Season 1, Episode 20, “The Seven-Month Itch-Part 2”

My apologies to those of you who lost sleep this past week while waiting to find out whether or not Uncle Jesse has really left the full house for good.  As for the rest of you, who probably can’t be bothered to scroll down the screen to read the previous episodes review, here’s a brief synopsis of what you missed:

Uncle Jesse was supposed to get the full house to himself all weekend and he was gonna bang the headboard nonstop with his new woman but then the family cancelled their trip and made Jesse sing “If You’re Happy and You Know It” while he had blue balls and so he finally got fed up with everyone’s stupid bullshit and snuck off in the night, leaving only a note that said he wasn’t sure if he was ever coming back.

Man, I should summarize all the episodes that quickly.  I’d have a lot more time to read books.

So, anyway: now what’s gonna happen, you guys?  Is Uncle Jesse ever coming back or what???

Danny’s first reaction is to lie to his children by saying that Jesse just went on vacation.  The kids go for it and are temporarily at ease but Jesse’s absence is soon felt when Joey makes some shitty ass pancakes.  Jesse calls about a minute later, immediately killing any sense of suspense.  For those of you who were wondering where Uncle Jesse went, wait no longer!  He’s skiing in Tahoe and doesn’t know when he’ll be back, but he left his emergency contact info just in case.  How thoughtful!  And what does Uncle Jesse get in return for this act of consideration?  Stephanie asks if she can use his room while he’s gone.  Damn, it’s like she doesn’t care at all.

Uncle Jesse and his pals all gather together in a cabin and sing “Love Machine.”  This strikes me as odd because I thought that sitting around with a bunch of corny assholes and singing songs was exactly what made him run away from home.  I thought he’d be bangin’ his woman.

Anyway, after blowing the roof off that bitch they decide to go skiing and there’s a lengthy bit about Jesse putting his ski clothes on that really never goes anywhere.  It takes him a long time to put all his ski clothes on and then he gets tired.  What’s the joke?

Meanwhile, back at the full house, Danny does a really shitty job of trying to replace Jesse’s role as DJ’s guitar teacher.

DJ asks if Jesse has left for good and there is heartfelt emotion as Danny explains that Uncle Jesse’s going through some shit right now.  In the very next scene DJ recruits Stephanie to cook up a zany scheme to bring Uncle Jesse back.  They call the cabin in Tahoe and leave a message with one of Jesse’s homeys alleging that the baby is sick.

Jesse returns to his corny friends and is told about the sick baby message.  He tries not to spend too much time worrying and his friends urge him to perform, “The Boys Are Back In Town” with them to take his mind off of it.  But their shitty sing-a-long is overwhelmed in Jesse mind by a montage of moments between him and Michelle, set to, “Baby Love.”

Pretty much every shot of Jesse and Michelle from the previous 18 episodes is shown, and when they run out there are some new vignettes of them having quality time together, like by playing cards and eating ice cream and stuff like that.

Jesse is so moved by these heartwarming memories that he immediately says goodbye to his corny friends and heads back to the full house.

So Jesse comes back and then he finds out right away that Michelle’s not really sick.  He gets all mad and then he has a heartwarming talk with Danny and Joey.  Jesse realizes that living in the full house fills an empty space in his heart that he didn’t even know was there.  So you might think that it would wrap up there but then he has a heartwarming talk with Stephanie and DJ, too.

And as if all that’s not tedious enough, Jesse then goes and has a heartwarming talk with Michelle, which is when the music comes on.  And it’s a really long scene, too!  But at least it’s the last one.

Ok, so I think the problem here is pretty obvious.  The shows writers have a hard enough time writing a single episode, so when they had to write a two-parter they just wee-wee’d their way through the whole thing.  There’s so much awkward padding in both of these episodes, from the extended dream sequence in the previous episode to the clips montage in this one, followed by a series of drawn out heartwarming talks.  Full House usually fails at being funny, but this time it didn’t even try.  I know that it’s a given that every episode of this shows sucks and everything, but this one’s awful in the worst way.

Firsts:  Montage of old clips