3rd Rock from the Sun

1996 - 2001

This whacky comedy follows a group of aliens from a race of "quivering purple tubes," who pose as a human family on earth to study its people and culture.

Stars: John Lithgow, Kristen Johnston, French Stewart, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jane Curtin, Simbi Kali, Elmarie Wendel, Wayne Knight, Chris Hogan, John Cleese
Created by: Bonnie Turner, Terry Turner
Tags: scifi/fantasy

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Episode Tropes

Season 1

Teen Queen: Episode 3, "Dick's First Birthday" (1996). When Dick finds out that humans have birthdays and keep track of their ages, he starts to feel old, so he dyes his hair black and walks around in tight leather pants in a misguided attempt to look younger.
Trapped: Episode 5, "Dick, Smoker" (1996). Dick takes up smoking, and while looking for a place to smoke at a dentist's office, he accidentally locks himself in a stairwell just as the building is closing.
Dog Gone Blues: Episode 6, "Green-eyed Dick" (1996). A dog follows Harry home, and Harry falls head-over-heels in love with "Scruffy," but Mrs. Dubcek is allergic to dogs and tells Harry he has to get rid of him. Tommy meets a woman named Kate, who's looking for a dog for her daughter, and Harry reluctantly hands Scruffy over to her, but Harry isn't too broken up because he ends up going out with Kate.
Drop Dead: Episode 8, "Body & Soul & Dick" (1996). At a faculty party, Dr. Hanlin, a hated old professor known for his antagonistic attitude hits on Sally, prompting her to threaten to put his eyeballs in the bottom of a martini glass, after which he drops dead of a heart attack. Sally momentarily feels guilty until another party-goer announces that Hanlin's death was his own fault for refusing to listen to his doctor.
Eulogize This: Episode 8, "Body & Soul & Dick" (1996). Dr. Hanlin, old professor whom nobody likes, drops dead at a party, and he left a note asking Dick to give his eulogy. Dick grasps at straws trying to find something nice to say about Hanlin. When he can't find anything, he takes the scientific approach and talks about how his matter has been converted into energy.
Art Class: Episode 11, "The Art of Dick" (1996). Mary tells Dick she's taking an art class, and since Dick has been looking for something Harry's good at, he signs Harry and himself up for the class, but Dick gets jealous when Harry's innate talent for art draws admiration from the other students, including Mary, so to put the attention back on him, Dick volunteers to pose nude in front of the class.
Fear of Flying: Episode 12, "Frozen Dick" (1996). Mary and Dick are attending an awards ceremony in Chicago, and before their plane can take off, Dick realizes he's afraid to fly. He freaks out and causes such a scene that he and Mary are kicked off the plane.
Dance Lessons: Episode 16, "Dick Like Me" (1996). Sally falls for Tommy's teacher, who asks her to a school dance, but she doesn't know how to dance, so she asks Harry and Dick to teach her how.
Stay Away from My Son: Episode 18, "Father Knows Dick" (1996). Sally meets Mr. Randell's mother, who instantly disapproves of her and tries to make her get lost, but Sally fights back, and their scuffle in the restaurant ends up costing Mr. Randell $1,700 in damages.

