Tequila

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Tequila is the twenty-fourth episode of ALF's second season. It originally aired on March 28, 1988.

Plot

The episode starts out with Kate preparing for a visit from her old college roommates and ALF and Lynn are polishing the silver. Lynn doesn’t want to do this, and will take any release she can get. The same tired jokes coming out of the same tired alien represent a small escape and she laughs at every single one of them. Then Willie and Brian come home with groceries, and Willie screams at his wife to drop whatever she’s doing and come open the door for him.

ALF wrote on the wall and said WELCOME DORM QUEENS. Kate’s gasp of horror when she notices this rings false. Instantly a wealth of ideas present themselves as alternative solutions, especially since the groceries just arrived and she hasn’t even started preparing dinner. There’s some crayon on the wall and she married a worthless piece who gives up after five seconds of caressing it with a damp sponge. Kate calls her pals and arranges to meet them at a restaurant on their old campus. She calls home to tell Willie that a friend will be spending the night. As soon as the other two depart, Kate starts telling Maura how proud they all are of her, and of what she’s accomplished, and it sounds so desperately supportive that the same take of this line could play over a scene of talking Maura down from a tall building. Maura begins to cry, and Kate believably doesn’t know how to handle it. On the phone, ALF climbs a ladder with a bucket of paint so that the ladder can fall over and the paint can ruin the couch. Here, Maura assumes ALF is someone named Sammy and invites him to have a drink.

Later, Willie and Kate hear ALF stumbling drunkenly around the house. Maura tells ALF — who she still thinks is Sammy — that he shows up whenever she drinks, arriving around the third margarita and leaving sometime during her blackout. ALF comes into the room and they all talk how much he needs to barf. Willie remembers that in college, they sued to call Maura “Boilermaker”. Maura starts crying again and Willie guides Lynn out of the room in the first human gesture. Kate confronts Maura about her drinking problem. Kate gently asks her how much she drank, leading the conversation without being confrontational. Maura defends herself by saying she’s under a lot of stress and is fighting with her husband. ALF appeals to Maura’s sadness and desperation, and gets her to admit she has a problem. When Kate allows herself to understand that Maura has a problem, she is finally ready to help Maura with that problem.

At the end, ALF has a letter arriving from Maura, who assures the Tanners that even though she will never be seen again, she’s doing great and will be forever. Kate thanks ALF and tells him that they owe him “a big one.” Because he explicitly disobeyed their orders by skulking around the house the night they had a guest sleeping in the living room, and then rudely interrupted a very serious conversation Kate was having with a fragile and desperate woman.

Title Reference

"Tequila" was a 1958 song by The Champs.

Trivia

• ALF originally wanted to drink beer in the pilot episode. However, he is against beer now that he knows of the negative effects of alcohol.