Season 3, Episode 11, “Aftershocks”

Pre-Credits Gag:  Jesse and Joey practice a blues medley and then the baby comes in and demands that they play the teapot song.  The Uncles comply and perform a  blues rendition that Michelle does a little dance to.  And there you have it, a new low.  This show really does get so much worse when the baby starts talking.  Watching this series all the way through is like journeying through the seven circles of hell, and this scene is clearly the entryway into a deeper, darker, more maggot-infested pit of horror.

One thing that’s been coming up a lot in the comments that I’ve really appreciated are these sort of suppressed memories about the episodes that we’re experiencing as they’re described (or in my case, viewed).  Usually people only remember certain moments of an episode that affected them a certain way, like the scene a few episodes back when Uncle Jesse rode his motorcycle on the roof, which both I and my beloved commenter, Carrick, held as our lone memory from that episode (how we managed to forget dreamy Scott Baio is beyond me… ).  Maybe it’s because the film quality was a little different and it was in a seldom-seen, outdoor location?  Or maybe it was just so spectacularly awful that it managed to burrow a little hole into our subconscious forever?  My favorite memory moment I’ve experienced while trudging through this series is how my brain merged the episodes where DJ and Stephanie were handcuffed together with the episode where they steal a shirt, so in my memory they were twisting their shirts to hide being handcuffed together instead of hiding the tags (which doesn’t even make sense).  This is all a bit long-winded, but what I’m getting at is that Full House seems to hold a place in our collective memories for its stingingly awful approach to everything.  Usually these memories are of single moments or sequences, as the bland hue of their surrounding storylines provided only a hazy, sticky doo doo smear in our recollections.  But some whole episodes were so fucking awful that they didn’t even provide us the courtesy of surrounding the pointy awfulness with the hazy bland doo doo and so the whole 22 minutes just stabbed us in the brain and scarred our memories forever.  A commenter had that experience with the previous episode, which I had either never seen or was so traumatized by the combination of Joey and Danny dressed as clowns and Jesse revisiting the sentiment of his Christmas speech that I blocked it from my memory altogether.  But this episode, this fucking shitty episode that we are about to experience, in which Full House tries to be topical and values shallow, contrived drama over gratingly obnoxious comedy?  I remember all of it.

Kimmy Gibbler’s been staying at the full house for a while because her own house has been undergoing repairs after the big San Francisco earthquake.  Instead of being grateful for the opportunity to share screen time with the only tolerable character on this whole show, the Uncles treat her like shit.  DJ comes down to model the Mrs. Claus costume she’ll be wearing for the school play and Stephanie points out a fat ass zit on her nose.  The uncles try to console her, saying that zits are just a part of life, but DJ has a big tantrum and runs off.
That night, Stephanie wakes up and expresses anxiety about the possibility of another earthquake.  DJ and Kimmy Gibbler tell her to shut the fuck up and go back to sleep so she goes into Michelle’s room and bothers her instead.  Stephanie convinces the baby to go with her to sleep in Danny’s room and when they get there, Stephanie claims that the whole operation was the baby’s idea.  Danny tells Stephanie that this pattern of getting into his bed at night has to stop but allows it one last time.

In the morning, DJ expresses further anxiety about her disgusting facial blemish while Stephanie relentlessly clings to Danny.  Stephanie even goes so far as to try to convince Danny to let her hang out with him all day instead of going to school but Danny doesn’t let her.  The uncles observe that Stephanie is being a desperate weirdo but Danny thinks it’s just because he’s such an awesome dad.

In the very next scene Stephanie is freaking out because Danny’s late getting home.  Joey tries to console her with an annoying impression of the elves from The Wizard of Oz but, really, what’s that gonna do to help?  Danny conveniently arrives at that moment and Stephanie vehemently adheres herself to him.  He tells her that he has to go to a dinner meeting and she totally flips her shit, so much so that he has to cancel his meeting and finds himself being frantically clutched while he just sits there and stares at the uncles like, “what the fuck am I gonna do about this crazy bitch?”

Having successfully manipulated Danny into being her emotional captive, Stephanie remorselessly forces him to appease her with a game of Barrel of Monkeys.  Eventually Danny tactfully approaches the subject of her being a needy succubus but Stephanie swiftly dodges the issue.
DJ comes home to find the uncles chillin’ in the kitchen and reports that her zit ended up not being a problem.  She went into the bathroom at school and found a bunch of other girls checking out their own zits and made the witty remark, “anyone want to play connect the dots?”  Why those girls didn’t all beat the shit out of her is beyond me, but DJ’s obnoxious remark won her peers over instead, thus proving that being a big pushy attention-starved stain on humanity is the best approach to every situation.  Shooba-doo-bop-badow.
Danny asks the uncles for help about what to do about Stephanie being all fucked up and Joey suggests she see a therapist.  Danny gets all defensive but the uncles apply gentle love to help him understand that seeing a therapist could be the best thing for Stephanie.

Danny takes Stephanie to her new therapist’s child-friendly, non-threatening office.  The therapist asks Stephanie to draw a picture of her family while she has a talk with Danny.  Danny begins to compulsively clean her desk and when she calls this into question he confesses that when he was a kid he fantasized about being a maid.  Wait, what!??!  Maybe this therapy storyline is gonna pay off after all…

Naturally, the second something remotely interesting happens the scene is interrupted, as Stephanie has finished her drawing.  So the therapist discusses the drawing with her and notes that Stephanie has drawn all of her annoying family members inside of her house with her but there’s a big crack in the ceiling and Danny is outside.  And so it is revealed that Danny was late getting home after the earthquake and now Stephanie feels the need to know where he is at all times.  Dang, that therapist sure cracked that nut pretty quick.  She then helps Stephanie write a list of things that will help her not to worry, and that’s it.  After that there’s just a brief scene of the family putting Stephanie to bed with the understanding that everything is now fine.  There’s no allusion to further therapy, and no hint whatsoever of there being anything else that needs to be dealt with.   For reals?  It’s amazing to me how this episode manages to endorse therapy (in the scene where the uncles convince Danny to swallow his parental pride and seek some outside help) and completely trivialize it (Stephanie was in therapy for exactly 4 minutes) in one fell swoop.  What’s really frustrating is having witnessed dozens of episodes chronicling how fucking bad all of these people need serious psychological help.  As long as Stephanie was there, you think they might have addressed her constant desperate need for attention or her total disregard for others.  Or why couldn’t they send Joey to therapy, just for being the way he is?  What a wasted opportunity.  But the good news is that if any of you are having issues you can’t handle, you can just make a single appointment with a therapist, where you’ll spend 4 minutes drawing a picture and writing a list before all of your problems are solved.  I think I’ll go this week and I’ll draw a picture of myself having this episode burned into my memory and I’ll make a list of reasons why I keep writing this shitty blog.