THIRD ROCK FROM THE SUN
Season 4

They live amongst us

Doctor Solomon's Traveling Alien Show

The missing Harry is located at a travelling carnival, the continuous threats being broadcast by the Big Giant Head forming the core of his act. With Dick's higher brain functions being shut down in reprisal for the lack of a status report, Harry has to choose between family and stardom.

3rd ROCK FROM THE SUN is back for a fourth season and nothing much has changed. Admittedly, it's the concluding part of the previous story, but there's not a lot going on that wasn't before.

Power Mad Dick

The new Dean of the faculty is announced and it is Mary Albright. Dick immediately assumes that power to be his own and fires Lucy, his nemesis from the canteen. When she files a lawsuit, Dick has to find some way to apologise. Meanwhile, Sally decides to lose her virginity to Don.

Forget the Dick story, the real story here is about Don and Sally. The unconventional approach of the family towards the loss of virginity is funny enough, but the rest is pretty dull.

Feelin Albright

Sally freaks out when she finds that Don has relationships before her and sets about tracking down all his old girlfriends in order ot assure herself that she is hotter than all of them. Dick, meanwhile, realises that his future is that of Dean Albright's wife.

Sally is pretty scary when she gets her obssession thing going, but it is Don's reaction to suddenly being confronted with all his past liaisons that makes this episode.

Collect Call for Dick

Whilst eating in the local fast food joint, Sally and Dick get caught by the collector's bug when they encounter the awesomely collectible 'fuzzy buddies'. What proves to be harmless for most people turns into a dangerous addiction for Dick.

Strangely flat and not very funny on any level until the very last few minutes where the drug addiction spoof kicks in.

What s Love Got to Do, Got to Do With Dick

As Dean, Mary has much less time for Dick, making him feel lonely and rejected. Then a new professor moves in to share his office and he learns that there is more to love than just one woman.

Laurie Metcalfe, one time sister on the Roseanne show, plays a professor in comparative literature, but there is very little else to take the attention here.

I am Dick Pentameter

The best title of a show ever. Dick grows closer to his new office mate Jennifer only to find that she is possibly the most annoying woman alive. However, having already broken up with Mary, Dick is left with little choice.

The danger with having a character who is inherently annoying is that they will also annoy the audience. That doesn't actually happen here, but there is not much else to be pleased about. The continual rhyming loses its charm for us at about the same time it does for Dick.

D3: Judgement Day

When he realises that Mary is torn up by seeing him with Jennifer, he plots to use this as a tool to make her beg him to come back. Sally, meanwhile, misunderstands the rules of bowling.

The last in the love triangle trilogy, there is not a whole lot more here to be delighted about than in the other two. This is looking more and more like a show that has lost its way.

Indecent Dick

Rutherford plays host to Playpen magazine and Sally decides to pose naked for them. This reveals a dark secret from Mary's past. Harry decides to try the whole naked thing in the house and Tommy finds a new girl to be interested in.

This is the best 3rd ROCK FROM THE SUN for a long time, but then nudity and the attitudes to it are easy meat. The highlight, though, is Harry wandering around naked, the show's rating only being preserved by some carefully placed objects. It's an old joke, but it still works. His cooking bacon naked scene is very funny, but boy is French Stewart thin.

Happy New Dick

A new year is about to dawn and Dick realises that he has acheived precisely nothing in the old one. In a fit of depression, he manages to ruin Mary's fondue party. Sally, on the other hand, ruins her relationship with Don by being too nakedly manipulative.

A self-pitying Dick is no fun at all and there's not a lot else to to save this episode from mediocrity. There is a touch of sweetness about the ending, though.

Two-faced Dick

In response to an old request of Sally's asking not to be the girl, the big giant head swaps Dick and Sally's bodies. This makes continuing the relationships with Don and Mary all the more difficult.

This is a fun situation and it's great to watch John Lithgow and Kristen Johnston imitate each other's styles. There's also a lot of fun to be had with the reactions to the characters having to contemplate getting intimate with a member of the same sex (sort of).

Dick Solomon of the Indiana Solomons

When Dick receives an invitation to a family reunion meant for someone else, he decides to go and investigate the significance of wider family ties. What he finds is a family that doesn't want him to be part of it.

Families - you have to love 'em even when you hate 'em. This is an OK episode that benefits mostly from Tommy's ill-advised attempts to get it on with his cousin.

Dick and Taxes

Dick gets to learn all about the IRS when he realises that the has to complete a tax return. When he fixes it so that the government owes him $300,000 they decide to do an audit and it seems likely that the family's secret will finally become known.

Another mediocre episode, although anyone who has ever had to fill out a tax return will no doubt be able to identify with Dick's frustration.

Sally Forth

When Sally gets fed up living in a dump with three guys, she makes some comments that convince Don that she wants him to propose to her. When Mary talks him into it, Sally's reticence puts their relationship in jeopardy.

A really great title and the episode tries to live up to it. Sally's dilemma over getting married is more real than anything that's happened in the show in a while. Don's method of proposing is really quite sweet and romantic whilst the break up is sad and touching. Times like these make you wish that the show could be a bit more restrained and less strident because when it is it proves to be a whole lot better.

