On March 24, 1990, NBC aired the final episode of Alf.
The main character on the show was, well, ALF (Alien Life Form). No one used his real name, Gordon Shumway. He came from the exploded world of Melmac to Earth, smashing into the garage of the suburban middle-class Tanner family who are made up of Willie (Max Wright), Kate (Anne Schedeen), Lynn (Andrea Elson), Brian (Benji Gregory), cat Lucky and later baby Eric.
ALF was such a big deal that there were stuffed toys at Burger King and a cartoon series, which was infamous for one episode supposedly having a subliminal message.
For four seasons, the family dealt with the completely rude and often hilarious being and kept him safe from the Alien Task Force. And Alf also made plenty of friends, including Willie's brother Neal (Jim J. Bullock), a psychologist named Larry (Bill Daily) and Jody (Andrea Covell), a blind woman who falls in love with him.
ALF was incredibly difficult to make, so much so that in a People article in 2000, everyone admitted that people were constantly freaking out on the set. Max Wright hated every minute of it, losing most of the laugh lines to a puppet. He supposedly even physically attacked ALF once. That said, in the same article, he was more open-minded about the show, saying "It doesn't matter what I felt or what the days were like, ALF brought people a lot of joy."
Yet after the final episode, "Consider Me Gone," Anne Schedeen said that after the final take, "there was one take and Max walked off the set, went to his dressing room, got his bags, went to his car and disappeared... There were no goodbyes."
I always wondered why the show ended, but now that I know more, I feel for the cast. Schedeen also reported that "It's astonishing that ALF really was wonderful and that word never got out what a mess our set really was."
One example is her TV daughter Andrea Elson. After suffering from bulimia during the show, she admitted that if the show went one more year, everyone would have really lost their minds.
That said, ALF was in tenth place in season 2 and never went below 39th place. The kind of ratings it got back then would be a huge success today. By season 4, NBC was on the bubble, so the show did a cliffhanger. Then they got a verbal commitment from NBC. But then the show never came back.
Imagine being a child when the true worry of the show finally came true. ALF was taken by the government to be dissected after he missed aliens from New Melmac coming to rescue him. It said "To be continued," but it never was. NBC executive Brandon Tartikoff would years later tell puppeteer Fusco "It was a big mistake that we canceled your show, because you guys had at least one or two more seasons left."
ABC would finally resolve the cliffhanger six years later with Project:ALF.
Project: Alf is one strange movie. On one hand, it has plenty of the humor of the original show. But it comes off as gallows humor, as ALF is detained at Edmonds Air Force Base and constantly being threatened by Colonel Gilbert Milfoil (Martin Sheen). He's finally had enough and plans to incinerate the creature, despite how beloved he is by the base. Of course, ALF has taken advantage of everyone, creating a black market out of a hangar and continually winning money playing poker.
As for the Tanner family, they used the Witness Protection Program to go to Iceland.
Two of the scientists, Major Melissa Hill (Jensen Daggett, Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan) and Captain Rick Mullican (William O'Leary, who was on Home Improvement playing the husband of his co-star Daggett) kidnap ALF and take him on the run where he meets Ray Walston - once My Favorite Martian - as a motel clerk and goes to the Kitty Kat Lounge, which he thinks is a buffet but ends up being filled with exotic dancers.
He finally ends up in the orbit of Dexter Moyers (Miguel Ferrer), who was nearly one of the men on the moon ad has now been discredited by the government. He's going on a Piers Morgan-esque show where he will publicly show ALF to the world but Minfoil wants to exterminate Gordon Shumway before that can happen.
There's a wild cast in this. Beyond Sheen and Ferrer, there's John Schuck, Ed Begley, Jr., Charlie Robinson (Mac from Night Court), Beverly Archer (who was Mrs. Byrd on the original show), Ahmet Zappa and even a robot that seems to be set up to be the Higgins for ALF if this ever became a series.
The movie was directed by Dick Lowry (Smokey and the Bandit Part 3, Archie: To Riverdale and Back Again, In the Line of Duty: The F. B. I. Murders, The Gambler, The Jayne Mansfield Story) and written by Tom Patchett, who was one of the creators of ALF along with Paul Fusco, who returns to play ALF. Patchett also created the shows Buffalo Bill and The Tony Randall Show, as well as writing Up the Academy, The Great Muppet Caper and Muppets Take Manhattan.
I really enjoyed this, as it brought back happy memories from my late teen years. I think you'll feel the same way.
