmac became a television sensation. In this backtrack, we’re looking back at ALF, the hit 1980s sitcom that brought an unexpected extraterrestrial into the Tanner family’s home and into living rooms around the world.
Jon We’ll revisit the laughs, the characters, and the memories that made ALF a pop culture icon. And it definitely is a pop culture icon and not all of us remember it equally.
Jon you know sometimes we have one of these topics where somebody saw it a lot or somebody saw it a little. We’ll talk about that in a second, but we are going to deliver. We promise on a retrospective on ALF. Thanks a large part for a buddy, George, who did the majority of the digging for this episode, doing some research.
Mo Oh yeah.
Jon So thank you on that, George. Before we get into that, it’s time for some fourth listener email. our first Our fourth listener this time around is Robert S., who watched the Short Circuit backtrack over on YouTube just a couple weeks ago.
Mo Oh. Wow, that’s recent. Yeah.
Jon Yeah, very recent. Here’s what Robert says. Short Circuit is what I call a two and a half star classic.
Mo yeah Okay. Yeah. Yeah. yeah
Jon Yeah, right ah right away we get it. He goes on to a describe it. I got it right away too. A film that is not great and arguably completely forgettable, yet has some virtues you can appreciate for what they are.
Jon that That sounds like Short Circuit. It does.
Mo Yeah.
Jon He says, my all-time favorite two-and-a-half-star classic is Paul Blart Mall Cop.
Jon A film with a lame and predictable script with thinly drawn characters, yet some very likable acting that makes it perfect and that makes it a perfect film to play in the background on Thanksgiving that you can tune in and tune out at will without really missing anything important.
Jon Says there isn’t really anything important happening.
George Yeah.
Jon I feel like I saw Paul Blart once. Yeah, maybe. i don’t think I’ve seen it again, but yeah, two and a half stars about right, as I remember.
George that That feels like a theme that I could put on like a YouTube movie channel, like have, you know, review current movies and everything, but then just have a whole segment.
Mo Mm-hmm.
George It’s called like background movies, movies that are just on in the background that you don’t care about.
Mo yeah
Jon Yep. Yep.
George and You just look at once in a while.
Jon Yeah. You know, we have a common friend, the three of us, our friend Kevin, who we played cards with quite a bit. ah George, you and I knew him in the Star Trek Club even before that.
George Mm-hmm. Ah.
Jon He calls those ironing movies. They’re great when you’re ironing clothes because I have to look at the clothes.
George ah
Jon i don’t have to look at the movie. and I could just poke my head around the corner to see a scene I want to see and get right back to ironing clothes. So he calls those ironing movies. ah Robert, I like the two and a half star classic. That’s good.
Mo Yeah.
Jon Robert wraps it up by saying, in any case, credit to you guys for making a review of a two and a half star classic from the 80s. So enjoyable. Thank you, Robert.
Mo Cool.
Jon We’re glad you enjoyed that one. And we we said early on, it didn’t have a lot of depth and it had stuff that wasn’t perfect about it, but… It’s iconic, and I think that goes for ALF, too. That we’re about to talk about a lot of ways. so Hey, fourth listener, if you’d like your email featured here on the show, it’s drop dead easy. All you have to do is hit us up at podcast at genxgrownup.com. We read every email that comes our way, and most of them eventually make the show.
Jon All right. With that good business in the rearview mirror, it’s time to jump into this backtrack all about ALF, the alien life form, right after this quick break.
Jon On September 1986, nearly years ago now.
Mo Oh, geez.
Jon ALF premiered on on television and it permeated. It’s not an overstatement to say it permeated pop culture. You saw it on T-shirts and mugs and dolls and everything. And I know that all my friends were talking about it. I watched it a lot when I was a kid. ah But before we get into talking about the history of this show and its origin, whenever we’d cover a topic like this, I kind of alluded to the beginning.
Jon I want to do a little round table to find out what are our individual familiarities with this series. And i I think I want to start with you, Mo, because I think you’ve already spilled the beans that yours is a little light.
Mo Okay.
Mo Oh, extremely, extremely.
Jon Okay.
Mo This came out my freshman year in college. And for some reason, I think this was running opposite of show I watched.
Jon Hmm.
Mo You know, like it’s like back in the you couldn’t watch both, you know.
Jon Yeah.
George Right.
Jon Kiss of death.
Mo And for some reason, I think this was like the show I was watching someone ABC or something else that this. But I mean, I remember hearing about me. You could not hear about this show. You couldn’t not know something about it just because it was everywhere.
Mo TV commercials. I mean, it was literally everywhere. um Super popular show. But yeah, that’s about it. Like said, I think I’ve seen like three episodes in my life.
Jon Wow. Okay. Recently or historically?
Mo Yeah, right for for here, I can make sure I went back and watched them.
Jon Oh, for this, for this or this episode. Okay. George, how about you?
George Yeah. I mean, I’m pretty familiar with the show. I watched it pretty regularly when it was on during its initial run. It got syndication really quickly as well. So it was on quite a bit around the air.
Jon Hmm.
George It was one of those shows that was designed for merchandising. I mean, ALF was on every lunchbox and poster and all kinds of little ALF dolls running around both the puppet variety and non-puppet variety.
Jon Mm-hmm.
Mo Hehehehe.
George It It was one of those shows that is quintessential 80s sitcom. like this
Jon Oh, yeah.
George You’d have no problem seeing this right up next to the Cosby show or Growing Pains or Family Ties or any of those.
Jon Mm-hmm.
George Although those shows had their more weightier subject matter and much better acting. This was definitely the lower end of the 80s sitcoms as far as I’m concerned, but it had a little bit of a hook that lasted for a little bit of time.
Jon Hmm. Okay.
Mo sense.
Jon Well, I won’t have you bad mouth in a puppet show, but you are right that it wasn’t the best in terms of, of scripts and acting. It had a great concept.
Jon Look, it has an alien and he’s a puppet. And that made for sure. I was going to be watching it. And, but I think I probably, probably watched it religiously as a kid the first season or two. And then for whatever reason, I don’t remember. It wasn’t until maybe a decade ago that I learned, and we’ll talk about this later, the way it ended, ah which again, we’ll talk about that. We have discussions about this. I was unaware because apparently I didn’t care. I didn’t keep watching the series. I didn’t care how it ended. I wasn’t paying that close of attention. And I wasn’t like a super fan. I didn’t have the lunchbox. I didn’t have the doll.
Jon But I certainly recognized him everywhere and I enjoyed watching the show when I did see it. So, yeah. So, Mo, we’ll we’ll help you keep up as best we can.
Jon But I mentioned George Duggan and got a lot of backstory on the origin of this series.
George Mm-hmm.
Jon So don’t you jump in and start telling us about some of the stuff you learned?
George Yeah, well, first of all, like we said, ran for four seasons and 97 episodes. So, John, it’s no wonder that you would have started watching it, but maybe not gone all the way through, because you would have started watching it as a sophomore junior in high school, and then by the time it ended, you would have been sophomore or so in college.
Jon Aging out, yeah.
Mo Yeah.
George Not really in your wheelhouse of things that you might have been enjoying at that point.
Jon Sure.
Jon It’s fair.
