Season 3, Episode 15, Lust in the Dust”

Pre-Credits Gag:  The baby tries to join in on DJ and Stephanie’s jump rope game but she does it wrong.  There’s some sort of joke about the way that she interprets their jump rope song but I can’t even tell what she’s saying.

Joey can’t get work done on his new advertising campaign because the baby hid his tape recorder.  Joey explains to her that he needs it for work but she just laughs at him and makes that little smug asshole smile that I hate so fucking much.  It’s always so disappointing to me that physical abuse isn’t among the many parenting flaws running rampant in the Tanner household.  I bet she’d give those keys up pretty quick if Joey held her head underwater.  Anyway, DJ finds the tape recorder.

Danny cancels a date and decides to spend his weekend cleaning the bathroom instead.  The family grills him about why he’s been weaseling out of all his dates all the time and Danny explains that the woman he was seeing had crooked earlobes.  The family reassures him that he’ll meet someone he likes soon and then, as if on cue, Stephanie shows up with her dance teacher, Karen.

I couldn’t remember any specific instance of Karen being on the show but she did look awfully familiar.  I had to wonder if she wasn’t just blending in with the plethora of bland, mildly-attractive-despite-their-awful-hair-and-clothes women that come and go throughout the series so I IMDB’d her and apparently she’s been in a few episodes before this.  She played a character with a different name in the episode called “Baby Love” (I couldn’t remember who the character was at all) and appeared as Karen for the first time a few episodes ago when Michelle had that awful circus themed birthday party (I couldn’t remember who she was in that episode, either.  I’m assuming she was the big titty aunt that showed up to the party…).  Anyway, it doesn’t fucking matter who she was before because now she’s Stephanie’s dance teacher, plus Danny wants to bang her.  So, there you go, that’s who she is.

Karen prompts Stephanie to show her family the sweet new dance moves she’s learned.  As if that wasn’t a mind-blowingly awesome enough setup on its own, Stephanie tells DJ to put a tape on and when DJ asks why she should have to do it, Stephanie replies, “because, your name’s DJ.”  She says it like DJ’s a fucking idiot, too, making it the funniest joke in the history of Full House.   Amping up this scenes ascension towards greatness, DJ puts on that now classic Bobby brown hit, “My Prerogative,” and Stephanie busts out the sweetest fucking dance routine you ever saw in your life.

Stephanie fucking tears it up, you guys.  That shit is awe-inspiring.  I’m kind of blown away by there actually being a moment on Full House that I genuinely enjoyed.  It’s giving me complex emotions.  Anyway, it’s easy to push any sentiment aside before it even sets in because in the next moment Danny starts dancing with Stephanie, which immediately transitions the scene from an awe inspiring spectacle to an awkward train-wreck.

However, Danny’s spastic, rhythm-proof thrusts are apparently some sort of white upper-class mating dance because pretty soon Karen starts dancing with him and then DJ and Stephanie being to develop a plot to hook them up.

DJ invites Karen to lunch and then the whole family makes a big obvious show of leaving them alone together.  Awkward!  DJ even lights a candle on their table before she splits.

Jesus Christ, DJ, why don’t you just toss them a bottle of lube!?  The craziest thing about it is that it actually works, because Danny and Karen are alone together for literally 20 seconds before they start making out.

While Danny’s off spittin’ game, Jesse realizes that he’s lost his keys.  He asks the girls if they’ve seen them and they all conclude that the baby must have hidden them.  They ask Michelle to show them all the stuff she’s been hiding and some incredible artifacts are uncovered, the most remarkable of which is DJ’s Milli Vanilli tape.  Milli Vanilli, you guys.  Milli Vanilli.  The best part is that Stephanie is vindicated by the discovery, exclaiming to DJ, “and you called me a Milli Vanilli thief!”  I don’t know, you guys, this episode is kind of great.  DJ really though that Stephanie had stolen her Milli Vanilli tape.  It was a fight that they’d had.

