I’ve been noticing a small resurgence of ALF in pop culture lately and I said to myself, “Self, you need to KablamaSlam this noise!”
The Premise: Everyone’s favorite sitcom alien puppet Gordon Shumway recounts his past adventures with family and friends on his home planet of Melmac.
It’s the ‘80s, and a guy named Paul Fusco annoys people at a party with his alien puppet that he apparently brought. Yeah. He’s that guy. Fusco pitches a concept for a sitcom based on the puppet to NBC president Brandon Tartikoff and it’s green-lit! Tartikoff is Mr. Must See TV and oversaw such hits as Golden Girls, Cheers, Seinfeld… so the guy apparently knew what he was doing. I mean, he obviously did because ALF was a hit and, like I said, we’re still talking about it to this day!
As with several things in the 1980s, ALF was quickly adapted into a Saturday morning cartoon show. Every episode of ALF: The Animated Series would have live-action puppet ALF (or Gordon) bookending each adventure. This meant less time spent animating and thus cheaper production. When I say “cheap” though, I certainly don’t mean in terms of quality! I personally thought the animation was incredible!
Again… this was the ‘80s, and just as animated spinoffs were commonplace, toy lines based on cartoons were even more so. Boy, did I love me some ALF toys! This is sort of a sidebar, I suppose, but we all have those “toys that made us” and for whatever reason, these were some of mine! Skip, Augie, Rick, Neep! I loved them all!
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| How bout a docuseries on these, Netflix?! |
During the show’s final season, another spinoff was created. ALF Tales ran alongside ALF: The Animated Series and featured a very Gordonesque spin on classic stories in the public domain, such as Robin Hood and Cinderella, and would feature the Animated Series characters in different roles. I didn’t like this show as much and remember wondering how the people on Melmac had all of the exact same fairy tales as us on Earth. I was probably taking it a little too serious, I suppose. That was a thing I did.
That’s a thing I do!
The thing that made this show great was the same thing that worked for the original sitcom. This character is straight up timeless. When Fusco originally pitched ALF, producers scoffed at first. “Jim Henson corners the market on puppets. Why are we wasting our time with this guy?” I assume they said. Their minds changed almost instantly after seeing Fusco’s performance, however. ALF is brazened, yet lovable, with a sarcastic wit that I’ve revered ever since I was as a kid.
All of this to say: Be the guy who brings the annoying alien puppet to a party.