George But let’s give the description the synopsis anyway. So, Gordon Shumway… but ah is an alien from the planet Melmac who follows an amateur radio signal to Earth and crash lands into the garage of the Tanners, a suburban middle-class family who live in the San Fernando Valley area of California. Now, they don’t really allude to a lot of that in the first episode. And by that, I mean where they’re at, the San Fernando Valley of California.
George the The father of the family of the Tanners, like he’s a little ambiguous in the first part of the first season. Like you’re not really sure what his job is. It’s definitely tech related.
George And he’s definitely a nerd character because there’s episodes where, uh, like the, the whole ham radio thing that, um, Al follows to get to his house.
Jon Mm-hmm. Willie!
Mo Thank you.
George And, the, and there’s like another scene where he’s like, He’s looking through microscopes and he’s making charts for his family. All this weird nerdy kind of stuff.
George He’s not like the baseball sit on the couch and drink a beer type of father.
Jon Yep.
Jon Yep.
George um
Jon Yep.
George He’s got a wife who is very studious and takes care of the family household and everything. It’s a very Ozzie and Harriet kind of setup. They’ve got the the teenage daughter who just wants to talk on the phone to her boyfriend.
George And they’ve got the young boy who instantly bonds with Alf and
Jon if
George and eats it’s not deep. Like we talked about it with other things, right? Like he was talking about with Short Circuit. This is something you could just listen to and not pay close attention to and you’ll still get 99% the episode. Mm-hmm.
Jon Yeah. Well, I think the fact that Willie is the dad is kind of a nerd. If he was a hoorah jock kind of guy, he would have been just as likely to call the authorities as as as consider the options.
Mo Yeah.
Jon And do we take care of this alien that just dropped in? So I think making him a nerd is the only reason this series was able to continue because otherwise the dad would have been protective of his family and not considering that these aliens might might be benevolent or not out to hurt somebody.
George Yeah, I mean, and there’s some there’s some weird stuff. We can talk about that later.
Jon Yes.
George um Like, the whole thing that when I went back and rewatched most of season one, I remembered, I watched the episode one, and it dawned on me that today’s modern audience would be screening bloody murder because at no point do they ever figure out why the alien speaks English.
Jon Yes. Yeah. Right.
Jon Yeah.
George Like he just is talking and they’re just, they’re like, oh, he can talk.
Jon yeah right
George And then the kids are instantly in conversations with him and he knows all earth’s colloquialisms and jokes and everything.
Mo Yeah.
Jon yeah
George It’s just, there’s no explanation of that. And that’s the way, that’s what I mean by the show is not very deep. Like it’s super surface top layer kind of stuff. It comes to you to us from a producer named Bernie Brillstein or Steen.
George I’m not really, I never know how to pronounce that.
Mo she she
Jon Yeah, they’re both working.
George that part of a name. Uh, but he was, somebody asked him to go take a look at another puppeteer guy who ended up being a producer on the show, Paul Fusco. Now Paul Fusco, he’s actually the man who puppets and voices out throughout the entire run of the show.
Jon That’s crazy.
George Plus some other stuff that we’re going talk about later. um But Bernie, he just wasn’t really interested at the beginning because he had worked and managed Jim Henson, the man of all puppeteers.
Jon Yeah.
Mo Yeah.
George And he was like, who the hell is this, you know, Jim Henson wannabe? I don’t want anything to do with it. But when he took a look at the performance, he won Brillstein over. And that’s when he thought the character could be hilarious and strong enough to be the focus of a series.
George I disagree, but that was how the show got started.
Jon um
Jon Alf is pretty acerbic, like all the time. He’s always cracking up at the expense of other people and making jokes and his own priorities.
George e
George Yes.
Jon But I want to say the coolest thing I learned in preparation for this podcast was the fact that Paul Fusco created the character, the concept for the show, was the puppeteer and was the voice.
George Yeah.
Jon The guy wrote his own ticket and somebody punched it and said, go ahead and make this thing.
Mo Yeah. For four seasons. Yeah.
George Yeah, I mean, you know, it’s not unlike when a comedian gets tapped to do a show, right?
Jon Are you kidding me?
George Like Tim Allen, you know, gets his show or Cosby got his show.
Mo Yeah, it’s true.
George It’s a very similar process, just from a completely left field. Nobody expects a puppeteer to get…
Jon Yeah, but a puppet show. Right.
George Right, exactly.
Jon Okay. Yep.
George um So Fusco co-produced the series with another guy named Tom Patchett, who also helped him co-create the show from that point forward, wrote and directed a lot of the episodes in the series.
Jon and clave yep
George So he was also a showrunner for it.
Mo Jeez. Ooh.
George Those three guys were pretty much the driving force. What was interesting was that Fusco was really secretive about the character up until the series premiere.
George Like he didn’t even want people to see it um It was ah during the show’s production.
Jon I like that.
George He refused to acknowledge that the puppet Alf was anything other than an alien. um He wouldn’t like give him any details or the description or anything like that.
Jon Yeah.
George Everybody involved with the production were cautioned not to reveal any of Alf’s production secrets. So in other words, it was like you got that Star Wars script and you had to sign your life away if you leaked it on the internet nowadays.
Jon ah huh Yeah. Color coded.
George Yeah.
Jon Yep.
George it’s that same kind of feeling all around a damn alien puppet that nobody had seen or cared about, but he was very, he was like very protective of this thing.
Mo I guess I’m trying to figure what he was worried about. I mean, it’s like that, you know, nobody would tune in if they knew what he looked like or.
George Well, I mean, you know, maybe he was, I don’t know.
Mo i don’t know. It seems weird.
George When did Jedi come out? Did Jedi come out before after this, before this, right?
Mo Oh, yeah. Way before.
Jon It was like 84, 85.
George Jedi, this is 86.
Jon Yeah.
Mo Yeah, yeah.
George Yeah, so maybe he was like, he didn’t want to get people comparing it to Jedi and the Ewoks.
Jon eighty three
George I have no idea, but…
Mo OK. Huh.
Jon Now, it kind of reminds me like a little bit of the Blair Witch thing.
Mo ah
Jon Like, maybe if we don’t tell them much about it, they’ll think it’s real. Even though they know it’s just a movie, maybe they’ll think these people really did disappear in the woods. Did they think that maybe if we didn’t tell them about the puppetry and the how the set was constructed and everything, they would think they they had an actual alien?
Mo We suspend belief in…
George I don’t know.
Jon I mean, I i think that would have made the news before it made a sitcom, honestly, right?
Mo Yeah.
George You know, maybe he was trying to use a secretive thing to drum up publicity. Sometimes, you know, the less you reveal makes people more interested in a thing.
Jon Mm-hmm. That’s not wrong.
George But you mentioned the set, and I did want to touch on that for just a second.
Jon Yeah.
Mo yeah
George The set was built on a platform that was four feet above the ground in the studio with trap doors constructed at a whole bunch of different points on the different rooms and stuff like that.
Jon I love that. Yeah.
Mo That’s neat.
George So Alf could appear almost anywhere, and Fusco would operate him
Jon Yeah.
George from beneath the stage so that the unoccupied holes throughout the floor were deep and treacherous. People fell in them.
Jon da
George They got injured.
