ALF was a popular 80's sitcom about Alien Life Form Gordon Shumway, who crashed into the garage of a suburban LA family and was forced to live with them or risk being captured and dissected by the authorities. Though basically an update of the Bill Bixby/Ray Walston sitcom My Favorite Martian, ALF had a somewhat more aggressive edge. Alf lived with the Tanner household, and frequently brought chaos to their lives. Willie Tanner (Max Wright) tried to keep Alf in line, but was mostly straight man to Alf's clowning. Wife Kate (Anne Schedeen) had the most antagonistic relationship with Alf, as she was the least tolerant of his breaches of the family's privacy. Daughter Lynn (Andrea Elson) and son Brian (Benji Gregory) got along the best with the furry Melmacian, though even their patience could be strained -particularly Lynn, who had to put up with Alf while also being a teenage girl! The show was a hit, and soon Alf was spun off into at least two Saturday morning cartoon series (A.L.F., which told of life on Gordon's home planet Melmac, and Alf Tales, which spoofed popular stories with Alf and his friends in the parts), as well as hosting the Saturday morning line-up bumpers right from the set of the prime time series. The animated Alf even joined a multitude of characters like Bugs Bunny and Garfield for the cartoon anti-drug special Cartoon All-Stars To The Rescue. Alf even did an episode of The Love Boat! A special hour-long ALF episode saw Alf hosting The Tonight Show! There was also a special TV Christmas movie, and a preview special in which Alf and Brian explored a haunted house and told about the upcoming new shows for NBC! By the fourth season, ratings began to slip and the network pulled the show -despite the writers attempting to force them into re-upping by ending the series on a cliffhanger that saw Alf in the clutches of the USAF. Though it took a few years, fans did get resolution via the TV movie PROJECT: ALF. Though funny, the movie lacks any of the Tanners, and thus feels disconnected. Paul Fusco continued working the Alf puppet for some commercials, and even did an in-character appearance on The O'Reilly Factor before TV Land brought the character back for ALF's Hit Talk Show, which wasn't a hit and left the tube fairly quickly. Those seeking more Alf antics can find skits on the menus of the ALF DVD releases, but be warned the episodes are the truncated syndication prints. The original show used a lot of popular songs, meaning that copyright issues for the uncut episodes are problematic. Interestingly, though, the original versions sometimes get broadcast on commercial television!
As a kid, one of the only contemporary sitcoms I regularly watched was Saved By The Bell. After recently revisiting the series, I see there's no wonder I turned out the way I did! Few shows, particularly those aimed at teens, were so crammed with glamorous cheesecake as was this series. It began life as a Disney Channel series called "Good Morning, Miss Bliss" starring former child actress Haley Mills. It concerned the misadventures of a teacher in the midwest, along with her Principal Mr. Belding (Dennis Haskins) and wiseguy student Zack Morris (Mark-Paul Gosselaar) -and his dopey sidekick Screech (Dustin Diamond). The show lasted but a few episodes before Disney cancelled it, but executives at NBC thought the show had potential and revamped it as Saved By The Bell (and incorporating the "Good Morning, Miss Bliss" episodes as flashback stories). Now set in the California beach town of Bayside, the series became a sort of teen-age version of the original The Phil Silvers Show. Zack Morris ran scams and get-rich-quick schemes with the aid of Screech and their circle of friends, while Mr. Belding tried to stay on top of things -which he rarely was. Zack spent much of the early seasons pining for the impossibly beautiful Kelly Kapowski (Tiffani-Amber Thiessen), and even won her, before the characters broke up and remained independent of each other for the rest of the run. Other players included Mario Lopez as studly Army brat A.C. Slater, Lark Voorhies as suburban princess Lisa Turtle, and Elizabeth Burkley was leftist lunatic Jessie Spano. The show was so popular that one season was extended to show the gang doing Summer work at a Malibu beach resort (a series of episodes in which Zack found a new love interest in snooty resort assistant manager Stacey Carosi -played by future sitcom starlet Leah Remini). A TV feature took the kids to Hawaii in SAVED BY THE BELL, HAWAIIAN STYLE. This showed just how green the cast really was, as they're blown out of the proverbial water by Dean Jones, who plays Kelly's resort hotel-operating uncle. That's not to say the kids are bad or anything, and they would continue to develop their craft through the run of the series. Even after the show ended, it was still doing so great in ratings that a new block of episodes was ordered up, and shot despite the lack of certain cast members who had moved on to other things! To replace the absent Theissen and Berkley, the writers introduced tough biker chick Tori Scott (Leanna Creel). Tori became Zack's love interest, but she was quickly forgotten as the graduation episode (which featured the original cast) was broadcast last! Saved By The Bell: The College Years caught up with the characters as they sought higher education, but this prime-time series failed to find it's audience and was abruptly cancelled. Saved By The Bell: The New Class struggled through several seasons, but failed to find it's footing (despite Richard Haskins and Dustin Diamond being on hand to play their familiar characters). The established characters, meanwhile, returned for one last hurrah in the TV movie SAVED BY THE BELL: WEDDING IN VEGAS, which showed Zack and Kelly finally get married (they had fallen back in love during The College Years, and that series ended with Zack proposing). Fun stuff a lot sharper than usually given credit for.
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| The girls: all-American Kelly, princess Lisa, and nutcase Jessie |
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