Season 3, Episode 14, “Misadventures in Babysitting”

Pre-Credits Gag:  Joey shows Michelle one of those mechanical flowers that dance when you play music.  Remember those?  They were pretty big around the time this episode aired, which is just the first of many tidbits of evidence in this episode that 1989 was a glorious year.  Exhibit B: check out Michelle’s cool shades.

Everybody in the full house is standing around waiting to use the phone because DJ wont stop gossiping with Kimmie Gibbler about all the heavy petting that’s going on at their middle school.  While they’re all waiting, Joey mentions to Danny that he needs a spot to play his poker game and Danny offers to join the game and host it at the full house.  Joey is hesitant to accept the offer because he’s wary of the social ramifications of Danny’s obsessive compulsive cleaning addiction but since he really doesn’t have anywhere else to go he eventually agrees.  Danny sees the game as an opportunity to make some changes to his behavior, probably because once Joey’s embarrassed of you, you can’t help but realize that it’s time for some personal growth.

Rebecca Donaldson and Jesse enter the scene and make a big point about how they’re finally getting along.  They discuss a disagreement they’re having about whether to visit either Rebecca Donaldson’s family or Graceland for the holidays and instead of reaching an agreement they just make out in front of everybody.  How could that even be a real argument?  Why are Jesse’s ideas always so fucking ludicrous?  Seriously, his girlfriend wants to go visit her family for the holidays and he wants to go to some tourist attraction instead?  There’s never any reason to take his side.

DJ’s phone hogging reaches a climax when Kimmie Gibbler comes over to the full house and, utilizing the cutting edge wizardry of cordless telephones, continues her phone conversation with DJ while they’re in the very same room.  Danny enters the scene and tells those broads to hang that shit up already and so DJ protests that she needs her own phone line.  Danny explains that he has two worthless assholes living in his house who don’t pay rent and a bunch of bratty materialistic daughters so even though he has a sweet job as a morning show host he can’t afford to get her a phone line of her very own.  Kimmie Gibbler breaks down the expenses of her own phone line at her house and Danny agrees to set it up if DJ can pay for it with her own money.  Kimmie Gibbler graciously offers up one of her babysitting gigs to DJ to help her earn money and with that you have:  a premise.

While the dads all play cards Stephanie is put in charge of putting the baby to bed and, boy does that baby give her a hard time!  Meanwhile, the dads put on their poker game with two guests, including that actor Bruce Baum, who kind of looks like Gallagher.  Those of you who have been taking notes may remember that he made an appearance as an MC at a comedy club in Season 1, but there’s no mention of whether he’s reoccurring as the same character or if that actor just happened to be hanging around the parking lot again when they were casting this episode.

So Danny tries to prove that his cleaning tendencies are not a psychosis by ignoring the poker guests slobbish behavior even though most of what they do defies basic human decency.  The guest who isn’t Bruce Baum brings a big stack of cigarette packs and chain smokes inside the full house the whole time they play the game.  You can’t just go to someone’s house and pull that shit!  I know that smoking has a lot more of a stigma these days than it did in the magical age of 1989 but even then you couldn’t just go into someone’s house and light up like that.  It’s hard to laugh at Danny suppressing his cleaning neurosis when you can actually sympathize with him.  Not that it would have been funny anyway, but I’m always really annoyed when I can actually empathize with these shitty characters.

Jesse starts bitching about Rebecca Donaldson at the poker game and is quickly whipped into a chauvinistic frenzy by the other players that results in him calling her up and acting like a gigantic asshole.  Doesn’t Jesse know better than to take advice about women from a bunch of gross dudes who never get laid?  Guys like that are always trying to recruit you into their ranks.

DJ starts her first night of babysitting by meeting a kid who, like Bruce Baum, has appeared on full house before as a bit character (he’s one of Stephanie’s friends) even though it’s not acknowledged in this episode.  The kids name is Brian and his parents are dirty hippies who are going to a Grateful dead concert.  Even though the parent’s personas are cartoonishly bad and totally unnecessary, it’s at least an attempt to represent some sort of archetype of the kinds of parents you might encounter in San Francisco.  So even though the representation is terrible, I’m so happy to see some element of the show where it seemed like someone almost sort of tried to do something that involved some consideration.  Anyway, as soon as the parents leave, Brian starts acting like a total shithead and jumping all over the furniture and yelling about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and DJ’s like, aw hell no, this babysitting shit aint all it’s cracked up to be!

Kimmie Gibler comes over and helps DJ assuage Brian.  They take their eyes off him for about ten seconds and he manages to get his head stuck in the banister.  While DJ searches for a way to free him, Kimmie Gibbler torments Brian by making him smell her stinky feet, which is just the first of many, many Kimmie Gibbler stinky feet references to come.  DJ rubs butter all over Brian’s head but when that doesn’t work she considers calling Danny to bail her out.

All of the poker players are forced to pretend that they’re sleeping in order to get Michelle to finally go to bed.  I guess when you sign up for an evening at the full house you have to be ready to participate in some corny bullshit like that.  DJ calls the full house and tells Danny that she needs his help so he leaves the game, but not before condemning the poker guests for being disgusting assholes.  The moment Danny exits, Rebecca Donaldson enters the scene and cuts Jesse’s balls off in front of his little boyfriends, which you totally can’t even blame her for.

Jesse and Rebecca Donaldson continue their inane debate after the guests flee the scene and finally decide to settle their issues with a poker game.  Before the game is won the two of them come to their senses and decide to discuss their issues rationally and reach a compromise.  It’s weird how we’ve barely seen Rebecca Donaldson at all this season and then we get two episodes in a row where she’s featured prominently and they’re pretty much exactly the same.  It’s like if she’s not arguing with Jesse about something he’s totally wrong about then the writers just have no idea what to do with her at all.

While Danny saws the banister apart so he can free Brian, DJ apologizes for being such a shitty babysitter and says she doesn’t deserve to have her own phone.  Danny consoles her and says that running to get her daddy to bail her out was better than trying to solve the problem herself and fucking it up even worse, which is a pretty confusing moral if you ask me.  At least the music never comes on.

Anyway, Brian’s parents come home before Danny is even able to free him from the bannister so it doesn’t even end up making any difference that he came, but they’re both peaking on acid when they get back anyway so they don’t even give a shit about what’s going on and hire DJ to babysit again next week.   Danny gets her a phone line of her very own in the final scene but then Stephanie gets a phone call instead of DJ.  Wah wah!

Firsts:  Kimmie Gibbler’s stinky feet, DJ’s own phone