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.
