VHS Lessons

4 Lessons ALF taught me about life choices (and writing for sitcoms)

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A poorly drawn picture of the alien ALF from the tv show ALF.

Hey, folks – Max Bedroom here. 

Mom’s shoveling the driveway and Dad is cooking dinner. I’m not a fan of either task, so I’m down here hiding in the basement. I figured while I’m making myself scarce I would pop another tape into the ol’ VCR. This time, I’m watching that classic 80s tv show about an alien with a smart mouth whose spaceship crash lands into the garage of the most boring family in America. That’s right, we’re talking about ALF.

Let me refresh your memory if you haven’t seen ALF recently. ALF stands for ‘alien life form’, although it should stand for ‘another lazy formulaic attempt leading (to) feelings (of) angst’. ALF’s real name is Gordon Shumway, but the Tanners just calls him ALF. Pretty rude. Reminds me of when I was a kid and Mom would call me Big Mouth because I liked catching large mouth bass. I have a name, Mother. It’s Max Bedroom.

Unlike aliens in other tv shows, ALF doesn’t really bother to hide from society. He might go out and get caught by the dog catcher or get mistaken for an ugly cousin. In this episode he is mistaken for a raccoon. It really greases the plot joints when you have an alien who doesn’t want to be discovered but also doesn’t need to bother hiding out in the house all day.

Here’s what I learned about life choices from ALF.

ALF Season 2 Episode 9: Night Train

  1. Some of the best times you’ll have in life will be when you have no money

Willie Turner has it all. A house. A smoke-show wife. Two mediocre kids. A job that gives him purpose. A wise-cracking alien living in his house. You know, the American dream. What he longs for, though, is that time when he rode the rails, hopping from town to town working odd jobs and having adventures. There’s something freeing about having no money and no responsibilities.

On a green background, a poorly drawn picture of Willie as a hobo stands in front of the train tracks.
Willie the Hobo looks like he’s ready to hop a train and maybe do a little murdering.

My problem with this logic is I currently have no money and few responsibilities and I’m pretty miserable. I’m not sure what I’m missing here. What made Willie so happy when he was riding the rails just scraping by? Was is the sense of freedom? Probably not. Was it the friends he made along the way? Doubt it. Was it the chance to see this vast continent, to take it all in from sea to shining sea? Nah. I think what made riding the rails so great for Willie was the trains themselves. Boys love trains. I wanted one of those big Lionel train sets for Christmas when I was eight. Instead I got a Dukes of Hazzard racetrack where the cars would jump the track. Still pretty cool.

I’ve made my decision. After Mom finishes shoveling the driveway and Dad finishes making dinner, I’m going upstairs to tell them I’ve figured out what I want to be. A hobo.

If you already have enough trains in your life and romance is more your fancy, then the next lesson is for you.

2.   Past loves prepare us for our true love

While stuck on a freight car with ALF, Willie talks about a past love, and it isn’t his wife. How often, as he’s going through the routines of his mundane life, does Willie stop and think about his ex? Probably all the time. Who doesn’t? I think about both of my ex-wives all the time, and I hope that loving and losing twice has prepared me for my true love, who must be out there somewhere. All I know about her location is she isn’t in my basement.

I can’t be the only one. Would Ross and Rachel have worked if Ross hadn’t married the British lady? How about Monica and Chandler? Would they have gotten together if Monica hadn’t snuggled with Tom Selleck’s mustache? It’s funny that way; love, I mean. Our greatest losses can be our greatest moments. Put that on a t-shirt and send me a dollar.

Sick of all of this love talk and want to know if your life choices so far have been correct? Then read on, my friend.

3. For some people, it’s ok to keep riding that train

You probably think by ‘riding that train’ I mean that it’s ok to continue on your life’s trajectory. Some people never seem to grow up, they just keep doing what they’re doing with smiles on their faces, annoying the hell out of the rest of us sinners. No, I’m not talking about life. I’m talking about riding an actual train. It’s ok to keep doing that.

In the episode, Willie and ALF end up in a freight car on a moving train and run into a grade A, verified, and bonafide hobo. A real hobo in the 1980s. It turns out, through an incredible coincidence that doesn’t take us out of the realism of the story at all, that this hobo is an old friend of Willie’s from back in his own hobo days. Since then, Willie has gone on to build a successful, if boring, career. Get married. Have a couple of boring kids. And, oh yeah, he secretly houses a flippin’ alien. Not too bad. This guy, however, has continued to ride the rails all these years. He has no home, no wife, no boring kids, no wise-cracking alien. But what he does have is freedom, you know, the good kind of freedom. He has the freedom to be as poor as he wants to be. Which of these men has lived a better life? That’s not up to me to decide. I leave that to a higher power, maybe Hasselhoff. Let him judge our mortal lives. Amen.

