Season 1, Episode 8, “Jesse’s Girl”

This episode begins with Jesse sneaking downstairs in the middle of the night to bash Joey’s head in with a bat.  Finally!

Joey screams then Jesse screams and then the rest of the family come downstairs to find out what all the screaming is about.  Jesse’s explanation becomes the framing device for the most unnecessary and shoddily constructed flashback episode I’ve ever seen on any tv series.  It all started last week when Jesse started teaching guitar lessons…

Corrina Spicer thinks she signed up for guitar lessons, but what she’s really getting is a whole lot of sexual harassment.  She’s not two minutes into her first lesson before Jesse’s practically dry humping her. Stephanie abruptly enters the scene needing help with her decapitated bear.  For once, Stephanie’s disregard for everyone else’s privacy is being used for good instead of evil.

Jesse kicks her out and then makes plans with Corrina to ride around on his motorcycle after their lesson.  Jesse’s voiceover informs us that they did a bunch of really neat stuff that would have cost a lot of money to film and then we see them come back to the full house to say goodnight.  Corrina’s barely consensual smooch is enough to convince Jesse that they are in love.  While he’s forcing himself on her, the kids come in and say, “eww!”

At this point Joey takes over the role of narrator.

Corrina shows up to meet Jesse, but since he’s running late she joins the family for a viewing of The Wizard of Oz, which just happens to be both her and Joey’s favorite movie.  The cable goes out but Joey saves the day by doing an obnoxious 2-minute prop comedy rendition of the movie.  For some reason this really gets Corrina’s juices flowing.

The kids are put to bed even though they were supposed to be sitting down to watch a movie and also why is Jesse having students over for guitar lessons right at the girls’ bedtime? But what the hell, the story required Corrina and Joey to be alone.  Joey does his best to obey the bro code, but Corrina works too hard to wear that poor, lonely man down.  Naturally, Jesse walks in the minute they start smooching.

Dang, he had flowers for her and everything!  Joey tries to explain to Jesse that he was merely sucking out cheese that Corrina was choking on.  Corrina is ushered out the door and then Jesse rushes to beat Joey’s ass.

Danny intervenes when Joey shields himself with the baby.  Danny attempts to instigate a reconciliation by having the uncles kiss Michelle, which doesn’t solve any problems but does result in an incredibly disturbing image.

This catches us up to the present, where the girls are sent to bed and Danny decides to resolve this conflict once and for all.  It comes to the uncles’ attention that they don’t even really know Corrina, and then the music comes on.  We haven’t really heard the music in a while.  I can’t really figure out which situations call for it.  There’s a heartwarming exchange at the end of every episode, but I guess not all of them are deemed music-worthy.  I’m pretty sure this changes over time as the show becomes even cornier and less conservative with emotional manipulation.  Anyway, Jesse admits that he’s waiting for that special someone and Joey shares that he was just amazed to meet a woman who was attracted to him.

Everyone quits being mad and then Corrina is discovered skulking around on the porch in the middle of the night.  Jesse chivalrously hands her over to Joey and they make out while the girls say, “eww.”

The most prominent of many problems for this episode is that it’s based around a retelling of incidents that the people they’re being recounted to were present for. If my roommate woke me up by screaming in the living room in the middle of the night, I’d be hard-pressed to hear out any 22-minute explanation, but I sure as shit wouldn’t sit through it if it was all about a bunch of stuff that I saw with my own eyes.  I guess the framing device is just to stretch out the narrative on account of this episode doesn’t have a secondary plotline.  If that doesn’t qualify as a hack job, I don’t know what does.