Danny walks Karen to her door after their date and she invites him in for some hot fucking.  Danny is down for the plan but then as soon as he steps into her apartment he sees that it’s a big filthy shithole.

Danny is unable to perform sexually due to the quality of Karen’s apartment.  He starts spouting all this crazy talk about cleanliness and she gets freaked out.  Danny decides that things aren’t going to work out between them and splits.

Michelle’s interrogation continues but she maintains the she didn’t hide Uncle Jesse’s keys.  Eventually Joey shows up and finds Jesse’s keys in the front door.  Jesse apologizes to Michelle and is so humbled that he forgets to make the point that he thought that she hid his keys because that’s what she’d been doing with everyone else’s shit.  Omitting this key point from the scenario only further paves the road for that hideous child’s reign of obnoxious behavior.  It’s like the story of the boy who cried wolf except that everyone just apologizes to the boy and tells him he was right the whole time at the end.

Danny comes home from his date and the family immediately surrounds him like a horde of vultures, demanding to hear the details.  He reports that he and Karen have decided just to be friends and the girls are pretty unaffected, reacting only by setting their sights on Danny’s next victim.  Stephanie suggests the lady who does Danny’s hair but DJ elucidates that the hairdresser is in fact a man.  Once again we find Full House touching upon its own repressed homosexuality, although I find this instance a little more hopeful than most.  Although Stephanie’s suggestion is rejected by DJ, which affirms that Full House is not yet ready to recognize it’s true orientation, it does present a courtship with the possibility.  Perhaps over time that curiosity will lead to illumination, and finally, acceptance.  Even this episodes title, “Lust in the Dust,” alludes to a cult-classic film starring none other than the great Divine.  If that’s not an indication of a burgeoning homosexual epiphany then I don’t know what to call it.

The Uncles decide to confront Danny about his latest date failure and he acts all weird and evasive before finally admitting that he got bugged out by Karen’s filthy apartment.  This is kind of hard to process and react to because there are sort of a lot of wires being crossed at once.  First of all there’s the obvious problem of Danny being a secret gay Dad, which we just acknowledged is a ways away from really being dealt with, so let’s move on.  Next is the smaller and more immediate problem that Danny has been avoiding dating (which, again, probably relates to the fact that he’s got a hankerin’ for a big wiener in his ass that he just wont recognize) and coming up with a string of lame, Seinfeld-esque excuses for what’s been going wrong.  The problem with linking that scenario up with this particular instance is that compulsive cleanliness is one of Danny’s few character traits, so of course a dirty ass nasty apartment is a deal-breaker for him.  This episode is presenting two story elements here that don’t quite match up.  Either have Danny breaking off dates for arbitrary reasons or have him really like a woman with a messy apartment and not be able to deal with it.  Don’t have him break off dates for arbitrary reasons and then have him break a date for a reason that falls perfectly in line with his character.  That shit doesn’t even make any sense.

The Uncles tell Danny that he’s making a futile search for the perfect woman and Danny says that his dead wife, Pam, was perfect.  The Uncles remind Danny that it’s easy to idealize someone who’s dead and point out a bunch of Pam’s annoying character flaws.  Harsh!  They go on to point out that Danny’s afraid to be close to someone, and although they fail to recognize it as the product of repressed homosexuality, I have to believe that this experience brings them one step closer.

Danny goes back to Karen’s apartment to patch things up and discovers that she’s cleaned it up.  He apologizes for being a weirdo and they hug, which marks the beginning of a relationship that I doubt we’ll ever see or hear from again.

I have to admit that I kind of enjoyed this episode.  It still sucked and had major story flaws, but it also featured a nice mix of gloriously awful late 80’s trends that’s impossible to hate.  Maybe it’s because I’m desperate to find a cause to do anything other than hate this show, or maybe it’s because I get so darn high when I write these reviews, but whatever the reason, this episode was the least painful one so far.

Firsts:  Stephanie’s interest in dancing, I didn’t want to kill myself while watching an episode