thoughts on Dumplin (spoilers)

Danielle MacDonald stars as Willowdean Dixon, the daughter of former pageant queen and current pageant runner Rosie Dixon (Jennifer Aniston).  Willowdean used to have her aunt Lucy (Hilliary Begley) to help her through pageant season, but Lucy has recently passed away.  Upon discovering an incomplete pageant application among her aunt's things and determining that Lucy must have not thought she would be welcome among the pageant's thin, pretty contestants, Willowdean decides to enter this year's Miss Teen Bluebonnet pageant in protest.  She is joined by her best friend, Ellen (Odeya Rush), who fits right in among the other contestants; Millie (Maddie Baillio), who, like Willowdean, is overweight, but unlike Willowdean, has dreamed of entering the pageant since she was eight; and Hannah (Bex Taylor-Klaus), whose entry in the talent contest initially consists of simply chanting "Down with patriarchy!"  Willowdean somewhat reluctantly befriends Millie and Hannah after she and Ellen have a falling-out ("You're not built for the revolution," Willowdean tells Ellen); she and her mother learn to understand each other better; and she learns that there is more to pageants than meet the eye.  Along the way, she finds a flyer for a Dolly Parton night at a bar called the Hideaway, after which the drag queens she meets there become unofficial pageant coaches for her and her new friends.

One thing I appreciated is that this movie is set in a world where most people are fundamentally decent.  Yes, there are some teen boys who yell nasty things at Willowdean and Millie (Millie mostly grins and bears it; Willowdean gets suspended from school for kneeing a boy in the groin).  Yes, Willowdean and Millie get some "What are you doing here?" looks from some of the pageant organizers and fellow contestants.  However, this is not the world of Glee, where those kids were constantly getting slushees thrown in their faces and having the cheerleading coach plot against them, or of Never Been Kissed, where more than one character has dog food thrown at them by the popular kids.  Here, the frontrunner in the pageant (Dove Cameron) looks exactly how you would expect her to look, and she even has a crush on the same boy that Willowdean does...but she seems nice enough.  In a different/worse teen movie, she would be actively plotting against Willowdean and her friends.  Here, more realistically, she and Willowdean are neither best friends nor enemies.

The parents aren't depicted as being evil, either.  It's fairly clear that winning the Bluebonnet pageant was the high point of Rosie's life, but given that the Bluebonnet pageant is such a big deal in their town, and that Rosie never left either the town or pageant culture, it makes sense that she would view it that way.  Also, though Millie's mother (Kathy Najimy) refuses to sign Millie's permission slip for the pageant and is initially angry when she finds out that Millie forged her signature, it is clear once we meet her that she only did so because she wants to protect her daughter, and she comes around pretty quickly to being supportive.  The looks on both her and Rosie's faces when Millie and Willowdean take the stage are very true to how mothers would react in those moments-- initially nervous on their behalf, then proud.

There are some real moments of joy in this movie.  Some of them involve Millie, who is so earnest and hopeful; whose smile so rarely leaves her face; who is working so hard and wants to do well so badly-- and is genuinely good at virtually every aspect of the pageant.  Others involve Willowdean and Ellen's friendship; they bonded as little girls over their love of Dolly Parton, and one genuinely joyful moment in the film comes when the two of them sing along to "9 to 5" as Willowdean starts to drive out of a parking lot and Ellen jogs alongside the car, holding her hand.  Nearly ALL of the joyful moments, in fact, are set to Dolly Parton music, including a closing scene with the girls and their moms back at Dolly Parton night at the Hideaway, onstage with the drag queens singing "Two Doors Down": "Here I am, feeling everything but sorry. Having a party, two doors down."

In short, it is a good-hearted movie about good people having a life-changing experience, with lots of Dolly Parton on the soundtrack; a feel good movie that goes deeper into the characters' relationships than you might expect.

