In the fall of 1986, among NBC's new shows was a kid-friendly sitcom called ALF. The show revolved around a furry, wisecracking, but good-hearted alien who crash lands into the garage of a typical suburban family, and ends up moving in with them. Critics were largely dismissive of the show, and players in proto versions of the Cancellation League confidently predicted it would be one of the first casualties of the new season. Instead, ALF proved to be a moderate hit, before becoming a monster hit in Season 2, ending up in the year's Top 10.
Only two years later, however, ratings, while still respectable, had fallen off dramatically. Paul Fusco, the show's creator/showrunner/lead puppeteer/voice of ALF, assumed that the show would be renewed for a fifth season, and ended the fourth with a dramatic cliffhanger. However, NBC surprisingly pulled the plug, leaving said cliffhanger unresolved. That proved rather awkward, because NBC had already signed Fusco to use his puppetry skills to create a new ALF-free Christmas special to air that holiday season.
Unlike ALF, which for the most part had only one puppet, A Very Retail Christmas would have multiple puppets, playing Santa's elves. There would also be human actors, with the role of the lead villain going to Ed O'Neill, starring at the time on Fox's raunchy hit sitcom Married...With Children. O'Neill played Max Crandell, a toymaker proud of his wantonly unsafe toys (as he brags to an underling, "Kids want something even more if their parents say they can't have it"). He has a scheme to take over Christmas, by using a troll who has infiltrated the elf ranks to convince the actual elves that Santa is considering layoffs, but Crandell is hiring. Of course, Santa, once he figures out what's going on, comes in to save the day, with the help of another character from another Christmas story (played by Christopher Hewitt, whose own long-running sitcom, Mr. Belvedere, had also ended the previous spring), who even Santa (played by Chuck McCann, best known for his voice-over work in animation) was surprised to see show up. Fusco voiced two of the puppet elves, the evil traitor troll, and another troll nervous about his job security. Meanwhile, veteran voice-over performer June Foray played a female elf, and Simpsons composer Alf Clausen contributed the special's very nice score.
Early publicity for the special, including some guides to holiday programming that were printed in late November, pegged the premiere date for the special to be Saturday, December 8, in a timeslot between Amen and The Golden Girls. Instead, when that day rolled around, the slot was filled by its usual occupent, the short-lived sitcom The Fanelli Boys, and the speical didn't make its debut until the night of Chirstmas Eve.
By 1990, the networks had figured out that Christmas Eve was one of the least-watched nights of the year, and subsequently, all the other programming that night was reruns. The special was placed between an old Fresh Prince of Bel Air and a repeat of a 1986 TV movie, approprately named Christmas Eve. Despite being the only new show that night, it still finished as the lowest-rated program of the evening. Needless to say, NBC didn't bring it back in 1991.
So what happened to cause NBC to give the special such a lousy time slot? I don't know, as no contemporary source explains the reasoning. One of the reviews of the special (there were some, and most of them were mildly to very positive) speculated that it was put on Christmas Eve to keep advertisers happy, as its message that Christmas is about love and giving, not presents, wouldn't be delivered until virtually all Christmas shopping was over. Maybe, but Crandell (and O'Neill's performance of him) is such a cartoon that I don't think anyone could take him seriously. Besides, How the Grinch Stole Christmas and A Charlie Brown Christmas both had more potent anti-commercialism messages, and those had aired for years in the middle of December.
Whatever the reason, it didn't seem to damage Fusco's relationship with the network too badly, as the following fall, he had a hybrid animation/puppetry Saturday morning series, Space Cats, for the network. After that ended after one season, he has largely spent the next thirty years reviving ALF in various forms. A 1996 TV movie (which aired on ABC) resolved the cliffhanger (albeit with none of the show's human cast), and ALF would go on to appear in commercials, on guest starring roles, at NBC's 75th anniversary special in 2002, and even get his own short-lived talk show at one point. More recently, ALF popped up on an episode of Young Sheldon and on the animated Duncanville.
A Very Retail Christmas is rather undeniably an oddball of a special, and it's anti-commercialism satire is pretty soft (and, I should point out, the mild jabs at various aspects of pop culture circa 1990 aren't very funny). Still, it probably deserved better than its one isolated showing.
Next time: Beary Christmas!
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