Season 5, Episode 6, “The Legend of Ranger Joe”

Pre-Credits Gag:  Stephanie gifts Michelle with her old tap shoes and tries to teach her a routine called “Tea For Two.”  Michelle attempts to repeat the act and sucks at it, but the audience seems to like it anyway, leaving Stephanie to sit off to the side with her head in her hands.  This sums up their relationship pretty well, I’d say.  It seems clear that the actress who plays Stephanie has a genuine interest in dance since her character so frequently busts out some dance moves, as shown here, but the audience would rather watch the baby suck at it than see the middle child attempt to do a decent job.  I guess it’s kind of understandable that having a childhood like this would lead someone to do a bunch of meth and then write a book about it and then do a bunch more meth.

Jesse eagerly tells DJ that he hopes his twins are a boy and a girl so he can name them Elvis and Priscilla.  Ok, never mind how creepy his stupid Elvis obsession is even, just think about how he wants to name his children after a married couple.  Jesse then goes on a big thing about how a person’s name determines their whole life and then DJ asks him why he’s so obsessed with names even though he just explained why.  Jesse then alludes to having gotten some shit about his name as a kid but then he doesn’t want to say more, which prompts DJ to invade his privacy in the very near future.  What else did he think would happen?  Privacy and the full house are like Joey and hilarious jokes.

Speaking of how terribly unfunny Joey is, he comes downstairs, looking like shit, and complains to Jesse about how badly he did at the club the night before.  I wonder if it was the Smash Club?  That’s like the only club where anything ever happens, right?  I bet it was the Smash Club.  Anyway, Joey has a rare moment of self-awareness when he says that his life is going nowhere, but it’s immediately contradicted by a totally ironic statement about how he can’t catch a break.  By that model, you know who really can’t catch a break?  Every adult in the world who has a job and pays rent.

If you had assumed that the next thing that would happen would be a radio station calling with a trivia question about Deputy Dog, then you, my friend, were correct.  Joey wins two tickets to a Donny and Marie show and then, signifying even further that his luck’s about to change, the cable guy shows up immediately when Joey was afraid he’d have to wait all day.  And what’s more, the cable guy’s a fine ass broad.

Not only that, but she recognizes Joey from his shitty stand-up and tells him that it really moistens her vagina to see a grown man do terrible impressions of cartoon characters. This seemed pretty far-fetched to me, but then I remembered that there’s some kind of rule on tv where a repair person has to either be a big fat guy or a really easy sexy lady.  I don’t know why this is, but it’s true even on good shows.

Joey musters up some courage and follows the cable lady into the living room, where she tells him that she scored him some extra channels for free and then turns on the tv to reveal the most sexual image that’s ever been on the show.

You kind of have to see it in motion to get the full effect, but those cars are definitely making love.  I guess that even these obscene images still weren’t enough to make the chemistry between Joey and the cable lady seem plausible, so she starts complaining about how she couldn’t get tickets to the Donny and Marie show, providing the perfect in for Joey.  He tells her that he just won tickets and offers to take her with him and then she gives him her number and is like, “after that Donny and Marie show, we’re totally gonna fuck.”

After the cable lady leaves, Jesse comes into the living room and tells Joey that it’s time for them to watch Wake Up, San Francisco.  I wonder if they watch it together every day while they sit in Danny’s house and eat his food and don’t have jobs.  Danny introduces the episode’s guest, Ranger Roy, and then he goes into a long ramble until Becky tells him to shut the fuck up because their show’s only half an hour long.  I thought this was remarkable because I’d always assumed that Wake Up, San Francisco was an hour-long show.  Aren’t all morning shows at least an hour long?

Ranger Roy announces that he’ll be retiring soon and is looking for a replacement.  While viewing at home, Joey expresses a desire to replace Ranger Roy just as Danny suggests him for the position.  Displaying a complete lack of consideration for all of the viewers at home who aren’t Joey, they proceed to make plans for Joey’s audition as Joey watches and revels in the lucky day he’s having.

The next scene opens with Michelle stomping frantically in her tap shoes while shouting “tea for two and two for tea” over and over again.  Stephanie is clearly bothered but Michelle just stomps and shouts while staring intently at her the whole time, and she even gets pissed at Stephanie because she doesn’t want to watch.  This grotesque nightmare of a wacky situation is interrupted by something even more hellish: the debut of Mr. Woodchuck.

Down at the tv station, Danny thanks Ranger Roy for granting his stupid worthless piece of shit friend an interview but when he reaches out to shake his hand, Ranger Roy recoils and says that he suffers from acute physical paranoia, which means he doesn’t like to be touched.  I’m not even going to question whether or not that’s a real thing.  When Joey shows up, Danny warns him by saying, “you can’t touch him,” but Joey, unable to understand simple, straightforward advice, interprets this as a metaphor.

At the start of Joey’s audition, he busts out Mr. Woodchuck and tells a single joke about wood before hanging him up.  I was going to have to mention this sooner or later, so I’ll just point out here that Joey has no ventriloquism skills whatsoever and that they try to resolve this by zooming in on Mr. Woodchuck whenever his voice is being done.  Anyway, the rest of the audition is just Joey doing those stupid fucking impressions that I hate so much.  After literally 30 seconds of auditioning, Ranger Roy says that Joey is clearly the guy that he’s looking for and hires him.  Joey is so overjoyed by this news that he starts aggressively hugging Ranger Roy and wont stop, even when Danny tries desperately to pry him off and tells him, “stop hugging him!”

