Season 7, Episode 20, “Michelle a la Cart”

Hey, guys!  Super rad cartoonist Carolyn Main made this FHR tribute painting and she’s selling it on ebay!  I thought it was a beautiful enough work of art to post here, plus she said she’d buy me a sandwich if it made her some money.  She’s also helping me find someone to improve the ads on this site.  These reviews are going to be all done in about 6 months and I’d like to try to monetize the massive amount of traffic I get between now and then.  If any web savvy folks can help with this, drop me a line at billysuperstar@gmail.com.  It’s preferable that you live in the Portland, OR area because that’s where Carolyn lives and she’s the one who you’ll be working with.

Pre-Credits Gag:  Stephanie comes home from the hospital after breaking her arm while slipping on a piece of pizza in a parking lot.  Although it’s satisfying to know that she got hurt, it would have been a lot funnier if they’d shown it.  My guess is that Jodie Sweetin really did break her arm in real life so they had to write in an explanation on the show and they stuck it into the pre-credits gag so they didn’t waste any valuable screen time on her.  That’s time that could be spent on Michelle acting like an asshole, or Joey’s terrible impressions, or the twins speaking gibberish.

As Michelle and Denise prance around the backyard, some kid named Kenny that we’ve never seen before struts up to them and starts talking hella shit.  He says that he’s in the neighborhood picking up his application for the downhill derby, which he wins every year (which must only go back a year or two, seeing as how he’s like 6 years old).  I usually embrace any character that treats the people in the full house like shit, but Kenny’s such a smarmy little fuck that I can’t even appreciate it when he verbally abuses Michelle.  His performance is so grating and awful that he immediately fits right in on the show.

Michelle asks Becky to help her build a downhill derby racer and Becky says fuck yeah she will.  Kenny says that girls are dumb and can’t build cars which gives Michelle even more cause to want to beat his ass in the race.

DJ comes home and Danny tells her that Steve called.  She gets all nervous and wants to know what he wanted because it’s the first time he’s called since they broke up but Danny says he didn’t ask because who gives a shit?  They were boring when they were together and they’re even more boring now.

As Michelle and Becky work on their plans for the downhill racer in the living room, Jesse and Danny come in and start making a bunch of misogynistic jokes.  Becky plays along because her dignity and self-respect has been effectively nullified after years of being married to Jesse.  Although it’s pretty obvious that they’re being facetious from the tone of voice they’re all using, a bunch of shots of Michelle’s stupid face reveal that she’s deeply affected by the exchange that’s happening before her.

DJ continues to freak out while wondering why Steve called as Kimmie Gibbler helps her move furniture around in the basement recording studio that nobody ever uses anymore.  Joey and Stephanie come down and discuss how Stephanie is going to teach Joey some ballet moves because supposedly it will help him be a better hockey player.  Yeah, sure, why not?   Kimmie Gibbler leaves because she knows better than to watch the rest of this scene and then there’s a really obviously pre-recorded sound effect implying that Joey’s pants rip as he does his first ballet moves.

While Becky builds the downhill racer, Michelle acts all pissy and second-guesses everything that she does.  Kenny walks up and starts talking a bunch of shit again and Becky fully engages him.  Usually the arguing-with-little-kids routine is reserved for Jesse, but I guess that this is supposed to be another example of how deeply corrupted Becky has become by being married to him.

Becky tries to demonstrate what a badass downhill racer they’ve made to shut Kenny up but as soon as she starts pushing it one of the wheels falls off.

Kenny walks off laughing at them and Michelle says that she wants to quit, then she slinks into the full house as sad music plays.

Becky follows Michelle into the full house and tries to convince her to continue sitting there and not helping while she does all the work.  Stephanie and DJ chime in to support Becky’s cause but Michelle is still like, “fuck it.”  As Becky heads out to the backyard to optimistically continue to build the racer (because it’s not like she’s busy with a full-time job and two kids of her own or anything so she’s got all the time in the world to help out some shitty ungrateful little girl) she finds Steve at the back door.  He stands there awkwardly for a minute until DJ finally tells him to come in, like he’s a vampire or something.  It’s really an odd moment.