Mo Oh my God.
George It was like the worst way to do it, but I guess the only way they wanted to. i’m not If I had been an actor, can you imagine today’s actors on that set?
Jon Yeah.
Mo oh no.
George No. Mm-mm.
Jon Yeah. I read several things about how the humans involved in this show. Okay. Maybe they’re all humans. I mean, Alpha’s an alien. You know what I mean? The human actors, we’ll say.
Mo Yeah.
George Right.
Jon Those humans, they had a lot of ill will toward this series.
George Mm-hmm.
Jon A lot. One was that Fusco was a perfectionist about things.
George Yeah.
Jon And he, he, oh I was going to go that far because i didn’t know the man, but whatever everyone to do.
George He was kind of a dick.
Mo He sounds like he was a dick. I don’t know.
Jon That combined with the complexity of the set and the production with everything built up 30 minute episodes. And by the way, they’re like 22 minute episodes, right? Well, all the commercials could take from 20 to 25 hours to shoot.
George Yeah. Right.
Mo Yeah, yeah.
Mo Oh my God.
George An hour per minute.
Jon So like you sign up for a sitcom and you expect a certain working schedule.
Mo Oh my God. Right.
George Mm hmm.
Jon And now you’re like, wait a minute. Long days, long nights, just one of the many things. And that set was one of them because you had, you couldn’t just run around the set. You had to watch out for these trap doors and stuff.
George Right. And this was back in the day of 22 to 24 episodes per season, not the eight to 10 that we have in streaming services these days.
Jon Yeah. i
Jon Yeah, that’s right.
Mo Yeah.
Jon That’s right.
George So yeah, it was a commitment, not just in time, but also in aggravation for those people.
Jon Yep.
Jon yeah
George Um,
Mo Jeez.
George But as protective as he wasn’t of the humans on set, he was very protective of that damn ah puppet.
Mo ah
George So to avoid wear and tear on the principal ALF puppet, the performers had to rehearse with a crude early version of ALF nicknamed Ralph for rehearsal alien life form.
Jon what
George Like, he wouldn’t have let him rehearse with a regular puppet. No, no, no, no. We got to get the backup that’s, you know, just some taped together spaghetti wire and some fur glued on or some shit.
Jon Stunt cock.
Mo Yeah.
George Ha ha ha ha
Jon ah
Mo Why does this sound like? I’m just just going by what you’ve just told me here is I. i He sounds like he’s kind of an asshole.
George Yeah.
Jon Well, the puppet and the guy.
George I mean, if you, if you watch the show, I know you watched a couple of episodes.
Mo OK.
Jon Yeah.
Mo Yeah.
George I think the humor that the alien was delivering was a very tamed down version of what Fusco’s personality was.
Mo Of this guy. Okay.
Jon Yeah.
George So yeah.
Jon Yeah. Self-important, ah acerbic, as I said, these are all things I would attribute to Alf, the character, or sorry, Gordon.
Mo Yes.
George e he
Mo Mm-hmm.
George Right.
Jon My apologies, Mr. Shumway.
George Yes. Right.
Jon To the character. But the more I read, the more, you’re right, I get the feeling that was the man who’s just running a puppet of his own personality.
Mo Yeah, he was just being himself.
George Yep.
Jon Yep.
George Now, it wasn’t always a puppet. There were some scenes. of Okay, dude.
George Now, it wasn’t always a puppet. Sometimes there were shots of the full alien from foot to head.
Jon Mm-hmm.
George That was actually accomplished by an actor inside a suit. He was two feet, nine inches, 84 centimeters, Michu Mazaros wearing the costume.
Mo Okay.
George You even saw it in the little um like the little segment. like They would have the the cold open, and then it would go into the part you know where they would… do all the little like he’s opening a camera anyway and there was in every episode you would see that actor in that uh so very much like what you would have like with the little people actors that would do r2d2 and other things of the day so i mean i don’t know how much he cared about that person but
Jon Yeah.
Mo Right.
Mo It’s a job.
Jon And they cut between them really well. That was very fascinating for me. They would have, you know, the person in the suit walk in a room and
George mm-hmm
Jon The mouth didn’t move or anything. And then you’d walk up to a person and then cut to a tighter shot of the puppet. And just kind of, you had to, they a good job of, unless you knew, you might not have caught on right away.
George Yeah.
Mo Continuity, yeah. Huh.
George Now, it did score its highest set of ratings during season two. It got up to 10th place in the Nielsen ratings.
Mo Oh, jeez. That’s the highest it got?
Jon Wow.
George That was the high point.
Jon That’s not bad.
George I mean, that’s not horrible for back in the day. I mean, there was something like 35 or 40 shows in the ratings at that point.
Mo Yeah.
Jon Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
George Um, but it usually hovered between like 13 and 15 in the scales for the other seasons. Um, The season ending cliffhanger, though, this the one that John kind of alluded to earlier. it was called Consider Me Gone, and it kind of became the unintentional series finale because NBC originally gave the company, the production company called Alien Productions, of course, a verbal commitment for a fifth season, but then they decided against it and withdrew their support.
Mo Ooh.
Jon Yeah. And, and I think it’s worth noting. I went back and watched the finale because I mentioned I’d never watched the finale. I didn’t know. Now I’ve heard stories. It was set up for a great cliffhanger moving in.
Jon It even says to be continued at the end, the people from his planet,
George Right.
Mo It never continues.
Jon send him a message on the ham radio and say, Hey, we bought a new planet.
George right
Jon We’re coming to pick you up. Do you want to go or not? And he has decided, does he want to go or not? He decides to go. And when he’s there for the pickup, the FBI, CIA, secret service, whatever swarm him, his friends in the alien takeoff,
Jon His friends with the UFO take off and they, the it last scene is him standing there full body and all these people in military outfits standing around him. And the family is not involved anymore. it’s like, oh he’s been abducted.
Jon And in fact, throughout the series, they talked about, well, if they, if they catch you, they’re going to do tests on you. They’re goingnna dissect you.
Mo Right.
George Oh, yeah. They’re going to poke you with needles.
Jon They’re gonna do all this stuff. Yes. And so it was super, super serious. We knew what was going to happen to Alf. And then the series ended.
Mo Wow.
Jon you had to assume he died was heartbreaking for anybody still watching something right yeah it’s uh i i went i enjoyed watching it because interestingly i watched the pilot the first four or five episodes then i watched the finale and how the kids grew up because they were those kids were in a prime they a baby at some point in the middle of the series they had a third kid toward the end i did i never knew that because i never saw that deep but
George Yeah.
Mo Or he’s or he said he’s in Area 51 right now. Right.
George Yeah, they had a third child. That’s right.
Mo c
Jon how how horrible must it have been if you were a kid watching at that time and there was never a follow-up to Alf being caught? You got bed sheets, you got a doll, you got…
George Yeah, I think because by the time it got to that point, I was a senior in high school and was not really watching the show regularly.
Jon Right.
George So it wouldn’t matter much to me. But you’re right. Somebody who started out watching the show when they were like eight or nine and then it went off at 12 13.
Jon Mm-hmm.
George Yeah.
Jon Right.
George You’d be pretty pissed.
Mo And so and they never did anything after.
George Well, yeah.
