Season 4 Reviewed

Here’s to you, beloved Full House Reviewed readers!  I can’t thank you enough, or blame you enough, for the perpetuation of this very silly project.  I don’t think it’s at all difficult to believe that I would have quit this ridiculous mission a long time ago if it hadn’t found an audience, proving beyond a reasonable doubt that y’all are as much to blame for this shit as I am.  This Season our readership literally increased by %1000 after some very influential blogs, message boards and websites were kind enough to promote the site, and it’s been pretty amazing to finally get so much feedback after over a year of feeling more or less like I was writing entirely for Teebore.  So thanks to all you new readers, and even more so to those of you who’ve been following this stupid bullshit all along.

There are a number of ways to support the site if you’re at all inclined to do so.  You can buy a Full House Reviewed shirt, as demonstrated above by FHR superfan Zack Teibloom.  Seriously, if you’re reading this blog right now and you’re not wearing your official Full House reviewed t-shirt while you do it then you really ought to feel ashamed.  Eventually there will be ads on the site, just as soon as I can figure out how to put them up without disabling the comments (can anyone tell me why that happened?), and when that tech-savvy revelation arrives I hope you’ll all be kind enough to click on those ads.  Finally, there’s a donation button prominently displayed at the top right corner of the site if you’d like to monetarily express your appreciation for the many hours of entertainment I’ve provided you.  Making money is in no way a motivation for why I write this blog and I’m not necessarily in desperate need of it, but that doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t be happy to accept it.

I mentioned all the new-found feedback I’ve been getting earlier, and I wanted to comment on it a little more before I proceeded to summarize why Full House Season 4 was such a big piece of shit.  I’m not really enough of an internet guy to know what the etiquette is for this type of thing, but I’d like to apologize to anyone who’s commented expecting a direct response from me that didn’t get one.  I’d like to respond to everyone, but writing this blog is already a gigantic waste of time so it’s a little beyond my means to engage in much more of a dialogue about it.  I almost always respond to Teebore’s comments because, like I said before, he was pretty much the only commenter I had for about a year so our exchanges have become routine, but now that I have a bunch more readers I can’t really keep up.  Maybe that’s how a lot of blogs work, I don’t know, but I just wanted to say that I really do appreciate all of the comments I get and I can’t thank you enough for leaving them.  I’m a little better at responding on the Facebook fan page or if you’ve really got something to say you can message me at billysuperstar@gmail.com.  Also, sorry I had to add one of those math problem spam filters but I was getting like 50 comments a day from Ugg boot promotional robots and I didn’t know what else to do.  Ugg boots just aint my style.

So how ’bout Season 4, you guys?  Yeah, it was pretty shitty.

I read my previous Season Reviews before starting this one and thought my complaint about Season 3 being totally uneventful was remarkable considering how Season 4 was like a non-stop bombardment of climactic events.  I really thought that the 2-part wedding episode had to be the finale, but even after the rice was thrown that shit just kept chuggin’ along.  Then I thought that Aunt Becky moving into the attic had to be it, but no, it just kept going.  I sort of assumed that Becky’s pregnancy would have been the climax of Season 5, seeing as how they just got married and that it’s already pretty fuckin’ unbelievable how many corny white people are living in that house already, but for whatever reason the creators decided to totally shoot their wad in Season 4.  I actually think that more shit went down in Season 4 than in all of the other Seasons combined, which I say neither as praise or condemnation, merely as simple fact, because whether or not events transpire on the show, it’s still all a bunch of lame bullshit to me.

Although there seems to be a little more consideration at this point in the series towards continuity and consistency, there were still some pretty major story elements that fell away without explanation.  The Uncles’ quit their cushy advertising gig early in the Season and then “went into business for themselves,” which never seemed to amount to anything at all.  Seriously, were these guys just laying around all day trading hand jobs and eating cereal out of little boxes or what?  As near as I could tell they weren’t up to shit.  Then Joey landed a job late in the Season as a voice actor on an animated series along with co-stars Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello.  But will we ever hear about that again?  Maybe it will come back in Season 5, but I really doubt it.

Full House continued it’s most traditional disregard for continuity in that several love interests disappeared with no explanation whatsoever.  Joey makes a big deal about his new girlfriend in the New Years Eve episode, and although it’s easy to believe that anyone as desperately lonely as Joey would blindly put too much stock into a new relationship, I still thought they’d bring that woman back at least once.  Even more disconcerting was Danny’s recurring relationship with that really bland woman whose name I cant remember that had that son, Rusty, who was a notorious practical joker.  It seemed pretty clear here that the creators were trying something out that didn’t really hit with fans, so although I still think their departure from the show warranted some sort of explanation, I can’t say I’m too sad that I’ll never have to look at “The Rust-Man’s” ass face ever again.

There’s not a whole lot else to say about the cast in this Season because there really hasn’t been any character development at all since the series began.  The Tanner family members have each been entirely motivated by approximately 4 assigned characteristics since the very beginning, and their lack of development throughout the series has made them seem more and more cartoonish and 1-dimensional as time goes on.  For reals, tell me one thing about Joey in Season 4 that wasn’t already apparent in the very first episode of the series.  After almost 100 episodes, there hasn’t been a single morsel of depth added to his character.  There’s always the unavoidable progression of the kids aging in real-time, which has actually been pretty painful.  Michelle’s more active role on the series just gets more and more antagonizing to the viewer, what with all her catch-phrases and troll doll features.  Stephanie used to be the least-painful cast member on the show, but this Season she devolved into a total grandstanding wise-ass, and we actually witnessed the precise moment in which she lost the last remnant of her little-kid cuteness.

