To my surprise, I could only locate one -- a very informative page done by a guy named Fred Ochs. Even worse, that page was reduced to compressed files on a "mirror site", with the original author being nowhere to be found.
A 9-year-running sitcom deserved better than that. I took it upon myself to reconstruct Fred's Alice page, also adding some elements of my own.
That was about 8 years ago. Since then, I decided to do another search for Alice pages. I found that Mr. Ochs did indeed bring back his page, but it's full of broken links, and doesn't seem to be actively maintained. Therefore, I will leave his valuable material up here until it becomes easily available on his own site again. As I mentioned earlier, not all of this site's material is from Fred's page, as I have added to it since finding his stuff.
Alice is no longer on E!, and it's not on any cable or broadcast TV station that I know of. Furthermore, it is not available on DVD (as of today's date, 1/26/05), and I don't have any tapes of it. I'm sure it will pop up somewhere like TBS or TV Land eventually.
Why my affinity towards Alice? The answer is simple: The show did a great job at combining humor, levity, and harsh reality. Most sitcoms suffer from the "happy ending syndrome", in which not only do all problems get solved by the end of the half-hour, but all wrongs get righted. It's never acceptable for a character to go through an entire episode as a "bad example" to the viewing public. He or she always realizes the error of his/her ways by the conclusion of the program. "Alice" was frequently different in this manner.
When the girls would realize that they're underpaid, they'd hit stingy Mel up for a raise. Most sitcoms would follow the formula of an initial conflict over the raise, followed by Mel feeling guilt for underpaying his employees, and all of the waittresses getting raises. Not on Alice. It wouldn't be surprising to see the niggardly Mel worm his way out of giving the girls raises for yet another episode, and feeling no remorse about his selfish ways. Depressing? Only if you watch TV to substitute for your own life's failures. Alice's plots mostly solve themselves by the end, but not always in the manner you'd expect. In the episode where Flo goes to night school to finally get her high school diploma, it's almost shocking to see the show concluding with flow ditching her studies to go on a date. Sitcoms of today would never attempt such a politically-incorrect manuever. Hollywood usually feels that it has to teach the "stupid" public morality lessons with television and movie characters. It's refreshing to watch a show where the characters' actions are more true to life -- with, of course, a good deal of levity and humor thrown in for good measure.
Alice was also written well, with many unique stories and biting humor. The characters aren't afraid to jab harsh insults at one another. However, you come away with the clear feeling that, despite the many exchanged barbed words, everyone on the show truly cares for and protects one another. There's no phony sweetness on this program, which makes the "bonding" moments between the characters that much more satisfying.
The show ran for 9 years (1976-1985), and its theme song was always sung by star Linda Lavin (Alice). The show was a spinoff from the 1974 theatrical movie "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore", starring Ellen Burstyn. From the movie, only two cast members appeared on the TV show. Vic Tayback, who played Mel in the movie, reprised his role in the TV show. Diane Ladd, who played Flo in the movie, came back as "Belle" in the TV show after TV's Flo (Polly Holliday) left for her own spinoff. Also, the car seen at the beginning of the TV show's theme song (in the first picture above) was a scene from the movie.
The following additional details can be found on this page:
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