Season 1, Episode 6, “Daddy’s Home”

The family is planning a fun day of attending Stephanie’s ballet recital followed by a shopping trip for DJ. When Joey enters the scene, DJ makes a comment that lets us viewers know that his outfit is ridiculous, while hooting from the audience informs us that Jesse is looking good.  As always, the shows aesthetics are so baffling that we need prompts to let us know how these characters perceive one another.

Yet another cheap hoe comes over to ride that Uncle Jesse train, which leaves Joey feeling envious on account of the fact that he’s disastrously unappealing.  An extra layer of complexity is added to the plot when Danny gets called in to work, causing him to miss both the recital and the shopping trip.  The kids are actually pretty understanding about it.  I guess you’d have to be, considering that he’s the only one with a fucking job.  It’s bad enough he has to float three daughters, but now he’s also got two unemployed nitwit assholes taking up space in his gigantic house as well.

Joey goes into the basement to watch Jesse make out with that hoe that came over.  This scene is actually really fucked up.  Joey talks about his problems while Jesse makes out.  A similar scene in the previous episode was already pretty unsettling, but this one is somehow even worse.  I don’t know if it’s everyone’s total disregard for Jesse’s privacy, or the fact that he doesn’t seem to be bothered when people stare at him while he’s getting busy, or what.  Whatever the cause, these scenes make me feel weird.

Anyway, Joey confesses that he wants to be more like Jesse, so Jesse agrees to school him in his lifestyle.  Uh-oh you guys, I think some wacky stuff is about to happen…

Danny comes home after work feeling shitty because his obligation to his job came before his daughters one time.  Meanwhile, Joey premieres his new persona, “Big Joe Stud” (that’s really what they call him!), which I don’t even know how to react to.  And now you have your entire premise for the episode: two one-dimensional characters attempt to make a sudden personality change based on a conflict that is abruptly presented with as little deliberation as possible.

Joey borrows Jesse’s motorcycle while Danny films Stephanie’s feet while she’s sleeping.

Filming your sleeping children’s feet might be even creepier than staring at Jesse while he’s trying to get his freak on.  Apparently Danny is trying to compensate for the one time he wasn’t there for his kids by smothering them.  He agrees to take the day off of work to do whatever they want, resulting in a lot of fun activities that we never get to see because there’s no fucking way any studio executive was gonna pay to film it.

Joey disappears overnight with Jesse’s motorcycle, so by the time he comes back Jesse is really pissed!   Joey tries to smooth things over with an increasingly implausible tale of meeting a hot chick and driving her to Vegas where he won a bunch of money and got married before producing a hit show on Broadway.  When Jesse somehow doesn’t fall for this idiotic bullshit, Joey tells the real story: he met a woman down the street and he fell asleep on her couch while they were playing Monopoly.  Even though this is a far lamer story, it’s still pretty unbelievable.  What woman would let Joey in her house?  And even assuming she would, who invites strange men in and then busts out the  Monopoly board?  I mean, really?   Anyway, after all is revealed, Joey decides that he’s happiest being himself:  an unemployable comedian who mooches off of his successful friend.  Well, great.

Meanwhile, Danny is in his daughters’ room tucking them in at the end of  a long day of overcompensating.  After going horseback riding, to the circus, and to Marine World, DJ is feeling upset and doesn’t really know why.  She’s probably fucking exhausted.  Who can do all that shit in one day?  I guess since they knew they weren’t gonna show any of the stuff they did on their day out the writers thought they’d really go nuts, but even still, that much stuff is pretty ridiculous.  Anyway, DJ’s problem is actually sort of almost interesting  because it’s more about ambiguous emotions than all the other quickly resolved problems that are always on this show.  So there you have it:  the shallowest plot and the deepest plot on the show so far in the same episode, and neither of them were worth watching.