Season 3, Episode 24, “Our Very First Telethon”

Pre-Credits Gag:  Michelle sneaks up behind Danny and grabs his face after he’s been up all night planning for a telethon.  This is one of those rare occasions where the pre-credits gag sets up the premise for the episode, as the aforementioned telethon is about to be rammed down your fucking throat for 22 minutes.

Moments before the show goes live, Danny frantically runs around and gets in the way of all of the people who are doing actual work for the telethon.  Naturally, he’s enlisted the entire Full House cast to participate in some form or other, including Kimmie Gibbler, who makes the generous offer of riding her sweet ass unicycle on screen but is relegated by Danny back to her phone answering position.

All of a sudden Danny’s boss, Mr. Strowbridge, who hasn’t appeared onscreen since the beginning of last Season, shows up and exposits the conditions of the telethon, with an emphasis on how important it is and how much faith he has in Danny.  Hasn’t Mr. Strowbridge ever watched Wake Up, San Francisco?  There’s no way Danny’s not gonna fuck up all over the place.

So the telethon begins its broadcast and Danny explains to the audience that the foundation they’re helping, “We Love Our Kids,” is raising money to buy equipment for the children’s health center.  I was honestly surprised that they bothered to explain what the telethon was for.  I had just assumed it was to pay the girls salaries.

So about ten seconds into the show, Danny hands his microphone to his stupid obnoxious kids and the telethon becomes instantly unwatchable.  Danny eventually wrestles the microphone back from Stephanie, who’s spending precious fund raising time giving shout-outs to all her friends, and presents the first act while standing between Bill Cosby and a cocaine dealer from Miami Vice.

So guess who the first act is?  No, really, if you were trying to raise funding for a children’s hospital, how would you want to open the show?  That’s right, with terrible comedy!  Joey comes out and does some jokes about music that involve him making guitar sounds and then he brings out Rebecca Donaldson for a magic act.  He separates Rebecca Donaldson’s mid-section from the rest of her body in “the cabinet of mystery” but then, fearing that he might competently perform a task, Joey reliably meets our expectations when he discovers that he’s unable to put her back together.  Rebecca Donaldson is then forced to perform the next act, a singing duet with Danny, while stuck in the cabinet.

There’s a really quick montage where they breeze through a bunch of the telethon but there’s very little footage that doesn’t involve the Tanner family.  Couldn’t they have booked, like, anything?  Before the show started there were all these clowns and stuff standing around and in the beginning they showed Danny scheduling all these acts but it looks to me like this telethon’s offering up jack shit.  They got the cheerleaders for the Raiders and the Tanner family and somehow that’s supposed to be enough to fill 24 hours worth of airtime.

After the montage, Danny exhaustedly tells the viewers that we’re now in the final 4 hours of the telethon and discovers that Rebecca Donaldson has gone home to get some sleep.  He stands around looking tired and trailing off his sentences until the girls walk onscreen and Danny decides to share some stage time with Michelle.  They sit in a chair together and Danny immediately falls asleep while Michelle grabs the microphone and sings “The Itsy Bitsy Spider.”  Oh, come on!  What I really don’t understand is why Danny’s solely in charge of everything.  Shouldn’t there be a director or an ambitious boom operator or something to deal with these kinds of situations?  Mr. Strowbridge appears and gets all pissed off but he doesn’t have like a plan or anything.  They all just stand around looking panicked and befuddled while the baby sings into the microphone.

Jesse tries to hold the broadcast together while Michelle sings the alphabet to a cheering audience.  Mr. Strowbridge becomes exasperated and puts Joey and Jesse in charge of the broadcast, seemingly because they’re the only other people standing around the set.  The Uncles hastily enlist the girls to provide entertainment, beginning with Stephanie doing a dance to, “Love Shack” that goes on for about a minute and a half.  I know that I got all into it when Stephanie did a dance a few episodes back, but after one time the novelty has completely disappeared.  If anything, this routine makes me feel really disappointed in the B-52’s.

As if that wasn’t excruciating enough, DJ follows up by singing some Shirley Temple-esque song about candy to Michelle.  DJ looks pretty miserable while she’s lip-synching the song, like you can really tell that she just couldn’t get out of having to do this routine.  The only upside to all of this shit is that I don’t have a lot to say about it and the performances are all pretty long, so at least it’s a little less work than usual to recap.

More desperate attempts to fill up air-time follow, such as Joey doing an impression of Steven Tyler, which combines the 2 biggest eyesores in the history of show business.

Rebecca Donaldson returns to the set and introduces Kimmie Gibbler’s unicycle act, which is allowed onscreen after Kimmie Gibbler’s Mom pledges $100.  What, they’ll let the baby sing the fucking alphabet but Kimmie Gibbler’s gotta pay for her screen time?

Danny wakes up and discovers that the telethon’s almost over but they’re only $40,000 away from their million dollar goal.  Mr. Strowbridge make an inelegant entrance and frantically exclaims that Mike Love from the Beach Boys has come by to help out.  Mike Love shambles out and lip-synchs, “Be True to Your School,” while Jesse plays guitar and the Raiders Cheerleaders dance around and since our 22-minutes are up the goal is reached and a bunch of balloons fall and everyone dances around and that’s the end of Season 3.

Well, shit.  On the one hand, I actually kind of appreciate that they tried to put a big production together for the Season finale.  On the other hand, it was such an underwhelming effort that they might as well not have tried at all.  I’ve always been really annoyed by the routines on this show that are all about how much Danny sucks at his job as the host of Wake Up, San Francisco, and this was pretty much an entire episode based solely around that.  I also have to point out that, as much as this show totally sucks shit as a sitcom, it’s about a million times more unwatchable as a variety show.

One last thing I wanted to point out is that this episode features frequent shots of the studio audience, which finally brings us an answer to the  the question so frequently posted here, “who the fuck watched this shitty show?”  So here they are, the assholes responsible for this shows inexplicably high ratings.

And that’s a wrap on Season 3!  Be sure to check in during the week for some exciting bonus content, and tune in next Friday for Season 3 Reviewed!