Maybe you’re thinking Ok, great, live your own life. But what if my life is already messed up? What if my planet blew up? Don’t worry, friend. You know Uncle Max has got you covered. Those of you with blown up planets should move on to #4.

4. Even though your planet exploded, you can still remember the good times

The trauma that ALF suffers from losing his home planet and everyone he loved is overshadowed by his hijinks, poor writing, and the Tanner family’s apathy. ALF lost everything and everyone. He needs therapy. Instead, he gets yelled at for not vacuuming while the family was out at the mall or trying to eat the cat. He’s hungry.

Red and yellow rays shooting out from the center of a black background.
Current Google Melmac view of ALF’s home planet.

ALF talks about this trauma on the train and realizes he can remember and talk about the good times. That reminds me of a similar trauma that I had my senior year of high school. I was on the way to the prom with my date and drove my truck into a ditch. The good news is some good ol’ boys from school who were on the way to the prom stopped to help. The bad news is they gave my date a ride and left me in the ditch. I never made it to the prom and somehow never saw her again. While I was waiting out there in the dark for someone to stop to help me, the smell of gasoline and cigarettes from the guys who picked up my date still lingering in the air, I found a half-empty, I mean half-full, pack of Marlboros. I didn’t smoke and still don’t, but at the time I figured why not and used my truck’s cigarette lighter to light up.

I sat in the back of my truck looking up at the field of stars taking draws from those cigs and feeling, just for a moment, that I was on top of the world. That feeling lasted right up until the point where I started throwing up. Still one of the best nights of my life.

Bonus lesson: If you’re going to write for an 80’s sitcom, learn to write a joke or two, you hacks.

Willie tells ALF that back in his hobo days he ate beans from a can and he even had a nickname. Now imagine you’re a writer for ALF. Once you stop crying over your life choices, think about the joke you would write with that setup. Beans give us all kinds of possibilities. They could have gone with something as simple as the Gas Man. Or Wilie Eat More Beans. Or the Fiber Rider. What did they go with? Boxcar Willie. They completely ignored the bean setup and they just ripped off the name of a country singer who used to sell cassette tapes on tv commercials. Come on, guys. Like my high school cross country coach once said to me, “You don’t have to be good but you have to at least try.” I would take it a step further than that, Coach. You don’t even have to really try…just pretend that you’re trying.

Signing off

Well, folks, I’ve fixed my spaceship and am now heading back to my home planet, where the cats are plentiful and the jokes are all one-liners. Don’t worry, I’ll be back soon enough to dust off another of these tapes so that I can share more wisdom from the 80s.

Until then, keep your cats skittish and your train a-rollin’.

4 Lessons Knight Rider taught me about careers (and locking lips)

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Hey, folks – Max Bedroom here. 

I’m a child of the 80s. My kids are all grown up and my wives are all gone (along with my house and my money)…so I’m back in my parents’ basement.

Down here in the basement I found a box of my old VHS tapes. They’re full of TV shows, movies, and music videos that I recorded when I was a kid back in the 80s. I’m hoping these tapes hold the key to getting my life back together. As I watch them, I’ll pull out the life lessons and post them here for you. Maybe you’re in a funk like me and need some life lessons, too. Or maybe you think I’m pathetic and reading about pathetic people makes you feel better about yourself. Hey, all are welcome!

Since I just lost my job to AI, I thought it would be fitting to start with a show about a guy with great hair who drives around in an AI-powered autonomous car. That’s right, we’re starting with Knight Rider. Here are the four career lessons I learned from Knight Rider.

Knight Rider Season 3 Episode 14: Junkyard Dog

1. There’s money in toxic waste

This episode can be summarized as: KITT gets thrown into an acid pit, recovers but loses his desire to kill, and then learns to love killing again. It’s just like the dad from Family Matters when he was a cop in Die Hard. Learning to love killing again is a timeless theme. It gives people hope.

The Boss Hogg of this episode is a toxic waste entrepreneur named “Acid” John Byrock. By complete coincidence, “Acid John” is what I once called my aunt’s toilet when I sat on it after she cleaned it with an abrasive agent. To this day I don’t trust toilets and I certainly don’t clean them. Don’t believe me? Ask my first wife.

You can tell “Acid” John Byrock is rich because he wears a fancy 80s suit and drives a big car. There are no horns on the front of his car, though, so he isn’t Boss Hogg rich, at least not yet. Maybe just one more toxic dump and he’ll get those horns.

How does Acid John make his money? No clue. We learn from a fake wildlife photographer (more on her later) that he sets up in a location, dumps toxic waste, and then when the law starts to catch up with him he moves on. Does Acid John’s company dispose of toxic waste for other companies? Do they produce something that results in toxic waste? Who cares? I want in. Show me the toxic money! At one point one of his trucks just dumps toxic waste on the side of the road. Come on, Acid John, there are much better places than that. Rivers. Ponds. Sinkholes. It’s as if the earth was made to hide toxic waste. Fine, I’ll dump it for you. Where’s my check?

