Season 7, Episode 15, “The Test”

Pre-Credits Gag:  Michelle and the twins steal Joey’s brownies.

Joey scolds Jesse for reusing a stamp because all of a sudden he has principles about not being a big worthless sponge.  Joey tries to get DJ to back him up as he scolds Jesse but she says that she doesn’t have time for their stupid bullshit because she has to study for the SATs.  She heads upstairs with Kimmie Gibbler but not before saying that if she doesn’t do well on the test she wont get into Stanford, which prompts Jesse to make a wise-ass remark about Kimmie Gibbler going to clown college.  After the girls go upstairs, Joey claims that the potato he’s peeling looks like Joe Pesci, which leads to a lengthy, unpleasant impression.  Hey, what the hell ever happened to Joe Pesci, anyway?  Maybe he went into hiding after being mentioned on Full House.

DJ tries to study in her room while Kimmie Gibbler just dicks around watching Wheel of Fortune.  Michelle comes in and starts blowing a whistle at everyone because she’s taken it upon herself to label all of the safety violations in the house, which seems to be just another excuse to be invasive and overbearing.  She scolds Kimmie Gibbler for leaving her jacket on a lamp, which does seem like a pretty ridiculous thing to do.  Still, I don’t know if barging into peoples rooms while blowing a whistle and shouting “safety violation” is a very effective means towards getting them to change their behavior.

Becky and Danny have a disagreement about an upcoming feature on Wake Up, San Francisco, which is about the ten millionth time that it’s been painfully apparent that the show is in desperate need of a producer.  I think it’s pretty safe to say that most morning show hosts don’t have to curate their own shows content, plus I can’t help but remember all the times that Danny was flailing around aimlessly on the air.  Maybe if they just hired one competent person to work things out behind the scenes, Wake Up, San Francisco wouldn’t be such a train wreck all the damn time.  Anyway, DJ comes downstairs and Danny asks her to settle the dispute in an attempt to fill the void that should be occupied by a competent professional, but DJ reminds him that she doesn’t have time for everyone’s self-absorbed nonsense because she has to study for her test.  Just that moment, Stephanie enters the room and tells everyone that she has something really important to share.  After she prevents DJ from leaving to go study, Stephanie divulges that her teacher told her that she has a natural gift for learning languages.  I’d be pretty pissed off at this point if I was DJ.  She’s really trying to be clear to everyone that she has something really important that she has to take care of and then her stupid sister is wasting her time by forcing her to hear about some arbitrary compliment her teacher gave her.  It almost seems like studying for the SATs is inadvertently teaching DJ a much deeper, more valuable lesson, which is that her whole family are a bunch of selfish pieces of shit.

The uncles walk into the room and say that dinner is ready but DJ says that she’s too nervous to eat and then excuses herself to go make some tea.  While she’s in the other room everyone bands together to further their meddling and Danny declares that they should downplay the importance of the SATs to put DJ’s mind at ease.

Joey tries to coerce DJ into eating the meatloaf and potatoes he made and I couldn’t help but notice that he’s not wearing any oven mitts while he holds it.  Are they eating cold meat and potatoes for dinner?  I also think it’s pretty ridiculous to suggest that such a miniscule tray of food could feed that enormous family.  The lack of attention to detail here is staggering.

Everyone tries unsuccessfully to convince DJ that the SATs are “just a test” and then Steve comes over with some classical music cd’s to help her study with.  The doorbell rings, which DJ insists on answering for some reason even though she’s the only person that’s busy.

A neighbor lady appear at the door who’s hella mad because she thinks that Comet’s been barking a lot and bothering the neighborhood and DJ tells her to fuck off.  I’d attribute this blameless reaction to the general entitlement that takes place in the full house rather than a testament to Comet’s good behavior.

The next scene opens with DJ sleeping in her room until Michelle wakes her up by blowing a whistle in her face.  She tells her that it’s already morning and DJ is startled to discover that she’s slept in and will be late for her test.

DJ rushes into the SAT room and discovers that it’s being run by the neighbor that she was shitty to.  The neighbor refuses to inform DJ of the changes that have been made to the test, which were announced before her untimely arrival, and then DJ sits down at her desk and notices that she’s still wearing her bunny slippers.  She then discovers that she’s forgotten her calculator but then Joey runs in the room and brings her a gigantic, old-timey adding machine.  It’s around this point that it becomes obvious that (*SPOILER ALERT*) this is all just a dream sequence.  Joey whips out the Joe Pesci potato from the night before and shows it to the teacher, which doesn’t make sense because DJ actually wasn’t in the room when the Joe-Pesci-potato schtick occurred and therefore wouldn’t have it present in her subconscious mind.

After Joey leaves, Jesse barges into the room and insists on giving DJ a breakfast burrito.  If it weren’t for absurd details like DJ being in her pajamas and the giant adding machine, this wouldn’t really seem like a dream sequence at all because the uncles storming into the room and disrupting everything like that is completely in line with their regular behavior.  On his way out, Jesse grabs a pamphlet labelled “SAT Test Answers” and then begins feeding them to DJ via a walkie talkie that he stashed in the breakfast burrito.

Earlier in the series they used to implement a lot of pointless dream sequences to pad out episodes but this one seems a little more deliberate.  Actually, maybe it’s fair to say that since almost this entire episode is a dream sequence, it’s being used to pad out the Season.  As DJ takes the SATs, all of the elements that appeared earlier in the episode return in some form to tamper with her experience.  Stephanie barges in to do a horrible job at helping her with the Latin section and then Becky and Danny come in to film her taking the test for their show.  Finally, when it’s time to grade the completed tests, Vanna White shows up to grade them and spell out where the test-takers will be able to go to college.

Kimmie Gibbler gets a perfect score, which will land her a spot at Stanford.  The entire Tanner family all gather together to see what DJ’s score is and it turns out that she got every answer wrong, which means that she has to go to Clown University.  DJ if forced to wear a humiliating clown nose while her family all tell her what a shameful disappointment she is and then Steve and Kimmie Gibbler start making out.

Danny wakes DJ up and tells her that it’s time to go take her test but she tells him that she had a fucked up dream and is too upset to take it.  The music comes on as Danny explains that she has to take the test because it’s hella important but then she calls him out on downplaying the importance of it the night before.  This is one of those times when the music brings us a sort of convoluted, meandering emotional resolve rather than a heavy-handed moral, as I’m not really sure what we’re supposed to learn from Danny’s explanation.  Something about believing in yourself, or to suck it up, or something?  I don’t know.  But they hug and the audience goes, “aww,” which is enough to convince DJ that she’s ready to take the test.

DJ goes in to take the test and the woman who runs it is played by Vanna White, presumably because she was already in the studio.  The credits come on as DJ begins to take the test and I bet you ten million dollars that we never hear about how she did.