Let's Talk About The Princess Switch (SPOILERS)

Vanessa Hudgens stars as Stacy De Novo, a Chicago baker who learns within the first few minutes of this movie that she has been selected to compete in a royal baking competition in the fictional Belgravia.  She travels there with her employee and longtime friend, Kevin (Nick Sagar), and his young daughter, Olivia (Alexa Adeosun).  Not long after arriving in Belgravia, she runs into Lady Margaret (also Vanessa Hudgens), who is engaged to Prince Edward (Sam Palladio) and looks exactly like Stacy.  Margaret proposes that they switch lives for a couple of days so that she can have one shot at being a regular person before she marries Prince Edward.  They will switch back in time for the contest.  Stacy agrees, and a lot of cuteness and some mild wackiness ensues.

First of all: "let's switch lives!" movies are my jam.  ("Let's switch lives!" movies are not to be confused with "Let's switch BODIES!" movies, or "Let's GROW UP REAL FAST!" movies, which often involve grown adults being made to act like children while encountering adult situations, and which make me DEEPLY UNCOMFORTABLE.  I will not see Thirteen Going On Thirty even though Jennifer Garner is one of my favorites.)  The Parent Trap is the most obvious example of the "Let's switch lives!" genre; another of my favorites is Big Business, starring Bette Midler and Lily Tomlin as two sets of switched-at-birth twins, one which grew up poor in the country and the other which grew up rich in the city. Closely related are "I have been mistaken for someone else and will just step into their life, which is better than my own" movies; obvious examples are While You Were Sleeping starring Sandra Bullock and Opportunity Knocks starring Dana Carvey.  Those are fun, too, but there is always an uncomfortable part where the person's real identity is revealed and everyone is mad that they've been lied to. 

Anyway, this is a pretty fun example of the "Let's switch lives!" genre, and I actually dig that there's not a lot of backstory and that it just jumps right into things.  It's like, "BOOM! You're in a baking contest!," and then, "BOOM! Here's a duchess that looks just like you!" This movie really could have gone one of two ways, either of which would have been fine.  The first way that it could have gone is that both women could have realized that they missed their own lives and that everything they wanted was right under their noses the whole time. The second way, and the way that it actually DID go, was that both women realized that they were better suited to their new lives than their old ones, and the men in both women's lives like the "new" them better than the "old" them.  Stacy's longtime friend Kevin likes that "Stacy" is suddenly spontaneous and go-with-the-flow.  Prince Edward likes that "Margaret" suddenly cares about the day-to-day affairs of running the kingdom.  (Side note: Prince Edward is REALLY SWEET.  My favorite scene in the whole movie comes when "Margaret" has to attend a royal ball with Edward.  Edward suggests that she play the piano for everyone, and the whole crowd gathers around.  I'm sitting there cringing, thinking that Stacy is going to embarrass herself.  What she does is freeze up.  Edward assumes that it is just stage fright, and he suggests they play "Carol of the Bells" together; her part involves just repeating a few notes and can easily be learned on the spot.  It is maybe the sweetest thing that I have ever seen in my whole life.)

There are a bunch of minor characters that are pretty standard in this type of movie, including Kevin's daughter, Olivia, who of course immediately figures out that "Stacy" is a fake but is into the whole thing; a guardian angel type guy who pops up at all the right moments to help things along; and some employee of Prince Edward's/the royal family's who knows something is up, keeps trying to expose "Margaret," and just keeps being given unpleasant chores to do every time he butts in.  There is Stacy's main competitor at the baking competition, who attempts sabotage that amounts to so little that I don't know why they even included it.  There is also a really fun scene where Stacy, Margaret, Kevin, Edward, and Olivia are all in the same place at the same time, and you're afraid they're all going to run into each other and the whole secret is going to be exposed.  That's actually usually the scene in movies like this where the whole secret IS exposed, but they keep it going for awhile longer here.

I think the reasons movies like this are fun are both because of the "fish out of water" aspect and the low-key stress/suspense of wondering when the secret is going to be exposed.  This one doesn't disappoint. Fine holiday fun.

