Season 3, Episode 5, “Granny Tanny”

Pre-Credits Gag:  Stephanie tries to teach Michelle how to tie her shoes but it turns out that Stephanie is just being manipulated into tying them for her.

Michelle crawls all over Uncle Jesse as he’s sleeping and reminds him that Grandma’s coming to visit.  He realizes that she must have escaped from her crib in order to come into his room and when he asks if this is the case, she says, “you got it, dude.”  Although this isn’t the first time she’s uttered this catch phrase, it is the first time the audience totally flips their shit when she says it.  Why was that ever a thing?  That little girl saying that phrase and giving the thumbs up is more annoying than the entire cast of Blossom combined.  I defy you to find a more annoying catch phrase in the entire history of television.  Anyway, Jesse tells Danny that Michelle’s able to escape her crib now and then Danny announces that it’s time for Michelle’s first big-girl bed.

DJ alerts everyone that Grandma’s car has pulled up and then there’s a ring at the doorbell and then this person walks in:

For those of you who have better things to do than cultivate an encyclopedic knowledge of Full House in your spare time, here is a brief history of grandma’s throughout the show so far:  The pilot of Full House actually opens with the original Grandma, Danny’s Mom, Claire, as she is booted out of the full house so the Uncle’s can move in.  She appears once more a few episodes later wherein she teams up with Joey and Jesse’s Mom’s and tries to usurp the Uncle’s to create a more structured, grandma-centric full house.  After that plan failed her days were clearly numbered and she was occasionally referred to but never shown onscreen again. For example, if the girls weren’t in an episode it was because they were “with Grandma.”  Season 2 brought in a new Grandma, Jesse’s Mom, Grandma Katsopolis, who was played by a different actress than the Jesse’s Mom who previously teamed up with Danny’s Mom.  Grandma Katsopolis was joined by Grandpa Katsopolis and the two of them showed up occasionally throughout Season 2, which never really added much to the show.  We haven’t seen them yet in Season 3 and I’m willing to bet that they’re gone for good.  This brings us to this episode, where Danny’s Mom, Claire, returns at long last to the full house, but the original actress has been replaced by Doris Roberts, who is probably best known for her later role on Everybody Loves Raymond.  I wonder what happened to the o.g. Grandma?

The family congratulates Grandma on her recent retirement but then she just goes into a whole spiel about how lonely and bored she is and how she can feel the icy hand of death slowly reaching out for her.  Later she makes everyone pancakes and then insists on cleaning up.  Danny decides that taking care of him and his family brings Grandma joy and meaning in her otherwise hollow life and so the family should all act like they can’t live without her while she’s there.  What the fuck kind of sense does that make?  The kids are all confused at the prospect of telling a lie, even if it’s to make Grandma happy.

Amidst cleaning up after everyone and taking Stephanie to the zoo, Grandma picks out Michelle first bed.  Many of you who are familiar with this show must surely have that pencil bed deeply embedded into your subconscious.

The family all rave about Grandma as they eat a big ass dinner that she’s prepared.  They give her such praise that she decides that the only logical state of affairs would be for the Uncle’s to move out and for her to come live at the full house.  Now that’s the kind of statement that really calls for a musical cue and a commercial break!

I’m surprised they didn’t milk this scenario more before Grandma made the decision to move in.  You think there’d be some more scenes of the family feigning ineffectiveness so Grandma would help them out or something.  That seems like grounds for some wacky comedy to me.  All they really do is tell her that they think she’s hella rad for like 5 minutes and then she starts tellin’ muthafuckas they gots to move out.  It’s also kind of weird how this is pretty much the same thing that went down the last time we saw Grandma.  Could they not think of a single scenario for Grandma Tanner other than her trying to invade the full house?

The Uncles, sensing that their meal ticket is at stake, quickly tell Grandma to back the fuck up.  She then replies that they can stay but they have to share a room.  Dang, y’all, Grandma’s callin all the shots!  The Uncle’s try to get Danny to give Grandma the boot but of course Danny’s a big fuckin mamma’s boy so he doesn’t do shit.  Grandma leaves the scene to get the baby ready for bed and then the kids scold Danny for making them lie to Grandma about how rad she is, thus resulting in Grandma’s presumptuous invasion, and the Uncles further pressure Danny to give Grandma the old heave ho.

Michelle has trouble adjusting to her new bed so Jesse helps her out in what’s gotta be the longest scene ever.  First he performs wacky physical comedy to help her get comfortable and then the scene takes on a more serious tone as he agrees to sit with her while she falls asleep.  I guess this scene is in there to emotionally manipulate us into caring about the bond between Jesse and Michelle, what with it being in jeopardy because of buttinski ass Grandma and all.  I wasn’t really buyin it until the long slow pan of them holding each other as the scene faded out and gentle music played.  That shit melted my heart.

Danny continues to avoid telling his mom to get up out his house but Joey really stays on his case about it.  Seriously, what the fuck would Joey do if he had to leave the full house?  He’s the most useless man on the planet!  You can see the fear in his eyes as he tries every psychological technique he can think of to get Danny to make his mom leave.

Danny finally confronts his mom and tells her that they were all just pretending to need her there and she can’t move in.  Dang, he might as well punch her in the face while he’s at it!  Grandma gets upset and then gentle music plays as Danny explains that he mislead her before because he’s so desperate to make her happy.  They quickly work out their issues with one another and then Danny suggests that instead of moving into the full house, Grandma should get an apartment in the neighborhood.  I’m always kind of at a loss for words when characters arrive at a reasonable compromise on this show.

Just to wrap things up, Danny goes into the girls room to fill them in on the Grandma situation and to tell them once again that lying is hella shitty.  He then informs them that they should never spare his feelings by lying to him and then they start spouting off about all this lame stuff he does.  Best ending ever!

So I’ve got about ten million bucks that says we never see Grandma Tanner ever again.  I’d even go so far as to wager that this is the last attempt on this show to feature any grandparents at all.  Seriously, every iteration of the grandparents on this show was totally unremarkable and this has gotta count as the third strike.  I did kind of like how this latest Grandma just rolled up on the full house and started making decisions for everybody.  It kind of gives you a sense of where the Tanner family’s relentless sense of entitlement comes from.  But then how did Grandma get like that?  I wonder where you’d end if you traced the Tanner family along their lineage of imposing behavior?  My guess is that they were descended from the Pilgrims.  I guess if you think about it, the Tanner family are sort of a characterization of everything that’s horrible about white people throughout history.  They’re loud and anal retentive, pushy, self-righteous, judgmental, don’t listen, act entitled, have no empathy, have way more money than they deserve, have bad fashion and terrible taste in music and dancing, and they’re fucking corny as hell.  I can’t believe I never realized this before.  This is my Full House epiphany:  Full House is anti-white people propaganda.  You can file this shit on a shelf at a video store next to Seventh Heaven and The Brady Bunch and call it the Kill Whitey section.

Firsts:  Michelle’s pencil bed