Season 2

Election: Episode 6, "Dick the Vote" (1996). When Harry accidentally chains himself to a tree while trying to lock up his bike, some nearby protestors think he's trying to save the park, and the media labels him a local hero. When he gets home, he gets a mysterious phone call asking him to run for city council.
Hot for Teacher: Episode 7, "Fourth and Dick" (1996). Tommy is falling for his music teacher, Miss Frost, so he invites her to the Pendelton homecoming game and tries to make a move; it doesn't go well for him.
The Magician: Episode 8, "World's Greatest Dick" (1996). Harry learns how to do impressive magic tricks and tries to demonstrate them to the rest of the family, but they're too wrapped up in their own shit to notice.
No Joke: Episode 11, "Dick Jokes" (1996). Mary is hosting a fundraiser, and she hired another professor, Ben Littmeyer, to emcee because she finds him hilarious. Dick gets jealous of Ben's ability to make Mary laugh, so he decides to try his hand at standup comedy, and his routine at open mic night at a local comedy club only elicits courtesy laughs from Harry.
Write What You Know: Episode 11, "Dick Jokes" (1996). Dick is emceeing a fundraiser Mary is holding, but he doesn't know how to be funny, so he consults a local standup comic, who makes jokes about his mother's flabby arms. Dick takes a cue from him and decides to make fun of Mary's arms at the fundraiser.
The Old Pie in the Face Gag: Episode 11, "Dick Jokes" (1996). To get back at him for insulting on stage a fundraiser, Mary and Nina buy bunch of cream pies and cover Dick with them, including two in his face.
Pathetic Christmas Tree: Episode 12, "Jolly Old St. Dick" (1996). Christmas is coming, so Harry buys a Christmas try that looks like a live action version of Charlie Brown's, complete with a big red Christmas ball on top.
Amnesia: Episode 13, "Proud Dick" (1997). Harry gets swept up by a tornado and hit on the head with a flower pot, which causes him to forget who he is and that he's an alien. He reads a logbook and discovers that the rest of the gang are aliens and is terrified.
Romeo and Juliet: Episode 14, "Romeo & Juliet & Dick" (1997). Tommy signs Dick up to direct his school's production of Romeo and Juliet so that he can cast August as Juliet and him as Romeo, but Dick makes Tommy the prop master instead, and August doesn't want to make out with him.
Green Card: Episode 15, "A Dick on One Knee" (1997). Michel, a French immigrant, asks Sally to marry him so he can in the country. At the wedding, Mrs. Dubcek discovers that an INS agent is in attendance looking for an "illegal alien in the wedding party." When she tells the gang, they think he's looking for them, so Sally calls off the wedding, telling Michel that she's an alien too.
Job Swap: Episode 16, "Same Old Song and Dick" (1997). When Sally complains about everything she has to do, Harry claims he could handle her job no problem, so they agree to swap jobs and prove they can handle each other's roles. Harry does a piss-poor job of all the household chores, and Sally gets bored to tears sitting around doing nothing all day, but Harry breaks when he has to kill a spider.
School Reunion: Episode 21, "Sensitive Dick" (1997). Vicki's back in town for her high school reunion. Harry comes along as her date and makes up outrageous stories to impress her former classmates.
Billy Elliot: Episode 22, "Will Work for Dick" (1997). After babysitting Mrs. Dubcek's granddaughter, Sally wants to have a childhood, so she plays with Barbies, styles Tommy's hair, and takes a ballet class, but her height, strength, and lack of coordination create the effect of a bull in a China shop.
15 Minutes of Fame: Episode 23, "Fifteen Minutes of Dick" (1997). The gang has to give up their table in a restaurant when Mark Hamill comes in, which pisses off Sally, so she kicks Mark Hamill's ass. When the media gets wind of it, she's treated as a sort of folk hero who stands up to celebrities for the little people. After her first local morning show appearance, the fame quickly goes to Sally's head, and she starts acting like a self-absorbed starlet while Harry serves as her agent.
Joe Hollywood: Episode 23, "Fifteen Minutes of Dick" (1997). Sally becomes a minor celebrity after a confrontation with Mark Hamill in a restaurant, and her newfound fame makes her instantly go Hollywood, ordering people around while wearing a turban and brandishing a long cigarette holder.

Season 3

Prank War: Episode 3, "Tricky Dick" (1997). After Dick and Mary break up, Dick pranks her by sending her a fake letter inviting her to dinner at the White House. Mary responds by having "Dr. Dick Salmon" painted on their office door. This leads to a childish prank war between them that gets way out of hand.
Don't Speak: Episode 7, "Eleven Angry Men and One Dick" (1997). Harry and Tommy volunteer to stop talking for five days to help Mary's anthropology class learn about pre-verbal cultures.
12 Angry Men: Episode 7, "Eleven Angry Men and One Dick" (1997). Dick is selected for jury duty, and makes friends with a guy he meets at the vending machine who turns out to be the defendant, so Dick keeps insisting he's not guilty, even though the rest of the jury thing he's guilty.
Ticket Scalping: Episode 8, "A Friend in Dick" (1997). Since he and Mary broke up, Dick has no one to go to the "King of the Jig" show with him, so he tries to scalp Mary's ticket and almost gets arrested until Officer Don shows up and gets him out of it, then attends the show with him.
Clip Show: Episode 9, "Seven Deadly Clips" (1997). The Solomons recall their experiences on earth using the seven deadly sins as an outline.
Lamaze Class: Episode 16, "Pickles and Ice Cream" (1998). Sally meets a group of pregnant women and feels left out, so she pretends to be pregnant too. Part of the act involves attending a Lamaze class with Dick.
Trapped: Episode 19, "Stuck with Dick" (1998). When Dick delays Mary at the library, they end up staying until after closing time and getting locked in, and the library is closed the next day.
World Record: Episode 22, "Just Your Average Dick" (1998). When August tries throw away a soda can, Harry takes it and tells her he's trying to set a world record for collecting cans. When she asks him how many he has so far, he says he has one.
Unwise Wisdom Teeth: Episode 26, "The Tooth Harry" (1998). Nina is having her wisdom teeth taken out, and her friend who's supposed to take her to the dentist for the procedure bails out at the last minute, so Harry takes on the job, but he doesn't just give her a ride, he hangs around to take care of her while she recovers, which leads to their becoming an item, but Harry just found out about the tooth fairy, so he puts $20 under her pillow, and she throws him out.
Joe Hollywood: Episode 26, "The Tooth Harry" (1998). Dick weasels his way into appearing in a promotional video for Pendelton, and he instantly goes Hollywood, wearing sunglasses inside and draping his blazer over his shoulders like a cape while Tommy poses as his agent, requesting changes to the script.

