"Alf: The Fuzzy Betrayal"

Few things in television history have been as unfair, cruel, and utterly unnecessary as the ending of Alf. The show that brought us a cynical, cat-eating, living-room philosopher alien ended with a scene that felt ripped from a Soviet bureaucratic nightmare: the military captures Alf and… that’s it. No joke. No rescue. No redemption. No hugs, no hopeful music, not even one last bite of cat. Just uniforms, helicopters, an ambush, and the dead silence of a TV network that had no idea how to end a series.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLBagvKv3ZU

For four seasons, we grew attached to that furry little guy from Melmac who had more personality than all the Tanners combined. Alf was insolent, charming, sarcastic, and clearly more human than most humans on Reagan-era television. And yet, after teaching us to laugh at domestic absurdity, they left him like E.T. — but without the bike, the glowing finger, or any damn escape plan. Who wrote that ending? An accountant from the network? A traumatized ex-military guy with a grudge against Jim Henson? A screenwriter who lost a bet? Was it a joke that just got left in?

The series finale aired in 1990 with a vague promise of continuation that never came (at least not as a series). What was supposed to be a cliffhanger turned into a narrative cliff-suicide. Alf, arrested by the government. The end. Done. Goodnight, kids. Humor, warmth, family satire, and B-grade sci-fi crushed under the boot of cancellation’s cruel logic.

But maybe the wildest part wasn’t even the ending itself — it was that someone at NBC thought this was fine. That you could leave millions of viewers hanging with an image of a handcuffed alien and no clue what the hell happened next. A family sitcom ending like The X-Files? Sure, why not. And to top it off, they rolled the credits like nothing had happened. Just another day at the office. Because, hey, if anything, the network had a twisted sense of humor. Or just sadism.

And that’s how Alf ended. As if a cat had written it in revenge. As if the Tanners had finally said, “You know what? We’re tired of hiding you. Let them take you.” As if the universe wanted to punish an entire generation with the existential dread of not knowing what happened to the most lovable alien of the ’80s. Spoiler: no one knows. Because no one cared enough to finish it properly.

Did you want one last laugh, a tear, or a classic Melmac joke? Too bad. You got a capture net and a fade to black. And still, decades later, we’re talking about it. Maybe because Alf, even in his most tragic final moment, managed to survive in our minds — alone, locked up, probably cracking sarcastic jokes in some secret military base, waiting for someone to write the ending he actually deserved.

P.S. The Ending After the Ending

Years after the brutal, unresolved series finale, someone at NBC — possibly guilty or just bored — decided to stitch the wound shut with a made-for-TV movie: Project ALF (1996). The result felt like trying to fix a broken leg with a Looney Tunes Band-Aid. The story picks up with Alf in a military base, a prisoner subjected to tests, with more budget for uniforms than for writing. No member of the Tanner family appears, not even a proper mention of their fate, as if the previous four seasons were just Alf's fever dream.

Instead, we get new, bland characters and a comedic tone that mixes cheap sci-fi with jokes that would embarrass a bad episode of That '80s Show. The movie tried to redeem Alf, show him escaping, prove he was still the same lovable cynic — but only succeeded in proving that everything that made the original series special — the dysfunctional family, the suburban living room, the alien trying to fit in with a stand-up comedian’s soul — was long gone. The only thing the film achieved was making us miss the Tanners more, and confirming that maybe, just maybe, Alf was better off in that cell, silent, reminiscing about better days, and wondering how everything went so, so wrong.

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