Season 7, Episode 4, “Tough Love”

Pre-Credits Gag:  Michelle tries to impress Stephanie with her sock-puppet ventriloquism skills but then it turns out that she’s just cheating by having Joey do the puppet’s voice from the closet.

This episode opens with Becky, Jesse and the twins having a squirt gun battle in the backyard.  After they run off, Danny appears with Joey and Vicky, who I was really surprised to see again.  We hadn’t seen or heard from her in long enough that I’d made peace with the idea that she’d never appear onscreen ever again.  It didn’t take much to do that.  Anyway, Danny wants to go out to dinner to celebrate Vicky being in town and as soon as they begin discussing where to go he eliminates Chinese food as an option because Michelle doesn’t like it. I like how casual they’ve become about her ruling all of their lives.  Vicky offers to make dinner for everyone at the full house since she’s gonna get married to Danny and will have to get used to making everyone dinner anyway.  Take that, women’s lib!  Danny says that he’s not sure if that’s such a good idea since the girls are such finicky eaters and then before Vicky can point out that there’s never been any mention of the girls selective diet before and that it just sounds like a cheap plot device, the twins come back and squirt Danny in the face.

Jesse tells whichever one of the twins it is that he’s talking to that it’s time to chill out on the squirt guns but then the kid just squirts him in the face a bunch more.  A heightened squirt gun battle ensues and they all run off screen again so Danny, Jesse and Vicky can talk shit about how out of control the twins are.  Oh, the irony!  Danny Tanner has no right whatsoever to judge anyone else’s parenting!  How many talent shows, class presentations, little league games and who knows what else were totally ruined because of his shitty kids?  Now he wants to evaluate someone else’s out of control children?  That is some bullshit.  The worst part of the whole scene, though, is when Joey does an impression of the Tasmanian Devil in reference to the twins.  I think that I hate this one the most out of all of his terrible impressions because of how stupid his face looks when he does it.

Michelle forces Stephanie to carry this big ass diorama of the solar system that she made for the science fair through the house.  Wait, I have some questions about this.  First of all, where are they coming from?  They just come in through the backyard with this big, cumbersome diorama and there’s no context given as to why.  I’m assuming that she made it at school, but she also made it for school, so why bring it to the house at all?  I also find it remarkable how compliant Stephanie is about lugging that thing around for her but I guess that we’ve already established that the family isn’t allowed to eat Chinese food because Michelle doesn’t like it, so this doesn’t seem that odd by comparison.

Danny looms over Vicky while she prepares dinner and is relieved to find out that she’s making spaghetti and pizza, because kids love that shit.  Then she reveals that the spaghetti will have pesto on it and the pizza will have goat cheese and he gets all worried again because I guess that’s supposed to be weird food.  They didn’t really go out on a limb with Vicky’s “weird” food choices here, although I guess it’s safe to assume that all they eat at the full house is white bread and corn on the cob, so I guess anything else would seem strange to them.

The twins search for Jesse during a rousing game of hide and seek and they find him behind the love seat in DJ’s stylish bedroom.  He tells them that it’s now their turn to hide and they just stand there looking confused for a long time while he attempts to shoo them off.  I’m guessing that these scenes with the twins are mostly improvised because they’re usually pretty ambling and I’m willing to bet that those kids aren’t exactly prodigious when it comes to taking stage directions.  As a matter of fact, they clearly have no idea what’s going on.

While hiding from Jesse in Michelle’s room, the twins totally fuck up her solar system diorama.  She comes in and freaks out and calls all the adults into the room.  She asks Danny why the twins are such assholes and why they didn’t listen to her when she told them to stop fucking up her diorama and he passive-aggressively tells her that they’ve never been taught how to listen by their parents while Jesse and Becky are standing there.

