Season 4, Episode 25, “The Graduates”

Season 4, Episode Twenty-What!??!  How fucking long is this Season gonna go on for?  I looked back at older Seasons and it turns out they’ve been getting progressively longer…  Rationally, I know that this show wasn’t intentionally made to suck as much as possible to recap on a weekly basis, but it sure does feel that was sometimes.  Ok, all the time.

Pre-Credits Gag:  Michelle walks into Joey’s room and asks him to find her stuffed pig but instead of helping her he just makes a song about it on his blues harmonica.

After Becky burns the waffles, everyone decides to eat cereal for breakfast and they all get one of those little individual mini-cereal boxes that you buy when you go camping or whatever.  What an odd detail…  Why don’t they have a regular cereal box?  Anyway, Joey starts asking Danny about how his blind date went the night before and Danny says it sucked because his date said that he looked old.  Hey, wait a minute, before I get to insulting Danny’s rapidly withering features, I have to take a minute to wonder what happened to whatsherface, that woman he was dating for most of this Season who had that ugly practical-joke-playing son, Rusty.  The last time Rusty appeared they didn’t show his mom or mention her at all, and now I guess they’re both gone for good.  Back in the early episodes they used to introduce and then drop new characters left and right (Bubba the turtle, your absence will never stop hurting…), but by this point I’ve come to expect some sort of explanation when a recurring love interest disappears.  Whatsherface and Rusty had several episodes centered around them, and now they’re just gone forever?  Why did I ever let myself get so invested in them?  Oh, and also, Danny’s face looks like Wilford Brimley’s ever-greying anus.

Michelle comes downstairs and insists on singing “The Wheels on the Bus” because she’s going to be performing it with her class at her graduation from preschool.  Jesse is visibly unenthusiastic about the choice of song, as he finds it to be “uncool” and not at all suitable for his preschool graduation viewing experience.

DJ and Stephanie come downstairs and Becky asks DJ about the speech she’ll be presenting at her graduation from junior high.  Stephanie starts bitching about how everyone else is about to have a graduation ceremony except for her but for some reason no one tells her to just shut the fuck up because it’s not like she’s being intentionally excluded, she’s just finishing a grade that isn’t concluded with a  graduation ceremony this year.  See how easily this premise could have been resolved?  Anyway, Danny continues to fret about getting older while the rest of the family make quips that make him feel worse and then everyone leaves the house without ever eating any of the cereal from those little boxes.  Well then why were they even there at all?

Wake Up, San Francisco features a fitness guy who makes Becky and Danny work out and then gives Danny fitness advice that applies to “us older guys.”  Although Danny crumples at his suggestions and begins to hemorrhage insecurity right on the show, this is still the least disastrous taping of Wake Up, San Francisco we’ve ever seen.  After the taping, some college intern from the show comes up to Danny and starts riding his nuts super hard.  Danny realizes that even though his best years are behind him he can still drain precious energy from someone else’s youth so he asks her out. She enthusiastically accepts for some reason and then invites him to go see a band called “Slaughter” with her, which sounds just like something the kids would be into, doesn’t it?

Jesse shows up early to pick Michelle up from preschool and cynically observes as the kids practice singing, “The Wheels on the Bus.”  Jesse admits to the teacher that he thinks the song is a piece of shit and, after a heated argument with Aaron Bailey, agrees to help the class learn a new song for their graduation ceremony.  Why does the teacher allow Jesse to come into her preschool classroom and argue with her 4 year old students like that?  This isn’t the first time Jesse’s come into her classroom and started up some shit and I really think that she should just make him wait outside.

In preparation for his date with that under-aged intern, Danny puts on the most ridiculous God damn outfit I ever saw in my entire life.  I don’t care what year it was, that shit is unacceptable.  Seriously, given a choice I’d wear a fucking rubber fetish bodysuit to a first date before I put that gear on.  It would certainly be less embarrassing.  The intern meets Danny at the full house and then goes to the bathroom before they head out, presumably to escape out the window after seeing Danny’s outfit, and Danny does a mating dance as he waits for her to return. As he does the lamest white boy dance of all time in the most humiliating outfit ever assembled, the family all return home from dinner together, Kimmie Gibbler and all, and are horrified to see that all those years of Danny being an embarrassing blight on their household was just a mild precursor to this moment.

