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Strap in, dipshits, and get your barf bags ready, because
you are once again about to be taken on a scandalous journey through some of
the most heinous factual inconsistencies presented by the plot of the NBC sitcom ALF, which ran from 1986 to 1990. You
guys are probably not going to believe this, but ALF leaves us with a LOT more
questions than answers about some pretty SERIOUS ISSUES such as SCIENCE THINGS
and FACTS.
If contradictory information makes you feel a little queasy, this is
gonna to be worse than an emergency landing in Mexico City. Pop a Dramamine now.
Last time I asked why ALF was called “ALF”
instead of “Gordon,” which is his NAME which he can say IN ENGLISH by TALKING,
which is a complete fucking miracle of a thing for an alien from a whole
different planet (Melmack) who crash lands in your garage to be able to do, and yet
everybody called him fucking “ALF” instead of fucking “Gordon.”
Alert reader Drew Bayers pointed out there
might have been a psychological
reason for ALF to prefer the new moniker. This does not fully explain the
Tanner family’s decision to shorten “Alien Life Form” to “ALF” and then call
the alien that to its face once communication IN ENGLISH was established, but I’ll
take it as enough of an explanation to refer to ALF as ALF instead of Gordon
for the purposes of discussion. Okay, assholes? Is that okay with YOU GUYS?
Fuck off. That question was rhetorical.
Today I’m going to explode your brains by telling
you everything I know about ALF and cats.
I’m not going to research this by re-watching every
episode of the show. I might get a few things wrong, okay, fuckheads? If there
are any ALF purists out there who want to correct me or point out how I’m wrong
about some ALF facts, or if the show already addressed some of the CLEARLY
QUITE DISTRESSING ISSUES I am now exploring in regards to the plot and premise
of ALF, use the comments section. Today
is, finally, your day.
If you are not an ALF expert but know one of these
people, do me a favor. Print this blog out and slide it under the door to the
basement where they live along with the next delivery of pancakes and other
flat foods they are doomed to live off of because, like they already explained
a million times to both their Mom and Aunt Pam, they can’t come out EVER.
Until corrected by the shut-in ALF experts of the
world, all I have to go on is what I know.
Here’s one thing I know:
ALF loves to eat cats.
Specifically Earth housecats. Felis catus.
Specifically, as depicted in the show, the Tanner family’s pet cat Lucky. He’s
always trying to catch and eat the family cat. Why? Primarily, according to
this hour long interview
at the University of Connecticut that there is NO WAY I’m watching, because the
show’s creator Paul Fusco thought it might be fun to try to trick NBC into
letting him talk about “eating pussy” on NBC. ALF loves to eat pussy. He’s crazy
for it. Ha ha ha. Are you laughing about that? Well GET SERIOUS. Because IT’S A
PROBLEM.
Cats are apparently a livestock animal on ALF’s home
planet of Melmack. That means there are, or were, ALF-like Melmackians whose
job it was to herd cats.
Ha ha ha. Like that old saying, “…like herding cats,” meaning doing a thing
that is difficult. Oh man, that is ridiculous. A bunch of ALFs riding the
Melmackian equivalent of horses, herding cats. Ha ha hee. Whee what fun. Well
guess what? THIS IS DISTURBING.
Are Melmackian cats the same thing as Earth cats?
THE SHOW NEVER TOLD US SO WE HAVE TO GUESS. Are you starting to see how fucking
bad this is, you guys? It’s bad. It’s real, real bad.
Let’s say that Melmack cats are totally different
organisms than Earth cats. Somehow they evolved separately on the two different
planets but became, in both appearance and behavior, indistinguishable to the
average Melmackian such as ALF. If this is the case, we know that the two catlike
organisms look and behave similarly because ALF does not appear distressed by
Lucky’s behavior.
Imagine if you crash-landed on another planet where
families kept chickens as pets and there was a taboo against eating them. Okay,
everything good so far. But then those chickens also behaved in a very unchickenlike
manner, like if they floated gracefully through their surroundings or walked
without bobbing their heads or they ate tiny cheeseburgers with a knife and
fork. You’d be surprised and a little confused.
But if they were just regular chickens doing chicken
things, you’d be totally cool. Like, “Oh chickens. We have these too. They’re
called chickens. They are fucking TASTY when you chop them up and fry them. Oh,
you don’t do that here? Well, shit. I could really go for some fried chicken.
Goddamn things are everywhere.” That’s how ALF acts about cats. Notice how he
also uses the word “cats.” Like, “On my home planet, billions of miles away, we
have these things too and we call them cats, what do you call them here? Cats?
WHAT A FUCKING COINCIDENCE.”
So it’s more likely that Melmack cats and Earth cats
are the SAME THING. Holy fucking fuck, you guys. GET READY. There are three possible
explanations for this.
Explanation One:
Cats, or the ancient evolutionary ancestors of cats,
are sufficiently technologically advanced to colonize more than one planet,
where in each case they allowed themselves to be domesticated, and in one case,
on Melmack, became chattel. I’d say given this structure of supposition it’d
make more sense if all Earth cats came from Melmack, where they are persecuted,
than the other way around. If you, as a member of an intelligent race of cats,
knew enough to colonize another planet, you’d probably be able to avoid being slaughtered for your meat once you arrived there.
