As a child of the early 80's I distinctly remember watching new episodes of this show every week along with watching reruns after school every day, to me as a seven year old in 1990 this was one of my favorite shows and I was disappointed when it was canceled but looking back at it twenty years later and after watching some episodes on youtube some parts of it have not aged very well.
The family dynamic of the Tanners was always a big part of what made the story's work, no matter what stupid outlandish thing happened either because of Alf or something one of them did or said they still always managed to come back together as a family at the end.
The acting was always really well done and believable especially considering the sheer absurdity of the situation their characters were placed into and the lengths they took to try and hide Alf.
The writing started out fairly strong in the first couple of seasons but once the show became exceedingly popular with kids (around the third season) they started focusing on much more kid friendly stories and the show lost some of it's sharpness in favor of light silly kid friendly humor and sometimes awkward attempts at topical humor and did so at the expense at the expense of any real character development for certain members of the family especially Brian who was growing up (by the end of the series he was 11-12 years old) but was still being written as a cute little boy who spoke with a cute squeaky little voice and said and did cute kid things.
Looking at the series last two seasons now it's more than obvious that by the end the writers were running out of good new ideas and were beginning to recycle old themes and ideas which was am awkward attempt at trying to keep the show off of life support (including that staple of 80's sit-coms that was pulled out when they had no good ideas for an episode: the dreaded clip show)as a result by the series end in 1990 it had truly run it's course despite the to be continued season four finale cliffhanger which was a transparent attempt at keeping the show on the air for another season but ultimately failed and left us wondering just what had happened to Alf until all the questions were sort of answered in the series wrap up 1996 TV movie.
Alf was sort of a Rodney Dangerfield for the little kiddie set and I will admit that as a child the jokes made me laugh almost all the time and to a degree they still do now the problem is that some of the topical humor that was current in the mid to late 80's has been out of fashion for twenty plus years and those jokes kind of fall on their face now even with the context of the times they were written in taken into account.
The other problem is that the character of Alf which was past his prime after the 1996 TV movie that tied up the loose ends that were left after the show was abruptly put out of it's misery in 1990 never truly went away for a while like he should have, he was still appearing in TV commercials all throughout the 90's including selling telephone long distance services chewing gum clothing and other products even as late as 2003 and even got a second shot at fame in 2004 in a talk show format that only lasted a few weeks before being pulled off the air, in essence I was exposed to Alf for most of my life (at least fifteen to twenty years) even after I was too old to like him anymore and actually became annoyed when I saw the character in advertisements.
Perhaps it was overexposure that soured me to the Alf character and his alien smart-alec shtick or perhaps the passage of time has hardened my heart a little but this show will always have a special place in my childhood memories of time spent with friends after school and family on the weekends laughing at his antics on TV.
Although the 2007 "interview" that he did with Bill O'Reily was rather funny just because you could tell that Bill was thinking "what did I do to deserve this?.....Oh right I told my bosses wife that she looked like a tree in that dress she was wearing at that reception a couple of months ago." all while desperately trying to keep from bursting out into laughter at the absurdity of what he was doing by trying to have a serious conversation with a puppet.
In the end I give ALF a six out of ten, and no I don't hate the show in any way, it was always intended to be mindless entertainment for kids which is what it did best back in the 1980's but looking at it today some of the jokes really are dated and don't work while the lack of character development for the human cast really hindered the direction the show took and most likely led to the eventual cancellation of it.
The family dynamic of the Tanners was always a big part of what made the story's work, no matter what stupid outlandish thing happened either because of Alf or something one of them did or said they still always managed to come back together as a family at the end.
The acting was always really well done and believable especially considering the sheer absurdity of the situation their characters were placed into and the lengths they took to try and hide Alf.
The writing started out fairly strong in the first couple of seasons but once the show became exceedingly popular with kids (around the third season) they started focusing on much more kid friendly stories and the show lost some of it's sharpness in favor of light silly kid friendly humor and sometimes awkward attempts at topical humor and did so at the expense at the expense of any real character development for certain members of the family especially Brian who was growing up (by the end of the series he was 11-12 years old) but was still being written as a cute little boy who spoke with a cute squeaky little voice and said and did cute kid things.
Looking at the series last two seasons now it's more than obvious that by the end the writers were running out of good new ideas and were beginning to recycle old themes and ideas which was am awkward attempt at trying to keep the show off of life support (including that staple of 80's sit-coms that was pulled out when they had no good ideas for an episode: the dreaded clip show)as a result by the series end in 1990 it had truly run it's course despite the to be continued season four finale cliffhanger which was a transparent attempt at keeping the show on the air for another season but ultimately failed and left us wondering just what had happened to Alf until all the questions were sort of answered in the series wrap up 1996 TV movie.
Alf was sort of a Rodney Dangerfield for the little kiddie set and I will admit that as a child the jokes made me laugh almost all the time and to a degree they still do now the problem is that some of the topical humor that was current in the mid to late 80's has been out of fashion for twenty plus years and those jokes kind of fall on their face now even with the context of the times they were written in taken into account.
The other problem is that the character of Alf which was past his prime after the 1996 TV movie that tied up the loose ends that were left after the show was abruptly put out of it's misery in 1990 never truly went away for a while like he should have, he was still appearing in TV commercials all throughout the 90's including selling telephone long distance services chewing gum clothing and other products even as late as 2003 and even got a second shot at fame in 2004 in a talk show format that only lasted a few weeks before being pulled off the air, in essence I was exposed to Alf for most of my life (at least fifteen to twenty years) even after I was too old to like him anymore and actually became annoyed when I saw the character in advertisements.
Perhaps it was overexposure that soured me to the Alf character and his alien smart-alec shtick or perhaps the passage of time has hardened my heart a little but this show will always have a special place in my childhood memories of time spent with friends after school and family on the weekends laughing at his antics on TV.
Although the 2007 "interview" that he did with Bill O'Reily was rather funny just because you could tell that Bill was thinking "what did I do to deserve this?.....Oh right I told my bosses wife that she looked like a tree in that dress she was wearing at that reception a couple of months ago." all while desperately trying to keep from bursting out into laughter at the absurdity of what he was doing by trying to have a serious conversation with a puppet.
In the end I give ALF a six out of ten, and no I don't hate the show in any way, it was always intended to be mindless entertainment for kids which is what it did best back in the 1980's but looking at it today some of the jokes really are dated and don't work while the lack of character development for the human cast really hindered the direction the show took and most likely led to the eventual cancellation of it.