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YMMV / Alice (1976)

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  • Adaptation Displacement: Few people today are aware that the show was based on a movie (and a Martin Scorsese movie, at that).
    • Vic Tayback (Mel) was the lone actor to make the transition, although Diane Ladd (Flo in the movie) eventually joined the series as an entirely different character (Belle).
  • Growing the Beard: The first dozen episodes were almost an attempt to recycle All in the Family in a Phoenix diner (with the notable exception of "The Last Review"). The characters were more serious, and almost every single episode was a Very Special Episode dealing with a finger-wagging moral of the day.
    • For example, one episode dealt with Sex Education, the teacher being portrayed by Adam West. Mel Sharples, in a stunning example of Early-Installment Weirdness, was very much opposed - in that one episode being portrayed as a religious conservative. He even bemoaned the end of school prayer.
    • About the fifteenth episode, "The Accident," the series turns definitively to screwball comedy. This move was solidified in the second season, when I Love Lucy writers Madelyn Pugh and Bob Carroll Jr. were brought in as producers. Regular customers Henry Beesmeyer and Earl Hicks were added to bring even more humour to the series. Finally, Mel himself went through some Flanderization to become laughably cheap and short-tempered.
  • Magnificent Bastard: "Jolene Lets the Cat out of the Bag")- Roger Harris is the neighbor and new boyfriend of Jolene, apparently protecting her from a local cat burglar robbing apartments. In truth, Roger himself is the criminal, having a years-long career of crime in which he has made fortunes for himself through "expertise, intelligence, and a modicum of good taste." Roger takes Jolene and her friends at gunpoint to rob them all, being immensely affable and accommodating even while threatening them, and continues to rob various strangers who stumble into the apartment, expressing his pride in being a successful breed of criminal and not a common crook. Promising Jolene that he genuinely cared for her and even offering her a chance to run away with him, Roger nearly escapes scot-free, intending to scale down the side of the building just to delight the excitable Vera.
  • Memetic Mutation: Flo's catchphrase "Kiss my Grits!"

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