Jon yeah We’ll get to that.
Mo OK, OK.
Jon We’ll get to that. it It took a while.
Mo Okay.
Mo So like we always do with these shows about movies or TV shows, we go into like the cast and crew. And we’ve already talked about the main person, right?
George Right. Right.
Mo Gordon Alf Shumway, performed by Paul Fusco.
Jon but
George right
Mo You know, as he said, we also have what Michu Mazazaris or whatever his name is, as one of the assistants in costume.
George right
Jon Right. He wore the costume. Yep.
Mo And I guess there were assistant puppeteers to Lisa Buckley and Bob Papiano, which I guess i’m not sure what they did as assistant puppeteers.
George I mean, I would imagine that at different points, they probably had to give Fusco a break. He was probably tired because remember you’re under a four foot, you know, little stage.
Jon Yeah.
George You got to be tired.
Mo Oh, you’re like hunched over.
George You get neck cramps and all that kind of stuff.
Mo Sure.
George There’s like, I i read one fact that he operated the puppet left-handed, which may be unusual for a right-handed puppeteer. But I, John knows all about that puppeteering stuff way more than we do, but I’m guessing that’s why he had to have other people.
Mo Sounds like a humble brag.
Jon Yeah. So two things about that. Yeah. Two things about that. My guesses are first, I’m surprised he had assistant puppeteers being the control freak that it sounds like he was.
Mo Yeah.
George Right.
Jon But so Alf was a, um they may have a name in puppetry world, but he was, ah he was a Rolf, like Rolf, the dog. Someone’s running his mouth and someone’s running his hands because he has articulated human ish hands in gloves.
George That’s true.
Mo Oh, right, right.
Jon So yeah,
George Yeah.
Jon Fusco doesn’t have three hands. He’s a control freak, but ain’t got three hands.
George Right.
Jon So sometimes you’ll do the mouth in one hand and someone else will just do gestures with the other. So he probably needed assistance to run either the other hand or the hands, depending on, yeah, what you’re doing in the scene.
Mo OK, that makes sense.
George You gotta to be real friendly with somebody for both of you to stand that close together to have hands.
Jon Oh, yeah.
Mo To be like that close.
George and yeah
Jon That’s right. You ain’t wrong. Yep.
George ah Kate Tanner, that was the mother character, was played by Annie Sheedon. ah
Jon Mm-hmm.
George pretty much innocuous typical mother character of a sitcom like you know making sure the household ran smoothly getting on to the kids when they got out of line dealing with her husband whenever he would do something stupid which was quite often in his case
Mo sister
Mo Often. Yeah.
George ah
Jon She was the one that often butted heads the most with Alf.
George she didn’t like alf yeah
Mo yeah
Jon She was having it the least. Like the the the boy we’ll talk about in a second. Loved him. You said he was chumming up to him right away. The daughter loved him. Willie was fascinated by him. The mom, she wasn’t having it.
George Mm-hmm.
George No, she definitely wasn’t.
Jon ah
George Now, Willie, like you said, that’s the father of the family and the one who, it was his signal that drew Alf into their garage, so to speak.
Jon Yeah.
Mo Bye. this
George i mean, he was the…
Jon Yep.
George He had a very interesting style of delivery as an actor. I’ll say it that way. it was It was like a stunted line kind of thing, like where he would…
George he would enunciate at the end of a sentence very aggressively as he like moved through it. I’m not sure i ever saw any other actor deliver lines in that way.
George So I can’t really compare him to anybody, but it was the only fascinating thing to me in rewatching the episodes. Like the stories are paper thin. The characters are nothing, but Max Wright’s delivery is Willie Tanner.
Jon Yeah.
Mo Yeah. Yeah.
George That was unique. And that one I was able to hang my hat on and help me to watch. I think I watched like 13 or something of the episodes, 14, maybe.
Jon Mm-hmm.
George Yeah.
Jon Yeah.
George um his delivery, I wouldn’t have thought about it when I was a kid back then, but now as an adult, I’d be like, what the hell is he doing? What is that?
Jon like ah Like a whiny stammer almost.
George Yeah.
Jon Yeah.
Mo yeah Of all the cast, he’s the only one I recognized in other stuff. Like he was in all that jazz.
Jon Mm-hmm.
George Yeah.
Mo He was, ah he always kind of plays that almost like a, a sad sack sort of hyper stressed person.
Jon Sure.
Mo Like, it seems like that’s his character. Like that’s his, that’s his, his jam that he goes for all the time, but I’ve seen him in a bunch of other movies and he was in the shadow.
Jon Mm-hmm.
Mo Actually, he was in that movie, you know?
George Yeah, that’s right.
Jon That’s right. Mm-hmm. Yeah, 96
Mo So, so I guess the rest didn’t have amazing careers afterwards. ah
George Yeah.
Jon Well, you you mentioned that Max Wright was, ah he was a celebrated actor. Both he and Anne Sheedon, they were stage and TV actors and they grew very resentful that their characters, and this is their words, were constantly upstaged by a piece of carpet.
Mo Yes.
Mo Established, right? Oh.
Mo ah
Jon Max Wright was particularly vocal about his frustration, noting that all the comedic timing and punchlines were strictly reserved for Alf. Now, I feel bad for him a little, but if you sign up for a TV show about a talking puppet alien, who do you think is getting the punchlines?
Mo Yeah, about… Yeah.
Mo Yeah.
George especially when the guy who created the puppet is the producer of the show.
Jon Is the guy, right?
George i mean,
Jon He’s going to give you all the best stuff. You knew what you were signing up for, right?
George yeah
Jon I’m so sorry you’re in a top 10 television series and you don’t get all the best jokes. Somebody’s got to be the straight man. We had a straight family is what we ended up with. And all the jokes were the puppet and they didn’t care for it.
Jon ah Among the other things, they didn’t care about the show.
George No.
Jon So, wah.
Mo Yeah, I wonder if it was more like frustrated at the puppet or the guy.
George as So…
Mo Like, did he annoy him as well? You know, that that’s, you know.
Jon A little bit of everything.
George Hey, the family’s rounded out by Andrea Elson is Lynn Tanner, the prototypical teenage daughter who’s, you know, oh, dad, I knew that was one. So, John, do you remember?
George I think it was like episode two or three, because I know you rewatch it. Mo, you may have seen the episode two because you watched a couple of them.
Mo Mm hmm.
George where they were having the arguments about the phone being used and needing to have like a chart for who get to use the phone when. When I watched that, I was like, there’s no way that storyline can play today because everybody’s got their own damn cell phone.
Jon Okay.
Jon Everybody’s got their own phone.
Mo Yeah.
George But this was like…
Mo Yep.
Jon No problems.
George prototypical 80s, there’s one phone in a house and the whole episode, like the father gets arrested because they end up like calling the president and all this craziness that happens.
Jon Yep. Hooked on the wall.
George And then at the end, the father’s like, you know, maybe it’s worth the extra $12 to give her her own line. i was like, really? That’s where we got to in this episode.
Jon but
George Yeah. Oh, just silly stuff. Brian Tanner played by Benji Gregory. Never really did anything after this series either, to Mo’s point.
