Season 4, Episode 26, “Rock the Cradle”

Holy shit, I really was starting to think that there’d never be a finale to Season 4, but I guess we finally made it.  This episode doesn’t have a pre-credits gag for some reason.  What a tragic loss!  Instead it opens with a lengthy performance from Jesse and the Rippers, who have about 20 members at this point, including, apparently, Wayne and Garth.

I actually remember the guy who looks like Wayne from an earlier episode because I checked IMDB to make sure he wasn’t John Favreau.  Anyway, the band plays some shitty song for this record executive who looks pretty much just like Danny with a ponytail.  The record executive says he likes their band for some reason and that he’ll give a good report to the folks at the label.

As the family all sit down to lunch, Michelle makes everyone meet her imaginary friend, Glen.  Danny reminisces about DJ’s old imaginary friend and then starts making asshole remarks towards Kimmie Gibbler, who’s just trying to eat her sandwich in peace.

The phone rings and Stephanie answers it, but she makes everyone wait to find out who it is while she makes lame jokes and word puns that relate to the imaginary friend conversation.  When Stephanie finally says it who it is it turns out to be the doctor calling for Aunt Becky, which you might think would have struck her as important enough to say without making a bunch of lame jokes first.  What if Aunt Becky had flesh eating bacteria or something?

Aunt Becky gets some exciting, mysterious news and then Danny takes her into the living room and says it’s hella obvious that she’s pregnant.  It is the Season finale, after all.  The rest of the family find out because they’re listening at the door and then everyone gets all excited until Becky tells them to keep a lid on it because she wants to wait to tell Jesse so some wacky misunderstandings can happen first.  Suddenly, as if on cue, Jesse comes downstairs and tells everyone that he has a meeting with a guy at the record label, which may or may not be the real reason why the family so enthusiastically congratulates him.

Becky gets all sexed up and makes Jesse a fancy dinner to set the mood for when she tells him the important news.  Before she can say 2 words when he gets home, he starts telling her all about how he and his shitty band got signed to that record label.  Apparently the people at the label felt like Jesse and the Rippers had a, “retro-punk hip-hop eurotrash garage beat,” which totally doesn’t mean anything.  Seriously, even the person who wrote that didn’t know what that meant, they just strung a bunch of words together because they thought people would laugh.  And they do.  And I don’t understand why.

Anyway, Becky serves up a dinner of baby shrimp, baby corn and babyback ribs, hoping that Jesse will sense a theme, but all he can do is talk about his upcoming tour with his shitty band.  He starts talking about how great it’ll be to go on tour because he doesn’t have any real responsibilities or anything tying him down and then, just when you think he’s gonna start a new discussion about how great abortion is, he just throws down his napkin and says he’s gonna go tell everyone else about his rad news because he’s too excited to eat.  On his way out the door he inattentively inquires about what her news was but she decides that she’d rather be all butt hurt than tell him.  I can’t believe I’m about to defend Jersey against Becky here, but it is pretty understandable that he’d be that excited about landing a record deal.  I mean, his band really does suck pretty hard.  It’s like a miracle or something!  And it’s not like he’s letting that overshadow her becoming pregnant, she just never told him.

As the family all sit around together enjoying a wholesome game of Pictionary, they struggle to solve Stephanie’s image, which turns out to be “don’t have a cow.”

Jesse comes downstairs and the family all congratulate him about the baby, but Jesse thinks they’re talking about his recording deal and many hilarious innuendos follow.  Joey’s like, “congratulations on having sex with Becky and your sperm going into her uterus and fertilizing an egg, creating a human life,” and Jesse’s all, “yeah, having a recording contract is pretty awesome.”  Eventually Becky comes downstairs and discreetly informs the family that Jesse doesn’t know about the baby yet.  She struggles to come up with a way to tell him and reaches the only logical conclusion:  Pictionary.

Jesse struggles to decipher Becky’s drawings, even after she cheats and straight-up writes the word “ink” on the page as a clue (seriously, it’s really not cool to do that in Pictionary), and she eventually blurts out the news about the baby in frustration.  Jesse is understandably shocked, never expecting an impromptu game of Pictionary to bring life changing news.

As Danny puts Michelle to bed, he starts to investigate the burgeoning psychosis taking place in the form of her imaginary friend, Glen.  She explains that she needs to have an imaginary friend because she doesn’t get to hang out with kids her age now that preschool’s out for the Summer.  Danny tells her that she’s starting a Summer program soon and will be around kids again and then Michelle’s all, “Glen can go eat a dick.”

Jesse comes into Michelle’s room to ogle Danny’s parenting and then Danny leaves them alone to have one of their special talks.  These talks made a lot more sense when Michelle was too young to say anything and they were really just Jesse’s monologues, but now that she’s actually counseling him they’re pretty fucking ridiculous.  Jesse wonders how he can balance being a father with touring around with his shitty band and Michelle tells him that he’d better just stay at home.

Jesse goes back up to the attic and tells Becky that he’s gonna tell his shitty band mates to go eat a dick so he can just just hang around the full house and tend to her needs all the time.  She explains that his tour is only for the next few months and that it’s pretty easy for him to just go do that and then come home before she’s even really showing any major signs of pregnancy.  Becky never recognizes the larger problem, which is that her husband is a completely worthless shithead who will always react in the worst, most self-important method in any given situation.  Instead, gentle music plays as they proclaim their love for one another, and although I can’t help but feel pretty bad for the artist formerly known as Rebecca Donaldson, at least Season 4’s finally over.

Tune in next week for Season 4 Reviewed!