Season 4

Family Reunion from Hell: Episode 11, "Dick Solomon of the Indiana Solomons" (1999). Dick receives a letter in the mail inviting him to a Solomon family reunion in Indiana. The letter was meant for another guy named Richard Solomon, but Dick decides they should all go to the family reunion anyway. When they arrive, it quickly becomes clear that there's some bad blood between Richard and the rest of his family, and some of the other family members are harboring resentment towards him.
Surprise, You're Adopted!: Episode 11, "Dick Solomon of the Indiana Solomons" (1999). While at a family reunion for another Solomon family, Tommy falls for a girl named Janine, but she's not interested because she thinks he's her cousin. When Harry tells Tommy that Janine was adopted, Tommy runs to tell Janine that they can be together because they're not really related. Unfortunately, Janine didn't know she was adopted.
Tax Audit: Episode 12, "Dick and Taxes" (1999). Dick learns about filing tax returns, so he gets Mary to help him file his for the first time, and he ends up owning the government over $9,000. To avoid having to pay up, the Solomons decide to lie on their return so that the government owes them over $37,000. The IRS responds by auditing them.
Chain Letter: Episode 16, "Superstitious Dick" (1999). Dick and Mary both receive the same chain letter, but Mary throws hers away, then suffers a string of freak accidents and other misfortunes.
Not the Mafia: Episode 18, "Dick 'The Mouth' Solomon" (1999). Sally dates a man named Sam whose nickname is "The Butcher," and she assumes he's in the mafia. When Sam asks Tommy to make a delivery for him, Tommy thinks he's getting made, but they both eventually find out that "The Butcher" actually is a butcher and not a mobster.
Maid to Order: Episode 19, "Citizen Solomon" (1999). Now that Sally has her own apartment, Dick, Harry, and Tommy have no one to clean up after them. When Dick hears that Mary has a maid named Cathy, he secretly hires her behind Mary's back. When Sally meets Cathy, she feels like she's been replaced. This all culminates in Sally, Mary, Dick, and Harry storming Cathy's home and fighting over her, and Cathy gets fed up and quits all of them.
Near Death Experience: Episode 22, "Near Dick Experience" (1999). While Sally, Harry, and Tommy are arguing with a waiter over a table, a giant chandelier falls and crushes the very table they wanted. When they realize they could've died if the waiter hadn't refused them the table, all three of them start waxing philosophical about even the smallest, most mundane things, like tree branches, the lights on a liquor store sign, and their shirts. Of course, Dick feels left out, so he manufactures his own near-death experience by almost driving Mary's car into a train. Unfortunately, when by the time he gets home, the rest of the gang are over it.
Dance Lessons: Episode 23, "Dick's Big Giant Headache: Part 1" (1999). Alissa wants Tommy to take her to the junior prom, so he asks Harry to teach him how to slow dance, but Harry takes his role as "Alissa" way too seriously.