Thoughts on A Star is Born (spoilers)

Bradley Cooper stars as Jackson Maine, an alcoholic country/rock singer who has been in the spotlight since his teens; he started as a guitarist for his brother (Sam Elliott) and went on to superstardom.  He meets Ally (Lady Gaga) by chance one night when he happens into a drag bar where she performs after her Friday night waitress shift.  It is one of those things where they meet and basically are never apart again.  The first perhaps half hour of the movie consists of their first twenty-four hours together, in which they meet, drink, and talk songwriting all night. This leads to her blowing off a waitress shift to join him at a concert, where he unexpectedly pulls her onstage to join him in a duet.  From there, it is a whirlwind: she joins him on tour and is offered a solo record contract; her career and their relationship progress as his addiction spirals out of control.

There is a lot to like about this movie; their duet "Shallow" is a showstopper, and the rest of the soundtrack is solid, particularly "Always Remember Us This Way," which Ally performs solo on the piano.  Gaga turns in a consistently strong performance.  Cooper speaks in a mumbly, "grizzled" voice that is hard to decipher at times, and it's problematic that so much of the movie, particularly following the couple's first couple of days together, is told from Jack's perspective.  Jack has a problem with the makeover she receives after getting her record deal, and with her new, poppier sound; while some of the songs we see are, perhaps, a little silly, she isn't really doing anything wrong-- his problems seem to come at least partly between a preference for a country/rock style and look vs. a pop style and look, and since we see most of these parts of the movie from his perspective, this preference is presented as somehow "better."  He also has a talent for expressing his opinions at times that make it hard to believe that he isn't at least partly driven by jealousy and resentment, such as when she is first offered a record deal and when she receives news of her first Grammy nomination.  The pacing is also a bit off, with so much of the movie taking place in their first couple of days together and then speeding quickly through their tour together and the progression of her career.  Regardless, the movie doesn't feel overly long despite its two hour and seventeen minute run time; Gaga and Cooper have great chemistry; and both characters are compelling to watch even when it is clear that Jack is going nowhere good fast.

Let's Talk About A Quiet Place (SPOILERS! SPOILERS! SPOILERS!)

A Quiet Place takes place in a post-apocalyptic future where the few humans left spend their days trying to not make any noise for fear of being attacked by creatures that can't see, but that will appear as if out of nowhere if you make the smallest sound.  The film focuses on one particular family that appears to have been better-equipped to survive than most, given that their daughter is deaf and they are able to communicate by sign language.  They also live in the country and have a garden and appear to can their own vegetables, plus they live within walking distance of a river where they can fish.  We meet the family less than ninety days after the apocalypse, when their youngest child is killed tragically.  Flash forward more than a year later; the mother is very pregnant, and the family struggles to survive while dealing with the loss of their youngest member and preparing for the birth of their newborn.  The movie follows them through the next few fateful days.

There is plenty to like about the movie, particularly how tight the storytelling was; more than one friend remarked to me afterward that it seemed like it only lasted thirty minutes even though it was ninety-five minutes long.  I also liked the tight focus on just ONE family, rather than the filmmakers trying to let us in on what's going on in the world or the United States as a whole (we see some newspaper clippings, but that's about it).  The thing that compelled me to write about it when I haven't updated this blog in almost a year, though, are the issues that stuck with me afterwards, particularly...

...the fact that I went back and forth between being impressed by the parents' (played by John Krasinski and Emily Blunt) survival skills and generally thinking they should be keeping a better eye on their kids.  Their younger son dies when they are walking back home from a pharmacy, where they have gone to get medicine for their older son.  The sound that makes the creature attack is a toy rocketship that his father told him he couldn't have, but that his older sister gave him anyway.  It was stupid of his sister to give it to him, but she's just a kid, and trying to make him happy under pretty horrific circumstances.  What bothered me is that the family was walking in a straight line, with the father at the front of the group carrying the sick child; the mother walking slightly behind; the sister behind her; and the youngest child bringing up the rear.  Now, this kid appears to be maybe three or four.  Who really lets a kid that age dawdle at the back of the group even when there ISN'T a predator willing to pounce at a moment's notice?  If the dad was going to lead the way, shouldn't the mom have been following everyone to keep an eye on the kids?  Later in the movie, the daughter goes off after her dad and brother leave on a fishing trip without her.  HER MOM DOESN'T NOTICE SHE'S MISSING FOR HOURS.  Granted, the mom eventually goes into labor, so that explains part of it, but it really seems like under these circumstances you would know where your kids are at ALL times. 