While I’m counting my money, I’ll be thinking and praying about all of the animals that get hurt by the toxic waste, which leads us to…

2. You can be a wildlife photographer if you have a camera and a creepy van

A poorly drawn image of Michael watching as Fran tends to a sick cow.

Admit it. You have, at some point in your life, thought that you could be a photographer. Point and click, right? Just get a fancy Canon or Nikon and off you go. I have personal experience with this, and I can tell you it’s not that simple. My first wife was a photographer. Nude photography. I mean she was nude when she took the pictures. And she only had one client, a handsome guy who, for reasons I could never figure out, didn’t care for me at all.

In this episode, Michael first meets wildlife photographer Fran when she’s standing on the side of the road among cows and a lone bunny. She gives Michael a chance to show off his muscles by asking him to put a sick baby cow in the back of her creepy van. What’s she going to do with that baby cow? My guess is dinner. Wildlife photographers have to eat like the rest of us. Why does a wildlife photographer drive a van? Is she not actually a wildlife photographer and just using that as a front as she builds a case against the toxic polluter? I’m not sure. Mom came down and yelled at me during that part and I didn’t bother to rewind.

Do you have an eye for perspective? Have you ever looked at the Mona Lisa and thought She should scoot a few inches to the left? If you answered yes to any of these questions, and if you own a camera, then congratulations: you are a wildlife photographer…and the owner of a creepy van with a baby cow in the back.

Not into cameras and creepy vans? Don’t worry; Knight Rider has a career for you that pays better and requires no skills at all.

3. To be a scientist you just need a white coat and two head gestures

After KITT is destroyed in an acid bath, they decide to spare no expense and bring in the best idiots money can buy to fix him up. They’re wearing white lab coats, though, which makes everyone in the show think they know what they’re doing. They do not.

It’s clear from the first moment these happy morons appear that all they know how to do is make things light up. They treat KITT like he’s a Nintendo.

You can tell these white-coated soft-heads are fixing KITT because they’re getting these lights, which look like they fell off the Christmas tree in A Christmas Story, to go into KITT instead of coming out of him. Gag me with a spoon! Are those lights his blood? If he gets a cut, does a rainbow come out?

After KITT is “fixed”, not like your dog at the vet but in a more biblical sense, he goes out for a test drive. KITT handles the cones like a self-driving Tesla on a busy city street: poorly. The doctors then shake their heads. Brilliant move, Doc! Later, after Hasselhoff convinces KITT to kill again and KITT masters the driving course, they…wait…nod their heads. A+ for communication, fellows.

Look, I’m not trying to be a hater. I just want that job. Put me in a white lab coat and let me move lights around. With all of the video games I’ve played, it’s what I was born to do. I’ll show Mom those years I spent on my Atari were worth it.

If you’re an idiot who doesn’t like wearing white lab coats, then you’ll love this next job.

4. If you’re going to be an arsonist, be the best arsonist you can be

Still riding high from Top Gun and Iron Eagle (and Iron Eagle 2), I once told my high school guidance counselor that I wanted to fly jets in the Navy. After she stopped laughing, she told me I was qualified to be a “rock breaker” or a “human test subject”…she didn’t even mention arsonist. If only I had known then, who knows what I might have become?

In this episode, when “Acid Jeans” John decides it’s time to high-tail it on out of there, he hires an arsonist. And not just any arsonist, mind you. He hires the best arsonist in the country. And how do we know he’s an expert? At one point someone questions what he’s doing, and he reminds them that he’s a professional arsonist. He was hired to burn down…a toxic waste dump. Is that hard? Couldn’t he just light a match or, you know, just wait a while?

That settles it, then. I’m heading upstairs to tell Mom that my career is about to catch fire. Literally. You know, because of the arson.

And if none of those careers appeal to your sensibilities, then the bonus lesson is for you.

Bonus lesson: Chekhov’s sexy lady lips

There’s an old rule in 80s TV shows: if a good-looking woman with lips appears in the first act of the episode, those lips have to be locked with the main hunk’s lips by the end of the episode. This old nugget holds true in this episode. Fran the wildlife photographer has lips. So does Hasselhoff. And at the end of the episode, as KITT is mid-sentence, Fran and Hasselhoff start making out. Ooowwweeee! Hot hot hot!

And what, you may be wondering, does the magic talking AI car do when they start making out in front of him? He watches. He’s a voyeur. A creepy, lipless voyeur.

Signing off

And with that the tape goes back in the box. Who knows what other life lessons lie in these boxes of tapes? I hope there are more about arson.

I have to get going. Mom is drawing me a bath. I hope it isn’t an acid bath.

I’ll be back soon with more VHS wisdom. Until then, keep your hair big and your dreams bigger.