What Happened on the Last Episode of ‘ALF’? Did ALF Ever Get Back to His Home Planet?
ALF was a major hit when it debuted in 1986, running for four seasons and 99 episodes on NBC. But while you might remember the wise-cracking, cat-eating alien who moved in with the suburban Tanner family, you likely don’t remember how the series ended — or whether ALF ever made it home.
Why did ALF get canceled?
Everett Collection
Debuting on NBC on September 22, 1896, ALF started off hot, with the cat-hungry alien quickly becoming a household name. Adults enjoyed the show’s farcical comedy, while kids gravitated towards the plethora of toys, T-shirts, lunchboxes and other merchandise licensed with the alien’s cuddly likeness. So what happened?
Depending on who you ask, there were lots of reasons why the show was destined to end almost as soon as it got started. For starters, ALF’s work schedule was much more exhausting for cast and crew than the usual sitcom, due to the fact that its star was a puppet. ALF was primarily played by show co-creator Paul Fusco, who voiced the character and operated the puppet; in full-body shots, ALF was portrayed by the 2 foot 9 inch Mihaly “Michu” Meszaros. In either scenario, working with a puppet made shooting scenes longer and more complex, routinely resulting in 18 hour work days.
Max Wright, who played family patriarch Willie Tanner, was left particularly disheartened by the situation. A trained theater actor, Wright resented sharing the screen with a puppet, and at once point said he was “hugely eager to have ALF over with.” After the show’s final scene shot, he supposedly left the set without a word of goodbye.
Anne Schedeen, who played mother Kate, referred to the set as a “technical nightmare” and said “If you had a scene with ALF, it took centuries. A 30-minute show took 20, 25 hours to shoot.”
Alien Productions/Courtesy: Everett Collection
But in the end, the series’ ultimate fate may have been dictated by its own premise, as a show based around an alien who remained hidden in a family’s home meant that opportunities for fresh scenery, characters or plots were hard to come by. In short, the show grew stale, ratings declined, and the show’s Season 4 cliffhanger finale in 1990 became its last episode.
What happened in the final episode of ALF?
“Consider Me Gone,” the final episode of ALF , originally aired on March 24, 1990. The episode was written as the first part of a cliffhanger, designed to keep fans interested enough to tune in for the story’s conclusion when the show returned for a fifth season (which obviously never happened).
This episode is a big swing in ALF’s life, as the alien’s goofing off with Willie’s short-wave radio leads to an unexpected twist: a signal from natives of his long-destroyed home planet of Melmac. It turns out that a rescue ship is heading his way to pick him up (and hopefully evade the watchful eyes of the Alien Task Force in the process.)
Emotions are overflowing, as the Tanners and ALF share memories and express their affection for each other during one final family pow-wow. Then, the time arrives for ALF’s happy ending (or so we think). The family loads their furry friend’s belongings into the station wagon and head off to the location where the pick-up is scheduled to take place.
Unfortunately, it turns out that ALF wasn’t the only one receiving those radio transmissions. Instead, the Alien Task Force (including Richard Fancy, better known as Mr. Lippman from Seinfeld) have been secretly listening the entire time, and are waiting to ambush the entire operation.
Alien Productions/Courtesy: Everett Collection
Remember that expected happy ending? Yeah, that didn’t happen. Instead, the ATF attack, spooking the Melmac ship into a hasty retreat. Now surrounded with no escape in sight, ALF utters his final lines of the series in one last attempt to break the tension
“You wanna grab a brewski? What about those Lakers, huh? Just my luck. Not a sports fan among you.”
And just like that, ALF was over.
Project: ALF the movie offers fans closure
Alien Prod./Courtesy: Everett Collection
Almost six years later, ALF fans finally got the conclusion they’d been pining for since the show’s de facto finale. The final chapter came in the form of Project: ALF, a made-for-TV movie broadcast on February 17, 1996.
The movie began exactly where the series ended, with ALF being taken in by the ATF. During the two-hour extravaganza, our favorite alien manages to escape Edmonds Air Force Base, accidentally visits a strip club called “The Kitty Kat Lounge” (falsely assuming they served cats for dinner, of course), foils the evil plans of rogue Colonel Gilbert Milfoil, and earns the title of “Ambassador to Earth” from the U.S. government.
Both ALF and Project: ALF are available on a variety of streaming services. You can watch ALF on TV on LAFF. Check them out for a good laugh (and a healthy dose of cat-as-food jokes!)
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March 2021
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