While all of this bothered me, I think it's fairly realistic to expect that anyone would make some mistakes and that life would sort of just go on under these circumstances.  Occasionally, someone would give a kid something they're not supposed to have.  Occasionally, a family member would lag behind the group or go off by themselves and the rest of the family wouldn't immediately notice.  The difference is that the stakes are so heightened here that small mistakes can have huge consequences, and it's easy to sit on the sidelines and point out what everyone's doing wrong, when I'm not sure how you could even live in constant fear like that.

...the mother's pregnancy. (IMDB tells me her name is Evelyn; I don't recall her ever being called by name).  We catch up with the family fairly late in the pregnancy, when they are preparing by soundproofing a cellar/basement room for the baby.  Can you even imagine the conversations that must have taken place when they realized Evelyn was pregnant?  Obviously, you can't make a baby be quiet. What options must they have considered before they got around to soundproofing?  How do you try to keep yourselves and the kids you already have safe while preparing for an addition to the family that is going to make doing so much more difficult?  It's an incredibly uncomfortable thing to think about.

I really liked the movie as a whole.  It says something that I'm still thinking about it a day later, and says more that a ninety-minute thriller that keeps you on the edge of your seat the whole time can also sit with you so heavily.

Let's Talk About the Dirty Dancing Remake (spoilers)

Before I get too far into this, let me establish that I am not opposed to remakes, per se.  A lot of people I knew were really upset about even the prospect of a Footloose remake, for example; I actually was excited about it and thought it was pretty good.  I’m also generally a fan of the TV movie musicals that have been coming out over the past few years; Peter Pan was pretty bad and so was Rocky Horror, but most of them have been at least okay.  So I shouldn’t have had a problem with ABC’s Dirty Dancing in theory; in practice, however…

It was bad.  Here are the worst things about it, in no particular order:

1) So many minor characters get storylines here.  Baby’s mom, Marjorie (now played by Debra Messing), before just a bit player, is now a sexually frustrated housewife who wants more from her marriage.  Her sister, Lisa (Sarah Hyland), now has an interracial romance subplot.  Vivian Pressman (Katey Sagal), before a cheating, rich wife, is now a wealthy divorcee who confides in Marjorie about the demise of her marriage.  None of this is terrible, per se, but some of the details I’ve hinted at point to some of the other problems with the movie, including…

2) They can’t just hint at anything in this remake.  They have to both show it and tell it.  In the original, we got that Johnny Castle (played here by former Pink backup dancer Colt Prattes, played in the original and in our hearts by Patrick Swayze) was probably sometimes having sex with Vivian in exchange for money and gifts.  Here, we actually see a sex scene between him and Vivian; see her offer him her ex-husband’s watch; see him have a conversation with Baby in which he explicitly explains how all of this works (he does talk about it with Baby in the original, but in the original it’s more like, “It’s easy to get sucked in when you’re poor and these women are so beautiful and rich”; here it’s basically like, “I HAVE SEX FOR MONEY SOMETIMES.”)  In the original, Baby’s father, Dr. Jake Houseman, offers waiter Robbie a check to help with medical school; when Robbie lets it slip that he was the one who got Penny pregnant, Jake simply takes the check back, gives him a disgusted look, and walks away.  Here, he orders Robbie to pay Penny back for her abortion and threatens that if he doesn’t, he will call every hospital on the east coast and keep him from ever getting a job. 

The original trusted us to catch things that were just alluded to; there were even some subtle things that probably everyone didn’t get, but if you did, were great.  For example, in the original, when Baby goes to Robbie to ask him to pay for Penny’s abortion, he tries to give her a copy of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead and tells her to make sure to return it because he has notes in the margins.  If you don’t know who Ayn Rand is, you don’t get it, but if you do, it just underlines the fact that Robbie is a douchebag, and what’s even better is, you know that Baby gets it and understands how douchey this makes Robbie.  Here, they have to say everything out loud, as if we’re all too stupid to get it otherwise.  Johnny actually says “I had the time of my life” as an actual line here.  It is so, so bad. 

