Aliens in the Family was a TGiF sitcom that aired on ABC for eight episodes in 1996.
Doug Brody (John Bedford Lloyd), a single father from Earth, is abducted by Cookie (Margaret Trigg), a single mother from space. They immediately fall in love with each other and get married.
This show provides examples of:
- 555: The Brodys' phone number is 555-9347.
- Abhorrent Admirer: When the Elders visit Earth, one of them tries to seduce Sally. Since he's a tiny reptilian creature, she's not interested in him at all.
- Alien Abduction: Cookie was abducting Doug when they fell in love. In one episode, Doug invites his business acquaintance Carl and his wife Holly over for dinner. Cookie recognizes Holly as a previous abduction victim.
- Alien Among Us: Cookie and her three children live on Earth and adapt pretty well into human society.
- Alien Hair: Spit has spikes growing out of his head instead of hair.
- Animated Credits Opening: The intro is a short cartoon of Cookie abducting Doug and falling in love with him.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Doug wants a promotion. When he gets one, he's too busy working to spend time with his family.
- Bizarre Alien Biology: Spit can open up his head and show his brain to people. Later, he pulls his organs out of his mouth. In one episode, alien DNA from a hairbrush and a washcloth can temporarily alter Heather's DNA.
- Blended Family Drama: Heather and her alien stepsiblings don't get along very well.
- Brainy Baby: Bobut is a baby from a species with superhuman intelligence. When Sally tries to teach him the alphabet, he gets very annoyed and points out how he already knows how to read in multiple languages.
- Buttmonkey: Sally is a nanny who takes care of the super intelligent Bobut and who constantly gets his by his lasers.
- Came Back Wrong: Snizzy brings a dead frog back to life, but it becomes a gigantic monster.
- Class Pet: Adam brings a frog from his class home, but the frog jumps into a hot pot full of pudding.
- Diet Episode: One episode has Sally not letting the overweight Bobut eat pudding.
- Double Aesop: One episode has Doug and Spit both learning to be themselves and not do things just to impress others. Spit notices how odd it is for both of them to have the same problem at the same time.
- Double Standard: Rape, Sci-Fi:
- When Holly decides to divorce Carl, Doug and Bobut try to stop her by hypnotizing her into loving Carl forever. The only reason Cookie opposes this plan is because Holly is her friend. Bobut accidentally hypnotizes Carl's housekeeper instead of Holly, so she ends up marrying Carl. Nobody sees anything wrong with this.
- Averted in another episode. When Bobut hypnotizes men into loving Sally, she tells Bobut that she doesn't want to be in a relationship with any man without his consent.
- Enfant Terrible: Downplayed with Bobut. He's more immature and selfish than evil, but he's also super intelligent and can do things normal babies can't do.
- Exorcist Head: Bobut does this when pretending to be sick.
- Extreme Omnivore: This applies to all the aliens. Some of the things they eat are toasters, paper products, and shampoo.
- Fictional Holiday: Spit doesn't want to get in trouble for eating his own homework, so he lies to everyone and says he didn't do his homework because he was getting ready for an alien holiday called Tweeznax.
- Getting Eaten Is Harmless: After Heather's boyfriend gets eaten alive by the family pet, Doug and Spit pull him out and he's fine.
- Hollywood Board Games: Brainy Baby Bobut is a downplayed Enfant Terrible — arrogant because of his superior intelligence and very bratty. He generally beats everyone's asses when they play Scrabble, however, his attitude problems are brought to the forefront when he Rage Quits because he can't use proper nouns in the game. It's as hilarious as it's frustrating, much like Bobut himself.
- Good Parents: Doug and Cookie are good parents to all their kids.
- Hair Substitute Feature: Spit has spikes growing out of his head instead of hair.
- Humanoid Aliens: Spit, Snizzy, and Bobut are aliens with huge heads and eyes that protrude from the sides of their heads.
- Hypno Ray: Bobut uses one to make Doug's boss give him a promotion.
- Improbably High I.Q.: According to Adam, Cookie has an IQ of 5000.
- Incredible Shrinking Man: One of Snizzy's experiments causes Heather to shrink.
- Interspecies Romance: Doug is an ordinary human and his wife Cookie is an interstellar scientist.
- Job-Stealing Robot: After Cookie gets a job and wants to build robots to increase productivity, the president of the company decides to fire all the employees and replace them with robots.
- A Match Made in Stockholm: Cookie and Doug fell in love with each other after she abducted him. They occasionally reminisce about it.
- Meet Cute: Bobut makes Sally fall into a fountain so a man can help her and fall in love.
- Mega-Microbes: When Spit is sick, he sneezes out some germs that are the size of baseballs. The have faces and can talk.
- Morally Superior Copy: When Bobut runs away, he uses one of Snizzy's inventions to create a duplicate that's nicer than the original. Eventually, everyone realizes something is wrong because the new Bobut is way too nice.
- My Brain Is Big: Spit, Snizzy, and Bobut have huge heads.
- Nuclear Mutant: Snizzy uses plutonium to bring a dead frog back to life, but it becomes a giant monster that eats people.
- Omnidisciplinary Scientist: Cookie is a biologist who's also a genius with computers and robots.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: Cookie is just a nickname; her actual name is unpronounceable by humans.
- Pardon My Klingon: In one episode, Spit calls Bobut a garch.
- Picture Day: Heather gets a zit on her forehead right before picture day and wants Snizzy to get rid of it.
- Playing Sick: When Cookie gets a job, Bobut pretends to be sick to make her stay home.
- Rage Quit: When Bobut can't use a word in Scrabble because it's a proper noun, he flips over the board.
- Rise of Zitboy: One episode involves Heather having a zit on her forehead.
- Rubber-Forehead Aliens: Cookie looks mostly human, but she has blue ridges on the sides of her head.
- Shout-Out:
- In "Cookie Makes Some Dough", Heather ends up shrinking from Snizzy's zit remover. She complains that now that she's ten inches tall, she'll never have a boyfriend. Snizzy quips, "We could always fix you up with Mr. Conductor from Shining Time Station."
- The episode title "A Very Brody Tweeznax" is a reference to A Very Brady Christmas.
- Spotlight-Stealing Squad: Bobut the baby gets more attention than the other kids.
- Super-Strength: Heather briefly has super strength thanks to one of Snizzy's concoctions.
- Sweet Tooth: Bobut is obsessed with pudding.
- Teacher/Student Romance: Sally apparently dated her math teacher in high school.
- Technicolor Science: When Snizzy tries to bring a dead frog back to life, she uses plutonium. The plutonium has a yellowish-green glow.
- Trial by Combat: When the Elders want to take Bobut, Doug has to defeat one of them in a sword fight to keep custody. Snizzy questions the wisdom of this, but is ignored.
- The Unpronounceable: Humans can't pronounce Cookie's actual name, so Doug just calls her Cookie.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Nobody on Earth is phased by the presence of aliens.
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Bobut is terrified of clowns. When a photographer dressed up as a clown tries to take his picture, he zaps him with a laser.
- Workaholic: As soon as Doug gets promoted, he's too busy to spend time with his kids.