Mo oh man
George um I think he was one of the child actors who probably ended up hating acting after this experience, and I can understand why from what I’ve read and what we’ve talked about, but…
Mo um my
Jon yeah i fell through a lot of trap doors i don’t want to do that again
Mo yeah really
George Yeah. ah He was, you know, he was the kid. He didn’t quite do as good a job as, say, the Olsen twins did on their show, right?
Jon e
George Like, they could deliver their lines, you know, and get the cute laughs and everything.
Jon Yeah.
George i don’t think he was quite as effective at it, but he did what he could, right?
Jon He was fine. Yeah.
George It’s not like he had Shakespeare to work with here.
Jon Yeah. Right.
Mo It’s a puppet.
George Yeah, exactly. ah They did have, John, you talked about that third child, Eric Tanner, that came in later on, played by Charles Nickerson.
Jon Yeah.
George I know nothing about this person other than he was a baby on the show.
Jon He was a baby. he was a baby.
George That’s it.
Jon He he did great.
George ah He Googled in God when he needed to.
Jon And he was and it was often not there. He probably wasn’t fed up because often they had the doll, you know, a stunt puppet doll for him so he didn’t have the baby on the set all the time.
George Right.
Mo Wasn’t that the death knell of 70s, 80s sitcoms is when they added the baby?
George Right. Yeah.
Jon Yeah, that’s that’s a shark jump situation.
Mo ah Like, yeah, exactly.
George Like family ties, growing pains. Yep.
Mo Like something’s wrong with the show.
Jon Yep, yep.
George Yeah.
Mo We’re adding a baby like, oh, oh,
Jon Yep.
Jon you’ll Probably…
George Well, Oh, go ahead.
Jon Is okay? as ca I was going to grab it.
George Yeah. Yeah. I’m sorry.
Jon if you Yeah, that’s okay.
George I didn’t, I thought we were. Yes.
Jon Now, probably the actor who has the most to complain about, but complain the least, was Lucky Tanner, the cat. Alf was famously, he loved eating cats.
Jon How he knew he loved to eat cats, I don’t know.
George Yes.
Jon Were there cats on Melmac?
Mo Yeah, I know. That that was weird.
Jon He had not had one until he got here. And I apparently look, they never show him eating a cat, but he’s always trying to eat a cat. So you have to assume he eats cats or maybe the cats look like something he ate on his home planet.
Jon But the point is, in the very first episode, he’s always chasing Lucky the cat trying to eat him.
Mo Well, whatever. ah
George he
Jon He famously never does. So, so it was, you know, over the years, I expect it was several different cats that they had throughout there, but did they have two different cats?
George They had two. Yeah.
Jon Yeah. Two different cats.
George Yep.
Jon They look the same. They didn’t change. It’s not like one got eaten and they got a black one instead of this other one.
George No, they even, in one of the episodes, like very early on for season one, they had two cats that looked almost identical. They were probably, you know, changing them in and out because the cat ran away and the family assumed Alf had eaten it.
George And so Alf went on a mission to go find it.
Jon Oh, right. a Fake cat.
George And at the cat shelter, he found what he thought was lucky and they called it lucky.
Jon Yep.
George It was wearing the same collar, but it wasn’t their cat. They found their cat in the next door neighbor’s basement.
Jon That’s probably one of the other cats that’s normally lucky, but…
Mo Oh,
George Right.
Jon All
George Yeah, I mean, there’s not a lot to go on the production crew behind the series other than the producers.
Jon right.
Jon Yeah. Yeah.
George I dug and dug and dug. There’s nobody really that you recognize outside the people we talked to. So that’s why i just didn’t include a lot of them in this. There were some other people that played other roles later on in seasons two, three, and four, but nobody were series regulars. I think, what’s that?
George Oh my goodness. The guy who was on Too Close for Comfort, Jim… Oh, goodness.
Jon Jim J.
George i
Jon Bullard? Jim J.
George Yeah, he was he was on this show in like seasons two or three for a little while as another neighbor or something like that.
Jon Dillard? Jim? Yeah.
Jon Okay.
Mo Okay.
Jon Yeah.
George But other than that, it just I don’t think there were a lot of people signing up to be on the show.
Jon Gotcha. Yep.
George I’m guessing that the main cast members probably put the kibosh on that by talking in the lunch line like, hey, guys, you don’t want to ever guest on this show.
Jon You don’t want to be on this thing.
George This thing sucks.
Jon Yeah. All right. When we get back from the break, we’re going to as we often try to do. And it could be challenging here to pick our favorite memory or thing about ALF when we look back on it.
Jon Now, this is typically the part of a show like this, a backtrack like this, where you go champion a track off this album, or what’s your favorite episode of this, or what’s your favorite line from this movie? We don’t have a super tight connection with this series other than how it permeated our pop culture as Generation Xers growing up. So what we’re doing in this segment is what is our favorite thing about the series holistically, about its existence in our pop culture universe, about the show in general. So, George, why don’t we start with you?
Jon What is your favorite thing about the series, ALF?
George I mean, the only thing to really hang your hat on, and we talked about it already, all the best jokes and lines went to Alf. So his just over-the-top ridiculousness, that laugh that he would do, ha, ha, ha, and slap the table because he was so funny to himself, the horrible puns that he would riff on.
George I mean, just… I guess that’s the only thing that, as a child, when I was young, because this came out in 86, so I was…
Jon Mm-hmm.
Mo Yeah. Yeah.
George So that’s the closest I could get to a favorite thing because it was that young person’s humor style that would have appealed to me.
Jon Mm-hmm.
George And I would have thought was funny. Um, the rest of the stuff going back and watching it now, it was little, little tedious, um, getting through the episodes that I did.
Jon Yeah.
George i think, it’s one of those things we, we talked about it. Was it earlier up here where we talked about the two and a half star classic, right? This, this feels like maybe a half star classic.
Mo Yeah.
Jon Mm-hmm. Yeah.
George Um, cause it was, again, um okay.
Jon Oh, ouch.
Mo Maybe one star. mean, come on.
Jon Come on, you get a star.
George I’ll give him one star and that star blew up cause it was called Mel Mac. No, um, it was,
Mo yeah
George It was good in that it was lighthearted humor that you didn’t have to think about a lot. And so it allowed you to have a palate cleanser for your brain if you had been dealing with a bunch of stuff during the day, I think.
Jon True.
George And as a kid, i didn’t have a lot of those deep things, but I remember my mother would watch the show with me and she would absolutely fall out of her chair laughing at ALF.
Mo Okay.
George when he would do his jokes and he would try to eat the cat or, you know, all the different, she would, she just thought that was so funny. And I remember as I got older thinking that shows like that made it more, it made it easier for her to tolerate the days that she had to deal with as an adult.
Mo Sure. I get that.
Jon It was a primetime pablum.
Mo Yeah.
Jon It wasn’t deep.
Mo Yeah.
Jon It was easy to watch.
George Yeah. Right.
Jon You didn’t need to know any mythology. Here’s an alien living with people.
Mo Yeah.
Jon What happens? Girl wants a phone.
George Right.
Jon There’s the show, right? That’s it. Like you said. So, yeah.
George Writes itself, pretty much. What about you, John?
Jon Yeah, right. It does.
