Season 7, Episode 19, “Love on the Rocks”

Pre-Credits Gag:  Michelle plays Simon Says with the twins.  She tells them to sit on the floor and they do it but then she points out that she did not say Simon Says.  One of them says, “who’s Simon?” and then the other one says some total gibberish that I couldn’t understand at all.  I almost thought that he said, “It’s Farsi,” which is a Persian language.  Anyway, Michelle explains the rules of Simon Says and then Jesse comes in and says to come and eat ice cream in the kitchen.  Michelle runs to go eat it but the twins stay put.  Jesse asks them why they don’t get up and one of them says, “can’t do it” and the other one says “issawoose.”  This is getting really frustrating.

Kimmie Gibbler comes over to the full house with her new boyfriend, Keanu.  When she introduces him to Danny she greets him as “T-Bag,” which is one of those cases where I can’t tell whether the writer is intentionally slipping in a dirty joke or just totally naive.  Steve discuses the movie they all just saw with DJ while Kimmie Gibbler makes out with Keanu and then Kimmie Gibbler comments on how boring and lame Steve and DJ are.  After Kimmie Gibbler takes her boyfriend home for some hot finger-banging, Steve tells DJ that he’s gonna be out of town next week to go to L.A. with his film class.  She doesn’t take the news very well because apparently that week is her vacation from school (I don’t know what vacation that would be but whatever).  He says that he’ll stay in town if she wants him to but she urges him to go, but then there’s a close up on her sad face as sad music plays during their hug.

Everyone in the full house is hella muthafuckin tired in the morning.  Joey comes down and he’s all spry and then Becky comes home and says that while she was driving to the health club she heard on the radio that it was 5 AM, which is 3 hours earlier than everyone in the full house thinks it is (I don’t know why she’d be driving to the health club instead of work but whatever).  Joey reveals that he changed all of the clocks in the house as a hilarious prank and everyone gets super pissed.  Danny tells him to pack his bags and move out and OH MY GOD THEY FINALLY DID IT!  THEY CAME TO THEIR SENSES AND KICKED JOEY OUT OF THE FULL HOUSE!  FINALLY SOMETHING HAPPENED THAT MADE SENSE!!!

Oh wait, never mind, it was just a throwaway line.  I knew it was too good to be true.  Anyway, everyone goes back to bed and then when Jesse tries to round up the twins one of them says “happubrefest.”  Seriously, this is bullshit.  Isn’t the first requirement of being on tv that you can speak coherently?  Every time one of the twins says anything there’s a close-up of them that makes it pretty clear that it’s shot independently of the rest of the scene.  I would be surprised if that kid didn’t do an hours worth of takes to get the highest quality line reading possible and the best he could do was “happubrefest”?  I sincerely have no idea what he’s saying.  “Happy birthday”?

Jesse replies to him by saying, “no, it’s not time for breakfast.”  Oh!  He said, “time for breakfast”?  I would have never figured that out in a million years. It’s weird because these aren’t the original twins so it’s not like they just stuck with the first babies they got and are trying to make due with their total inability to speak.  These kids were actually hired to say this stuff.

Becky notices that DJ isn’t going back to bed and asks her if anything’s wrong.  DJ says that she feels like things have cooled off between her and Steve so Becky tells her that she has to find out if their relationship can continue to develop beyond the initial attraction.  DJ points out that Becky and Jesse are still “hot for each other” and Beckys says that that’s pretty much the entire basis of their relationship but if you want to base a relationship on sex you have to, well, have sex.

Kimmie Gibbler and her boyfriend try to get DJ to come with them to some makeout party but DJ says that she’d feel weird going by herself, what with Steve being out of town and all.  The couple leaves and then everyone in the full house except for Joey surrounds DJ and lays out their revenge plan for Joey’s prank.  They’re going to tape the reading of the lotto numbers and buy what would have been a winning ticket, then they’ll switch the ticket with the one Joey will buy and play the tape when he wants to watch the current broadcast so he’ll think he won (they’ve never mentioned before that Joey plays the lottery ever week but whatever).

DJ stays home on Saturday night to watch the twins and wait for Steve to call her.  Steve calls and says that L.A. is super fucking cool and then he has to hang up abruptly because Suzanne Somers wants to use the payphone.

I guess that she’s supposed to be an impressive guest-star even though she’s just some lame actress from another crappy TGIF show.  Steve is so awed by her that he starts kissing her ass, saying that because of the Thigh Master, his mom has “the cutest buns on the whole block.”  Oh my god, who talks about their mom like that!??!  Anyway, after feeling burned by staying home for some crappy 2-minute phone call, DJ realizes that she needs to start having a life and stop being so lame and boring.

