3289. ALF

ALF is an American science fiction sitcom that originally aired on NBC from 1986 to 1990, created by Paul Fusco. The title character was Gordon Shumway, a friendly extraterrestrial nicknamed ALF (an acronym for Alien Life Form), who crash lands in the garage of the suburban middle-class Tanner family.
The series stars Max Wright as father Willie Tanner, Anne Schedeen as mother Kate Tanner, and Andrea Elson and Benji Gregory as their children, Lynn and Brian Tanner. The character of ALF is portrayed by a live-hand puppet operated primarily by Paul Fusco.

Gordon Shumway is an alien nicknamed ALF (an acronym for Alien Life Form) by William Tanner in the pilot episode. ALF was born on October 28, 1756, on the Lower East Side of the planet Melmac. Melmac was located six parsecs past the Hydra-Centaurus Supercluster, and had a green sky, blue grass and a purple sun. The commonly-used currency is a "Wernick" (named after producer Sandy Wernick) which is equal to ten Earth dollars, and the substances Earthlings call lint, gravel, and foam are as precious on Melmac as gold is on Earth (whereas gold and platinum are so common that they are used in place of porcelain to make toilets and sinks, as seen in the episode where ALF sells the gold and platinum plumbing in his ship to buy a Ferrari for Lynn). ALF's body is covered with a ginger/rust-colored fur (he once described his color as burnt sienna). He has a rippled snout, facial moles, eight stomachs, his heart is apparently located in his head, and he likes to burp, eat cats, can whistle without opening his mouth and had a best friend on his home planet named Malhar Naik. He has a friend named Skip and a girlfriend named Rhonda, both of whom also escaped the explosion. He attended high school for 122 years and was captain of a Bouillabaisseball team (which is played on ice using shellfish as a ball).
ALF has an enormous appetite (eating everything he can get his hands on); he is also troublesome, sarcastic, slovenly and cynical, and sometimes he puts himself at the risk of being discovered while perpetrating some of his often-unintentional pranks. However, if things have gone too far, he does as much as possible to make up for his mistakes, generally with positive results. In one episode, he tried to help Brian, too afraid to perform, to gain confidence during a school show by giving him a "lucky tooth" which ALF claimed helped him be a star of the stage on Melmac. In another occasion, he helped Dorothy deal with Sparky's death and move on and accept Whizzer's friendship. After neighbor Raquel Ochmonek claims to see ALF and is ridiculed on a television show, ALF calls in to the TV show to defend her.
He has at least 30 relatives: cousins "Pretty Boy" Shumway and Blinky; two uncles, Tinkle and Goome; a Grandma Shumway; a brother Curtis; parents Bob and Flo Shumway; and aunts Bubba, Wagner, and Eugene. In a commercial for the NFL that ran during Super Bowl XLV on February 6, 2011, it was confirmed that ALF is a Carolina Panthers fan (though the team didn't exist during the show's run).