So in this scenario, cats came to Earth from
Melmack. I don’t think this is likely either, because how do you then explain tigers
and sabertooth tigers and all of the other cats we’ve ever had? Wouldn’t the
arriving Melmackian cats immediately become the dominant species on Earth, like
a Planet of the Apes situation but with cats? And why would there still be cats
on Melmack, suffering in bondage, if some of them figured out a way to get out
of there? Wouldn’t they build up a society on Earth and then come back for
their fallen brothers? I am not ready to consider the CAT EARTH universe simply
because ALF thinks Lucky looks like a tasty snack.
Let’s say a bunch of Melmackian cats are just kind of regular stupid cats which somehow stole
and operated a spaceship that was designed for ALFs. Then they arrived on Earth, then
they evolved into every single cat species Earth has ever seen. But if that happened, Earth
cats would behave in some ways like herd animals because they’d been originally
domesticated that way on Melmack. And our cats don't act that way. The idea is so ridiculous, we even make jokes about it. Hilarious jokes and YouTubes of Super Bowl commercials.
I’m done with this. Cats don’t drive space ships. That’s just fucking ridiculous.
I’m done with this. Cats don’t drive space ships. That’s just fucking ridiculous.
Explanation Two:
There is, or once was, a secret program on Earth
that sent cats out into space, possibly through a mythical Stargate-like
portal. Okay, you guys? Alright? I just fucking made a reference to fucking STARGATE.
I feel like a CLOWN right now. Don’t look at me. This is probably the worst I’ve
ever felt. Aside from my personal feelings on the matter (I HAVE A JOB TO DO
HERE AND THAT JOB IS TELLING THE TRUTH ABOUT ALF FOR THE FIRST TIME) I don’t
think a secret cat-sending portal cabal is likely.
If the portal in question had any potential use
other than sending cats, I don’t see why or how it would have been kept a
secret for this long. And if it didn’t have any other use, I don’t see why
anybody would have built it. Can you imagine? Your friend Tim is like, “Hey
guys, I built a portal to another place, it only works on cats, you put cats
into it and they never come back and that’s as much as I know about the portal
I built.” You’d be like, “Tim is a weird dude and I think he’s killing cats, I
should call the police.” And that would be the END of the cat portal.
Explanation Three:
Some long ago Melmackians STOLE SOME OF OUR CATS. Okay
you guys? Are you fucking understanding me here?
I think this is the most likely explanation given
that Melmackians as presented in the ALF universe both refer to their cats as “cats”
AND have demonstrated interplanetary travel capabilities. This is alarming,
because domesticated cats, by definition, are domesticated by HUMANS. Which
means ALF is from a race of INTERPLANETARY CAT THIEVES, and they at one point
STOLE SOME CATS from RIGHT UNDER OUR NOSES. This is probably why Bob Barker was so adamant
about spaying and neutering your cats. He knew the score. Don’t give those fucking
sneaky ALFs the satisfaction of putting your cat out to stud back on their home
planet.
Alright? So there we go. Logically, ALF is from a
race of interplanetary marauders who so far have avoided detection, but have
definitely stolen some cats from us. It seems like Willy Tanner could have
figured this out. It was pretty easy for me to piece it together. Instead,
Willy just responds with exasperation whenever the crash-landed alien he is
hosting tries to eat the family housecat. “AAALF, you CAN’T eat the CAT,” he
whines. What are you BLIND, Willy Tanner? This guy is NOT TO BE TRUSTED. He
KNOWS too much about cats.
If an alien crash-landed in my garage and tried to
eat my cat, and called it a “cat,” and told me he had cats on his home planet
and that they’re fucking tasty, I would run through the above steps in logic
and then call the fucking cops on him. Maybe I’d put the phone down if he said,
“Wait a minute, wait a minute, I’m just fucking with you. You don’t know how
bored I am and how stupid you humans seem to me, please don’t subject me to a
series of government controlled quarantines and anatomical probings.” MAYBE.
But I’d still be deeply suspicious that this little
furry fucking alien was running a con on me. Either the cat thing is true and I
don’t trust him because he’s from a culture which goes to other planets and
steals cats, and I have no way of knowing what other devious shit they do, or
else he’s just fucking with me and making up ridiculous lies in order to kill
the time, in which case I don’t trust him either. Regardless, I’m sure as shit
not going to harbor him and feed him and keep him safe, going so far as to
habitually deny his existence to my nosy neighbors. No matter how annoying
those fucking Ochmoneks
are.
Okay, you guys? ALFs are not to be trusted.
If you see one in your garage, call the cops. Don’t be a Willy Tanner. What a
blubbering simp of a man. If there was any reality at all to ALF, it’d be a
show about an alien smooth-operator having his way with the biggest idiot mark
of all humankind. ALF says, “Listen, you give me food, okay, and I don’t do any
work and I never have to leave the house. In return I’ll be furry and do a
bunch of cute shit.” If it was me instead of Willy Tanner I’d say, “Hit the
bricks, pal, I wasn’t born yesterday.” Here’s the most ironic thing about it: the
ALF con is roughly akin to the con that domestic cats are currently running all
over the world.
I hope your skull just imploded, because that
is some SERIOUSLY mind-destroying shit. About ALF. The TV show ALF which I am
talking about.
I haven’t even started about how odd it is
that ALF sometimes wants to eat the cat raw but also sometimes attempts to lure
it into a soup pot or a microwave. My theory is this has to do with ALF’s
anatomy, and that is DEFINITELY a reason why this is a nine-part series. There
is too much truth out there for one human brain to hold without breaking it down into nine chunks.
But don’t worry,
buttwipes, I’ll be back. I’ll be back REAL GOOD.