George do you have a Do you have a favorite thing? I’m kind of guessing I might know what your favorite thing might be.
Mo I wonder what it is.
Jon Yeah.
Mo i wonder, huh?
Jon Well, you know, I’ve always been a fan of puppetry of any form or fashion. And even when I was watching this as a kid, now keep in mind when this came out, I wasn’t a kid kid, right? I was 16, 17.
George Right.
Jon Maybe I was like the age of the girl in the show. But even then, I understood something about puppetry and production. And I had dabbled in trying to make puppets and things like that. And I watch these shows even today. I remember watching them as a kid studying the puppetry.
George o
Jon And it’s distracting for me in a way that I didn’t watch the story very well. But so here’s Alf sitting on the couch. Am I listening to Alf talk about what he’s talking about? no I’m like, where’s the puppeteer?
Jon So it’s got to be a hollow couch. So he’s got to be reaching through.
Mo Oh, okay.
Jon These are fake feet. got Oh, the fake feet are moving. That’s a great touch.
Mo So that’s the assistant.
Jon And then it right and then it would the assistant and then it would cut from the puppeteer to the full body suit. And I’m like, oh, that was a good cut because he turned the puppet started moving.
Jon They did a cut. The guy was already moving. It was watching the logistics of what’s going on. How are they getting this done? I remember seeing one that he was sitting on the floor.
Jon And I’m like, well, there has to be a a trap door right there. So later when he wasn’t there, I’m looking for the trap door because I want to see if I can see it, the hole in the carpet, you know?
George Right.
George ah
Jon So was all those studying the artist, artistry of the puppetry is what I remember and still enjoy the most about the series.
Mo technical
George You know, i I was when I rewatched these episodes, I noticed a thing that I didn’t remember from when the series was first out. And I wondered if you picked up on it and if you had some insight into or not.
George So there’s all the scenes, you know, he’s he’s moving his head, his hands, like you mentioned before, with multiple people and the legs that you were talking about.
Mo Mm-hmm.
George But I hadn’t noticed that. that the ears were also moving.
Jon Articulated.
George There was a scene where like it was like if he was a little bit sad or getting yelled at by the mother or something like that, the ears would kind of bend down from the tips like a dog’s ears go flat if they’re getting yelled that kind of thing.
Jon Sometimes. Yep.
Jon Yep.
Jon Mm-hmm.
George I wonder if, like, de’t is that just a typical, like, saying oh, yeah, that’s easy to do, nobody… i That kind of… I kind of got fixated on that a little bit in this rewatch.
Mo Mm-hmm.
Jon Yeah, it was. So you can understand maybe why Fusco wanted to protect this puppet, because it was a good puppet. It was really good. it had a lot of articulation. had blinking eyes. The mouth was just a standard open, closed mouth, ah but it had the ears.
George Right. Yep.
Jon And depending upon, those are usually hooked up to, you know, it’s a wire with a little little rig down below.
George ah
Jon Sometimes the puppeteer who’s doing the mouth can do it. Like, they’ll have the wire hooked to your pinky finger. And that’s probably how you can blink or move the ears. Or sometimes it’s an assistant will do it.
George Gotcha.
Jon um Think of… um You ever watch Jeff Dunham, the ventriloquist, right?
George Right. Mm hmm.
Jon His characters can wiggle their ears sometimes, move their eyes sometimes.
George Yeah.
George Yeah.
Jon They’re little levers and things often inside of ventriloquist dummies because you just have one guy.
Mo That’s pretty cool.
Jon And so it tells me that Fusco was, he was right to protect that puppet. It was intricate. It wasn’t a sock puppet. And it was an involved puppet. There was involved puppetry going on in it. It wasn’t just open and close his mouth. He was emoting somewhat. So that’s,
Jon It’s part of the cool thing I like.
George That’s, that’s gotta take a lot of skill and practice to get muscle memory, to get so used to that.
Mo Oh yeah, I imagine.
Jon Yeah.
Mo is
Jon Yeah.
George Because I’m thinking like, if I had my, you know, hand trying to work his mouth and I had like the pinky maybe or whatever, trying to control a thing, like I would have to like be thinking about that consciously, like, Oh, time to move the, move the ear or blink the eye or something like that.
Jon Yeah.
George Got to move my pinky. Yeah. Obviously he got so used to it and good at it. that It was just second nature.
Mo imagine.
Jon Well, you know, so George, you were, you played a lot of baseball.
George That’s, that’s pretty fascinating.
Jon You’re a big baseball player. You learned muscle memory.
George Right.
Jon You learned when to catch a ball, turn and pitch it to first.
George ye
Jon You didn’t think about that.
George Yeah.
Jon You learned what that felt like to do. When you caught the ball, you were doing it.
George It was automatic. Yeah.
Jon When you’re a good puppeteer, you know that character and you’re not thinking about when do I need to blink the eyes? It becomes part of like, oh, this feels like a natural spot. It just kind of happens and life comes out of it.
George cause Because those are automated things that we we don’t think about blinking our eyes usually, right?
Jon Right. Yep. Yep. So there’s my puppet talk.
George Pretty cool.
Jon I loved watching the artistry of the puppeteering. So Mo, I feel bad for you. You didn’t watch this much.
Mo Well.
Jon You don’t have much of a connection. What’s your favorite thing about Alf?
Mo So, well, one, you know, at first I thought, OK, it’s unique show concept, right you get the whole alien. Then it’s not. it’s It’s a typical family sitcom, right? He could be the weird uncle.
Jon Mm-hmm. Okay.
Mo actually you know instead an alien um but one thing so i only watched a few episodes so i watched the pilot obviously i figured give me a good feel for it and then i watched the christmas episode in season two yeah that’s one of the reasons watched i heard it’s like one of the most popular ones and i watched that and i i actually felt but i felt like wow this is what the show could have been
Jon ah ah Okay. Yeah. All
Jon right.
George oh
Jon That’s a very popular episode. Yes.
Jon Mm.
Mo You know, because it was very emotional. He wasn’t a jerk through the whole thing.
George Right.
Mo Like he actually had like a layer, you know, and and I’m like, wow, I said this this whole series could have been this and it would have been probably a great series, you know, but instead this was definitely seemed like it was a one off.
George Right.
Jon Ooh. Ooh.
Jon Mm.
Mo Like they want a sentimental Christmas episode, which I got, you know, but yes, so i was a little disappointed in that actually.
Jon Yep.
Jon I tell you, Mo, George definitely saw this one, if ah this one episode. I want to recommend one to you if you go back and watch, if you if you watch one more episode in your life.
Mo Okay.
Jon um I might be toward the end of the first the first season, but there’s an episode very reminiscent of, there’s a section of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein where Frankenstein is befriended by an old blind man who doesn’t know he’s a monster.
Mo Right. Yes. Right.
Jon There is an episode where a blind woman befriends Alf and thinks he’s a talking bear. And it’s actually very touching because he’s like cares about a person in a way that he typically doesn’t because he’s being accepted much of the way Frankenstein was accepted by the old man with no pre, you know, I’m not afraid of you because you’re an alien.
Mo Right, right.
Jon Why she was okay the talking and bear. i I don’t know, but it’s, it’s one of those kinds of stories.
