There’s no shortage of otherworldly strangeness in Julio Torres’ new HBO series Fantasmas (as in, the show opens on a discussion at the Crayola factory about creating a clear crayon) but even so, one aspect of this bonkers new series takes the surreality to a whole new level. In fact, the scene was so bizarre that I found myself pausing and rewinding to figure out how it had happened. Did anyone else have “ALF parody starring Paul Dano” on their bingo cards?
In Fantasmas, Torres—the former Saturday Night Live writer behind such masterpieces as HBO’s Los Espookys and the comedy Problemista—plays a fictionalized version of himself. The series premiered on Friday night and sends Julio on a mission to find his lost oyster-shaped earring, even as the more practical aspects of his life start to crumble around him. One might think that a show like this would not concern itself with a dated sitcom from the 1980s, but nevertheless, the show’s ALF parody, titled MELF, plays soon after the opening scene. When Julio hitches a ride in the show’s Uber alternative called Chester—named after Chester, the person who drives the car—the driver insists that MELF (and only MELF) plays in the background.
At first, it seems as though we are watching the first episode of MELF, but gradually, it becomes clear that what’s unfolding on screen is more like an accelerated, montage-laden play-through of the show’s narrative arc. (One thing about Fantasmas: Do not try to watch it by multi-tasking, or you will quickly find yourself lost in the dada wackiness.) In the show-within-a-show, MELF—a lilac-colored alien with pink paws and face, from the planet MELF—crash-lands in the home of a suburban family of four. Paul Dano plays the patriarch, while GLOW alum Sunita Mani plays his doting wife. MELF loves cookies and spaghetti, and eventually, Dano’s character comes to love MELF to a degree that most would consider inappropriate.
Through montage, see this extraterrestrial homewrecker winning Dano’s character over with clandestine hook-ups and cuddle sessions until eventually, the jig is up. We cut to the future, when one of Dano’s children shows up at the home he now shares with MELF with a wedding invite. At first, the “step-MELF” is not invited to the wedding, but by the end, all is harmonious again.
… And then, we return to the car where Julio is sitting, and everything proceeds as normal.
Fantasmas is far from the first series to use disorienting cutaways for comedic effect, but the execution reflects the show’s overall ethos. Although the show does have a cohesive narrative—Julio’s increasingly farcical, anxiety-driven mission to recover the missing earring—its most memorable moments have little to do with plot at all. The series unfolds like a series of interlocking SNL sketches, each one infusing its world with a little more absurdism than the last. Bowen Yang plays a Christmas elf who is suing Santa Claus, while Princess Nokia and Kim Petras play mermaids for about 30 seconds. Julio’s Crayola meeting and cab-bound MELF screening feel like the perfect amuse bouche for the brilliant ridiculousness that lies ahead.
ALF references were all the rage in the mid-2000s, but it’s been a while since we’ve seen a proper riff. In 2014, the character “Smarf” in Adult Swim’s classic parody Too Many Cooks was an obvious throwback, and two years later, Mr. Robot dropped its own ’90s sitcom homage, which included a murderous ALF. Here, the use of MELF feels similarly designed to warp our nostalgia into something more sinister—if also, in this case, utterly silly.
Within the context of the show’s dystopian gaze, MELF might also have a deeper meaning to impart. Fantasmas’s vision of New York is downright dystopian, right down to the takeover of countless buildings to become corporatized housing. (Julio’s building, for example, is kicking out all tenants to become a “General Mills Café and Residencies.”) As a media property, MELF is the perfect poster child for that conglomerated inanity, and the critter’s presence so early on in the show signals both Fantasmas’s commitment to outlandishness and also its suspicious take on American capitalism. That said, I’ll also admit, that little guy is really cute in a disturbing, candy-coated doom kind of way.
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