There were gender issues present in the original.  There were class issues present in the original.  Here, we have multiple characters reading or discussing Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, like, “LOOK, WE ARE FEMINISTS, OR AT LEAST INTERESTED IN LEARNING ABOUT FEMINISM.”  We have Lisa, the morning after Robbie gets sexually aggressive with her, give a little speech to her family about how someone isn’t a good person just because they’re going to Harvard.  We have the addition of her interracial romance, which characters comment on in ways that make you cringe.  It’s just all so spelled out for us that it’s insulting.  Also...

3) The characters sing sometimes.  The original had a lot of music and dancing in it.  There was no singing, and while I generally enjoy musicals, given that this is not only a remake of the original, but a remake that follows the plot of the original fairly closely, it really takes you out of the moment to have Johnny actually SINGING “Time of My Life” to Baby, especially given that THE MOVIE IS CALLED DIRTY DANCING AND THIS PART IS SUPPOSED TO HAVE SOME FAIRLY STRENOUS AND IMPRESSIVE DANCING IN IT.  Also, Abigail Breslin (Baby) can’t really dance.  Yes, Baby is supposed to be just learning to dance, but in the original, she’s good by the end.  Imagine if Baby never really got the hang of it and could never really do anything that difficult?  That’s what happens here.  She does do the lift.  It doesn’t feel as triumphant as in the original.  Also, even Dr. Houseman plays the piano and sings in an empty dance studio at one point.  If this was leading up to him making love to his sexually frustrated wife on the piano, that would have been pretty hot.  Instead, it leads to a conversation with Baby where she’s like, “I didn’t know you played,” and he’s all, “Eventually there comes a time to put away childish things.”  Yeah, okay, we get it, you’ve lost your zest for life.  Finally…

4     4) Baby and Johnny just don’t really have a lot of chemistry here, which is basically the most important thing.  Though Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey reportedly did not get along offscreen, they were super hot together.  Also, while Baby in the original was somewhat nerdy and awkward, she also was pretty tough.  There is one scene in the remake where Baby beats on Johnny’s door crying about how he can’t just have sex with her and then act like it doesn’t mean anything. He opens the door and grabs her and kisses her and it’s pretty great, and all, but I just can’t see the original Baby doing that.  The original Baby does not beg him to love her, ever.  She wins his love through her strength, determination, character, and intelligence.  AS YOU SHOULD.  Also, they never actually say they love each other, because they’ve known each other like a week.  Here there are all these dramatic declarations of love.  And we find out they don’t wind up together.  Like, we can probably GUESS they don’t.  They’re young and from two different worlds and all that.  We don’t need to see her coming to see him years later with a husband and a kid.  More ruining everything by spelling it all out.

So.  It was much worse than I expected it to be, and I did not expect it to be good. 

review of Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates

Adam DeVine and Zac Efron star as Mike and Dave, brothers, roommates, and partners in a liquor distributing business.  Prior to their sister Jeanie's (Sugar Lyn Beard) wedding in Hawaii, Jeanie, her fiance Eric (Sam Richardson), and their parents (Stephen Root and Stephanie Faracy) meet with them to tell them that they need to find dates to "keep them in line" at the wedding.  Mike and Dave actually come across as nice and a ton of fun; they just always take things that extra step further that takes a party from fun to out of control.  They put an ad on Craig's List for wedding dates that attracts so many responses (it's a free trip to Hawaii, after all, and Dave, in particular, is really good-looking) that they wind up on the Wendy Williams show.  It is there that Tatiana (Aubrey Plaza) and Alice (Anna Kendrick) see them.  Alice has been a mess ever since she got left at the altar, and the two have just been fired from their waitress jobs, so Tatiana decides that an adventure is in order.  They pose as "nice girls," finagle a "chance meeting" with Mike and Dave, and are quickly invited to Hawaii, where the guys get more than they bargained for.