Paranoid Dick

When Mary misses a memo that makes her miss a meeting and the Chancellor tells her not to worry about the summer, Dick's suspicions are aroused and he believes that her position as Dean is in danger. He talks her into breaking into a colleagues office and thus is born the 'Marygate' scandal.

Following the much better Sally Forth, things are back to normal (ie loud, frenetic, non-too-subtle and less funny) in this episode, which has nothing much to mark it out from the others in an increasingly disappointing fourth season.

The House That Dick Built

Sally decides that she needs her own space and moves out into a room over the garage. Harry and Vicki Dubchek decide to have a baby together. Dick panics over the splitting up of the family and determines to scare Sally so badly that she will move back in.

Vicki's baby dream at the start of this episode is deeply disturbing (and poorly realised), but proves to be one of the few funny things about this episode.

Superstitious Dick

Dick has applied for a major research grant when he receives a chain letter. Mary throws hers away and suffers a run of outrageous bad luck. In the meantime, Vicki takes Sally to a riverboat to get her over her split with Don.

Seeing Mary in steadily increasing swathes of bandages is the only amusing thing about an episode that shows its characters in a less than sympathetic light.

Y2Dick

When Dick is called computer illiterate, he forces himself to confront the computer age and delights in it so much that he removes himself completely from the real world to the point of giving his lectures over the internet. Sally and Tommy get caught up in the video age and set about creating the ultimate home entertainment system.

The dangers of the internet are there to be seen in this slice of overexaggerated nonsense. It's easy to see how anyone could get swept up in the desire for the better TV. It's not really all that funny though.

Dick the Mouth Solomon

Sally takes up with an italian american who glories in the nickname 'The Butcher'. Tommy thinks he's in with the wiseguys and takes up the monicker 'The Nephew'. Mary forces Dick to go to a couples' retreat to work on their communicating, but then finds that she is the one being targeted for her ways rather than Dick.

At last, another episode to get enthusiastic about. Forget the couples' retreat plotline, the glory here is in the way that Sally and Tommy take on the guises of characters in a really bad mobster film. Kristen Johnson and Joseph Gordon Levitt put on glorious accents and overact the mobster and moll for all they are worth and it is wonderful. If only all the episodes could be this good.

Citizen Solomon

Dick and the boys hire a maid to take up the cleaning chores that Sally no longer does since she moved out. Sally fears that she is losing her place in the family. Tommy is made editor of the school newspaper only to find that his ex-girlfriend August is one of the staff.

Back to mediocrity again as another story goes by without raising anything above the ordinary couple of wry smiles and odd almost-laugh.

Alien Hunter

A woman and her son show up in Dick's class. Then she shows up in his office to take him to lunch. Then she shows his family how to organise Dick's not very surprise birthday party. She then cancels the party and announces that she is going to cut Dick's head open because he is an alien and she wants the transmitter that is inside him.

Kathy Bates is the guest star in this episode as the alien hunter, but it's a curiously low key effort. Threatening she can do without really trying, but this kind of broad comedy seems to be a bit beyond her. It could just be that the script gives her nothing to work with, something that the rest of the cast is used to. The fact that her son is mentally challenged to adds a bitter aftertaste to it all.

Dick vs Strudwick

Professor Strudwick is a colleague and rival of Dick's, so when he writes a book that makes him a physics superstar, Dick in incensed. He's also frustrated because he can't write a better book for fear of revealing his true identity. Then he learns that Tommy is dating Strudwick's daughter and turns to more personal methods of revenge.

Another ho-hum episode that leaves you wondering why you even liked this show in the first place. The heady days of the first season have been left far behind.

Near Dick Experience

When Sally, Tommy and Harry are nearly crushed in an accident, they discover a new reverence for life that Dick is desperate to share. Whilst he is searching for new ways to risk his neck, they soon find that being changed human beings is, in fact, very hard to keep up.

It would be nice to report that this episode is a step up from the others of this season, but it isn't. Unmemorable is singing its praises.

Dick's Giant Big Headache - Part 1

The Big Giant Head announces that he s visiting the Solomons to take them to task for poor performance and shows up in the shape of a fat, drunken boor. Apart from drinking and public urination, he demotes Dick and makes Sally the High Commander.

What could have turned the whole series around just turns into another lacklustre episode that relies on the stunt casting of William Shatner as the Big Giant Head to give it some attraction. It's a big shock seeing him for those who only know him from the STAR TREK TV show, but he fits the part of the drunken boor distressingly well.

Dick's Giant Big Headache - Part 2

It's prom time and Tommy takes his new girlfriend. He also has to take the Big Giant Head who uses the event to take advantage of Vicki Dubchek. He only leaves when she announces that she is pregnant and the pregnancy lasts for about twenty minutes. The question is, what is going to come out?

There's a real sense of desperation about this final episode. With a show that's floundering about all over the place, introducing a plot that brings a baby into the equation just speaks of panic. It might be just as well if they left the show here.