About 3rd Rock From the Sun

Space, the final frontier. Or in this case, the final efforts of aliens to understand what makes us human peons tick. The Emmy and Golden Globe-award winning series 3rd Rock from the Sun ran from 1996 to 2001. It featured five aliens posing as a "typical" American family as they gathered information about Earthly customs, sociological habits and important snack foods. They named themselves The Solomons, and as Dick (artfully portrayed by deadpan-humor king John Lithgow) himself put it, "Sally's the woman, I'm the tall dashing man, Tommy's the adolescent and Harry's the funny-looking one."

Aliens have had their moment in the sun onscreen many times, rising in popularity in a nuclear-obsessed 1950s and continuing to dominate in the space-d out '70s. But 3rd Rock turned the alien-invasion format on its head with its loveably clueless resident "visitors." As Sally (combat expert Kristen Johnston) once asked Professor Mary Albright (Jane Curtin), "Isn't there a place where people can have mindless sex with different partners?" Mary's response? "Yeah! It's called 'the '70s.'"

Welcome to Earth, baby!