Season 4, Episode 16, “Stephanie Gets Framed”

Pre-Credits Gag:  Michelle brushes her teeth and then Danny holds her over the sink when she spits.  That’s really all that happens.

DJ gives Michelle her old piggy bank and teaches her how to weasel money out of people.

Stephanie comes home with a note from school that says that she needs an eye examination.  She worries that she’ll look like a geek with glasses but Danny explains that with the way her face has been shaping out over the last few years, glasses are the least of her worries.  Well, maybe he didn’t exactly say that, but you can tell he was thinking it.  Anyway, he tells her she’s gotta get glasses and tough shit if she don’t like it, then Michelle comes in and bums money off of everybody.

Rebecca Donaldson tells Jesse that it’s time for him to pick his best man for their wedding.  Danny and Joey are called into the kitchen and told that one of them is going to be selected, then there’s some conflict over who it should be.  Didn’t Jesse have any friends before he started hanging out with these guys all the time 4 years ago?  It’s like his whole life before the full house has been erased, like he’s been assimilated or something.  Anyway, Jesse ends up picking Joey and Danny gets all butt hurt about it.  You can’t really blame him, considering that he’s been housing and feeding Jesse for years now.  You’d think he’d get a shout-out, like, one time.

Some time later, Jesse and Danny discuss their feelings in the living room when DJ runs in with her friend Julie, who’s never been on the show before.

They explain that Julie’s cousin, Steve, is in town and he’s been bugging them while they try to get their shit done for the school newspaper.  As Steve knocks on the door, Danny and Jesse are persuaded into distracting him as the girls escape.  Jesse answers the door and OH MY GOD YOU GUYS IT’S URKEL!  IT’S FINALLY THE EPISODE OF FULL HOUSE WITH URKEL IN IT!!!

Oh, man, I can’t even tell you how fucking long I’ve been waiting for this one.  It’s like the one bright spot in an otherwise endless void of shitty garbage.  I think I’ve mentioned this before, but I actually wanted to write a Family Matters Reviewed blog originally, but I ended up not doing it because the show never had a proper DVD release.  I think that’s because it switched networks late in the shows life, so the rights are all fucked.  Anyway, Family Matters and Full House are pretty similar shows in a lot of ways, which is no coincidence because they share the same production company, but I always preferred watching Family Matters because it was endearingly bad, whereas Full House was just obnoxiously bad.  Although I think I’d spend less time with my head in my hands while I watched the episodes if this was Family Matters Reviewed, ultimately I think Full House was the better choice for one reason:  variety.  Even though I totally fucking hate every single stupid asshole on Full House, at least they shuffle the focus around a little.  There’s probably about 12 stock scenarios that get recycled in some form or other over and over again on Full House, whereas on Family Matters, by about Season 3, every single episode was exactly the same. It was all about Urkel.

Every episode of Family Matters goes like this:  Urkel goes over to the Winslow’s house and either sexually harasses Laura or kills Carl’s bosses pet fish or tries out some invention that does an incredible amount of property damage and then they kick him out.  He gets all sad and then later the Winslow’s feel bad and invite him back over under the condition that he’ll quit being such an asshole, but he never really changes at all.  Seriously, that’s every episode.  Sometimes there’s a shrinking ray or Waldo Giraldo Faldo says something particularly hilarious or Urkel turns into Bruce Lee or something, but that one synopsis pretty much describes every episode.  So even though I find the cast of Family Matters ten million times more watchable than the shitty anuses on Full House, and even though I find myself struggling on a weekly basis to find something new to say about how much I hate Uncle Joey, a least sometimes I can talk about why I hate Stephanie instead.

Anyway, Urkel is rad, you guys!  So rad that they just had to get him on Full House at least once.  Now, in case you weren’t paying attention, let’s quickly review what brings him to the full house:  some girl we’ve never seen before ran into the full house with DJ and said that her cousin was bugging them, and then her cousin turned out to be Urkel.  How’s that for an inspired crossover?  I think it would have actually seemed less random if Urkel had just knocked on the door out of the blue and been like, “what’s up, you guys, I’m Urkel from Family Matters.  I’m just gonna hang out for a couple scenes because they film my show on the other side of the parking lot, plus it’s sweeps week.  Urkel laugh!”

Urkel bestows his comedic genius unto the full house.  Jesse tries to teach him how to walk like a cool guy and then they spend a solid 2 minutes gyrating their pelvises together in the living room.  Classic Urkel!

Stephanie comes home with her new glasses and is all bummed out because she looks like a dogs asshole.

Stephanie becomes depressed and asks the girls to let her have some time to herself in her room.  Urkel decides to ignore her request for privacy and forces her to listen to a pep talk about how wearing glasses is great.  Stephanie is hesitant to heed his words because he’s a stranger that won’t get out of her room but she’s eventually receptive to his suggestion that he should preempt people making fun of her glasses by making light of it herself.

Meanwhile, Jesse is overwhelmed with guilt over picking Joey over Danny as his best man so he tells them that he wants them both to be his best man.  Then they all kiss each other on the lips.

Stephanie’s teacher tells her to put on her reading glasses in class.  While she thinks about putting them on, she is distracted by these really weird superimposed windows into her mind that create what I’m just gonna go ahead and call the best freeze frame you will ever see on this blog.

Urkel’s floating head reminds her to make the kids in her class laugh with her before they laugh at her so she proceeds to ham it up in front of her classmates with a bunch of trick glasses.  Her teacher gets all pissed off and reprimands her, which is one of the precious few instances ever on this show when someone is called out on being an obnoxious, attention-grabbing asshole.

Michelle continues to collect money for her piggy bank until the ice cream truck comes and she becomes desperate for the money.  DJ explains to her the importance of saving your money and then Michelle makes a face that will make you never want to have children.

Joey finds Stephanie writing lines about not disrupting class and has a talk with her about what happened.  She explains that Urkel gave her shitty advice and Joey says that he understands because he, too, has no social tact or common sense.  He then explains that he used to be a fat kid so he’d act a fool in class to prevent kids from making fun of him, which is pretty unnecessary because we don’t need to be told that he was once fat to believe that kids used to ridicule Joey in school.  Anyway, Joey says that any kid who makes fun of her can go suck a dick and that she should look at herself in the mirror with her new found sense of confidence.

Stephanie takes a look in the mirror and since they don’t use a fisheye lens this time I guess we’re not supposed to notice that she looks like Jason Voorhees.  The music plays as Stephanie makes peace with her doo doo face and then Joey coerces her into doing erotic poses as the credits roll.  Weird!

Dang, I guess that’s it for the Urkel episode, which was the only episode in the entire series that I was actually looking forward to watching.  He was only in like 2 scenes!

Firsts:  Julie (Urkel’s cousin, who I’m sure will never appear on the show again), URKEL!!!, cross-over with another show