Mo I don’t know either.
George Yeah, right
Jon It’s a classic story. They didn’t invent for Alf, but they did it well. That’s a great episode too.
Mo Okay.
Jon So if what you like is what it could have been,
Mo Okay.
Mo Yeah.
Jon There are a few sprinkled episodes in there that are interesting.
Mo Oh, they’re speaking all around. Okay. All right.
Jon So, yeah, I don’t know what it was called, but it’s worth looking.
Mo I’m sure I can find it.
Jon Did you see that one, George? You know i’m talking about?
George I do remember that one.
Jon Yeah.
George um I didn’t rewatch it for this, but the one that, um the one thing that comes to mind is I don’t remember there being
Jon Okay. Yeah.
George a drama episode. So typically in the eighties sitcoms would always have that one episode, right?
Jon Very special.
Mo Right, which is all like no laugh track, no…
George A character gets robbed or somebody there’s a death near the family kind of thing, or some horrific tragic event happens to an individual.
Jon Right.
Mo Right.
George That’s a main character, you know, maybe you know, like some kind of assault or something or drugs.
Jon Yep.
Jon Right.
George There was always a drug episode.
Mo Yeah, something bad, like something tragic for sure.
Jon Yep. Yeah. Right.
George I don’t remember if there was one of those in this series because i don’t think they cared
Jon Mm-hmm.
George about the audience in that way.
Jon Yeah.
George ah It literally felt like they were just running through joke after joke after joke.
Mo Mm-hmm.
Mo Yeah. Mm-hmm.
George How many, how how many laughs can we get for the puppet?
Jon Yeah.
George That was what it felt like in most of the episodes.
Jon Yeah.
Mo Mm-hmm.
George So I’m glad that Mo, you found that Christmas one. Cause you’re right.
Jon Yeah.
George That’s the most popular one probably. And John’s episode with the, ah with the talking bear blind woman. I remember that one as well. Those, i don’t think there were very many of those in the series though.
Jon No, no. Right. It would have been in the promo, you know, and then this Thursday on a very special Alf. Yeah.
Mo Right.
Mo Yeah. Yeah.
Jon ah We never got a very special ALF. We just got ALF.
Mo Yeah.
Jon Yeah.
Jon Whatever you might think about the dramatic value of ALF. Okay.
Mo It’s not Shakespeare. Yeah.
Jon No, no.
George he
Jon as we As we noted, it definitely permeated Gen X pop culture during the time that was out and well beyond, too.
Mo yeah
Jon I mentioned all the merchandising, the lunchboxes and the TV trays and the dolls and the pillowcases and the sheet sets and the curtains and the T-shirts and every.
Mo Oh my god, yeah.
George t-shirts oh yeah mm-hmm
Mo Yeah, mugs, everything.
Jon And of course, puppets. Everybody wanted to do, you know, play with a puppet. um But sometimes it stops there. That wasn’t the, when ALF ended, the merchandising and stuff might’ve started to dry up, but our fascination with ALF did not end at the end of that series.
George no well and interestingly enough some of the things happened while the series was still on so
Jon In the midst of it.
Mo Oh.
Jon Okay.
George Yeah, there was an animated series, 1987, that was set on Alf’s home planet, so it’s kind of like a prequel to the storyline of the TV show.
Mo Oh, Okay.
Jon Really?
Mo Oh, okay.
George Yeah, and it’s all about Alf and his family on Melmac and all that kind of stuff.
Jon Oh.
Jon it’s cool. No people.
George Yeah, nope just just them on Melmac. Interesting, they did um they had another thing too, like the next year called Alf Tales, which was Gordon and the cast of characters from season one and recast them as characters from assorted classic fairy tales.
Mo What?
Jon What?
George Yeah, so like if have you ever seen the Once up Upon a Deadpool, the little thing where it like they took and they did the Princess Bride version of Deadpool?
Mo Huh?
Mo Oh, yeah, yeah.
Jon Like a what if he kind of thing.
Mo Yes.
George Yeah, like a slightly so askew universe kind of thing.
Mo it It was more of a goof, really. Yeah.
Jon Okay.
Mo Yeah.
George Yeah. Again, while the regular series is going on, let’s do something else.
Mo Okay.
George Why not? Because ALF is so popular right now.
Mo ah Sure. Go for it.
George Let’s throw him into something else.
Jon All I could think was Alf Tales. Woo.
Jon Not to be confused. ah So I’m going to pay off on something I promised earlier, Mo. You said that was it.
Mo Yeah, i did I just end it there?
Jon We never heard about what happened to him.
Mo Uh-oh.
Jon Well, in 1996.
Mo Oh, that took a while.
George Yeah, four years.
Jon Seven, seven or eight years after the end of the series. Right. There was a made for TV movie called Project Alf.
Jon Now, it’s not a good made-for-TV movie, but if you were wondering what happened to Alf, I watched part of this movie, I’ll say.
George ah
Mo Not really, but okay.
Jon so
George he
Jon I watched enough to know what’s going on. I watched a note enough to know that Martin Sheen is in it.
Mo What?
George what
Jon Martin Sheen is a general who… So let me back up a little bit. In this future of what’s going on, Alpha was not dissected or poked with needles or killed or anything.
Mo Okay.
Jon He’s living at a top secret facility like a king.
Mo okay
Jon He’s got…
George Oh, Lord.
Jon He has talked his way into getting everything he wants. He has this palatial suite. He gambles and takes money off of all the servicemen around that are guarding him. He gets regular massages and he has three hour lunches and because he’s an alien and they do little interviews and testing on it, but he gets everything that he wants.
Jon Martin Sheen plays this general who is dead set that Project ALF should be terminated and so should ALF. Because it turns out his mother once saw an alien and no one believed her.
Jon And she died lonely. And he wants to take it out on Elf.
George I don’t blame him.
Mo Was this through Martin Sheen’s drug times? that
Jon Oh, I’m sure it had to be. It sure it had to be. Probably my favorite. There were several little cameos in this. My favorite cameo, Ray Walston. You might know the name.
George Really?
Jon He was the Martian in My Favorite Martian with Bill Bixby.
George My favorite Martian, yep.
Mo Yes, right, right.
Jon He shows up in there. He’s not an alien at all, but the nod that like, we know what that actor did. We know who he actually is well known for. Let him be in this alien show.
Jon So Alf escapes. Actually, these two people that take care of him know that he’s in danger. They help him escape. They, you know, eventually I’ll let you watch it yourself if you want to know, but there was a movie and we learned that he didn’t die and he had a semi happy ending.
George You know, you were talking about the guest appearances and stuff in that one. It reminded me, the original series in that season one, the episode where they they called the president got in all kinds of trouble.
George One of the people on the president’s plane was from that TV show WKRP in Cincinnati, the actor who played Les Nesman, the news guy.
Mo Oh, really?
Jon Oh, yeah.
Mo yeah
Jon Yeah.
George He plays a radio operator in that show on the airplane.
Jon Great. Yeah.
George It’s just so funny to me, all the silly little… Like, they would get people to come guest on there from other things that maybe their careers didn’t take off after the thing they were known for.
Jon Yeah.
George But Martin Sheen?
Jon Yeah.
George Well…
Jon Yep.
