ALF
By Joyce Slaton,
Common Sense Media Reviewer
Common Sense Media Reviewers
Broad '80s sitcom boasts sci-fi elements and sarcasm.
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What's the Story?
In the sitcom ALF, a hairy, aardvark-like alien (Paul Fusco) follows an amateur radio signal one night while fleeing the destruction of his planet, Melmac. He winds up crash-landing through the roof of the Tanner family. Patriarch Willie (Max Wright) is a space nut who convinces wife Kate (Anne Scheeden) to let homeless ALF crash with the family, which also includes teenaged Lynn, grade-schooler Brian, and pet cat Lucky, whom ALF would dearly love to kill and eat (Melmacians eat cats, it turns out). Under constant threat of discovery by a military just dying to dissect him, as well as nosy next door neighbor Mrs. Ochmonek, ALF cracks wise while he learns the ways of humans in general and the Tanners in particular, making mistakes that are corrected at the end of each episode.
Is It Any Good?
When it first aired in 1986, ALF was truly subversive stuff. A nation whose collective minds had been recently blown by blockbuster movie E.T. expected a show about an alien creature to be life-affirming and tear-inducing. Instead, ALF presented a sardonic, sarcastic alien who was riddled with survivor guilt after escaping his destroyed home planet, bored and trapped in his new human home, and who was all too willing to take out these emotions on the Tanner family. Kids thrilled to ALF's bad attitude. He dared to talk back to mom and dad! For their part, adults appreciated ALF's flintiness, which was a breath of fresh air in the do-gooder landscape of '80s family sitcoms like Growing Pains.
These days, with plenty of programs centering around anti-heroes, ALF's grumpiness doesn't come across as quite as fresh. In addition, references that were sharply current in the '80s (Sean Penn, Born in the USA, Mork & Mindy) now require some explaining to younger family members. But the fish-out-of-water concept is still a juicy one for kids, since they keenly relate to characters who don't really know the rules and how to act. Whether parents will appreciate ALF's general negativity, his mockery of the Tanner parents and their values, and his incessant backtalk is not as certain.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about why ALF is so unrelentingly negative and sarcastic. Do you think that his bad attitude is a way of helping him cope with feeling so out of place? When you feel out of place, do you ever act in a similar way?
Do you know any other television shows that feature life forces from other worlds, like Ben 10, Lilo & Stitch, Star Trek, or The Fairly OddParents? How is ALF different from the alien creatures on these shows? Are these alien creatures presented as threatening or comical?
Why do television shows and movies so often feature characters who are new to a setting, i.e. a new worker at an office, or a new girl at school? Why is it useful to the story to have a main character who doesn't know the way things work?
TV Details
- Premiere date: September 22, 1986
- Cast: Max Wright, Paul Fusco
- Network: Discovery Family Channel
- Genre: Comedy
- Topics: Science and Nature, Space and Aliens
- TV rating: NR
- Last updated: July 22, 2022
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