DJ goes mountain climbing with Kimmie Gibbler and her boyfriend.  She gets freaked out by how high up they are and asks them if they’re scared, too, and Kimmie Gibbler says, “I’m too dumb to be scared,” which struck me as pretty odd.  I guess you can just chalk that up to lazy writing.  I mean, it’s not an allusion or anything.  Why would anyone ever say something like that about themselves?

Anyway, DJ has a moment of self-doubt during the climb but then Kimmie Gibbler, through little more than absent-minded indifference, coaxes her to the top.  Once she’s up there, DJ finds the stock images of a beautiful horizon to be quite inspiring.

DJ comes home and finds Steve waiting for her and he’s hella mad because he just got back from L.A. and they had a date that she stood him up for.  DJ says that she’s been doing hella stuff while he’s been out of town and basically forgot all about him.  Apparently a week has passed between the last scene and this one.  It’s usually pretty easy to convey a quick passage of time on tv but this one seems really inorganic and abrupt for some reason.  Steve accuses DJ of being negligent to get back at him for going out of town and then she straight up kicks him out of the full house.

Everyone gathers around to observe Joey as he watches the reading of the lottery numbers, which certainly wouldn’t arouse suspicion.  They all stand around giggling and smiling as Joey grows increasingly enthusiastic while the pre-recorded lottery broadcast rattles off the numbers from the ticket they’ve bought him.  After Joey is fooled into thinking that he’s won, Danny and Jesse argue over who gets to smell the lottery ticket (I’m not even making that up) and then they “accidentally” throw it into the fire (I don’t know why they only ever have a fire in the fireplace at oddly convenient times like this but whatever).  Joey attempts to jump into the fire after the ticket but Danny and Jesse stop him because I guess that severely burning Joey’s flesh wasn’t part of their prank (although it certainly would have made me laugh).

Everyone tells Joey that they played a prank on him but then while they explain how they did it he tells them that there wasn’t a tape in the vcr and that they really were watching the actual current lottery reading.  Even thought that would mean that the exact same lottery numbers won two weeks in a row, everyone believes Joey and then they attempt to get the ticket out of the fire.  Once they realize that it’s too late and the ticket has been destroyed, Joey tells them that he tricked them and knew that it was all a ruse all along because he saw the tape in the vcr earlier, which was labelled, “joke on Joey.”

Wait… if Joey knew that it was all a joke, why did he get all hysterically excited when his numbers were read?  And why did he try to jump into the fireplace?  Just to play up his own ruse?  That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.  Anyway, Joey smugly walks away after declaring himself the king of pranks but then a bucket of water spills all over him as he walks into the kitchen and everyone yells “April fools!” at him.  So, wait… does that mean that they all anticipated that he would figure out their prank and do a retaliatory prank so they set this up as the finale? If they really were able to anticipate this ping-ponging of pranks then you’d think that they’d have come up with something a little more clever for the final outcome.  I mean, a bucket of water?  They might as well have just kicked him in the nuts.

Danny finds DJ up late drinking tea and they start talking about her relationship with Steve.  She says that she feels like they’re not on the same wavelength anymore and that they’ve been together so long that she doesn’t even know who she is anymore.  Danny tells her that she should talk to Steve about the feelings that she’s having, which is the most obvious and redundant advice that he could have possibly given her, and then they hug.

DJ takes Steve on the same climb that she went on earlier (partially because she likes the view, but also because a new spot would require a different set) and he totally doesn’t appreciate it.  She says that they need to talk about their relationship because the magic isn’t there anymore and he’s like, “well, it’s been almost 2 years… Maybe it’s time you let me get to second base?”  They both agree that things aren’t going anywhere between them and DJ still refuses to let him touch even one of her boobs, not even just over her shirt, so they realize that their relationship has transformed into a friendship.  They agree that the idea of breaking up is pretty scary but then the music comes on, which helps them realize that it’s a fear that they’ll have to learn how to face.

They hug each other goodbye (which is their equivalent of break-up sex) and then, as they’re about to head back down the mountain, DJ takes one last look at the stock photo of the view and tells herself, “I’m going to be ok.”

That was actually the most mature and insightful episode of Full House ever.  I mean, it was really dumb and not funny at all, but at least it wasn’t totally pointless.  This show ends every episode with some sort of a lesson and they’re often misguided, sometimes to an insulting or even dangerous degree, but this moral, about how young girls shouldn’t stay in stagnant relationships just because they’re comfortable, is actually a pretty good one.