Season 5, Episode 11, “Nicky and/or Alexander”

Big Shout-outs to FHR’s 700th Facebook fan, Michael Robertson.  Your reward is the public humiliation of being called out as a fan on this blog.  If you’re not a fan of FHR on Facebook then you better get with the program.  There’s some pretty neat stuff going on over there.

Pre-Credits Gag:  Ok, see, the pre-credits gag is back again!  Can anyone tell me what’s up with this?  I’m baffled.  Anyway, in this one, DJ tries to teach Michelle how to crack eggs into a bowl.  After DJ’s explanation, Michelle says, “Duh,” cracks an egg, and then throws the egg shell into the bowl and stirs it in.  What’s her fucking problem?  Maybe she’s regressing because of the new babies or something.  Oh, wait, never mind.  She was always an asshole.

Jesse and Becky come home with the twins and then everyone stands around gawking at them and subjecting them to their grating personalities.

Becky starts abruptly crying and I assumed it was because she finally recognized the horrifying reality that she’s brought her children into but then Jesse explains that she’s just having postpartum mood swings because bitches be crazy.  DJ and Stephanie get to hold the babies and then when Michelle says she wants to hold one she’s told that she’s too little.  I have to say that I’m totally amazed at the rare judgement being put to use here.  Not only did they do the unthinkable by denying Michelle’s request, but they did it with the foresight that Michelle was totally going to kill that baby.  Remember that shit with the eggs in the pre-credits gag?  That was clearly a metaphor.

Jesse goes on a whole ramble about the babies being recognized as individuals and it’s clarified that the babies are currently being identified by their medical bracelets, plus one of them burps a lot and the other one apparently likes Elvis, or at least Jesse seems to think so because he’s actually incapable of empathizing with any other human beings, much less recognizing them as individuals, and so he merely projected himself onto his child.  The gang decide to take pictures of the babies to send to all of the grandparents that they never have on the show anymore and then Becky busts out booties that her mom made for the babies.  Jesse sees the booties and decides that they’d draw too much attention to the fact that the full house is filled with the most conspicuously closeted gay men in all of San Francisco.  When Jesse tells Becky that he doesn’t want the babies to wear the booties, she starts crying again because women are crazy, you guys, and should just stay in the kitchen, plus also have high paying jobs.

So then they take the babies upstairs and the first thing that Jesse does is show his bed to the babies and tell them that this is where he fucks their mom.

Jesse shows the babies the rest of their weird attic apartment, ending the tour with the totally unfinished room that he was supposed to build for them.

What an appropriate introduction to the life he’s going to provide for them.  “Sorry, kids, but you have to sleep on raw sheets of plywood because I was too busy laying around and eating ice cream while your mother was pregnant to prepare anything decent for you.  Plus I was jerking off all the time to the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue because your mom wasn’t givin’ it up due to you dumb babies plugging up her vag-hole.  I bet I woulda written a hit song by now if you guys hadn’t been born.  Anyway, enjoy your splintery boards.  I’m gonna go lay down on my comfy bed over there, which, by the way, is where I fuck your mom.”  Maybe I’m paraphrasing, but it’s all there.  Plus I think what I wrote is a lot better than the overextended scene of Jesse kissing the babies and telling him that he’s gonna be the best dad in the world while they inhale asbestos in their unfinished room.

There’s a pretty lengthy scene of Danny hosting Wake Up, San Francisco by himself and I can’t tell if we’re supposed to know that he’s terrible at it or not.  After the show wraps, Mr. Strowbridge shows up, who we haven’t seen in like 2 Seasons or something.  I wonder where he’s been.  Anyway, he tells Danny that he needs a temporary replacement for Becky while she’s taking time off to take care of her babies with no help from her useless husband.  Danny says he doesn’t want a temporary co-host but then Mr. Strowbridge tells him that he’s already hired one and she starts tomorrow, which might seem kind of abrupt but that’s actually how every decision has been made about Wake up, San Francisco for the entire series.  Mr. Strowbridge introduces Danny to Vicky Larson, the new co-host, and then Danny immediately decides that he wants to fuck her so he starts acting like a real pompous asshole.

Becky takes the babies’ ID bracelets off and tells DJ and Stephanie that they can be identified by the color of their booties, which seems a little bit like it may be some sort of a set-up.  Becky leaves and then there’s a long, horrifying scene where the girls get all up in the babies faces and talk like god damn know-nothings.

Jesse comes upstairs after finishing beating off to the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue in his “recording studio” and excuses the girls.  The second they leave, Michelle comes in and is like, “am I old enough yet to kill the babies?  I mean, hold the babies?” and then Jesse chases her out of the room and totally pinches her ass.  Weird!