Alice, in particular, is an interesting character.  She genuinely seems nice and well-meaning, but, like Mike and Dave themselves, always takes things a step too far, like offering a masseuse money to offer Jeanie a little "special treatment" during her pre-wedding massage and giving Jeanie ecstasy the night before the wedding.  Tatiana is more just there for the free vacation and isn't super bummed once Mike figures that out.  Dave and Alice genuinely hit it off, but Mike keeps dragging Dave away to deal with some "crisis," like their cousin Terry (Alice Wetterlund) potentially upstaging their rehearsal dinner toast.  Basically, it winds up a movie about Alice, Tatiana, Mike, and Dave all learning to grow up and rely on each other a little less; Dave is afraid that Mike will be upset if he leaves the liquor business to work on his graphic novel, while Tatiana admits that she likes it that Alice kind of needs to be taken care of.  They all bond over salvaging Jeanie's wedding, though the end result indicates that they haven't changed *too* quickly or completely.

Overall, I thought there were several funny moments, and solid performances from the whole cast, particularly Anna Kendrick.  I'd recommend.

Fuller House, Season One

Full House premiered in 1987, when I was eight, making me the exact target audience for it.  I was two years younger than DJ (Candace Cameron Bure) and three years older than Stephanie (Jodie Sweetin).  It was part of the TGIF lineup on ABC, and I remember it being must-see TV before that was officially a thing.  Even when I had a friend over to spend the night, we would usually drop what we were doing to watch Full House.  I remember it being a thing we talked about; like, even in I think eighth grade, I remember asking someone if they had seen it when Kimmy Gibbler (Andrea Barber) pierced Stephanie's ears.  I was sixteen by the time it went off the air, and by that time, I had mostly lost interest; I recall that I would watch it if I happened to catch it, but that I didn't really keep up with it.  Years later, I caught some old episodes in syndication and was like, "Wait.  DJ and Steve (Scott Weinger) broke up?!"  They started playing the episodes on Nickelodeon at some point, and my niece became a fan a few years back; I watched some episodes with her and was like, "You know, this is really pretty good."  In addition to the appeal of actors like John Stamos and the general cuteness of the kids, this was a show about pretty solid, good people.

For example: last summer I caught a Season Three episode called "Breaking Up is Hard to Do."  Jesse and Becky (Lori Loughlin), his then-girlfriend and eventual wife, get in a big fight that starts because she insists that he go horseback riding.  He goes and has a horrible time, and she's like, "Well, you know, I'm not necessarily so hot on going to see your band play all the time, either," and things escalate until one of them is like, "Well, if we don't have anything in common, why are we even together?!" The other one is like, "Fine, maybe we shouldn't be!," and before you know it, they are breaking up even though you can tell that neither of them really wants to; she ALMOST comes back to talk to him, and he ALMOST goes after her, but they're both too proud.  He then goes out on a date with a woman he has more in common with, who Becky catches at the house when she comes around to do something with DJ.  She is furious, of course, and the two of them have another fight, and then the other woman just approaches them and is like, "I hope you're Becky, because if you're not, you're going to be hearing a lot about her."  Then Jesse and Becky talk things out and decide that they do want to be together, and that doesn't mean that they have to either give up all of their own interests or constantly do stuff they don't want to do.  They'll do some stuff on their own or with other friends, and do the things they like to do together.

It struck me last summer just how mature and decent that all of this was.  They had an issue (having different interests) that some couples would have handled a lot differently, and worse; one of them could have just continued doing stuff they hated all the time and not said anything out of reluctance to start a fight or fear of losing the other one.  But one reason that Jesse and Becky were a great couple was that they valued their individuality along with genuinely loving each other enough to want to compromise and work things out.  Neither of them hesitated to bring it up when they had a problem, but neither of them was mean or overbearing about it, and neither of them ever crossed a line.  For example: Jesse went out on a date with another woman when they were broken up.  He did not go off and sleep with another woman.  He was a fundamentally decent guy.  All of the main characters on the show were.

