Season 4, Episode 15, “Ol’ Brown Eyes”

The title of this episode comes from the special name the dads have for when they rub their anuses together.

Pre-Credits Gag:  Michelle interrupts Joey and Danny’s card game by showing them that she can skip.  The three of them skip around like a bunch of overpaid actors until Jesse shows up and tells Michelle that it’s cooler to strut.

Stephanie hides Michelle’s doll and tries to play the hot and cold game so she can find it but all Michelle gives a shit about are cookies.

Jesse gives Rebecca Donaldson’s wedding ring to Joey and asks him to have it engraved with the inscription, “love me tender.”  Rebecca Donaldson shows up and has to work real hard to convince Jesse not to wear a leather tuxedo with a cobra on the back of it at their wedding.  Have I mentioned enough time’s that I’m completely mystified about why Rebecca Donaldson would ever marry Jesse?  He must be a hypnotist or have a solid gold penis or something.  Although he’s never shown any characteristics outside of a love for shitty rock ‘n’ roll, Elvis and fried chicken, he’s gotta be hiding some kind of amazing secret.  Either that or Rebecca Donaldson just hates herself.

DJ comes home and tells everyone how excited she is about the school newspaper fund-raiser that she’s gonna have at the Smash Club.  Oh, man, remember the Smash Club?  We haven’t seen that place in like 2 Seasons.  Well, I guess we can continue to assume that it’s the lamest club in the universe, because not only do they let Jesse’s shitty band play there, they also host parties for junior high school newspapers.

Apparently the uncle’s are the planned entertainment for the fund-raiser.  Joey prepares by demonstrating some of his new jokes, which are a bunch of lame observations about cartoons with shitty impressions mixed in.  Does Joey ever tell any jokes that aren’t about cartoon characters?  What a waste of human life.  Anyway, after talking to the uncles, DJ confers with Danny about his role as MC and makes a big deal about how he’s lame and should take up as little stage time as possible.  It’s really great to see DJ grow up and finally realize that her Dad’s a big lame piece of shit. Anyway, after DJ leaves, Danny decides to impress DJ by performing a song with Jesse’s band.  That’s right, motherfuckers, Danny’s gearing up for one of the all-time worst moments in the series’ history!  Hold on to your asses!

Michelle enters the scene and asks if anyone will play hot and cold with her and everyone saunters off.  After being left alone in the living room, she finds Rebecca Donaldson’s wedding ring and decides to hide it.  Man, that’s what those fuckers get for letting that child walk around unsupervised all the damn time.

Joey wanders into Stephanie’s room with shit in his pants because he cant find the wedding ring.  Stephanie offers him no help at all, and instead takes great pleasure in preying on Joey’s anxiety.  Reveling in the misery of others has been a really predominant character trait for Stephanie lately.  It’s like, now that she’s not cute anymore, the shows creators were like, “let’s just made her a sadistic asshole.”

Anyway, Michelle comes in and reveals that she hid the ring, then she forces Joey to look for it by playing the hot and cold game.

Jesse gets ready to practice with his band for the school newspaper fund-raiser.  For some reason, every time we see Jesse’s band it has a completely different set of members.  I don’t think I’ve seen a recurring band member, ever.  Was it cheaper to always hire new extras or something?  Anyway, there’s no time to dwell on that because Danny comes out dressed in leather and tells Jesse that he wants to sing, “My Generation,” by The Who.

Danny gets a big laugh from the audience by saying that he’s going to, “bust a move,” which really dates this episode.  I guess that was the hot new phrase of the day, or at least it was until someone said it on Full House.

Danny’s performance is stilted, awkward, and totally painful to watch.  It’s a classic embarrassing-to-look-at-or-even-think-about Full House moment.  I think it’s actually supposed to be painful to watch because DJ comes in halfway through with Kimmie Gibbler and they’re both totally horrified.  DJ tells Danny that he’d better not do that shit at her school event or her life will be ruined and then she storms off to her room and gentle music plays as the camera pans in on Danny’s stupid face looking sad.

After the commercial break, Danny reminisces with Jesse about how embarrassing his own Dad was.  Danny has the shocking revelation that he’s an embarrassing nerd and decides that he shouldn’t perform at DJ’s thing.  I am totally amazed that someone on this show actually felt self-conscious for once and showed some fucking humility.  It wasn’t worth sitting through that performance to see it happen, but at least it’s something.

Danny goes up to DJ’s room and tells her that he’s not gonna sing at her party.  He goes on to explain that he only wanted to do it to prove to her that he was hip and cool, but now he’s realized that he isn’t.  What a great scene!   The best part about it is that DJ doesn’t reassure him at all, she’s just like, “thanks for realizing that you’re embarrassing.”  If only this were the end of the episode!  But no, they never quit while they’re ahead.

Michelle puts Joey through a bunch of bullshit while he’s looking for the ring.  Eventually it turns out that Jesse found it and has been carrying it around.  Jesse seems kinda mad but, really, what did he expect to happen when he asked Joey to do him a favor?  Did he really think that he wouldn’t fuck it up?

DJ’s school newspaper fund-raiser is a big hit!  A bunch of middle aged extras dressed like flamboyant teenagers dance around to Jesse’s shitty band.  The show wraps up pretty quickly and then Danny delivers some brief closing words wherein he congratulates DJ for putting the whole thing together.  DJ goes up on stage and announces that Jesse’s shitty band is gonna play one last terrible song, sung by her nerdy dad.  Danny checks with DJ to make sure she wont be embarrassed by him and she says the only thing she’s embarrassed about is the way that she acted earlier.  And if that’s not enough to make you wanna put your fist through the screen, Danny proceeds to sing, “My Girl” to the audience.

Oh!  It’s so painful!  It’s such a fucking whitebread rendition in every way possible.  “My Girl” has the greatest base line in the history of music and they just totally left it out.  It’s this up-tempo, dance-with-your-arms-locked-in-a-45-degree-angle interpretation that just makes me want to cry.  And fucking Danny Tanner is singing!  I really wonder what the motivation was for this because Bob Saget really can’t sing for shit.  And that’s not just me picking apart and criticizing everything that ever happens on this show;  that man really cannot sing at all.  So much so that it seems really odd that they would put him in that situation.  Why did no one stop this from happening!??!

Once again, the show ends with a totally skewed moral.  DJ was embarrassed about Danny singing at her school event because he’s fucking embarrassing!  Why does DJ have to ask him to sing at the end?  What lesson does that teach us?  It encourages us to coddle people who are overbearing and obnoxious.  That’s all this show’s ever about!

Firsts:  someone shows self-awareness about being lame