Left to his own devices, the first thing Jesse does is disregard his wife’s only request by taking the babies’ booties off.  Immediately afterwards, Becky asks him to bring her Alexander and then he realizes that their ID bracelets are gone.  He asks how he’s supposed to identify them and she tells him to use the booties.  He immediately starts talking again about how shitty the booties are but then Becky starts screaming and crying because women are irrational, but then Jesse is quickly able to placate her because women are also easily controlled.  Jesse then scrambles to figure out which baby is which, finally taking a wild guess that I was able to verify as the wrong one with the magic of DVD technology.

Jesse tries to wake up before Becky so he can figure out a way to identify the babies.  He treads water aimlessly until Becky wakes up and notices that the baby who doesn’t usually burp is burping.  She leaves the room to go take a shit and then Jesse decides that the babies must be switched and frantically tries to switch their places before Becky gets back.

After switching the babies, Jesse realizes that he still doesn’t know which is which and then he asks Becky what she would do, hypothetically, if the babies got mixed up, which of course stirs up her unstable female emotions.  The scene is interrupted by Michelle, who just walks into their room without knocking or anything and asks again if she can hold one of the babies.  Jesse’s like, fuck it, and decides that if he can’t even identify his babies then he must not value their lives very much, and offers one of them to Michelle.  Surprisingly, she does not kill the baby.  Unsurprisingly, the audience totally jizzes in their pants over this unabashedly saccharine nonsense.  They’ve already been going “aww” pretty much anytime there’s a close-up of either of the babies, but when Michelle kisses the baby and tells him that she loves him, they fucking lose their shit.

Even still, you can tell by the look in that baby’s eyes that it knows that there’s a really good chance that it’s about to get murdered.

Right before they begin taping their first episode of Wake Up, San Francisco together, Danny gets all intimidated because he finds out that Vicky has all these tv credentials, which he would have found out earlier if he’d just shut the fuck up for 2 seconds.  Danny and Vicky have some really forced on-air tension and then they bring out their first guest, Joey, because why not?  Joey comes out in his Ranger Joe gear and performs some remarkably improved ventriloquism, which I was almost impressed by before realizing that Mr. Woodchuck’s dialogue was pre-recorded.

Joey takes a really awkwardly arranged seat between Danny and Vicky before Vicky asks him a long question about violence in cartoons.  Danny tries to interject by explaining that Joey’s a fucking simpleton and cannot answer such questions, but then Joey delivers a lengthy reply in a rather contrived, “intelligent” fashion.  Danny cuts to a commercial break and then chastises Joey for engaging with the new co-host, but Joey just points out that Danny obviously wants to fuck her.

Meanwhile, back at the full house, Jesse confides in the girls that he’s gotten the babies mixed up and uses their junior detective kit to take one of the baby’s footprints so he can compare it to their birth certificate to identify them.  While Jesse takes one of the babies footprints, Becky shows up and wants to know what the fuck’s going on.  Jesse tries to  hide what he’s doing but doesn’t think to cover up the baby’s inky foot with the booties for some reason, and instead puts the baby’s foot in his pocket.  Although I’m going to totally hate myself for admitting this, and it definitely made me concerned for that baby actor’s safety, I actually laughed a little at the baby-foot-in-pocket routine.  It’s just such an absurd image.  I know, I probably lost like 100 readers for giving this show some credit even one time, but that’s like 2 things I ever thought of as funny over the course of over 100 episodes, and this is the first time it didn’t involve a cast member getting hurt.  Even still, I’m deeply ashamed.

Becky wants to know what the fuck is going on with the baby-foot-in-pocket routine, so Jesse finally confesses about the episode’s premise.  Jesse further explains that he didn’t want to tell her about it because she’s been such a crazy ass bitch lately, plus he has all these false aspirations about being the perfect dad that are clearly contradicted by this blatant display of incompetence.  Becky reassures him and then they make out while the babies lay in the background, ignored while they cry for sustenance.

The babies are finally identified by the footprint Jesse took and then right after the credits roll he performs a scarification ritual on one of them so that he’ll never mix them up again.

So what’s up with these new babies?  The original baby had to be played by twins due to child labor laws or something, so how’d they get these guys on here?  I’m pretty sure that they’re not played by quadruplets.  I always wondered if the new twins were supposed to be some sort of show of baby-wrangling prowess, like they were so experienced with having babies on the show that they knew they could pull it off or something.  Or maybe the show was a big enough hit that they could get away with violating all sorts of child-labor conventions?  Maybe one of you readers can shed a little light on the subject, and if not, that’s fine, too, because who cares?

Firsts:  Vicky Larson