When I heard they were rebooting the show for Netflix, I was interested, but I guess not interested enough to prioritize actually watching it, because I'm pretty sure it premiered months ago and I just started watching it on Saturday.  And guess what?

I blew through the entire thirteen-episode first season in two days.

The premise is that DJ's husband, a firefighter named Tommy Fuller, died a year prior to the start of the show, leaving her a single mom to three boys: Jackson (Michael Campion), thirteen; Max (Elias Harger), seven; and baby Tommy (Dashiell and Fox Messitt) (I guess she was pregnant at the time of her husband's death).  She and the boys have moved into the family home with her dad (Bob Saget), but now he, Becky, and Jesse are all moving to L.A. so that Danny and Becky can host a nationally syndicated morning show and Jesse can do the music for General Hospital.  After some discussion, it is decided that Kimmy (now a party planner) and Stephanie (now a DJ and kind of a hot mess-- more about her later) will move in to help DJ out, along with Kimmy's teenaged daughter, Ramona (Soni Bringas).

It all works for many of the reasons the original show did.  There are plenty of opportunities for cuteness; in addition to the kids, DJ is a vet at a pet clinic, so there are animals around a lot.  The kids are interesting in their own right: Jackson is testing his limits following his father's death; Ramona is adjusting to a new school and to her parents' separation (Kimmy is still technically married to an extremely cheesy Argentinian race car driver named Fernando (Juan Pablo di Pace)); Max is a neat freak like Grandpa Danny, wears a lot of sweater vests, plays the trombone, and is obsessed with his puppy, Cosmo.  Things are family friendly, yet not too squeaky clean, with the adults; the women occasionally share a bottle of wine or go out for tequila shots.  Weekly plots generally deal with the day to day life of learning to live together; ongoing storylines include Kimmy's on-again/off-again romance with her not-quite-ex and DJ's would-be romances with ex-boyfriend Steve and fellow vet Matt (John Brotherton) (I'm totally Team Matt, by the way).

I need to talk about Stephanie, because she is a piece of work.  Despite dealing with the death of her husband, DJ has her shit together: she has a successful career in a career that requires an advanced degree; she's a good mom to her boys; and she has two successful, kind, attractive men trying to date her but generally respecting that she's not really ready to be exclusive or super serious with either of them.  Kimmy is pretty much how Kimmy always was, which is kind of pushy and obnoxious, but generally nice, fun, and a good friend.  She filed for divorce from Fernando because he cheated on her and was never around, but she still loves him; he loves her, but is fairly irresponsible and self-centered.  She has some relationship problems, is what I'm saying, but she's doing the best she can, and she's probably generally going to be okay in life.  She's a fully functional adult, capable of taking care of herself and her daughter.  I stress that, because again: Stephanie.  God.

Stephanie is a DJ (and yes, there are jokes about the fact that she is known as "DJ Tanner," while that is DJ's actual name) and aspiring singer who apparently, prior to moving in with DJ had a globe-trotting, party-hopping lifestyle.  She's running off to party at Coachella one episode, then in another she's having to spread out her Starbucks order over multiple credit cards...and coming up short.   She does some legitimately dumb, ridiculous shit; one episode she is out with the baby, and an attractive young man starts flirting with her and tells her how hot he thinks it is that she's a single mom.  Not only does she not just go, "Oh, actually, he's my nephew," like any normal human being would in this situation, but she keeps digging herself in deeper; by the end of the episode she has claimed all of DJ's sons, plus Kimmy's daughter, as her own, and told this guy that DJ is her nanny and Kimmy is her cleaning lady.  Like...is she pretending to be a single mom just to get laid?  Is that what's going on here?  Because she knows if she actually dates this guy, the truth is going to come out eventually, and he's going to think she's a total psycho for lying, right?  But then you see how easily and quickly lying comes for Stephanie, and you know she would totally just roll with it for as long as she could.