DJ and Steve have a stilted exchange until she starts blurting out a bunch of stuff about how she knows that it’s hard to get over her but he’s just going to have to learn to move on with his life.  Steve appears confused and then clarifies that he just came over to ask for his Sting CD back.  They have a brief and remarkably uninteresting discussion about how they’re feeling after their break-up and then they agree that they can still hang out even though they’re no longer a couple.  They leave the full house together to go have pizza and no sex, just like old times and, incidentally, Steve never gets gets his Sting CD back.

Oh, shit, you guys, this next part’s pretty rough.  Joey practices ballet in the basement with Stephanie while wearing tights that totally show off his nut sack.  It’s really bad.

While this is happening, Danny and Jesse peek at them from behind the stairs while giggling and jerking each other off.

Stephanie asks Joey if he’s ready for the bar exercises and Jesse says to Danny that he’s “ready for the bar-f bag” which is a pretty good example of the deeply uninspired wordplay that runs rampant throughout this show. I usually don’t bother to mention it because there’s not much to do beyond quote it and say that it sucks, and there are about ten examples of it in every episode, but I thought that this one was particularly uncreative.

As Joey continues to practice his ballet he says that while he practices he pictures himself as a squirrel gathering nuts.  I guess that the topic of intolerable wordplay was apropos here because Joey just had to mention nuts while wearing those awful tights.  Well, that settles it.  I’m officially celibate.  Anyway, Jesse and Danny eventually jump out and mock Joey for doing ballet and for the first time in Joey’s life he is self-conscious enough to experience shame.

After humiliating their idiot friend, Jesse and Danny head upstairs where they find Michelle sitting in her room, which they take as a sign that something is wrong for some reason.  Michele says that she quit the downhill derby because Becky was helping her and girls can’t build cars.  Danny asks her where the fuck she came up with that bullshit and she tells him that Kenny told her.  Danny says that Kenny’s a fucking asshole who doesn’t know shit about dick but then Michelle recounts all of the misogynistic jokes that everyone was telling the other night and how deeply they affected her.  Danny says that it’s totally mind-blowing that Michelle is unable to detect sarcasm after living in a sitcom her entire life but it’s really not that surprising since girls are so dumb, but then Jesse says that girls can do anything that boys can do, which comforts Michelle.  Joey comes in the room and Danny apologizes to him for gender-stereotyping by mocking his ballet and then Michelle decides that she’s going to continue to not really help Becky build that car after all so she can enter the downhill derby race.

Michelle goes to the backyard and has basically the exact same conversation with Becky that she just had with all the dads, except this time the music comes on.  Becky apologizes for making facetious jokes about gender stereotypes and then she tells Michelle that being a girl is pretty special and the good stuff about it is still coming up.  I assume that she’s referring to yeast infections and unfair wages.

The family all gather together to support Michelle’s stupid baby race because their lives all totally revolve around her.  There is a succession of races because I guess it’s a tournament and they’re all shot from extreme angles to try to draw attention away from that fact that those downhill racers only go like 15 miles per hour.

Believe it or not, the final race ends up being between Michelle and Kenny, which was totally not predictable.  Everyone offers Michelle a final burst of support before the championship race and Becky tells her that she’ll be proud of her whether or not she wins.  Right before the race, Kenny talks shit to Michelle one last time and she retorts with one of her worst line readings ever.

She sort of barks at him about how her dad says that she shouldn’t say anything at all if she can’t say anything nice, then she says that her dad’s not there and that Kenny’s a weenie.  Actually, her dad’s only a few feet away, but whatever.  Anyway, Michelle wins the race and everyone cheers for her and Kenny’s all sad but no one consoles him or acts like a good sport about beating him or anything.  You know, just once I’d like to see an instance where someone doesn’t just get everything they want on this show.  Maybe a really good lesson for the show would be that it’s ok not to win at everything all the time.  That bit where Becky says that she’ll be proud of Michelle whether or not she wins is totally hollow because she’ll never actually have to learn to cope with not winning.  Not even once.  I guess that in this case it’s not as bad as usual because at least it’s in support of a feminist theme but I’m just so fucking sick of everything working out perfectly for these shitty people all the time.  My hatred for them is totally gender-neutral, I swear.

Firsts:  Kenny