Season 2, Episode 1, “Cutting it Close”

This Season begins with a pre-credits opener (a first for the series) that gives us a moment before the show starts to take a little breath and reacquaint ourselves with the Tanner family.   All the adults look just about the same but the kids have aged visibly, especially Stephanie, who is quickly shedding away her youthful charm.  The family gathers to play ring around the rosie with Michelle, who instead of falling down at the end, sticks her tongue out at everyone.  And with that you have a fine introduction to the Season:  an impertinent gesture from an ugly baby.   That’s right, assholes:  Welcome to Season 2.

We get right into the thick of things as we find Uncle Jesse jamming out in his room until Stephanie interrupts him.  She doesn’t give a shit about his struggling music career and is instead only concerned with whether or not he’ll play beauty parlor with her.  She tries the same fake crying routine that she used over and over again in the first season but Uncle Jesse seems to acknowledge that her cute tv kid days are rapidly approaching their end and giver her the low down about how that shit aint gonna fly no mo.   She quickly develops a new self-pity routine and he finally caves.

We all know by now that Uncle Jesse has about four character traits, and one of them is that he’s real particular about his hair.  As such, he gets a little uptight when Stephanie starts pretending to cut it with giant pointy scissors.  Joey tries to relieve some of the tension by doing his new Roger Rabbit impression (not that this show is dated or anything) and it proves to be so hilarious that it causes Stephanie to absent-mindedly cut a huge chunk out of Jesse’s magnificent mullet.

Jesse freaks the fuck out while Joey and Danny stand around laughing at him.  What a bunch of heartless pricks.  Stephanie feels guilty and decides to punish herself, which makes the audience go, “aww.”  Danny tries to have a heart to heart talk with her but despite his best efforts he just can’t find the right words to make the music come on.

Later Danny chills out in the living room and his burgeoning obsessive compulsive disorder is explored as he tries to force Michelle to stack the coffee table magazines by size and alphabetical order.   DJ enters the scene and describes to him how she stacked the dishes after washing them and Danny glares with approval.  Abruptly, Uncle Jesse enters the scene, fresh from the hospital with two broken arms.   He got into a motorcycle accident that he claims was caused by his emotional turmoil over the haircut he had to get.   He says that shit right in front of Stephanie.  That’s a grown man blaming his motorcycle accident on a botched haircut a little girl gave him, right in front of her.  Nobody even argues about this being the cause of the accident.

Jesse laments his condition, which he says will take 6 weeks to recover from.  The family try to talk him into removing his motorcycle helmet so they can see his haircut and, despite his lack of cooperation, his broken arms prevent him from deflecting their effort to remove said helmet.   Once again we find ourselves at one of those Full House moments where we’re not sure how we are supposed to react to a characters appearance.  In my opinion, Jesse’s hair looks about ten million times better, but I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to look fucked up.  So, yeah, who knows?

Jesse goes into the kitchen to get himself some cereal, refusing any help from the family all the while.  This leads to a seemingly endless physical comedy bit.  He puts bananas in his cereal and everything.  But how’s he supposed to eat it with two broken arms?  Oh, Uncle Jesse!

Jesse finally agrees to let the family help him out, which leads to a montage of hilarious scenes set to a really terrible cover of “help!”

The montage wraps up as DJ tries to help Uncle Jesse play the guitar while Stephanie keeps her distance.  Jesse has a big hissy fit and interrupts Danny’s cleaning (he’s actually dust-busting the vacuum cleaner while he vacuums… he’s really losing it…) to get him to slam the back door for him.  Jesse has a big bitch-fest in the backyard while Stephanie airs out her neurosis to Danny, claiming that she’s the cause of all of Jesse’s frustration.  I wonder how she got that idea?  Oh yeah, it probably happened when he blamed her for all his problems right in front of her and nobody contested it.

Danny interrupts Jesse kicking his ruined motorcycle in the back yard to tell him that he needs to set things right with Stephanie.  Stephanie comes out and claims that Jesse hates her, which prompts the audience to go, “aww” for like the third time this episode.  I guess they bought an “aww” sign to prompt the audience with between seasons because the “aww’s” are coming pretty free and loose all of a sudden.  Anyway, the music comes on and Jesse makes up with Stephanie.

Adding an epilogue to the story, Jesse has a little chat with Michelle.  He asks her if his haircut is better than Gary Shandling’s and she says, “no.”   He ponders his lifestyle, wondering if it isn’t time to make some personal changes.  Finally, he calls Joey to hold his weiner for him while he pees.  That’s right, assholes:  welcome to Season 2!

Firsts:  Pre-credits opener, Jesse’s new hair style, Michelle talks