The Bizarre Truth Behind ALF Just Broke Me

Comments · 3.4K

• PL

  @PlayStonkers · 2 months ago

  Oddly enough, there's an episode of ALF all about him getting his own puppet and becoming more and more obsessed with it until he believes it's really alive and annoys the heck out of everyone around him. The Tanners ultimately hold an intervention for him and make him realize how unhealthy it is to keep the illusion and he finally lets it go. This is all in the first season as well and I'm not sure Fusco realized how much it was CLEARLY written about him.

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• EL

  @eliassmeke3991 · 2 months ago

  When Max Wright attacked the ALF puppet, he screamed ‘’PUT US ALL ON STICKS! WE’RE ALL PUPPETS!’’

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• PR

  @princessdollgf · 2 months ago

  The irony that he saw himself as above children’s puppeteering but got his show greenlit by pulling a booger gag at the pitch meeting.

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• FI

  @FinalGirlFox · 2 months ago

  What I find kinda sad is that Jim Henson achieved what Fusco was desperately pushing for. Everyone knows The Muppets are puppets, we can see things like Kermit's hand stick and the puppeteers, yet people still talk about them like they're real. Actors have said for years they would get so engrossed in the performance it was easy to forget their co-stars were made of felt. All he needed to do was make the puppet performance engaging.

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• LA

  @LadyFan05 · 2 months ago

  I like to think if Alf <b>had</b> been real, he would&apos;ve begged Fusco to let him out of the house.

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• UN

  @Unknowntyper · 2 months ago

  Literally no one, including my childhood friends ever thought that Alf was real. Even my little brothers everyone understood he was a damned puppet.

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• SA

  @sarahakin · 2 months ago

  I was a child in the 80s. We didn&apos;t know how it all worked, but we knew Alf wasn&apos;t real. I wasn&apos;t even aware of that conceit!!

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• BE

  @bennygerow · 2 months ago

  The man went full method as a puppeteer. You never go full method as a puppeteer.

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• BI

  @BingBong67489 · 2 months ago

  It&apos;s kind of funny to consider that Jim Henson technically also did the whole &quot;my puppets are actually actors&quot; thing, and even had them play themselves in a re-enactment of their life story when he did the Muppet Movie, but he never felt the need force everyone around him to act like Kermit is a real actor, to maintain the illusion at all times (because that would be, you know...insane). Instead he just wrote it that way in his stories, and had fun with it by having the characters break the fourth wall and go on talk shows and such, and everyone loved the idea so much that to this very day people still play along with the idea that Kermit and the other muppets are actually a wacky group of performers just trying to entertain people by putting on a good show.

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• NA

  @NashEsq · 2 months ago

  I watched it when it aired, had the doll and other merchandise, and this is the first time I have heard that the creator wanted everyone to think ALF was a real alien character. I can&apos;t recall anyone ever talking about ALF like that. It&apos;s insane that Fusco was obsessed with something that most people had no idea he was trying to do!

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• TH

  @TheoRae8289 · 2 months ago

  He really did not get that seeing the puppeteer was part of the charm. Seeing a legless Kermit on Jim&apos;s arm, and Jim&apos;s mouth moving, did not make the character of Kermit any less &quot;real&quot; to us.

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• SS

  @SsnakeBite · 2 months ago

  It&apos;s so weird that Fusco insisted that the show couldn&apos;t have sci-fi concepts because it would break the illusion that Alf was a real actor. But like... he&apos;s supposed to be a 250 years old extraterrestrial, that&apos;s a sci-fi concept to begin with, why would sci-fi tech and ideas change that?<br><br>Similarly, I don&apos;t really get the idea that Alf couldn&apos;t be out of the house because it would contradict him being on the run from the government. Yeah, you what else contradicts that idea? <i>Him being on a TV show.</i> And since it&apos;s supposed to be a fictionalised account of his life anyway, who cares if it takes liberties with the &quot;true&quot; story?<br><br>That&apos;s what really baffles me about this whole thing: even from the point of view of Fusco&apos;s bizarre obsession with maintaining the illusion, a lot of his decisions and arbitrary limitations don&apos;t make much sense.

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