Season 5

Whodunnit?: Episode 4, "Dial M for Dick" (1999). The gang joins marry at a murder mystery weekend, but no one told them it was all game, and they think there's a real murderer in their midst.
Plastic Fantastic: Episode 5, "Dick and Tuck" (1999). When Mary and Nina fawn over Harrison Ford, Dick gets jealous and decides to have plastic surgery, but just before he goes into surgery, he realizes that his face holds a lot of memories, and he changes his mind.
Auction Mishap: Episode 8, "Charitable Dick" (1999). At a charity auction, Dick bids on an ugly painting of two monks just to show Strudwick he's not cheap. Strudwick bids against him, and they get into a bidding war that ends with Dick winning the painting $1,700.
Happy Loving Couples: Episode 10, "Gwen, Larry, Dick, and Harry" (2000). Mary wants her and Dick to socialize with other couples, so they start hanging out with a couple named Gwen and Larry. After their first couple of outings together, Gwen and Larry ghost Dick and Mary. Dick tracks them down and asks them why, and they say it's because they don't like Mary. They find her tedious, pretentious, and self-absorbed. Dick asks Gwen and Larry to give them one more chance, but they act bored when Mary tells a story they've already heard, so Dick tells them to get lost.
Hyp-NO-sis: Episode 12, "The Big Giant Head Returns" (2000). To help Sally get over her shoe shopping addiction, Tommy tries to hypnotize her, but he accidentally hypnotizes Harry instead, so whenever anyone says "one," he passes out, and if anyone says "two," he wakes back up, and if anyone says "three," he feels like his shoes are on fire.
Playing the Market: Episode 14, "This Little Dick Went to Market" (2000). When Dick hears that everyone at the office has been investing in the stock market, he decides to join in, and Tommy follows suit, but the stock they choose takes a steep dive when a rumor spreads that the company has been over-spending, so they storm the company and pretend to fire people to cut costs.
In-home Stakeout: Episode 15, "Youth is Wasted on the Dick" (2000). Don sets up a stakeout in the Solomons' apartment to spy on their neighbor across the street, who he suspects is pirating videos.
Dance Contest: Episode 17, "Shall We Dick?" (2000). Dick, Mary, Harry, and Nina enter a dance contest, but Dick quickly discovers that Mary can't dance, so he sneakily talks Harry into staying home so he can dance with Nina instead. To everyone's surprise, Harry shows up at the contest anyway and dances with Mary.
Hole: Episode 18, "Dick and Harry Fall Down a Hole" (2000). Dick and Harry both fall down a hole, and Tommy uses the opportunity to sell T-shirts, while Sally yells at the "hole expert" the police hired to rescue them because he's taking too long.
Accidental Eavesdropping: Episode 20, "Dick Solomon's Day Off" (2000). Don leaves his police scanner at the Solomons' apartment, and it starts picking up a woman named Andrea's phone calls. Sally, Harry, and Tommy get so invested in listening to the phone calls that they track down Andrea at the dry cleaner, and Harry ends up going out with her.

Season 6

You Screwed Over My Friend and That's Not Cool with Me: Episode 1, "Les Liaisons Dickgereuses" (2000). Mary's perfect sister, Renata, who loves doing things to piss off Mary, comes to Rutherford to open a museum, and she hits on Dick. Mary is ready to throw down, but Dick comes up with an elaborate plan to wine and dine Renata and then dump her, but when Renata asks him to marry her, he says yes and even says "I do" before Mary finally puts a stop to the farce.
The Magician: Episode 10, "There's No Business Like Dick Business" (2001). After assisting a magician in the park, Dick decides to become a magician himself, and Sally joins him as his assistant. They start performing at a local club and become a big success, but soon some resentment brews between them and they turn on each other.
Vacation from Hell: Episode 15, "Glengarry Glen Dick" (2001). Dick and Don go in on a timeshare together and take Mary and Sally there on vacation, but it turns out to be a shit hole with only one cramped room and bed bugs in a town with nothing to do, so they each try to sell their half to each other.
Amish Paradise: Episode 17, "Mary Loves Scoochie: Part 1" (2001). The gang finds out that there's an award-winning group of aliens nearby called "Team X," and they try to find them. When Sally and Harry meet an Amish couple in a store, they're convinced they're Team X, so they go to their farm to learn from them.

Character Tropes

Fish Out of Water: Dick, Sally, Tommy, & Harry Solomon - Played by John Lithgow, Kristen Johnston, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, & French Stewart.
Mild Mannered Man-child: Harry Solomon - Played by French Stewart.
Idiot Savant: Harry Solomon - Played by French Stewart.
Hyper Honey: Cheryl - Played by Anna Slotky.