Jesse tells the twins to apologize to Michelle and one of them says, “ahsow ashell.”  She asks them if they’re really sorry, because I guess that gibberish was supposed to be an apology, and then they both shout “no!”  At least you can understand them when they’re being defiant.  Joey ushers the twins away and Becky and Jesse apologize to Michelle and tell her that they’ll rebuild her diorama. She’s hesitant to accept their apology but then Danny gives her a pep talk about the importance of graciously accepting apologies before shooing her out of the room.  Once she’s gone, Danny tells Jesse and Becky that their kids are out of control.  How come nobody ever mentions that the diorama wouldn’t have gotten fucked up if they didn’t let the kids run around the house unsupervised all the time?  Why isn’t supervising your children ever a value that’s learned in the full house?  This has been a problem since the beginning!  Anyway, Jesse and Becky admit that their kids are assholes and agree to start setting some limits, but for some reason they never point out to Danny that he needs to start doing this, too, because this is a problem that has plagued the full house for many a year.  Seriously, the irony in this scenario is excruciating.

Danny gathers all the kids into the living room to tell them that the dinner that Vicky is making for them might have some weird shit in it and they’d better just shut the fuck up and eat it.  Michelle and Stephanie are hesitant to comply so Danny pays them each $5 to keep their stupid mouths shut.

Vicky serves up goat cheese pizza and spaghetti with pesto to Danny’s shitty family and they all eyeball it with hesitation while asking borderline-insulting questions like, “is it supposed to smell like this.”  Nicky and Alex start putting their bowls on their heads and then dropping them on the floor and Danny looks at Jesse all judgmentally even though his kids are being way bigger assholes and don’t have the excuse of being 2 years old.  I don’t know, I kind of think that the premise for this episode comes from Danny wanting to feel better about what a terrible father he is by pretending that someone else’s kids are even worse.  Anyway, Jesse decides to assert himself by taking the twins upstairs for a time out and telling them that they don’t get any dessert.  Ooh, harsh!  As soon as he leaves, Vicky asks Michelle if she likes the food since she hasn’t tried it yet and then Michelle picks up a noodle with her hands and wipes the pesto off with her napkin before eating it.  That is so fucking rude!  Like, seriously, I’m not even trying to make a clever observation here.  That is just appallingly obnoxious, rude behavior.  If I had a kid who acted like that I would kill myself just so they would have to be an orphan.  To top it off, Joey tells her that she’s missing out on the best part of the food so she hands him her pesto-smeared napkin.  AND THEN SHE CONTINUES TO EAT WITH HER HANDS!!!  Why the twins got a time out and this kid is aloud to stay at the table is completely baffling to me.

Jesse tries to explain to his kids what they did wrong while they sit there with vacant expressions.  They proceed to call him a “weenie” and give him the raspberry and then when he becomes more assertive they start calling him, “mean daddy,” which hurts his feelings.

The kids all agree that the food Vicky made was actually pretty good and then Michelle says that she would be saying that she liked it even if Danny hadn’t paid her.  Vicky’s like, “what the fuck?” but then she forgives Danny immediately, rendering an already pointless storyline even more so.

Jesse comes back downstairs as Vicky serves up vanilla ice cream for everyone, noting that there are 2 extra bowls because they were meant for Nicky and Alex.  Well, she already knew that they weren’t getting dessert, and it’s not like any preparation really went into it, so what the fuck?  Jesse places the bowls on the counter and then begins to hallucinate his kids faces inside of them calling him, “mean daddy,” so he decides to sneak them upstairs.

Becky follows Jesse after he heads upstairs so he hides the bowls of ice cream in his shirt, which leads to some uninspired physical comedy.  Becky calls Jesse out on being such a pussy of a dad and then he talks about how he doesn’t want to be like his own dad, who was more of a dick.  It’s interesting how Jesse has been bringing up his lousy dad all the time lately and excusing his own irresponsible behavior as a necessary contrast to his dads disciplinarian tendencies.  It’s almost like the writers want his character to have some sort of depth or plausible motivation all of a sudden.  I guess that Jesse’s daddy issues would explain why he moved into the full house with Danny, who’s like a non-threatening father figure who enables him to live out a perpetual boyhood.  It’s also pretty interesting that Jesse’s dad was a recurring character in the earlier Seasons who was never seen again but is still mentioned pretty frequently.  I guess that Jesse’s inability to make peace with their issues is as good an explanation as we’re ever going to get about any of the disappearing grandparents who’ve stopped showing up at the full house.

Anyway, the music comes on as Becky tells Jesse that being a dad means being a disciplinarian sometimes and maybe his own dad wasn’t so bad.  Then they excuse the twins from their time out, followed by hugs.