For example: in the very next episode after she meets this guy (who we never see again), she is helping young Max practice his trombone.  He tells her how nervous he is for his upcoming recital, and she's just like, "Oh, hey, wear my scarf!  It's magic!" He asks her to keep it for him until the recital.  My heart sinks: "Oh, God, she's going to lose the scarf, after she just basically made him feel like he needs it to play well."  It's actually worse than that.  She WEARS THE SCARF TO COACHELLA, which, by the way, she leaves for without even saying goodbye to any of the kids or explaining to Max that she's going to miss his recital.  Backstage waiting to go on at the recital, Max tells DJ that he can't go on because Stephanie took his magic scarf.  I'm expecting DJ to explain to him that there's no such thing as a magic scarf and that he should just go out there and do his best.  Instead, she goes, "SHE TOOK YOUR MAGIC SCARF?!," and immediately calls Stephanie like, "Deal with this shit, you ridiculous person."  At first you think that DJ could have handled that better, but then you realize that she's been dealing with Stephanie's bullshit for Stephanie's whole life, and sometimes she's probably just like, "Get yourself out of this mess, idiot."  And then Stephanie tries to tell Max that the scarf's magic is transferable over the phone, which Max doesn't buy because he's already smarter than Stephanie, and then she makes him play his song to all of Coachella to prove that he can play without the scarf.  And I'm like, "Well, that could have backfired quickly and horribly.  Sure glad your horrible idea worked out, Stephanie."

I tried to remember whether Stephanie was always like this, and I realized that yes, she kind of was.  If you recall, on the original series, DJ's storylines mainly had to deal with normal pre-teen/teen stuff.  She had her first kiss, her first boyfriend, and first break-up over the course of the show.  At a couple of different points, she was reminded not to let her boyfriend, Steve, consume her life; her dad got on her case for neglecting family obligations at at least one point, and Kimmy got her feelings hurt because DJ wasn't paying much attention to her and even forgot her birthday until Kimmy reminded her.  Once, she took a part-time job and let her schoolwork slide.  She had some body image issues; at one point, a boy dumped her for a girl that was "so pretty," and at another, she tried starving herself to look good in a bathing suit for a friend's pool party.  Because she had such a solid family and because Kimmy was a solid friend, none of this got out of control; someone was always around to help her get her priorities in line and to remind her of what was really important.  Meanwhile, Michelle's storylines were little kid/growing up type problems, like literally learning to ride a bike and tie her shoes; having a male friend stop hanging out with her briefly because the other guys were making fun of him for having a female best friend; and learning to be a good sport when she didn't get the part she wanted in the school play.  Again, she had solid people around to help her navigate all of this basic childhood stuff.

So what kind of storylines did this leave for Stephanie?  She was already too old at the beginning of the series for the shoe-tying/bike riding stuff, and they'd already dealt with all of the basic teen stuff with DJ by the time she got to be that age, so basically, Stephanie was constantly pulling some ridiculous bullshit or getting herself into some insane situation.  She accidentally cut Uncle Jesse's hair when she was giving him a pretend haircut.  She drove Joey's car into the kitchen.  She pretended to be her own twin at a twin convention so that she could date twins (I'm not making this up).  She got fake-married and tried to run away and live with Harry Takayama.  She also didn't really have one solid best friend like Kimmy (Harry stopped coming around at some point), so she was more susceptible to peer pressure than DJ was; she let Kimmy pierce her ears to impress some cool girls in her grade, she almost smoked in the bathroom when she was in middle school, it was the end of the world when she had to get glasses, and she once considered throwing a baseball game because the guy she was dating asked her to.  DJ wouldn't have been dating a guy like that in the first place.  Stephanie had some self-esteem issues and was just kind of a screw-up, is what I'm saying.  While her antics on Fuller House are not really surprising, then, they're harder to watch coming from a grown-ass woman.

As you can tell from all of this, I got really into this whole thing.  I was interested in all of the characters, and I laughed out loud at least once an episode.  The winky-winky references to the original show got a little old, but hopefully they will have gotten those out of their system by the second season.  If you were a fan of the original, I'd recommend.