Things devolve even further when the intern comes back from the bathroom and the family discovers that not only is Danny the loudest fashion don’t of the entire 90’s, he’s also a statutory rapist.  Hilarity ensues!

As the family sit in the audience awaiting Michelle’s graduation reception, Stephanie proceeds to selfishly complain about how she’s not graduating this year.  Jesse and Michelle’s teachers introduce the graduates, who come out in cute little paper hats and robes as Stephanie continues to hate on the ceremony and vociferously feel sorry for herself.  The children are shooed behind a curtain as Jesse, also deeply intent on making a 4 year-olds graduation ceremony all about himself, introduces the musical number that he’s arranged for the kids under the title of “Jesse’s Little Rippers.”

Long time readers of Full House Reviewed may remember that there’s one scene on the show that I’ve been dreading above all others.  I’ve sat through some really shitty stuff, you guys.  Remember Jesse’s Christmas speech?  Remember the constant revolving door of Grandparents that are featured in a few episodes, never to appear again?  Remember every single line that Joey ever said?  All of that poorly produced, barely scripted, no-talent performed, hackneyed bullshit looks like Citizen Goddamn Kane compared to what comes next.  This is it, you guys.  This is the worst scene in the history of Full House.

Proving once and for all that the creators of Full House have a deep-rooted hatred for the Beatles, Michelle and her classmates perform the most unbearable rendition of “Twist and Shout” that could possibly exist.  It’s just a bunch of little kids standing around with fake instruments, looking confused while shouting the lyrics in the most unsynchronized manner imaginable.  Naturally, Michelle leads the performance, standing front and center and shouting the lyrics first before the other kids repeat what she says at whatever pace they feel like.  Words cannot describe this awful, awful moment, which I really think is the worst in television history.  It makes the Hindenburg disaster look like a field of flowers with a big ass rainbow hanging over it.  It makes the time Fonzie water skied over a shark seem like a trip to the Louvre.  It make the last episodes of Seinfeld and Battlestar Galactica not seem so disappointing after all.  I’ve almost gotten used to this shows’ brazen approach to self-congratulating, intrusive “comedy,” but this fuckin’ scene is a full on sensory overload in the worst way conceivable.  There are still a bunch of episodes in later Seasons that I’ve never seen before, but I really can’t imagine that there will ever be a moment as terrible as this one.  I saw this scene exactly one time in like 1999 and it made a strong enough impression on me that I’ve been dreading it with every review.  So there you have it, y’all:  worst scene ever.

I almost feel like I can’t go on after that but there are still about 6 minutes left in the episode so I guess I’ll finish it up.  I just feel so exhausted now…  So, what’s next?  The family decide to reward Stephanie’s relentless narcissistic complaining by staging a graduation ceremony just for her in Joey’s room.  I can’t help but feel that she might have actually learned something for once if they’d all just ignored her or, better yet, sat her down and explained that she was being a real asshole and ruining her sisters’ graduations with her endless kvetching.  I bet they could’ve sold it if they’d played some gentle music when it happened.

Danny walks in on that intern jamming out with DJ to hair metal in her room and decides that it’s time for a very special talk.  He explains that he’s acquired whatever reassurance he was looking for by bangin’ some girl half his age so now he wants to “just be friends.”

Later, Danny sits in the kitchen and plays “Young Girl” on his guitar, joining this episodes themes of self-pity and horrible musical performances.  DJ comes downstairs and asks him to listen to her rehearse her graduation speech and he lets her get about 2 sentences in before he starts criticizing it and then giving advice that clearly only applies to himself.  Danny says that he realizes that he can’t be young again just by taking advantage of some naive intern and then DJ tells him what an asshole he looked like in the outfit he wore to the Slaughter concert.  Although he really didn’t help her at all with her speech, or even listen to it, their discussion is concluded and they hug.  Stephanie and Michelle come into the kitchen and Danny declares that his life here in the full house, with 3 ugly daughters and 2 sponging idiots, plus now Aunt Becky, is pretty darn sweet.