Joey runs off in a manic frenzy but the second he’s gone Ranger Roy gathers himself together enough to tell Danny that Joey’s fired.  Dang, Joey and Ranger Roy’s relationship is less than a minute and a half old and already it’s seen such peaks and valleys. Also, the guy who plays Ranger Roy has the most amazing face in the world.

As Stephanie and Aunt Becky watch tv together in the living room, Michelle comes in, turns the tv off, jams her finger in Stephanie’s face and angrily accuses her of stealing her tap shoes.  Damn, I think this might be the rawest shit we’ve seen on Full House so far.  That little girl does not give a fuck.

This is some next-level obnoxious little girl shit right here.  When Stephanie responds to Michelle’s questioning, Michelle retorts by saying, “duh!” which really gets the audience all riled up.  She’s actually said this in the last few episodes, with similar reactions from the audience, but I didn’t know it was going to become a thing so I never mentioned it.  I guess it’s like a mini catch-phrase.  “Duh!”  Put that on a t-shirt!  Aunt Becky doesn’t even discourage this behavior at all, either.  She actually takes Michelle’s side and asks Stephanie what she did with the tap shoes.  It’s become really difficult to make a point of it when this show reaches a new level of obnoxiousness because I’ve already hated on it so hard for so long, but even after all I’ve seen, this scene is shocking.  Michelle doesn’t even make any jokes, she just acts like a complete fucking asshole.  Man, this show’s gonna have me believing in child abuse by the end, I just know it.

Abruptly, Joey runs in and summarizes his storyline in the episode so far and then runs off again.  What the fuck?  Just then, DJ comes downstairs and tells everyone that she spent enough time invading Jesse’s privacy to uncover that his real birth name is “Hermes.”  I thought she was gonna tell them about how his last name is really Cochran.

Comet the dog walks in carrying Michelle’s tap shoes in his mouth, followed by Jesse, who says that they were buried in the yard.  Stephanie admits that she buried them and then launches into a frantic monologue about how Michelle is driving her crazy, but then everyone just ignores her as she walks away.  After that annoying diversion wraps up, Michelle refers to Jesse as “Uncle Hermes” and then everyone laughs at him.  Jesse tells everyone that the name Hermes is rad and if they don’t like it then they can go fuck themselves and that’s pretty much the end of the Uncle Hermes story.  It’s weird how they’ve been using these tertiary plotlines that don’t go anywhere lately.  I guess they’re better than all those dream sequences they used to do to pad episodes.

Danny tries to tell Joey about how he got fired for his irresponsible hugging but he’s interrupted by a phone call about Joey’s Donny and Marie tickets being revoked and then the sexy cable lady coming over and telling Joey that there’s no way that she’s gonna fuck him if he doesn’t have Donny and Marie tickets.  As Joey tries to process this series of misfortunes, Danny tells him that he’s been fired by Ranger Roy.  After Danny explains Ranger Roy’s condition, Joey rushes off to intercept the hugagram he sent him, which is like a telegram except with hugging.  I’m not even going to question whether or not that’s a real thing.

Joey arrives moments too late to stop the plushophile that he paid to hug his new boss, which leads to the second scene in this episode where someone forcefully hugs Ranger Roy against his will while someone else struggles to pry them off.  Ranger Roy stumbles offstage where he hyperventilates as Danny walks up with Michelle and Teddy for some reason.  Danny tells Michelle and Teddy to go find spots on the Ranger Roy set, so I guess he was taking them to be guests on the show.  It’s strange how that was never mentioned before.  Also, Joey rushed out of the full house to come see Ranger Roy, but Danny, who was siting idly by when it happened, somehow managed to go get Teddy and Michelle and show up several seconds later.  But there’s really no time to process any of this, because apparently Ranger Roy is a live show and it’s about to start recording in a few seconds.  Since Ranger Roy is still recovering from that non-consensual hug, the people on the set force Danny to take his place.

Danny’s about as good at hosting the Ranger Roy show as he is at hosting Wake Up, San Francisco.  Teddy’s like, “this is some bullshit.  I came down here to see Ranger muthafuckin Roy, not some sorry ass punk,” and then Danny decides to grab Joey from offstage and get him to host the show.

Joey expresses his insecurities about trying to host the show and then Danny gives him a heartwarming pep talk, all on a live children’s program.  Joey then goes and grabs Mr. Woodchuck from behind a curtain where he left him at his audition because I guess no one would have moved him or anything.  Mr. Woodchuck tells three jokes about wood before Ranger Roy walks onstage and tells Joey that he was so amazed by his act that he’s decided to retire immediately and give him the show, then all the kids hug Joey.

Well, shit, you guys, that was the 100th episode.  I can’t believe I’ve watched 100 episodes of this shitty show.  I also just realized that the 2 year anniversary of this site was a few weeks ago, so everyone should eat a lot of cake this week to celebrate these things.

Firsts:  Mr. Woodchuck