Season 6, Episode 16, “The Heartbreak Kid”

Pre-Credits Gag:  Michelle has her friend over and they jump on her bed.  What was this kids name again?  I can’t remember at all.  They introduced her twice on the show already.  Damn, I can’t remember her name for the life of me, and they never say it.  You know, she’s the kid that replaced Teddy.  Anyway, they jump on the bed.

Steve gives Michelle a Valentine’s Day cookie and then she gets a huge boner for him.  DJ and Kimmie Gibbler encourage this for some reason, I guess because they think it’s cute.

Meanwhile, Stephanie helps Jesse with his new computer, which is surprisingly modern looking.  This might actually be one of the first instances of a kids-helping-adults-use-computers premise on a tv show, which probably makes it the most innovative work the writers have ever done.  There aren’t any remarkable jokes or observations or anything as Stephanie guides Jesse through DOS programming, but at least we’re not seeing some recycled rendition of something we’ve already seen a million times before on a million better tv shows.

In order to strengthen their codependent relationship, Danny helps Joey clean out his closet.  While they’re sorting through piles of useless crap, Danny finds an old picture of his high school girlfriend with an inscription written to Joey that heavily implies that they were hittin’ skins.  As Danny begins a pointed interrogation with Joey, Michelle abruptly walks in and asks Danny what you should do when you love someone.  Without any question as to where this is coming from, Danny explains that when you love someone, you start a relationship with them and then if it goes well, you get married.  Michelle thanks him for the information and then walks out of the room, leaving Joey and Danny to continue their argument as if there wasn’t a completely random interlude shoehorned into the middle of it.  Danny remains determined to know if Joey stole his old girlfriend and Joey refuses to give him a straight answer.

Michelle asks Steve to marry him and he and DJ decide to go along with it because she’s just a dumb little kid who doesn’t know anything so it’s funny to toy with her emotions.

Michelle tells her friend whose name I can’t remember that she’s going to marry Steve and assures her that it is not pretend, it is a for reals wedding.  Seriously, what the fuck is this kids name?  They never say it once.

Anyway, the girls ask Becky about how a wedding is thrown and she shows them photos from her wedding album.  I kept expecting Becky to have an epiphany about what a horrible piece of shit she married as she looked through the book but then I remembered that it’s too late for her.  It has been for a long time now. The girls then head upstairs to ask Jesse about weddings and he tells them about honeymoons, which leads to a lot of sexual innuendos.  There used to be a lot more of this type of humor in the earlier Seasons but it’s kind of gone away as the show has become more bland and family-friendly, so it’s kind of nice to see some jokes about fucking again.  Anyway, Jesse shoos the girls away so he can get back to his computer work but then he discovers that the twins have erased his file.  Oh, computers!

So Danny straight-up calls his old high school girlfriend and asks her if she banged Joey.  Wouldn’t that be your greatest nightmare if you’d ever fooled around with Joey?  Like the act itself wasn’t already traumatizing enough, you have to get a random phone call 20 years later just to remind you about it.  So the twist is that she admits that she was fuckin’ around with Joey, but she only used both of them to make Jesse jealous, because that’s who she was really into.  Not only does that sound like the biggest coincidence in history, but it’s also pretty fucked up considering that Jesse is about 5 years younger than these guys.  So assuming they were all like 17 at the time, Jesse would have been about 12.  Don’t get me wrong, I’d probably pick 12 year old Jesse over 17 year old Danny or Joey, too, but even still.  Eww.

Jesse comes downstairs and gets Stephanie to retrieve his lost report and when she does there’s a close-up of it and it’s actually not that bad.  There are a few typos but it’s still outstanding writing compared to any of the writing on Full House or anything you’d imagine that Jesse would be capable of composing.  My guess is that some intern wrote it.

DJ and Steve come home and then Michelle’s friend whose name I can’t remember comes in and tells them all that it’s time for the wedding.  Everyone decides that it’s a really cute idea so they all play along.  Michelle comes down in a white dress with a table cloth draped behind her while the audience goes, “aww,” and then there’s a brief ceremony.

After it’s over, Steve’s like, “I gotta get home because my mom’s making meatloaf” but then Michelle tells him that he can’t leave because they’re married now.  Danny tried to explain that the wedding was just pretend but Michelle’s like, “hell naw, muthafucka.  Steve’s my husband now, no joke.”  At this point I kind of expected everyone to agree that since Michelle wants them to be married that they really had to be because that’s pretty much how everything has gone down throughout the whole series but for once they actually tell Michelle that her idea is bullshit.  Well, first they try to coax her out of the idea with reasoning, like that she’d have to move away from her family if she got married, but she just points out that Jesse stayed in the full house when he got married.  Finally, some concrete evidence about how damaging that was for the children!  Things get pretty Twilight Zoney as the family tries to convince Michelle that the wedding was just for shits and giggles and she willfully denies what they’re saying but then the music comes on so she’s able to understand that the wedding was just pretend.  She gets really upset and throws her flowers down and runs upstairs, which was pretty funny.

Danny goes up to Michelle’s room and explains to her that she’s just a dumb ugly 6 year old who doesn’t even understand what love is.  The music comes on as Danny admits that sometimes it’s hard to remember that little kids have real feeling because everything they do is so stupid and trivial, then he reminds her that Steve is DJ’s man so she better back the fuck off.  Next he explains that one day when she’s a grown-up she’ll meet some rad guy and she’ll get married for reals, and I was kind of hoping that he’d say that her husband might die tragically and suddenly and she’ll be forced to raise her kids with a couple of worthless pieces of shit, but I guess that’s a given.

Finally, DJ and Steve come in and apologize for messing with Michelle’s mind.  Michelle tells them that it’ll be fine as long as they buy her some pizza.  Yeah, that always works on me, too.

Remember that episode a few Seasons back that was all about Stephanie pretending to marry her friend because she wasn’t getting enough attention from her family?  This was even more fucked up somehow.  It also draws attention to how much of a better performer 6 year old Stephanie was than 6 year old Michelle.  Actually, contrasting the two episodes does a pretty good job overall of exhibiting how much worse the show has gotten over the years.  Man, I remember shitting all over that Stephanie getting married episode back in the day.  I had no idea what was coming.  How naive I was.  How young and hopeful and naive.