Mo Okay.
George That’s not the only ALF show, by the way.
Mo All right.
Jon okay No?
George There is one more ALF thing to talk about as far as what’s already been produced.
Mo There’s more.
George In 2004, there was an ALF talk show set up just like The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, and co-starred Ed McMahon as his sidekick.
Jon No, there wasn’t.
Jon ought what
George Yeah.
Jon Wait.
Mo When did Johnny Carson end? What was it? Is that after 2004?
Jon Oh, yeah. and No, no, either before that.
George Yeah.
Jon even before that
Mo Yeah, yeah, before that. So, McMahon was available.
George Yeah.
Jon Was this a one-off or like a series?
Mo Oh,
George Honestly, I don’t know.
Jon Okay.
Mo my God.
George i i didn’t go watch it because I was too afraid to see what that would be like.
Jon All right. It sounds like a gimmick.
George Can you imagine the ALF character with all of his laughing and bad puns sitting next to an Ed McMahon character? And Ed McMahon in 2004, you would imagine, had to be the most embarrassed human being on the planet to know that what he had done with Johnny Carson was now being twisted into this ALF thing.
Mo um my god
Jon That’s a downgrade.
George i don’t even know was I don’t even know if Ed McMahon was alive. He might have been a dead zombie on the show for all I know. I don’t know when Ed McMahon died, but could have been another cartoon for all I know, but.
Jon He might have wished he was. I don’t know.
Mo Jeez.
Jon I’m super fascinated.
Mo That’s crazy.
Jon Like, I want to i want to see.
Mo want to watch one of them, right?
Jon I want to see. Yeah.
George Now, you’d think that that’s where the legacy would end.
Jon Damn. him
George However, apparently there were a lot of people who loved ALF in the 80s and have grown up to work in Hollywood now, and so they keep wanting to bring this damn thing back.
Jon That didn’t kill it?
Jon Oh.
George 2018, Warner Brothers Television announced the development of an ALF reboot.
Jon Sure.
Mo jeez.
Mo Huh.
George It later got cancered canceled.
Mo Yeah.
George That same year, got cancer. should have gotten cancer.
Jon Wow.
George But… ah Then, just a few years ago, in February of 2022, a company named Shout Studios acquired the distribution rights to the ALF titles and developed new ALF-related content with the company Maximum Effort.
Mo OK, if you not that long ago
Jon Oh, yeah.
George Do you guys know who…
Jon That’s Ryan Reynolds company, right?
George That is Ryan Reynolds, Maximum Effort Deadpool.
Mo Oh, my God.
Jon Yeah.
George Yeah. They’re joining the, they joined the whole production thing in 2023 to develop new material for ALF.
Jon Wow. I’ll tell you what. So here’s the thing. we We mentioned this at the end of the short circuit backtrack.
George Mm-hmm.
Jon Alpha is not hallowed ground.
Mo No.
Jon You could do something more with it Mo, you just pointed out so much more could have been done with what they had, but they really just didn’t dig in and do what was potentially there.
Jon I think you could do something more interesting with that concept today than what they delivered in the 80s. I’m not mad at that idea.
Mo no no
George No, I’m not either. And I kind of think that there is a model already in place for this. So I don’t know if you guys watched it or not, but there was a couple of movies in the eighties, Teen Wolf and Teen Wolf two first with Michael J.
Mo Yeah.
Jon Yep.
George Fox, then with Jason Bateman in the sequel, which not well received, but um there was an, there was an MTV Teen Wolf series that was done later on.
Jon Yep. Yep.
Mo Mm-hmm.
George That was much more dramatic.
Jon Oh, right. More dark. Yeah, darker. Yeah, I remember that.
George Yeah, I think they could do something like that here. Can you imagine if Alf crashes into the typical suburb family’s home?
Jon Yeah.
George And instead of being like this wisecracking cat eating Alf that we know, he’s like mysteriously dangerous and maybe the family feels like it’s held hostage a little bit.
Jon Mm-hmm.
Jon Less cute. A little more alien.
Mo Yeah.
Jon Yeah.
George Yeah. Yeah.
Jon There’s potential there. Yep.
Mo He gets the cat.
George ah gets
Mo ah
Jon In the pilot, the cat is eaten.
George He eats the cat and the baby. The third season baby is gone.
Mo Yeah. yeah
Jon That’s the twist. It’s like Kenny. The cat dies every episode.
Mo Every episode.
George Right?
Jon You bastard. You ate lucky.
George yeah
Jon I think I’d watch that. I think I’d watch a darker modern elf. Mo, how about you?
Mo I would give it a shot. I would definitely give it a shot.
Jon Would you give it shot?
Mo oh Absolutely. I’d give it a shot.
Jon Yeah. What do you think, George?
George Yeah, I mean, if nothing else, just for you know curiosity’s sake, and you know I’d watch it before I’d go back and watch the rest of the seasons of the original series.
Mo Yeah.
Jon Yeah.
Jon The original Alf. The original Alf. Yeah. All right. Okay. I think it’s a good place to wrap up this episode. Of course, George, I want to thank you for all your research that you did to carry us through this one.
George Yeah.
Jon Really appreciate it. Mo really appreciates it because he didn’t know any of this stuff.
Mo Yeah. I knew nothing.
Jon So that’s…
George Ha ha!
Mo Now I feel like I fake it.
Jon ah Before we… now you can Now you can pretend you know, right?
Mo Now I can. Yeah, can totally fake it.
Jon Yeah, there you we can work it out. Before I leave you, I want to thank a couple of brand new Patreon supporters. These are folks who headed over to genxgrownup.com slash Patreon, opened up their hearts in their wallets, set up a regular recurring pledge for as little as a dollar a month to support what we do.
Jon And that’s Michael T. and William M. They both signed up since we last spoke.
Mo Awesome.
Jon or I mean, maybe a little farther back, but i want to make sure I thanked both of you as folks who are helping to make sure we can continue to do what we do. And I know on many episodes, I mentioned this, want to make sure I point out that If you enjoy this podcast, not only will becoming a patron help us pay for what it costs to produce this podcast and the platforms that we use, but also if you’re at that $5 level or higher, you’ll get an advertisement free feed of this show.
Jon So no ads, just the cool throwback ads. That’s it. None of the commercials, none of the stuff are modern. Just it’s a little extra. We try to throw your way to thank you for supporting us. And Michael T, William M, thank you for throwing your hat in the ring and saying, we want to support.
Mo That’s awesome.
Jon Gen X grownup. We love you for that. That then is going to wrap it up for this backtrack all about ALF. Don’t worry though. If you were worried, you should not worry. We’ll be back in a couple of weeks with another backtrack. Next week is a standard edition of our show. Until then, I am John George. Thank you again so much for being here.
George Yes, sir.
Jon Mo, you know, i appreciate you, buddy.
Mo Always fun, man.
Jon Fourth listener, it’s you. We all appreciate most of all, though. We can’t wait to talk to you again next time. Bye-bye.
George See you guys.
Mo Take care, everybody.
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About The Author

Mo As someone who barely manages to squeeze in as a GenXer my memories include more of the 70's than those younger GenXers. Reading and movies are my passions with some video gaming thrown in there for good measure!

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