Season 8, Episode 2, “Breaking Away”

Pre-Credits Gag:  Becky’s upset because it’s the twins’ first day of preschool and then there’s some throwaway joke that’s not even worth mentioning that’s about how Joey’s an idiot.

This is one of those episodes that picks up right where the pre-credits gag leaves off.  That always throws me.  Becky is still upset as she prepares to send the twins off to school, presumably because they’ll finally be diagnosed with whatever the hell it is that’s wrong with them once they’re exposed to people who are familiar with kids.  Jesse actually offers some support for once and tries to reassure Becky but she still declares that she’s not ready to let go, which makes the audience go “aww,” but just barely.  It’s kind of a half-hearted, almost understated “aww.”  The twins hug Becky goodbye, which apparently merits a full-fledged “aww” from the audience.  Maybe they were just holding it in for the big one.  Or maybe the light in the “aww” prompter was messed up and it was flickering.

Stephanie comes downstairs for school and Danny is alarmed by her whorish attire.  She tries to explain to him that it’s 1994 and therefore all teenage girls must have their midriffs exposed at all times, through rain, sleet or snow, but Danny aint havin’ it.

Gia comes over wearing the exact same outfit as Stephanie and gets into one of her verbal jousts with Michelle.  Gia’s patronizing voice when she speaks to Michelle and Michelle’s bitchy retorts have to be my most dreaded of the recurring gags that’ve cropped up in the last year.  It’s too bad, too, because you’d think that someone being a dick to Michelle would bring a morsel of joy to the series, but that condescending voice that Gia puts on is just unbearable.

DJ comes downstairs and is shocked by what a straight up ho Stephanie looks like even though she went through pretty much the exact same premise when she was more or less the exact same age.  Finally, Danny tells Stephanie to take her ass upstairs to wipe that skank off her face.

As Stephanie remover her makeup in her room, Gia tells her to leave the mascara on because eyes are the first thing guys notice.  Stephanie asks is that’s true and Gia replies, “well… for now,” which is a joke that’s almost as gross and inappropriate as Stephanie’s exposed midriff from a couple minutes ago.  Danny comes upstairs to make sure that she no longer looks like a surefire candidate for teenage pregnancy and then he starts bitching at her about cleaning up her room.  He seems to want her to clean it up that very second and for some reason Stephanie never points out that she can’t because it’s time to go to school but, anyway, after he leaves she rebelliously decides that she’ll clean it when she feels like it.  This is about as close as the series ever gets to examining the unpleasant realities of having a dad with an obsessive compulsive cleaning disorder.  “I was late for school because I was cleaning.  CLEANING!!!”

After some really weird stock footage of children playing on a playground, Jesse escorts the twins to their preschool classroom.  For a second they seem a little apprehensive about starting preschool but then they see some toy trains and they’re so excited by them that they snub their dad when he asks for a goodbye kiss.  Jesse experiences separation anxiety and tries to stay in the classroom but the teacher edges him out of the door.  However, as soon as her back is turned, Jesse sneaks back into the classroom because he has no interest in boundaries or his children’s personal growth.

Some kid outs Jesse to the teacher so she approaches him and tells him to get up out her classroom because his kids don’t need him right now.  Jesse is taken aback by this statement and decides that his own feelings are more important than his children’s mental and social development so he pulls them out of class.

Becky comes home to find Jesse eating fried chicken in the living room and she apologizes for being such a weirdo about sending the kids to preschool.  Jesse neglects to admit that he was an even bigger weirdo about it and instead delivers some song and dance about how the kids weren’t ready for school and they should wait a few years until they try again.  He declares that he’s going to home-school the kids himself, with Joey’s help, and Becky kind of tries to resist for a second but by this point we all know how this type of shit goes down.

Stephanie throws all her shit all over the place in her room because that’s about as close to teenage rebellion as anyone gets on Full House.  Why can’t she just be caught doing whip-its in the school parking lot like a real teenager?  Why does everything have to be so bland?

Michelle decides that she wants to move into DJ’s room because Stephanie’s being such a gross slob.  DJ understands that Michelle is an unstoppable force of evil and there’s no resisting her malignant will so she tells Danny about how Stephanie’s room still looks like shit so he’ll cause a chain reaction that will result in Michelle choosing to move back into her old room of her own volition.

Danny freaks out and yells at Stephanie, threatening to ground her for 2 weeks if she doesn’t clean her room.  Stephanie concedes and then Gia goes home and that’s the end of the Stephanie’s messy room subplot.  I guess the valuable lesson there is, “yell at your kids.”

Jesse begins his first home schooling session with the kids, which of course includes Joey sitting with them and acting like a complete fucking idiot.

Jesse introduces them to the letter A but since he’s unable to draw a recognizable apple he finds himself at a loss for how to get them to know what words to associate it with.  Predictably, Joey provides no help whatsoever.

Jesse gives up on letters and tries to teach the kids about counting instead, employing a monkey puppet to convey his message out of desperation.

The twins just ignore Jesse and start jumping on his bed, leaving him at a total loss about how to teach them anything.  He decides that the only thing left to do is declare a nap time so he gathers the twins around while he spoons Joey on the floor.

Becky comes home from her exhausting, demanding job to find her husband sleeping on the floor with his idiot best friend while the twins paint their feet.  Although I’m sure this isn’t what she had in mind when she agreed to let them home school the twins, I doubt she’s very surprised, either.  I can’t even tell anymore, you guys… is this a new low?  I mean, sure, it’s not like anybody expected them to be any good at teaching these kids, but to try for maybe 4 minutes and then just fall asleep on the floor?  That is deeply pathetic.  It’s amazing that these guys have cultivated such low expectations around themselves for so long and yet they can still be disappointing.

Joey slinks downstairs and then Jesse finally admits that he sucks dick at teaching the twins.  Becky says that it’s too bad that the twins didn’t like preschool and then, totally unexpectedly, one of the twins makes a clear statement about how they did like school.  I guess that 2 minutes that they spent in school really did have a positive effect on them.  To be fair, though, the next thing that one of them says is a bunch of gibberish that I couldn’t even try to make sense of.  It sounded like, “big juice is nice.”

Becky, being the only reasonably intelligent person on this whole show, deduces that the kids didn’t have a problem with school and then she gets Jesse to admit that he pulled them out because they wouldn’t kiss him goodbye.  The music comes on as Becky displays an unreasonable amount of patience and tolerance for her husbands explanation of why he decided to forgo their children’s progress for the sake of his own feelings.  They decide to send the twins back to preschool but first they kiss them on the mouth a whole bunch.

The next day, while wearing a midriff exposing shirt (bringing this narrative full circle), Becky escorts Jesse and the twins back to preschool.  Doesn’t she have to be at work?  I guess she had to take the day off or she’d never have a guarantee that the twins would make it.  Even if Jesse wasn’t having all that separation anxiety, he’d probably just let them stay home because he didn’t feel like driving.

I have to give this episode some credit for having a consistent theme running through both storylines.  Although the Stephanie b-story didn’t really go anywhere, it also dealt with the rocky landscape that forms between parents and children at certain stages of development.  Maybe that’s kind of a stretch but given that this was a story that included Jesse and Joey falling asleep on the floor instead of home schooling their kids, I kind of have to take what I can get.

Firsts:  One of the twins makes a statement that isn’t total fucking gibberish

Shout-out to Shane Jeffries, AKA Rambo Homer McFly, former author of Family Matters Reviewed and The Golden Girls Reviewed, and also the guy who was the winning bidder for the original art of the FHR logo.  Shane is raising money for a film project and he wanted me to share that with y’all.