We also saw the once likable Rebecca Donaldson throw her life away when she married the greasiest, most worthless idiot on the planet.  That poor woman!  Watching her  gradually become crazier as she was sucked into the full house over the past few Seasons has been kind of like a Lars Von Trier movie, except without any of the artistry or depth. Actually, it’s really only the overt misogyny that makes them similar.

Since I’ve spent way too many precious hours of my life watching this stupid bullshit, I’ve developed a few theories as to what’s actually going on behind the scenes.  Seriously, doesn’t there feel like there has to be an explanation for all of this?  So, without further adieu, here are my Full House theories:

1)  Full House is actually anti-American propaganda created by some foreign dictator (I’m guessing it was Muammar Gaddafi).  Doesn’t this show seem to exemplify every awful stereotype about Americans?  Especially if you come at it from a conservative perspective.  The Tanner family are a “non-traditional” (i.e. pretty darn gay) family full of pushy, over-privileged white people who always get whatever they want and they end every episode by expounding their heavy-handed moral superiority.  Nobody works hard or puts any effort into anything they do and yet they are constantly rewarded, both socially and financially, and showered with glowing praise and attention. In other words, they’re the distilled essence of everything that’s wrong in the United States.

2)  The full house is actually a living, evil entity that is slowly destroying the Tanner family.  My guess is that it was built on an ancient Puritan burial ground, which would explain why its denizens are possessed by corny, pushy and morally-superior behavior.  First we saw it overtake Uncle Jesse over the first few Seasons when he moved in and went from being a pussy-pounding motorcycle guy into a tea-party attending, wholesome sweater wearing limp noodle.  Next it overtook Rebecca Donaldson, who clearly descended into madness over the course of the Season and finally just said fuck it and moved into the attic even though there’s no way she couldn’t afford her own place.  Seriously, you think Kelly Ripa lives in Regis’ attic?  I wonder if the full house isn’t in some way responsible for the death of the mom, too?  Who knows what the full house is capable of?  All I know for sure, whether or not my theory is correct, is that it is an evil place.

What else is left to say about Season 4?  Was it the worst one so far?  You know what?  I can’t even tell anymore.  It did bring my pick for the worst moment in the series’ history, when Michelle and her classmates sang “Twist and Shout” at their preschool graduation ceremony.

I felt like some readers were disappointed by this long-alluded to pick, but I honestly can’t remember witnessing a more painful moment.  Lots of commenters presented their own worst moment picks and they seemed to be from episodes I haven’t seen before, so who knows?  Maybe the Forever music video, or the episode with Pappoli, both as-yet unseen by me, will be even worse, but at least now we have a low-point to compare them to.

I have to give Season 4 credit for one thing, at least:  it brought us the episode with Urkel in it.  Here’s to you, Urkel episode, the only one I was looking forward to in the entire series.

Now that I’m exactly halfway through the series, I have to stop and look back at all that’s happened.  First of all, I can’t fucking believe I wrote all that shit.  Seriously, what the fuck?  Just the sheer volume of these reviews kind of justifies the disgruntled assumptions I’ve received from Full House fans that I’m some unemployed weirdo.  How did I ever find the time to do this?  But the thing that really strikes me is how much all those episodes totally blur together.  This Seasons’ expanded readership brought a bunch of new fans who went back and read through all the archives, and some of them commented along the way, causing me to look at old reviews for the first time and finding myself totally amazed at how many episodes I’ve already totally forgotten about.  I thought that breaking down every episode like this would bring about an encyclopedic knowledge of the series, but it’s all just blurred together in my brain like a big pile of shitty mush.  I have to blame it on the overall poor quality of the show, because I remember old episodes of the Simpsons really well and I’ve never reviewed a single one.

So now that Season 4 has come to a close, I’ve gotta drop a bit of a bomb on y’all.  I’m gonna take a break before moving on to Season 5.  I’ve been writing this blog every week for almost 2 years and I’ve never been late to post, so I figured that here at the halfway point is as good a place as any to give it a rest for a minute.  Hopefully this doesn’t totally kill my readership.  So how long will this hiatus last?  Well, that’s up to all of you.  I made this decision after discovering that Netlfix doesn’t carry Season 5, and I’m sorry but there’s just no fuckin’ way I’m buying that shit.  My solution was to create this Amazon wish list and put it on you muthafuckas to keep me supplied in Full House.  So if someone buys it the day this post goes up then I’ll probably be back the following week, but, hey, no hurry.  Also keep in mind that I’ll be pulling this same move for the remaining Seasons so if you’re willing to front for the DVD’s to keep this thing going then you may as well knock ’em all out now.  Be sure to post a comment below if you order any so I don’t end up with multiple copies.  There’s also the possibility that no one will order it, and if it’s really the case that I can’t find anyone to shell out $15 to keep this thing going then I guess it’s run its course.

Update:  Cheers to FHR fans Tiffianna, Rachwho, Hebrewersfan and Rustu, who within a few hours bought me the rest of the series.  I feel the love!  I’m gonna take it easy next week and only post the new FAQ page and then I’ll probably return the following week with Season 5.  I might take an extra week off in-between, I guess we’ll just have to play it by ear.

So stay tuned!  And until next time, I remain:

your pal,

~Billy Superstar~